ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

How about sleeping sitting up?

We prop her up. She rolls down to a more comfortable position while we're sleeping though.

Yeah. That sucks. I'm actually having the same problem, minus the barfing, myself these days. It's gross. Poor kid.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/turn-your-princess-obsessed-toddler-into-a-feminist-in-eight-easy-steps/?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

BTW, K actually turned out to be sick, the daycare lady is on point. She also called us later that evening to see how she was doing.

Aw. Is she okay?

4 days of antibiotics and 6 days of fever later, yes

Oof.

Blimey. Are you OK?

I have erected an elaborate cage through my living room made out of various dog kennel barriers to keep my sanity while michael explores the exciting world of "electrical cords and things that can murder him"

It looks like I am either raising chickens or keeping prisoners in here.

Blimey. Are you OK?

― Madchen, Tuesday, October 28, 2014 10:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm on kind of a sleep-deprived buzz the last day or two

have erected an elaborate cage through my living room made out of various dog kennel barriers to keep my sanity while michael explores the exciting world of "electrical cords and things that can murder him"

Sometimes I like to think about who probably has/had to say "don't touch that" more often -- parent living in the rainforest or parent in modern apartment

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/41/e3/89/41e3897f537d054a43d527473905b0a2.jpg

Bottom half of this is very much otm

it's all otm imo!

Really happy to be out of that phase. Will this child survive if I leave her in the room watching Fresh Beat Band for 3 minutes so I can take the trash out?

I let K watch sesame street alone for 10+ minutes at a time while I shower, shave and dress. Don't tell child protective services.

J has basically no screen time but we are wondering if showing him a video will allow us to cut his hair, it's super long everywhere (which is fine, he looks good with long hair!) but his bangs are covering up his eyes and he won't let us cut them.

Here's my advice: it's a slippery slope. It lets you do a lot of things, but it's a slippery slope. I was a no screen time parent once too, and now I'd say she averages 1-1.5 hrs per day.

hey y'all do any of you have links or info about the inadvisability of TV exposure for very young children (our grandchild is almost 3 months and is spending what might be considered as too much time in front of a big TV)? I feel like I've seen articles and such advising that TV be introduced later on.

never too early to tell the parents they're doing something wrong ;) but really, my wife just wants to send the mom a link or something.

The American Academy of Pediatrics advises no screen time under age 2. I'm sure if you google that you can find it, as well as a host of other reasons not to put your baby in front of a screen at all. Some of these I find questionable, but if you want support you can find it. My guess is that the AAP errs on the side of caution, knowing that it's a slippery slope as I mentioned above, even though probably 20-30 minutes a day of videos does no harm. Although we failed to make it to age 2 before the first vid, we still have pushed our own parents not to use the screen as a crutch, particularly my MIL who just doesn't understand saying "no" and thus sometimes lets her watch hours of videos. At least now K is in full-time preschool with lots of stimulation and zero screen.

I will also say that I have noticed a big difference based on the KIND of screen time -- for example, disney movies seem to result in extremely shitty moods and bad behavior, but sesame street does not. Also using ipad apps for too long gets her very worked up, but a baby einstein video on youtube tends to soothe her.

thx Hurting

Generally I find stuff that is very even in tone and mood and free of quick cuts or exciting scenes is preferable. Toddlers can barely regulate their emotions as it is and can't really handle intense movies imo. Although I remember my little brother wanted to watch Dumbo every day at age 2 even though the mom in jail scared the crap out of him.

So Ivy started physical therapy yesterday. She army crawls and will stand holding on to something, but doesn't hands and knees crawl with any consistency and hasn't pulled herself into sitting or standing yet. The therapist said she has low muscle tone, so if our insurance will cover it, Ivy will have weekly sessions. She's also going to get some kind of neoprene/lycra support vest that the therapist said will help her crawl on her hands and knees.

The therapist will go to Ivy's daycare so it's convenient and I don't have to be there every time, and from what her teacher said yesterday, Ivy enjoys it so I'm pretty psyched about it. It's kind of astounding to think that she will be standing on her own and maybe even walking in a few months.

I'm largely indifferent to the amount of screen time. We don't have the TV on a lot anyway, any free time we have before her bed time is spent doing chores/stuff around the house. Even when the TV is on, she doesn't seem that captivated by it and barely watches anything. Maybe she just hates House Hunters.

How old is Ivy again? As noted above, K has/had pretty similar issues and also got physical therapy.

xps A co-author of the AAP statement tries to present a balanced view: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1840251

There's also the question of actual learning from media (though the 'babysitting' side is totally valid and reasonable in moderation too!) If you Google 'vide0 deficit childr3n' you'll get summaries of a lot of research showing that young children find it difficult to learn from video. Here's the abstract of a paper on trying to get kids to learn more from video by introducing dialogic features, either via the parents or an on-screen actress: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23544859 - this person's work is all about trying to make e-books, apps and video more supportive of learning. And here's a paper on whether babies learn from specially targeted baby media: http://www.centenary.edu/attachments/psychology/journal/archive/feb2011journalclub.pdf

xps: oh man, my son just started a Love It or List It phase this weekend.

11 months. She'll be ONE YEAR OLD on November 18!

How did K do with the PT? xp

fwiw one of the things that changed my mind was that K actually DID seem to learn things from the videos she watched, so that made me think she was "ready" for it. Like she was constantly picking up words, shapes, colors, etc. She repeats stuff from Sesame Street all the time, and we talk about what happened in the episodes.

CA: the physical therapy was free through the city so we've stuck with it. Honestly I really don't like the physical therapist and neither does K afaict. She seems like a bitter woman. But she has given us some exercises to do with K that seem to help, and it's also just a good weekly reminder that we need to do a little extra with K, like take the stairs instead of the elevator as much as possible, games involving pushing and pulling, tell her to fix her legs when she sits, etc. I mean, K is progressing physically, I don't know if it's the therapy or not. She didn't walk until 18 months, was delayed in jumping, climbing, p much everything physical. Still falls a lot more than other kids. But she seems to LIKE running around and jumping and climbing now, and that makes me happy. I feel like as long as she finds it enjoyable rather than painful or embarrassing, she will keep trying to do it and keep progressing nicely. A couple weeks ago I saw her hang from a bar for the first time, which was really cool, and she looked so proud of herself too.

I had a lot of similar problems as a kid and my parents were more of the pretend it's not a problem school. And I think at least back then it was much worse for a boy to have these problems than a girl, maybe still is. So I'm trying to not put my head in the sand about it, especially since, hey, free services so why the hell not.

Aww, good for her!

This PT is through a state program but we don't qualify for the free services so it's billed to our insurance. I haven't met the therapist (there was some confusion about when the sessions would start so I wasn't there for the first one) but she's very sweet on the phone and Ivy (and my and Jeff's) favorite daycare teacher really liked her so that's good enough for me for now. I'm looking forward to participating in the next session so I can see how we should be playing with Ivy to help increase her strength.

I hear you about not wanting to put your head in the sand or revisit your difficulties on K. Ivy's always been at the low end of normal for physical development so we've advocated a wait and see approach, but the hands and knees crawling and the lack of pulling herself up is the first thing that she's been truly behind on, so we figure it can't hurt.

I have always been a physically timid, bookish, uncoordinated person, although my mom says that I walked at ten months. So who knows whether it was low tone or not. From all accounts, Jeff was a ball of non-stop energy who was always climbing things and falling out of trees and making crazy jumps and landing directly on his knees. Maybe it's a function of Ivy being a preemie? Not that it really matters, I guess. Just interesting to consider.

My wife was reportedly the fastest girl in her class and a valued member of the swim team.

Yeah, Jeff was a tennis star in high school and I quit trying out for sports and joined the drama club after being one of like two people cut from the field hockey team two years in a row.

I will have you all know that I lettered in band and drama, however.

Commando crawling is really common in households with slippery flooring apparently. A whole generation of UK kids is late to the hands-and-knees action, or skips it altogether, I've read. THANKS IKEA. We're about to move from a house with floorboards to a fully carpeted flat, so it'll be interesting to see if that affects F, who at 8.5 months is giving hints he might soon move on from the Roll Onto Tummy Then Struggle phase.

(irrelevant side question for hurting 2 - Is there like a general lawyers talking about being lawyers thread?)

we've erred on the side of caution re: screen time - basically none until almost age 2, with the intermittent emergency exposure to smartphone/tv programming while travelling or out in public (restaurant/theater performance etc.) My youngest has just in the last few weeks been exposed to TV programming (primarily Pee-Wee's Playhouse lol) he seems moderately into it and will wander up close to the screen for a bit and then go do something else. He will be 2 in January. Veronica didn't watch any TV at all except for one brief episode where she was up inexplicably puking in the middle of the night at about 1 1/2 so we let her watch TRON with us. When she was almost 2 we let her start watching Yo Gabba Gabba. These days her TV viewing is restricted to the weekends, between 2-4 hours spread over Friday night to Sunday night. And she gets to play video games on her nintendo or pad while on long car trips.

we've got screen time for our (almost) 4-year-old down to a movie once a week (almost invariably frozen but this is changing) and bugs bunny on sat. mornings for 30-45 min. she doesn't ask for more unless she's with her grandparents (of course!) or wants to look at photos of herself on the computer. she started with yo gabba gabba too and some sesame street though she never really got attached to either. she'll watch soccer with me occasionally but usually if it's on she ignores it.

Can't remember if I've said it here before, but an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba gives me time to shower if I need to get ready before F has had his first nap. So that's 23 minutes of screen once or twice a week. It pleases him greatly to see DJ Lance's giant face appear.

i'm not into the costumed whatever they are but dj lance is awesome.

feel like YGG is a p ingenious synthesis of various things the creators know will push this generation of parents' buttons - Mr. Rogers, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Gimme Gimme Octopus, a patina of hip hop

I know it's a cliche to say it, but Sesame Street continues to be really smartly written and there are a lot of subtle jokes and comic nuances aimed (I assume) at adults.

we like peter rabbit, word girl, daniel tiger's neighborhood, adventure time, dora (ugh), and of course frozen. daniel tiger's neighborhood has some really useful songs ("if you have to go potty - stop and go right away" super useful, also "you gotta try new foods cause they might taste good," and "if you feel so mad that you want to roar... take a deep breath and count to 4.")

Gro-ow-nups come back. Yeah we use those a lot. It's such a boring show though, can't stand to watch it with her.

I put a temporary moratorium on frozen viewing because she always seemed to have tantrums after, too intense.

grownups come back great too! such a useful show tbh.

Mr. Rogers was so much better, always visiting cool factories and shit

Now there are no factories to visit, only customer service call centers :(

sometimes they air vintage mr rogers episodes and we've recorded them for the kids -- some of the really early ones are pretty surreal, like pre-trolley live action plays.

dora = so much shouting

Veronica liked Frozen but the hypnosis-level obsession seems to have passed her by, she doesn't beg me to keep renting it or anything (she saw it once in the theater and once at home)

what she *does* keep asking me to watch are Justice League Animated Series episodes

xp