My ex-wife should write a book on child rearing. She grew up dirt poor in Mississippi the second oldest of 8 girls with no father. ( 5 different fathers) She rasied her younger siblings while she was still a baby herself while her mother was picking cotton. Once we had kids she had no trouble adapting. I take very little credit myself but because of her we had as close to perfect kids as anyone could ask. She gave them plenty of love, firm consistent direction, very hard to describe but she made it look easy. No temper tantrums, no playing games with food, no time outs. If she had a problem she dealt with it swiftly and then it was done and over.
She baby sat while I worked for extra money. The kids were dropped off and were often problem kids. The mothers would give her long instructions on how to deal with special needs etc. The kids all loved her and even as adults stay in touch. They were never a problem, always behaved and seemed happy to do so. She put up with nothing from kids, they minded simple as that and they loved it!
Well, thanks for that.
Heh. I wrote something similar on Facebook, about how if she’s not a lawyer by the time she’s 20 I’ll be mad.
As frustrating as such moments can be, I’m lucky enough that my weird little kid is hilarious a lot of the time, so her temper tantrums often send me into paroxysms of laughter.
And then there are the creepy moments, like a few weeks ago when I woke up to find her staring at me with a beatific smile and singing,
Because after reading this thread you stabbed yourself in the ovaries?
Threads like this are the best form of birth control.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this song.
Yeah but it’s also the best age too. I miss having toddlers around.
One of mine was like that. Every morning was 20 minutes of trying to place clothes on a squirming, screaming toddler.
As an adult she doesn’t remember any of that, and is extremely amused when I tell her stories of her early childhood behavior.
I came up with a very bad mommy cheat for this, I put him to bed in sweatpants and a t-shirt and that’s what he wore the next day to preschool. Up and off to school little baby!
We’re just about at that point. She’s fighting even diapers now. We’ve compromised at putting them on while she stands up siiighhhhh.
Yes, toddlers are 49% the biggest pain in the ass ever. But they’re 51% supreme joy. Like this morning when she took my hand, turned it palm-upward, and zerberted it. Took me totally by surprise and made me laugh my ass off.
Or when I picked her up from daycare yesterday, and she threw her skinny little arms around my neck and crowed “mama! Mama! Mama!”
Hell, I still do that myself sometimes.
This is brilliant. I’m about to do it with my 23-month old! Thank you!!!
This weekend, while she was supposed to be napping, baby Smaje peed in her diaper, then took off her pants and removed the diaper, and sat patiently in her crib for me to get her a new one. I never would have known, had I not glanced at the baby monitor. She is cute.
For a bit…then they become teenagers, and its a different kind of hard.
Then they leave home…I’m looking forward to the leaving (13 and 14)
For the folks trying to force kids to eat something they don’t want to, just let me tell you that saving that bowl of Cheerios for lunch because your 5 year old won’t eat them for breakfast won’t work.
Rather, it might work, and you might end with barfed Cheerios all over the place.
Just sayin’. 
(I STILL hate Cheerios!!)
Oh, hell, no! Not “bad mommy” in the slightest! Brilliant mommy. Mommy does what works mommy, and why not?
(And yes, I did the same with my not-a-morning-person kiddo, and I will sometimes do it myself when we’re leaving before dawn. Anything for an extra round of the snooze button!)
I do it with my kids. At least their shirts. I don’t put them to bed in jeans.
Kids are fun and adorable and interesting and also damn creepy. My four-year-old was telling me about how much he loved his brand new twin baby sisters, and how he was going to take care of them, and then wanted to know what would happen if their eyes fell out.
I love him, I do, but there’s a good reason he thinks ‘Little Weirdo’ is a term of affection.
You know that thing about warning them if you count to five there will be serious consequences?
My kids LOVED to count along with mommy and me, even knowing there would be serious consequences when we all got to five.
I have absolutely no idea what I’ll do if I ever get to five. Seriously.
Yeah, sometimes I was only counting to five because it gave me four seconds to come up with something. You know what’s funny reading these boards? So often I felt like a terrible parent, I didn’t know I was doing ok until much later when my kids told me they thought I was a good mom. So much of parenting is just making through the day.
My youngest, when she was 2, said to me “mama, you have two choices: you can get me M&Ms, or you can get me a lollipop”. She picks up on things quickly 
Usually getting to five earned them a time out. That gave me a couple of minutes to figure out what to do next when they continued to act up.