ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

The use of "peanut" in the singular in that abstract is delighting me. Maybe that's how you're supposed to say it, like how fashion people always refer to "a pant" instead of "pants" but in this case, I like it ("pant" makes me IA).

Oh, I don't want to start a row or anything about what people feed their kids. It seems super personal and different things are going to work for different parents and different babies!!! Rice cereal, bananas, tacos... it's all good IMO. I was just really curious about what folks here chose to do, particularly since you all seem much smarter/more thoughtful than your average baby-centric message board poster.

FWIW I actually was briefly taken in by the "modified vaccine schedule" thing before the doctor assured me there was no evidence that it was beneficial (although she regularly implemented it for parents who wanted it). It's scary as fuck to have the job of keeping a little person alive sometimes, so I get why people have all kinds of unsubstantiated fears about products and food. I have had mild panics putting K in the bath and then briefly thinking that maybe the tub wasn't rinsed well enough after it was bleached and that I am now bleaching my child.

yea, we had some of those fears re: vaccines that were really just compounded by our reaction to the fragility of a newborn. they are just so small and vulnerable. i think once J got some fat on him we basically just went on the standard vaccine schedule. though we have skipped whatever hepatitis vaccine that prevents the sexually transmitted type, we can wait on that one till he's older.

UK used to advise against eating peanut in pregnancy but not any more. I guess it still stands for infancy tho.

I am just over here identifying strongly with the fear of not rinsing the tub well enough and other similar things.

This week my child discovered the joys of peeing in nature.

In the UK it's no peanuts before six months now (the NHS recommends no solids before six months anyway). Breast feeders eating peanuts is fine too.

the peanut/allergies thing fascinates me cuz I have (of course) interacted with adults w/kids with severe allergies and I'm like... how do you get over that? are you just going to avoid mustard/peanuts/whatever for the rest of their lives? I guess I don't understand the mechanism involved wherein exposure to allergens = less allergies.

What were the first solid foods those of you with solid food eating babies tried?

I guess rice cereal is passé so I was thinking I'd try avocado, cut it up into squares and let her cram them in her mouth herself.

― carl agatha, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 12:08 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we didnt do rice cereal ever, went right for avocado (mashed at first). banana and sweet potato were early foods. we did exclusive breastfeeding first 6 months, few solids from 6-9 months. didnt do a lot of purees, but we never needed to...the boy had teeth at 4 months...year later and he's got nearly a full set of chompers.

the peanut/allergies thing fascinates me cuz I have (of course) interacted with adults w/kids with severe allergies and I'm like... how do you get over that? are you just going to avoid mustard/peanuts/whatever for the rest of their lives? I guess I don't understand the mechanism involved wherein exposure to allergens = less allergies.

It's weird--I'm 38, and was always the freak kid growing up as I'm anaphylactically allergic to all nuts, and nobody had heard of such a thing. Now every second kid seems to have it. And yeah, you just have to avoid that nuts/pesto/most cakes/Thai restaurants the rest of your life.

We had Ella tested early in case she had inherited it, but the allergist was super reassuring. Apparently even in identical twins there's a really small chance of BOTh being allergic--the genetic factor is weak or non-existent--and he had us giving her little tiny bits of various allergenic foods from 6 months+, with no ill effects. So she can eat everything with no squinting at ingredient lists the rest of her life.

unless she becomes vegan later

lol last night my son took a shit in the bath, it was the first time he's done it. he reached back and picked it up, held it in his hand, and started crying. it occured to me that it was probably the first time he's really ever seen his own shit! all those diapers. he didn't really know what it was and he just got freaked out.

oh yeah that is a big deal "WHAT IS THIS COMING OUT OF MY BODY!", not hard to see how that would be alarming

however, kid I was referring to in the other thread was like 6

Haha, that's brilliant Marcos. A story to be trotted out on family occasions for decades to come.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-breastfeeding,36008/

^ making me LOL

yes, that was great

wow, this is fucked:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/us/among-experts-scrutiny-of-attention-disorder-diagnoses-in-2-and-3-year-olds.html

Pathologizing behavior in low income children... ;lakdsjf;alkjds;lkjas

wow fuck.

My wife is a sped teacher in a pretty low-income elementary school so she gets a lot of kids with an ADHD diagnosis. OOH she says there is pretty clearly a difference in some of their ability to concentrate vs other kids in the school. OTOH there isn't even daily recess in their schedule, there's only gym like once a week, and when they get home they don't play outside because it's not considered safe. Oh yeah and it happens to be all boys with the diagnosis.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114527/self-regulation-american-schools-are-failing-nonconformist-kids

I like this article a lot.

this shit is terrifying

My wife says that school is basically child-torture for a lot of her students if done by the book.

TBF:

A different, utopian approach to classroom management works from the premise that children are natively good and reasonable. If one is misbehaving, he’s trying to tell you that something is wrong. Maybe the curriculum is too easy, too hard, too monotonous. Maybe the child feels disregarded, threatened, or set up to fail. It’s a pretty thought, order through authentic, handcrafted curricula. But it’s nearly impossible to execute in the schools created through the combination of No Child Left Behind and recessionary budget-slashing. And that makes internal discipline very convenient right now.

I guess Pink Floyd was on to something.

Like some of these problems are just endemic to the nature of the thing we call school.

I'm trying to figure out if we're going to need to schedule meetings with all of our kids' teachers outside of parent-teacher conferences in order to make sure The Right Things happen for them

I mean the very idea of taking groups of 10 or 20 or 30 students and putting them in a room to learn (more or less) the same thing at (more or less) the same time is industrial and efficiency-oriented in nature. You can put them at round tables instead of rows, "differentiate" the instructrion, rearrange the jargon a million different ways, emphasize or deemphasize data and testing, but you still have large groups of students with a teacher in blocked-out time periods, and it's just not that feasible to "handcraft authentic curricula" that meets everyone's needs and to constantly stop and recognize the individual issues of every single student in that format

I guess that's the kind of thing Waldorf Schools are trying to get beyond. And guess, what, they're expensive as fuck.

At least to make sure None of the Bullshit happens to them. xp to Dan

I really like this article, too - http://www.bostonreview.net/wonders/fausto-sterling-motor-development

Especially as a parent of a premature baby who is developing at her own speed, it's nice to be reminded that 1) it's all pretty arbitrary and 2) she'll get there.

It's taking a lot of will power not to say all the ways in which she is really close to her birth age developmental milestones because god forbid anybody think she's not the Lisa Simpson of six month olds or something.

It is a fact of American Life that I am thinking of strategies to teach them how to recognize and handle The Bullshit rather than ways to prevent it, because it is impossible to prevent it.

That makes me sad and I'm sorry. It also sounds exhausting.

tbf parenting is exhausting in general

Speaking of, how are the boys sleeping these days?

K gets physical therapy from the city which I only agreed to because it's free. She's behind in physical development apparently, enough so that she can get the free services. I was as well and it doesn't matter much to my life of sitting on my ass in an office chair, although it did make me kind of unhappy as a kid. It's taught me little games I can play with her to encourage physical activity and help her get stronger, so it doesn't seem like it does much harm, but there is a ridiculous amount of anxiety created about every developmental microphase.

xp: ha

One problem is that we keep forgetting to swaddle them; I think we need to wrap them up no later than 10 in order to start bringing their energy levels down. I swaddled them last night/this morning after their 2:00 AM feeding and was able to get both of them to sleep in their cribs on their Boppy pillows. This was the first time we'd been able to get either of them to sleep in the crib without completely losing their shit.

Yes! As someone with PLENTY of anxiety around parenthood I work very hard to avoid getting anxious about developmental microphases. We have conceded to two (the second one is this Wednesday) early intervention evaluations from the state. They come free with an extended NICU stay. She was fine for her adjusted age at three months, but they wanted to come back and six months actual and check on her then. As a first time parent without a whole lot of experience with babies, it is comforting to have four child development experts declare our baby to be fine.

xp That's good! Maybe this is the start of something beautiful. Ivy would nap longer on her boppy pillow than she would if I just put her flat in the crib.

Yeah, we only just got the Boppys a couple of weeks ago and I had the revelation that I could put them in the cribs over the weekend. I expect that to be a regular thing now.

Boppies make it a lot easier to hold them and if you are a negligent parent like me, you can put the pillows sideways on the couch and wedge the baby in there for a little bit so you can eat and watch TV.

oh we have already discovered the joy of wedging yr kid into a Boppy pillow

and when they're bigger you can upgrade to shoving them in a bumbo

omg I had Ivy in the bumbo yesterday and she pushed her legs out and arched her back right the fuck up out of that thing. I caught her before she went backwards into her head but it scared the shit out of me.

Which Country Shares Your Parenting Values
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/country-comes-parenting-values/

SHOCKER I got Sweden

lol i got south korea

Sweden for me.

Australia, but most of it was pretty arbitrary for me except for putting religious faith last.

a slightly reordered version got me new zealand

Yemen for me wtf