Mmm! Another baby will NOT fix the relationship, and how dare you bring another life into this world just because you think it’s going to make your marriage better or something.
I’m a proud father of a 2 year old boy and trying for a 2nd child, and I’ll say that a lot of that is a sort of buyer’s remorse- having kids is an absolute and total lifestyle change; marriage isn’t even in the same order of magnitude.
I’ve heard plenty of men talk about things like weaning and potty training.
For me, the “Cult of the Child” phenomenon also includes the notion that absolutely everything in life should be child-friendly. It’s far from all parents who behave this way, but the ones that do are pretty annoying. E.g. We’re not going to childproof our house, so if you bring your children over you need to expect to supervise them well so they don’t get into things that are dangerous. That’s not our responsibility beyond making sure we don’t leave knives, poison and fire in the middle of the living room floor.
Heh. I like that one!
You’re quite welcome, and I glad I didn’t overstep with my take on what we we’re talking about in this thread, and my personal opinions on what it is like to be an outsider (good word, by the way) in our society. 
Nothing you posted was threadshitting; some of the parents who came into this thread were getting dangerously close. The usual response to a thread that doesn’t interest you here is to not participate in it, not go into the thread and announce why it isn’t a valid thread.
I’ve probably hijacked this thread enough with my militant childfree-by-choiceness, but if you have any further questions, please feel free to PM me.
If your child is less than 6 years old, and you don’t think they are the most talented, intelligent, good-looking, athletically-gifted and just-gosh-darned-nicest-kid-ever, you are probably a poor parent.
If your child is over 6 years old, and you still think any of the above, you are probably a poor parent.
If your husband is addicted to video games, or anything else, a baby will not make him stop.
eom
The kid’s first birthday party doesn’t need to be some elaborate affair. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on anyway.
Keep your kids off Facebook. You can send grandma a private message, and not worry about kidnappers, murderers and rapists taking notes.
Sometimes people standing outside a process have insight that people deeply enmeshed in it do not.
Children are great observers, but poor interpreters. They will see more and understand less than you assume.
And the corollary: if your children are throwing things in someone else’s house, jumping on the furniture, etc., and the hosts have asked them numerous times to knock it off, in your presence, and they still aren’t knocking it off, it’s time for you to be the parent and step in, and remove the child from the house if necessary. My friends are generally pretty good about this (and their kids are always welcome at our house when there’s a gathering, which is unspoken in our circle), but I still have a broken lamp that my mother made that was in a room with some particularly rambunctious friends’ children after they had been asked to leave the living room because they persisted in throwing sofa cushions at each other in a room full of fragile handmade and/or antique things. All the kids involved are old enough to know better.
Another one: the mere fact of having given birth (on your fourth accidental pregnancy at that) does not give you some unique human insight into relationships between other parents and their (adult) children, neither of which are you, so keep your mouth shut unless someone requests your opinion. Getting knocked up doesn’t exactly require some special, hard-to-find skill. (Yes, I’m thinking of someone in particular - how did you guess?)
This is very specific advice but: people in wheelchairs are usually happy to talk about being in a chair. There is no need to be afraid of us.
Oh, I feel you. Generally in the workplace I just tell them I have kittens instead, because I can leave them alone for days at a time. That generally shuts them up, for a while anyway.
Parents, for the love of Og, find something to talk about besides your kids. I am SO sick of pretending to care about the minute details of their lives. Really, we are just being polite.
That’s actually quite useful information, thank you. I mean, I won’t extrapolate that to apply to every person in every wheelchair every time (no one is always up for being the ambassador) but I do struggle with how to educate my kids, encourage them to be helpful and at the same time not make people using wheelchairs feel like a display item, y’know?
Don’t boss your kid around unless the kid is doing something that will risk their safety.
That’s the thing though; until the kids get a little older, the parents generally don’t do a whole lot else or have much else to talk about.
That’s what I was getting at when I said that having kids is an absolute and total lifestyle change. It’s why your friends who have children drop off the face of the earth for a long time, if not forever.
It’s not so much them crowing about how awesome their children are in many cases, it’s that it’s about the only thing going for them, especially if they’re stay-at-home moms. I find myself talking to my buddies about my son more than they probably like, but it’s mostly because outside of bitching about work and our college football team, that’s the other thing I have to talk about these days.
Dont make your kids over-ambitious. Make them take interest in and enjoy real things (people and nature) around them (less tech savvy). Make them care-free but sincere.
Here’s one I learned the hard way while working in daycare: don’t lift or swing little kids by their hands or arms. It’s easier than you think todislocate or break their elbows.
In my case, I had a group of 2-year-olds holding hands and dancing in a circle. The little girl holding my right hand grabbed tight and picked up her feet so I was dangling her by her arm for a few seconds until I could slow down and put her down without stepping on her. She began complaining that her elbow hurt. Fortunately, this happened during a classroom party with parents present, including her mom, so she was taken to the doctor right away and I had witnesses that there had been no abuse. When she came back, her arm was in a cast. Her elbow had been dislocated and a bone had been cracked.
Being a parent isn’t the only way to experience, interact with, or raise children. It could actually come across as an insult to some of the people I know who perform volunteer/medical work, help, and teach many hundreds of kids over years, all to generally thankful parents who share the upbringing experience.
Reading your consecutive posts, you may not have meant it this way, but it seems unnecessarily defensive. Good parenting is certainly a full time job, and no matter the advice, mistakes will be made and the entire process is a learning experience to be shared with the kid(s). The more people genuinely involved with that, the better. As such, yeah, you probably don’t need the advice here, but what you’ve written comes across as condescending.
Not at all. You’re taking offense to a generalization, which we know should be a non-starter.
100% true, lol.
I can see that I guess. Apologies to all. The hairs got up on the back of my neck. We had two kids 17 months apart and therefore had sleepless nights and diaper changes and 3:00 AM feedings for like 5 years in a row, with no break. And believe me not only did I do my share, I think I did more than my share, plus went to work every day, plus took the kids out to give mommy a break and the whole 9 yards.
It was a very, very trying experience. I love them more than anything, and did what I needed to do but the change in lifestyle was enormous. HUGE! UNFATHOMABLE even. And then to reduce it all to a one or two sentence piece of advice from someone who hasn’t been there seems grossly unfair to me. Walk a mile in my shoes and all that.
They’re teenagers now and there are issues that go with that. Nothing major, but teenagers can be selfish jerks, even to their own parents. It’s another phase of parenting to navigate through.
I’m sorry for pseudo-threadshitting earlier, but it’s almost like non-car owners creating a thread for advice for car owners and piping in with:
“Make sure there’s gasoline in the tank.”
“Change your oil on schedule as per the owner’s manual.”
“Check your tire pressure before any long trips.”
“Clean the snow off your windows before driving.”
It’s like, no shit Sherlock.
Continue.