ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

story of my (parenting) life

I was driving around town at 4 a.m. and sitting in the driveway at quarter til five just trying to buy my poor dude an hour's rest and the tension of sleeplessness after two years isn't exactly easy on the ol' marriage

:(

Oh man. I'm sorry. Definitely know sleeplessness.

Thought that was all over for me but for a weird reason*, this summer everybody had to go back to sleeping in the same room again, which makes for a restless night as we all bump against each other and jostle for space. I'm a 6'3" 240 lb man sleeping balanced on my side at the very edge of a queen-sized mattress with my wife and little girl. My son sleeps on two child-sized mattresses pressed together at the foot of our bed. Sometimes I accidentally kick him in the head at night since my feet dangle off the edge. I regularly get pushed off the bed and have to bother my wife to let me back on at least once per night. The girl sleeps relatively well, at least, since she basically has half the bed. We're gonna look back on this and laugh some day.

*the window unit a/c in my son's room started beeping erratically and keeping him awake all night. We can't figure out how to make it stop so we just brought him into our room, where he's gonna be until the season changes.

I was driving around town at 4 a.m. and sitting in the driveway at quarter til five just trying to buy my poor dude an hour's rest and the tension of sleeplessness after two years isn't exactly easy on the ol' marriage

when this hit us we rolled with it as long as we could and eventually were like fuck it, you can do this, kid, and let him holler for what felt like hours. after two nights it was solved. i don't think it would have necessarily worked if we had tried it earlier though. the stars need to be aligned. by which i basically mean without that white hot rage i would not have had the incentive to endure a couple of hours of screaming from the room next door.

marriage ish is real though, not sure how we made it through those years now, except for lots and lots and lots of love that you've built up, and

I got so much trouble on my mind
refuse to lose

This kind of goes against the standard advice, but I really think there are times where you have to kind of temporarily shelve your expectation of getting anything out of the marriage when you have an infant. You just have to say fuck it and have faith that it will come back later.

As for sleep, we did wind up doing Ferber method. I feel like we did it "before she was ready", somewhere between five and six months iirc, and it seemed to take longer than it was supposed to, and I regret that. At the same time, she sleeps well now and isn't a particularly anxious child, so I don't think we did serious harm (although we'll never know for sure!)

yes this is a new yorker "shouts and murmurs" but i thought it was funny and other ilx parents might enjoy it: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2013/09/09/130909sh_shouts_frazier

Recently, it seems Montessori is everywhere. Is it? Why? New hip thing?

I taught Spanish and art at a Montessori school in the mid nineties for two years and was really into it. At the time it was difficult to find an enthusiastic group to discuss it. Not even the mothers were super excited about it, just appreciated it but that was it.

I keep bumping into blogs that are all about living with Montessori, bringing it into the home 24/7. Some of the blogs can be truly elitist and condescending, I feel. Just wondering where all this is stemming from? I use quite a bit of Montessori with August, probably 24/7 but not to the extent that these blog writers seem to be. I was really excited about finding them all at first but now that I have gone down these lil Montessori rabbit holes, I am left feeling under-Montessoried and inept. Some of it is sour grapes too. Love the tiny furniture and some households seem to have a lot of cute, tiny furnishings...all with a natural wood finish, of course.

Dear people on the subway,

I know that this morning, you were thinking "What kind of asshole brings a stroller on the subway at rush hour." Believe me, I am aware of the inconvenience, and I would not do it if I didn't have a good reason. If it's any consolation, it sucks about 10x harder for me than it does for you.

yeah any time I see parents struggling with crying kids or taking up a ton of space or whatever I just sympathize

young michael took his first bottle like a champ today which is a huge relief. we're still rolling with 99% breastfeeding for the next 8 weeks, but one less anxiety left to conquer

so my daughter's had a rough few weeks of kindergarten - teacher out sick, one day spent in a 1st grade class cuz they couldn't get a sub, only white girl in her class, etc. - but today she came home and told me that her and a friend were being harassed by these boys at lunch, one of them pulled out his dick in front of her a couple times, and then they were grabbing at her when she tried to go find a teacher (at least, this is what it sounds like happened from how she described it to me).

now, this is not a good thing, obviously, at the same time I'm not super-worried about it, this is standard "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" 5-6yo behavior, although the fact that it happened in the lunch room is a bit o_0. anyway, since she didn't find a teacher she just had to endure the incident which has led me to ponder a question my wife said I should ask ILX: should I teach my little girl to kick boys in the nuts. cuz that'll put a stop to it, that's for sure.

whoo boy

I think I'll let the panelist to my left answer that one

Prob don't teach kicking in school...

I would say kicking for actual self-defense. Or if an adult whipped it out, then yeah. But not a five year old in school.

heavens to betsy

I say YES but a) I am not a parent b) I mostly err on the side of physical violence in general anyway and c) I'm a child :)

Did she eventually find a teacher? Have you talked to the teacher? Has the behavior problem of her assailants been documented? I wouldn't go assuming it's just innocent playing doctor stuff. The other kids may have problems are home or whatever.

we have not talked to the teacher, I just heard this story when I got home a couple hours ago (my daughter did not tell her mom, not sure why). but yeah I assume it's fairly innocent and the other kid probably has issues etc. but I just want my daughter to feel safe, that's no. 1.

if it's not clear from that post yes obviously we are going to talk to the teacher or someone else in the administration. I tried writing this all down as soon as I could so that I wouldn't forget any pertinent details.

IANAP but i really don't see a problem in teaching your daughter to physically protect herself from a boy of any age grabbing her inappropriately. it's one thing for a little boy to be all 'whooohooo look at my weiner!' but if they were grabbing her/restraining her/possibly trying to get her to touch it... that's totally different. imo.

That doesn't sound at all good. Hope you can straighten it all out asap. Could be innocent but still confusing and scary to a kid.

A little girl flashed me in kinder and to this day the way she did it is still slightly horrifying. Then she bullied me and demanded I show her mine, that made the whole thing worse, for me. It was a scary and confusing experience for me at the time. The girl bullied me that whole year and then again in first grade. She was held back in first grade. This was at a Catholic school too, with nuns, in the 70's.

My dad did tell me and encourage me to fight back but that only landed me in trouble. I was always the one caught not playing well with others.

it's one thing for a little boy to be all 'whooohooo look at my weiner!'

this is what it sounded like from her description. she got defensive when I asked her if she told an adult - she said the boys "slapped her on the back" when she went looking for one but I don't really understand how that would stop her. it sounded to me like it made her confused and intimidated, but she didn't seem traumatized by it later (the fact that she went hours without saying a word about it to my wife, and only told me when we were goofing around before bedtime would seem to indicate she wasn't that concerned about it). we e-mailed the teacher we'll see what they say.

well this has all been resolved, no nuts-kicking required. Principal talked to all the kids involved at lunch and I guess everything got worked out.

That's awesome. I hope it stays worked out.

here's a weird detail that bothers me. when I was asking V about identifying the kid - she said she didn't know his name - I asked her what he looked like and she said he was african-american, with long hair. when I related this to my wife, she said that couldn't be right, because there's no african american boys in the class. and sure enough, it turned out to actually be some blonde kid. so why did my daughter just racially profile the wiener flasher? Maybe she's confused about what constitutes african american... although I feel like we've been pretty up-front about discussing race, and she's had bi-racial and african-american (and latino and asian etc.) kids with her in other social environments so I don't really get it. maybe we need to have more, really literal discussions about skin color or something.

hmm, maybe just a lot of confusion around starting school for a lot of different reasons?

maybe I'm making too much of it but the prospect that she's already internalized some narrative about african american males as sexual predators is sort of horrifying.

otoh 5yos - not good with details, prone to saying first thing that pops into their heads

maybe we need to have more, really literal discussions about skin color or something.

This at least from what I've read is never a bad idea--kids are SO literal and grown-up hesitancy or reluctance to allow/discuss what seem to be obvious truths make no sense to them.

What age is first grade? ime kids don't notice it - my three-year-old has no problem saying 'daddy' when he sees a picture of Mario Balotelli, who is a really different colour from me. I don't know when it starts to be something they'd notice for themselves, but until then I'd imagine simple confusion might be the reason.

my 3yo nephew shouted SANTA! at any man with a beard for like a year, didn't matter if they were dark-skinned or had red beards, beard=santa as far as he was concerned

first grade is 7 or so. V is in kindergarten - but we definitely have discussed skin color with her, going back to when she was around 3. and we live in a diverse neighborhood, I know she has an idea of what an african american is, it's popped up in her artwork when she draws Storm or JJ Fad or black models or whatever. I dunno, it's just a weird detail. and now I feel guilty/stupid for having relayed it to the administration.

xp

You mean she literally said "African American" and you think she might not understand clearly that means black?

cuz that sounds pretty believable for a five year old.

yes she said the words "African American". and yeah I'm thinking she didn't understand that that implies a certain skin color. this may be compounded by her being personally acquainted with relatively light-skinned/bi-racial kids, I dunno.

life is so confusing!

Not in love with the tone of this article but this is basic what I was thinking of. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-harvey/dear-parents-of-white-children_b_3719818.html

ah yes Nurture Shock

maybe the blonde kid was with a bunch of other kids and she remembers one of those? Were they even in her class or were they older?

Beatrice (also the only white kid in her class) had a rough start to kindergarten but hers was the 5th graders smacking her lunch tray down type of thing. A few months later, of her own free will, she pulled her pants down in the middle of the playground.

I think butts and pee pees and poop and pee are still pretty hilarious to this age and probably will be for a while.

Beatrice has the cutest, sweetest best friend. They go to different schools now but they spend summer and holidays togther. One day she came home and announced 'Today Sydney told me she is going to poop in my mouth!! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAAAAAA'

Were they even in her class or were they older?

they are not in her class, they are in one of the other kindergarten classes and she said she didn't know any of their names

I think butts and pee pees and poop and pee are still pretty hilarious to this age and probably will be for a while.

tbf they are comedy staples the world over

ahh this

http://gawker.com/back-to-school-lunch-is-a-problem-that-comes-every-day-1302995232?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

the last couple of nights evie and i have been making up a stinky song, which is basically just a long list of things that are stinky, she thinks it's hilarious

my favorite children's song is one my cousin (Quitty of Tight Bros mini-fame) made up. it is called "The Elf Who Soiled Himself". It is totally not appropriate for children, unfortunately.

hold up Shakey your daughter draws pictures of JJ Fad?

^

she fills up one 100-page notebook a week w/drawings