ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

happy mothers' day to all the moms

to all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends I'd like to offer my love and respect to the end

otm

holy hell Henry is off the charts crazy right now. tonight he got in an argument with the ipad.such a sight: tears rolling down his face while yelling at it "ITS MY TURN! MY TURN!!!!'

in 4 weeks i get to stay home with him all day for 2 months :)

jesus christ, just reading this is making me exhausted

i teach high school geometry all year, staying at home with my son is a welcome reprieve

I just realized that my "parenting voice" is super-nasal, like Bert from Sesame Street. I definitely don't shift voices on purpose. It's so embarrassing. No one has mentioned it to me, but undoubtedly, I've done this in front of strangers, relatives, my wife, maybe even coworkers on Bring Your Kid to Work Day? It's like some unconscious tic.

Traveling with K is a little rough -- she's generally a good sport but it's hard for her to sleep in different places, let alone a different time zone. First few nights she was up until 2 or 3 am. Tonight she actually fell asleep at 10pm, but on the other hand, she totally broke down in the restaurant at dinner to the point that we had to cut out early, where as we thought she would have been fine given her late schedule. I think meeting new people for her every single day has been tough too -- aunts, cousins, friends, etc.

Getting her a ticket was a good idea although it hurt a little on the money side. I don't know how we could have done the flight otherwise.

I just realized that my "parenting voice" is super-nasal, like Bert from Sesame Street. I definitely don't shift voices on purpose. It's so embarrassing. No one has mentioned it to me, but undoubtedly, I've done this in front of strangers, relatives, my wife, maybe even coworkers on Bring Your Kid to Work Day? It's like some unconscious tic.

my cousin has a thing he does where he says "oKAAAAY?" after everything he says to his kids and the "okay" itself is super-nasal though the rest of it is not. super-weird. i'm sure he's not aware of it. it reminded me of friends i had who did telemarketing for this carpet-cleaning place and every single person in the whole goddamned place worked from the same script and had the exact same nasal way of announcing "i'm calling from budget carpet cleaners?"

I think meeting new people for her every single day has been tough too -- aunts, cousins, friends, etc.

yeah this amt of new stimulus is crazy-making for a small kid i think

i didn't know where else to post this, and you guys are always full of good advice.

my nephew is 13, and I just found out from my mum that he's being bullied at school. I don't know exactly the specifics of what was being done to him -- the bullier has been suspended which is something. he's a pretty quiet kid, in a very loud and rambunctious family. he has 2 younger brothers, and they are v energetic/cute so they suck up a lot of the attention in that family, and it's often 'who yells loudest gets noticed' in their house. My sister is a good mum, but not the most touchy-feely parent, so aside from checking in and making sure he's okay, I don't know how much handholding she's going to do with him about this. which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

I guess I'm just concerned that as a kid who's already kind of withdrawn and quiet, that he's going to retreat more as a result of this. my brother was bullied in primary school by his best friend...I was thinking maybe it would be good for him to talk to my nephew, since he gets a lot of admiration from my nephew and all 3 boys pretty much worship him..

idk. I'm thousands of miles away from him and we don't talk except when we visit. maybe I'm just feeling over anxious becuase of the distance, but he's a cool kid and i just get so mad thinking about this little shit who's trying to break his spirit.

have you guys had experiences like this with your own kids? how have you handled it within the home? etc?
i just need to hear some stories to know the ways he might be okay.

my brother was bullied in primary school by his best friend...I was thinking maybe it would be good for him to talk to my nephew

this sounds like a good idea. make it happen

my kids haven't had this experience yet, so i don't really have any advice of my own

Man, bullying. Never figured that one out myself. I'm always kind of tempted to say "hit back" since none of the nonviolent approaches my parents suggested really worked. But it's probably not necessarily the best answer.

my brother's situation was horrible. he was bullied through most of primary school by the kid that we all knew as his best friend. he was a bigger boy, bigger than most of the kids in his class, he had a couple of older brothers and in retrospect it all kinda fit but, man... this kid came over to our house all the time, they went to each other's birthday parties, seemed like a quiet nice kid but apparently he was tormenting my brother throughout the whole friendship, all through primary school :(

he only told me a few years ago, and it broke my heart.

this is probably no surprise to anyone (well maybe it is what do I know) but as the smallest kid in my class from roughl age 7-16 I received endless amounts of (often but not always) unprovoked shit from my physically superior peers. my memories of elementary school through junior high and the first couple years of high school are liberally stuffed with namecalling, beatings, "charley horses", "tabling", smashed lunches, and other various humiliations. it doesn't help having the word "cock" in your last name, lemme tell you... anyway, I got in fights all the time. constantly. some kid would make fun of me or hit me or something and the whole "just ignore them" thing does not work. neither does attempting to reasoning with them, or ridiculing them back, or reporting them to the teacher (fun fact: if you complain that some kid is giving you shit, you BOTH get detention/in trouble/sent to the principal's office/etc. Justice!) I just dealt with it by developing a thick skin and being a wiseass, avoiding people I knew would give me trouble as much as possible, fighting when I had to, trying to be smarter and quicker than my adversaries. Recess (in elementary school) and Phys ed/gym (in jr. high and high school) were the absolute worst because there I was basically in "general population" with garden variety jocks/idiots/assholes who would basically immediately alpha-male it up as much as possible by asserting their physical dominance over the weak and inept (ie, me). There's basically nothing you can do about this, in my experience. This period is the brief window in child development where physical superiority totally rules, other mediating factors that come out later in life are of lesser significance - the strong and the pretty will revel in their (usually brief) moment in the sun at the expense of others and they will do it as much as possible. You just kind of have to bide your time and avoid them, find other things that bring you joy or help you get through it. But there's no stopping it, it's like a force of nature. When I think back on it now, even decades later, I am filled with loathing for my one-time peers, I don't think it's something that will ever go away - even though I turned out fine as an adult (content, well-adjusted, with a family and a job and creative outlets etc.)

booming post. could be the germ of a treatise on bullying.

haha man I say basically a lot

yeah I think you're pretty otm. it's easy to be on the outside and talk about 'dealing with it'

if it isn't clear already from that post, I have a pretty fatalistic attitude about "bullying" in general. My response to various campaigns to "eliminate" bullying is usually an eyeroll. if one of my kids starts getting it I don't know how helpful my experience will be in providing advice because I don't think there are any hard and fast rules. I'm not going to tell my kids not to hit back if they're being hit - sometimes it's smart to, and sometimes it's not, and knowing when is part of the trick. sometimes it's better to run away from a fight you know you can't win (ie it's you vs. a bunch of kids) and sometimes it's better to take your chances in a fight (ie if there's no one else around and it's just the two of you)

and you definitely can't rely on authority figures to provide any kind of help. they will not always be around, and, more importantly, they will not always do the right thing, because they have their own interests that come into play (how much do they care about resolving this headache? whose parents are they going to have to deal with? do they have the time/energy that day to really figure out what's going on? do they have biases/prejudices of their own regarding any of the kids involved?) Bullies act when they know they aren't being watched - then they can either deny it later if they are caught, or otherwise obfuscate the blame. So the bullied kid ends up having to always have a better/more believable story than the bully. and on top of that bullies usually repay being "ratted on" with further bullying. so appealing to teachers/cops/hall monitors whatever is fraught with its own perils. kids tend not to respect another kid that relies on the protection of authority figures, and respect (or lack thereof) is really what bullying is all about.

yeah "telling" was basically the worst, like a betrayal. as if "betrayal" was even an operative term in conjunction with someone who has been fucking with you 24/7. but somehow it was.

i think for my nephew, as far as hitting up my brother to talk to him, my thinking was less of 'how to stop it' and more 'make him feel less isolated' so that he at least knows you can grow up and be ok in spite of it

i once hit a kid in the face at school, during recess. he was a perfectly nice guy, and i liked him. we had a game we were playing, it was basically a "war" with two sides. he was on my side but then he told me he switched. i felt so rejected by him, so disappointed, that i hit him right in the face. he immediately started crying and went to tell on me and i got in big trouble. i still feel terrible about that. what in the world??

that's not really a story about bullying though, i guess

i'd be curious to know what percentage of ilx posters experienced bullying in school

poll it

I would make a distinction between random things like that, fights between friends, etc. and repeated, systematic abuse. Like, there was more than one occasion when I got into fistfights with people I was friends with, over some perceived slight or insult or what have you. But that was different from the guys I only saw in gym that would try to shove me in a locker.

xp

i was never beaten up, but i was stalked by a horrible girl because of a bunch of shit between me and that girls' best friend... horrible girl threatened to punch my face in if she ever saw me in public, to the point where I wouldn't even go to the local swimming pool in summer. one day mum found out and dragged me to the pool so that I wouldn't be such a coward, worst day of my life, I just sat on the edge of the pool not making eye contact with anyone. and then when I left, the girl was there, standing in the parking lot with her friends laughing at me as I walked behind my mum.

so much easier when parents don't get involved imo

i'd be curious to know what percentage of ilx posters experienced bullying in school

― Mordy , Thursday, May 23, 2013 4:46 PM (7 minutes ago)

poll it

― Spottie_Ottie_Dope, Thursday, May 23, 2013 4:47 PM (6 minutes ago)

must have "as the bully," "as the target" and "as both at various times" breakdowns.

no one's going to admit to being a bully

that's like asking racists to self-identify

ok i did it

Who Bullied You?

I bullied one kid to deflect bullying off of me, sometimes. I have since apologized to the guy. One of my main bullies has apologized to me, but I'm not sure that he ever realized how much it damaged me. xp

i was a bully to a kid in 5th grade and the victim of bullying in middle school/a little in high school. nothing violent, but in 6th grade, an 8th grader would sit next to me and follow me home on the bus and pester me. i p much ran home those days.

the kid i was a bully to it was more mean girl type of stuff? i made fun of him for his jeans, for the food his mom would pack him, for bragging about his german heritage. i feel terrible about it to this day. he would lash out at me, made fun of me for being fat or not having cable. because of my popularity in class i was the aggressor in this scenario, though. we were mean to each other, but i definitely was trying to assert my alphaness and did.

whoops messed that sentence up, shd be: an 8th grader would sit next to me on the bus and follow me home

ive seen his name floating around the internet in various forums, but ive been too ashamed to reach out and apologize to him. i should, though.

In elementary school I bullied a kid who had once been my friend. He left school for a couple of years because his parents moved abroad and when he came back I bullied him. It was probably part resentment of him for leaving and part "here's someone who is nerdier and weirder than me." I also bullied the hell out of a kid at a summer program when I was a teenager -- very much a case of suddenly finding myself higher in the food chain and taking advantage of it. My friends and I were so mean to him that he went home before the program was over. Felt really guilty about it, but I guess there was a lesson in it for me - "victim" is not some kind of special status that makes you exempt from moral considerations or incapable of doing wrong.

So K's diaper leaked pee twice on the return flight (including once onto my own clothing), poop once, and she barely slept, and screamed persistently for the last 20 minutes of the flight. Then when we got to the airport our stroller was broken, forcing us to carry her, the carseat and all the bags through customs. I was also sick during all of this, and felt even worse because the plane's air-conditioning was on full blast right in my face for twelve hours (no individual controls on this kind of plane). I genuinely feel like this was a "character building" experience.

Happier thoughts: K did a one-by-one hug reunion with each of her stuffed animals when she returned home.

awww! im impressed by your attitude. I believe after my trip to australia and back with 2 year old Beatrice I was using the term 'Soul destroying' a whole lot more than 'Character building'

we are 30 weeks in O_O

xp tell me your war story! Anyway, she did well most of the trip. Except going to the emergency room with a 103 fever and then having diarrhea for the next three days, and refusing to eat any of the diarrhea foods or drink electrolyte solution.

you know what we found stops kids from pooping at all? Pediasure. its like baby super immodium.

30 weeks!! excitement! names?

i think i relayed at least some of our travel woes, including me making a total ass of myself, upthread.

the only excuses i can allow myself are that i was wrangling a two year old plus luggage alone, pp needed to stay home, and i was preggers too.

from upthread:

I took Beatrice to Australia - a total of 24 hours travel time each way - when she had just turned two. It was a freaking nightmare. Carrying all of our luggage and attempting to keep hold of her while running to gates/getting through customs/security was no easy task. Oh and FYI, people in airports are total dicks. They were literally pushing past us. Both Beeps and I were getting body slammed from all directions. And., of course, the whole time she was being a normal 2 year old. She wanted to run around, she wanted me to carry her everywhere, she wanted everything she saw in the gift shop windows, she was crying, she was screaming, she was laying on the floor refusing to get up etc etc Then on each plane she was hysterical while taking off and then bored and tantrumy until we landed. Trying to get a toddler to happily sit in a seat for 15 hours is completely impossible, obviously.

I had three of my worst parenting moments during that trip. At one point while carry all the bags and holding Beatle's hand, I was trying to make sure she got on the moving walkway safely when one of our bags slipped off my shoulder and crashed to the floor taking a bunch other stuff with it. Already on edge from the relentless body slamming I said way too loudly to the bag 'You motherfucker!!!!' Everyone around me slowed right down and gave me the filthiest looks. I guess they either thought I was talking to Beatrice or just horrified that I was using that language in front of my child. Super embarrassing.
After two harrowing flights we finally landed in San Francisco. We had some time to kill before getting on the flight to Sydney. I had brought a couple of those single dose Benadryl packets with me in case of emergency. After the last two flights, 15 hours on a plane seemed like a code red emergency to me so 15 minutes before we were due to board I took Beeps into a handicapped stall in the bathroom and said ‘Beatle, Mommy is going to give you some medicine, okay?’ Well that was not okay at all with her and we ended up wrestling in the stall, ending up on the filthy airport bathroom floor. At that point I realized what a freaking maniac I was being, ditched the Benadryl, grabbed Bee in a hug and apologized profusely.
On the flight home, when we got to San Francisco, we had to collect our bags to go through customs. We went to baggage claim and waited and waited and waited until there were no more bags on the carousel. I guess I'd reached my anxiety limit by that point. I picked up Beeps, took her with me to a corner of the room, sat down on the floor and just cried for about 10 minutes. When I got my shit together we found our bags sitting on the floor a ways away from the carousel.

― (from a bottle you dicks) (sunny successor), Thursday, May 2, 2013 11:01 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah yes, sounds familiar. Although in my case I was more embarrassed by the way H and I started loudly bickering at the baggage carousel, but it was one of those purely out of exhaustion, forgotten later things. I also got really nasty with people who tried to cut the customs line and thought I was going to come to blows with one.

The good news is that United is very good about replacing broken strollers without giving you a hard time.

I would definitely NOT do this again for any reason other than family, that's for sure. I have a co-worker who has taken his 2 yr old to Ecuador and to the Balkans (staying in a different place each night for twelve days) and I just don't get why that's fun.

we have a name but i am holding back on publicly announcing it out of some sort of superstitious weirdness. its not bizarro fyi.

yeah don't tell ANYONE the name. someone will have a problem with it and pollute it for you.