ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Our kids have three sets of grandparents:

My dad and step-mom live about 20 minutes away.

My mom and step-dad live 70 miles away up in B.F.E.

Sunny's mother lives in Sydney, NSW.

The funny part is, guess who whines the most about not seeing the kids? The set that lives here in the same metro with us and averages a visit every two weeks.

Everybody saying "NO" otm.

I hate going into this because in a way, my kids are fortunate to have five - count 'em, FIVE - living grandparents.

But after spending a dual childhood with a mommy family and a daddy family, and then 15 years or so of not having to worry about who's in the same room as whom, one of the biggest complaints I have these days is that I'm back to staggering visitations.

Swear one year my dad tried to push a birthday party for Beeps to begin at 2 pm for one set and have a 4 pm showing for the other set. I said, SEE YA AT THREE.

staggering visitations

how dare u

Yeah, we got ourselves into a situation. Cancelled our trip last minute. Then they asked if they could visit next weekend and we said no because (1) we have to find an apartment because we are being priced out of ours and (2) we had other prior plans. Now we're bad guys. Turns out that's the only weekend for a while. They last came a month ago, which doesn't seem that long I guess but when a baby is small, you know. I'm sure behind this in part is jealousy of the other grandparents, but the thing is they help us out a fuckload, come when needed, etc. It's not like I want to see my in-laws all the time, but they're so available to us and it's great.

When one of our local grandfolks moans a little too much, I mention sunny's mom who maybe sees them biennially.

staggering visitations

how dare u

― Mordy, Friday, June 29, 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dying at this (sorry JS).

dumb question probably: but can you guys skype or send them photos or something to tide them over until they *can* see grandbabby again?

obv we do that

well then tell them to blow it out their ear :D

Hoo boy, this just got reaaaaal fun.

c'mon, spill

It's all good. We cancelled the trip bc wife is sick, I had a giant cathartic shouting match with my mother on the phone which was probably overdue, my mom decided we don't care about her, then we managed to get a flight a day later and come anyway, and then all was forgivien.

sooo...are we bad people if we take K on our lap instead of in a carseat?

Not going to judge you as a person, but that's illegal in our state.

Don't make me play that Rosie Perez scene from Fear with the fire extinguisher.

i think he means on the plane, not in a car

Oh.

http://corncommentary.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Nevermind-litella.jpg

lap on the plane is fine, just have to be wary of turbulence, but it's probably worth not having to pay for another seat

yeah. I figure 99.999% of situations we're either (1) completely safe or (2) all dead anyway and a carseat won't save her

A couple of friends of mine, who have 2 kids and travel all the time, did this as long as they could, incl. trips to Europe & Japan. Babe-in-arms until age 2, iirc.

yeah, we did that on the plane as long as we could. sylvie wanted to be held anyway.

we never buy a seat for D when we fly. a) money b) she'd end up in our lap during the trip anyway

We are not paying for a seat for our son until we have to.

agree when they're small and mostly immobile it isn't worth paying for a seat.

She was fine on the flight but we hit some seriously nail-biting turbulence on the flight back while she was on my lap (with one of those sudden drops that feels like the plane is going down). She didn't cry but I felt a parental feeling I've never felt before.

Folks are in DC. We could have driven but K doesn't take well to long car trips. Amtrak was actually much more expensive than the Delta Shuttle so we just went with the plane (also figured it was a nice, broken-up trip where even if total travel time was equivalent to the train, she was never stuck in one place for a long time). After this I don't know if I can do it again for a while though. I think I'm just going to stick to having my folks visit us here.

this is eye-opening

I was spanked as a child (I dunno what constitutes "regularly" - I got a spanking whenever I did something really egregious up until the age of probably 8 or 9) and I turned out okay. Was initially sort of blase/noncommittal about it when our daughter was born but my wife (who suffered much worse than I as a child) was dead-set against it. and now here's pretty definitive proof that she was right.

link doesn't work

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/spanking-kids-leads-adult-mental-illnesses/story?id=16695697

Guessing this is it. Interesting. I still would like to know what constitutes "sometimes" vs. "almost never." E.g. my parents used spanking maybe a handful of times in my childhood as a kind of last-resort punishment. My father also got physical with me maybe three or four times in my childhood out of anger -- not extremly severe, but a couple of times he shoved me hard and once or twice he hit me -- a single shot to the arm. I don't know if this constitutes "sometimes."

It is an interesting study and I am dead-set against spanking kids, but this little disclaimer is very important.

"They cautioned that the study was cross-sectional, which precludes drawing any causal inferences. Moreover, they noted, the data was retrospective, which could introduce recall and reporting biases."

TBH in my memory the incidents with my dad were much more damaging than the light spanking incidents were this controlled response to situations where I had become stubborn and absurd and they kind of snapped me out of it, whereas what happened with my dad just seemed disproportionate and scary and out-of-nowhere.

The actual question doesn't use the word "spank" at all: "As a child how often were you ever pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit by your parents or any adult living in your house?" All those examples do sound more like examples where it was a parent losing their temper and responding physically, rather than as a more controlled punishment for misbehavior (i.e. spanking as the more buttock focused version of a time-out.)

yeah spanking was like a controlled annoyance/irritant that I endured cuz I was acting out/being wild it wasn't something my parents did because they were crazy hostile or abusive. I don't think either of my parents ever laid a finger on me in anger, really

I think it's very hard to separate out hitting due to discipline and hitting due to anger. I know my parents were nearly always angry when I got slapped. They didn't just hit out, they'd warn me about it beforehand, but they were hitting me because they couldn't deal with the situation and had lost control.

Non-parent dipping into the parenting thread again, but that article kinda strengthens my feelings that what fucks people up (kids and adults both) is living in danger, under threat, being subject to anger and harm from others.

You could never spank your kids but emotionally manipulate them, for instance by being inconsistent with anger/affection responses in a way that disconnects their actions from your reaction--living with the uncertainty of that is v v destructive even in the absence of physical harm.

I don't have final thoughts about spanking as a controlled discipline (or not), but I don't think that's what this article is about.

There are so many gaps in the way the research is reported in that article (or possibly in the research itself) I don't know where to begin. The headline needs a question mark at the end of it IMO.

xxp Agree and it might actually be impossible to separate them out. Still suspect that the conclusion drawn in the tagline (spanking is BAD for kids) is impossible to infer from the text of the question.

This is really about neural development and a child's brain creating pathways and emotional connections.

Laurel is OTM, as usual, with this: "what fucks people up (kids and adults both) is living in danger, under threat, being subject to anger and harm from others.

You could never spank your kids but emotionally manipulate them, for instance by being inconsistent with anger/affection responses in a way that disconnects their actions from your reaction--living with the uncertainty of that is v v destructive even in the absence of physical harm."

Abuse; physical, emotional or sexual; in childhood causes actual brain damage. The hippocampus is smaller, there is decreased communication between the cortex and the limbic system, the left side volume is decreased, the neuro-endocrine system is out of whack and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember now. Basically, kid is traumatized, kid dissociates from reality to deal (flight, flight, freeze response), emotional dissociation leads to the emotional center of the brain and its communication with other parts of the brain to never completely develop resulting in a plethora of life-fucking-up behaviors and disorders.

I doubt spanking w/o anger is represented here but like vicky i have no idea what that would look like.

I had no idea you guys were Australian.

my girl is 2 years old today :)

happy b-day! get ready for wild times. ours is three in a couple weeks. just moved into a big girl bed. here she is pretending to sleep in it.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/549517_4376577253096_685381926_n.jpg

evie's 2nd birthday was a little over a week ago, we had a party that basically took me out of commission for an entire day after

too many cupcakes?

haha yeah we had the party (a duck/dinosaur themed affair because she liked dinos and ducks), man it was a lot of work!

she's turning into a little demon sometimes lately though! she's so sweet most of the time but goddamn now she gets hungry and it's crazy

yeah woke up early and was running around a lot getting stuff ready and then i was frosting her cake and ended up eating too much frosting and then having a sugar crash during the party, there is video footage with me in the background just like sitting on the stairs with my mouth open. then i felt vaguely sick the entire next day but was not actually sick.

evie wants to eat all the time and it's hard to figure out how much to try and limit that. don't want to keep her from getting nutrition but i feel like if we kept giving her food, she'd keep eating it.

she is mostly good but we do get some tantrums, usually related to putting on clothes or taking off clothes.

happy birthdays!

we just sang twinkle twinkle little star together. she wasn't singing the actual words, but it was really close.

M turned one in June, second child syndrome she didn't really have a party, just a few friends round. It's Aidan's 5th birthday and party on sunday, I'm dreading it. It's turned into a military operation to plan and my to do list, to be fitted in with work, tidying the house ready for said party and mother and sister in law coming down for a week, and looking after two children, is starting to scare me a little.

Time sure does fly by with kids, doesn't it?!

My little brother and his fiancée set their wedding date to be Henry's third birthday.

We're still a little miffed about it, but deep down, it's also a bit of a relief.

Happy Birthdays ILX babies! I saw this cake this morning and it blew my mind:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6078/6067409735_f1f2a58cbd_z.jpg

Vicky im feeling you on the 5th birthday stress and we didnt even have people coming into town.