ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

i think i can be good to let the kid chill out on his/her own sometimes -- we haven't had to do it too often though. But it can be literally just a minute and our daughter will do a complete 180 mood-wise. i don't know whether she "gets" it necessarily (she's 2 1/2 now), but it helps the situation.

Cruel? I'm still trying to figure out time-outs are punishment in the first place.

Beeps has to sit on the stairs while we count off her minutes (all FIVE of them) with this multi-colored light thing that looks like it fell out of some roadside assistance kit. I've told her, "In my day, we had to stand in the CORNER." and she's all "How did you get to the corner when all your toys were in the way?"

lol

n/a: I agree, a birthing center within a hospital is the best of both worlds.

pplains: hahahaha

My friend had a weird situation when her daughter picked up the following phrase at daycare:"How sad, how saaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices."

She walked into her daughter's room one day because she was so quiet and the three year old had moved all her toys to one side of the room and left a lonely stuffed animal frog in a corner and was pointing at "Frog" saying,"How sad, Frog, how saaaaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices." She called me at work all freaked out to ask if I thought she should have a conference. I said, by all means, that sounded creepy. So she did and everyone at the daycare denied ever teaching anything remotely like that.

My friend is extremely thorough so for weeks she worked hard to unravel the mystery. Meanwhile, her child was pretty much policing herself by repeating the phrase before she'd do something wrong. Then she started inserting it into her parent's conversations. When my friend said she forgot to pick up snacks at the grocery store, phrase was repeated, when her dad said he should have cut the grass because he found out rain was predicted for days, phrase repeated. Drove everyone nuts, but worked for her. She was very well behaved. My friend ended up hearing another child at the daycare say this and it turned out one of the student workers who was very Christian had been saying this to the children.

"How sad, Frog, how saaaaaaaaaaaad, you make bad choices."

Holy crap that is the cutest thing in the world. A little creepy maybe but also really freaking cute.

Teehee...

so my grandma is 101, has pneumonia and is probably not gonna live for much longer - family (some of whom have not been together in the same room for 20+ years) are all gathering. my daughter is 4. taking her to the hospital to visit with everybody would probably be too heavy/weird... right?

i think it would be good. you don't have to stay too long. it will be heavy and weird but i think that's good to see, so she can understand why people get all serious when they talk about your grandma. i mean, i don't know, but that's my first instinct.

she might be confused by it, but it's kind of inevitable that a four-year-old will experience some things she is confused by

Tough call. I probably wouldn't have taken my daughter at that age, but it's YMMV territory.

I was there the other night and my grandma's not hooked up to any machines, no tubes, she's in a private room, etc. so it's not as crazy as it could be. otoh she is 101, and really sick and looks it.

She is definitely aware that people and things die, but we haven't really had the big discussion about death yet.

I dunno, I'm of two minds about it.

my only real reference is being taken to the hospital to visit a dying neighbor (an old woman who had always been very nice to me) when I was 12. And that was a really heavy but positive experience - otoh 12 is very different from 4.

My parents kept us out of my grandmother's sickness and eventual death from cancer as much as possible. Even at her funeral, we were put into the church nursery to play until the adults were done, and I was...8 years old? So I have no memory of losing her, just that there was a person in my life for a while and then she stopped being in it, but I don't remember feeling any sadness or loss or marking the occasion.

So from my point of view, take her, give her the memories, let her see some amount of grieving responses, because, I don't know, it seems honest?

it's not the grieving I'm concerned about really. and it's not even the hospital per se (she loves hospitals! lol) ... I guess really my only concern is that she'll be freaked out by how my grandma actually looks right now, on the edge of death after a really long life. like visually she mind find it alarming/scary. I dunno.

Was she close to her? If not, she might be a little confused but in a way that would eventually be positive.

I would do it with my five-year-old if the relative was distant. If she was seeing someone she had been close to so near to death, maybe it would be a different story.

close = eh, not really. I mean by the time she could walk/talk my grandma was already nearing 100 and fairly senile. We've taken her for brief visits and she knows who her great grandmother is and where she lives etc but no I don't think there's a real emotional bond there.

My parents always seemed to think we would find things scary, like knowing the dog was sick, or seeing an ailing relative who was already jaundiced or dying or w/e. But it was never the things they expected that freaked us out? You just can't know, I guess. Still would take her?

also kinda wonder if I will be taking shit from my relatives for bringing a 4 yo, tbh. Like I might be okay with it, some of them might think I'm being a terrible parent. But whatever, that's a minor concern.

xp Agree I think it's hard to know what's going to freak out a child at four (or for that matter eight). I'm inclined to think it'd be okay either way, but I don't think you would be sheltering her terribly if you didn't take her. She'll get plenty of opportunity to learn about mortality ya know.

tbf I do have all those bodies stashed in the basement

there is that.

okay well looks like we're going over this afternoon if my wife can find a sub at the co-op

that went pretty well actually. Veronica was not weirded out or scared or anything. she wandered in and out of grandma's room, asked some questions, played with the relatives etc. later in the evening after we'd gotten home she recommended that the doctors give grandma "special medicine" because "we don't want her to die" at which point I had to inform her that grandma was not going to get better and was in all likelihood going to die and that that was okay, sometimes when you're that old people don't get better. this didn't seem to upset her at all (mostly cuz I don't think she really has a concept of what death is at this point).

and then my grandma died this morning around 6:30am. haven't talked to Veronica about it yet (since I'm at work) but I'm sure there will be more explaining ahead of and during the funeral.

condolences, shakey

yeah, what do you say when someone passes away at such an old age?

Except "maybe they had wanted to live to be 102?"

I'm really sorry, shakes. But at least V got to meet her and have that memory, something that make a connection in the web of family, a shared thing. I'm glad she took it in stride.

man, intense

If she lives until 2109, she'll be able to say that she once met a relative born almost 200 years ago.

Sorry, Shakey.

Except "maybe they had wanted to live to be 102?"

lol yeah. people go when they're ready to go, in my experience. My EMT cousin was there and was talking about how he picks up old people all the time who are like "I'm ready to die! let's go!"

but thx for the kind words everybody. it has not been that intense, really.

Ok so anyone have any thoughts on dealing with family wanting to visit all the time when the baby is new?

Basically the main problem is this: for months before the baby was born, my mother was going on and on about how she'd come stay nearby for a week to help my wife once I go back to work. So, that happened, only she really wasn't much help at all. She held the baby some, which I guess at least gave my wife a break, but otherwise she mostly just talked, or talked on the phone, or did stuff on her laptop. She didn't do any of the cleaning she said she'd do, she wound up needing a lot of my wife's help for cooking the two times during the week that she actually did cook, and she actually left messes that we had to clean up, like she literally never even cleared her dishes after eating/drinking (incidentally it was kind of revelatory to realize just how little my mother cleans up after herself - she has always been that way and I've only gradually become aware of it). Meanwhile my wife is kind of stuck hanging out with her all day, and while they get along well, it winds up being difficult for her after a while.

Now my mom wants to come "help" again. I feel like I can't shatter my mom's illusion of helpfulness by telling her that it's not actually helpful or suggesting she not come again so soon. I also can't make my wife entertain my mom while I'm at work. Sigh.

This happened to us & imo tell your mom to stay away, new fam prerogative trumps all & you can't handle company at this point

Tell your mom to stay away. If your choice is your wife entertaining someone over the age of 1 month old or your mom not feeling so "helpful" after already "giving so much for a whole week," you're going to have to pick the latter.

As it stands right now she is just going to come for two days and not even be there the whole time, so we decided we can live with it. But I am going to have to learn to be more confrontational about this in the future.

perfectly reasonable to send up a non-specific "we need our own space for awhile" signal

^^^

my wife's mom barely lasted an entire weekend. my mom was probably more helpful but left when the toilet broke lol.

it was really bizarre when she was here for a week, like "how can you keep insisting on how helpful you want to be and yet be so completely oblivious as to how unhelpful you are actually being?"

"AHM JUST FINISHIN' THIS MAGAZINE!!!"

(yeah, been there)

I could probably write a 10000 word diatribe about relatives who get in the way after a new birth. It was worse with the first one, but they didn't exactly learn any lessons by the time the second one came along.

eesh that sucks. we lucked out, my mom was amazing in those early months. i remember the panic I felt the day after we got home from the hospital with sylvie, and then my mom shows up, and everything is OK. awwww.

oddly, her mom, from whom we didn't expect anything, has been a total lifesaver. Comes when we actually need help, never overstays her welcome, makes good but unobtrusive company. Maybe it's because it's the emotionally cool, unneedy ones who are more capable of actually being there for you in a true sense instead of "helping" for some kind of self-affirmation.

UPDATE: the kid who I suspect has some kind of developmental disability/autism/Idunnowhat, his parents are now looking into getting him into yet another preschool (this would be his 4th in two years). The mother was expressing some surprise the other day when it was pointed out that said kid does not engage in any imaginative play - like, at all. which is unusual for a 4 yo.

*sigh*

parental denial with things like autism is huge - my wife deals with it all the time as a sped teacher, and it's not always the parents you'd expect. I mean you get poor immigrant parents who have no idea what autism even is, but you also get highly educated parents who actually honestly still believe that their five year old who does not speak a word will "catch up" by "learning from his peers."

BTW only half-illustrative of the same point, but Leonard Lopate I believe has a child with autism, and I once heard him argue with a medical expert about the link between vaccines and autism on air!

i have a cousin who's got twins. his brother works with autistic kids and he has thought for a long time they show a lot of the early signs of autism. they're about 7 now. i don't really know what specific things he's seeing, but it's true that they can't focus on anything, they're very asocial, etc.. but their mother absolutely REFUSES to consider it. the very few times anyone in the family has broached the subject she has frozen up, shut down the conversation. the kids go to some kind of experimental school where there aren't any lessons or rules and which doesn't believe in "pigeonholing" kids, even those with autism. there are no assessments like that. in their eyes, every kid is just unique and that's that. i have a lot of time for that point of view and i do think that people's minds are way overmedicalized these days but these kids' mother's total refusal to even have them assessed by a pro is incredibly frustrating because it's impossible to even have the conversation. and the concerned brother is frustrated too because he says the longer you wait to deal with autism the harder it gets. GAH.

We saw the midwife today and talked about our fantasy birth plans! Planning our birth dinner. I learned how to time contractions and got teary-eyed, We're at 36 weeks now!

Soon soon soon! So excited for you guys!

We installed the car seat today...took 40 minutes and it was work out in the hot, Texas sun. Felt uber rewarding to get it in. J. did the most of the labor, I just read instructions and looked at illustrations and tried to make sense of it all.

sending you all my very best wishes.