ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

When she can handle walking all the way, I may just start using the subway underpass.

and yes, ban cars

No minimization. It's endemic. I hate it.

My kid keeps talking about starting a goddamn dog-walking business. He initially brought it up about half a year ago and keeps bringing it up again every few months. He talks about it with his friends.

I think it's a terrible idea for so many reasons, but then when I go and google "should a kid start a dog-walking business" there are plenty of websites with step-by-step plans for you to follow. What do you guys think? Just in terms of your gut reaction.

how old it he? i think it would probably depend on his age and maturity. i could see a 13/14yo doing okay w/ it.

Only if it is driven by a website that he creates for peer to peer dog walking. The same old dog walking industry needs a shake up and how's life Jr. may be just the person to do it.

Yeah I think it depends on (1) your sense of his maturity and (2) your willingness and availability to shepherd the project. Could be a great lesson in responsibility. I just would hate to see someone learn from "mistakes" involving other people's dogs.

Today, while visiting her three friends, all brothers, August came up to me and said. "Mommy, I need a sister." This sister thing has been going on awhile, Frozen only made it worse. At playgrounds she'll call little female friends she just met and likes "Sister". Sometimes it makes me sad for her, like she will be the stereotypical lonely-only.

Molly has expressed her desire for a baby sister. I told her that she wouldn't like it if she got one but that there was no chance of it happening.

God, I thought we'd got off lightly on the tantrum front, hahahaha. Thought too soon. Full on screaming in the rush hour this morning on the tube, the commuters had to part to make space for her as she threw herself back onto my knees and screeched, all because I wouldn't let her have a seat to herself.

stereotypical lonely-only

^^ Not all onlys are lonely! Apparently I asked my mom for a sibling once and she told me it wasn't going to happy and then I said OK and never asked again.

Oh man, public transit tantrums are happening over here, too. When both Ivy and I are in our puffy winter outerwear, I find her carrier a little uncomfortably snug so I've just been carrying her in my arms on the bus. She wants to stand pretty much all the time, so she'll cry until I stand her up. But then she gets tired so she tries to sit down on the floor of the grody mid-winter filth on the bus floor, which I obviously won't let her do so then she freaks out. Or she wants to stand but the bus is too crowded or she wants to sit but on a seat and not on my lap. Basically any point at which I don't let her do what she wants to do (assuming she even wants to do anything). Then comes the freakout and she's too tired to get over it so we ride home serenading the bus with her relentless "tired cry." It's exhausting. Yesterday she freaked out so hard she scratched her face.

She's on the verge of walking, she's figuring out that she wants to communicate but there's only so many things she can express with "mama" "dada" and "cat," I think she's getting some more teeth, and she's starting to really pick up things from her environment and mimic them so my theory is that her little brain is constantly in overdrive and there's just no mental resources to deal with disappointment and/or tiredness.

yeah in our experience times like growth spurts or new skill spurts (talking, walking, etc) brought on bad sleep, fussiness, you know, the good stuff

how can make baby not bite? baby thinks is hilarious!

I'm not saying this is the route to go but when I was a baby i was baby best friends with this kid Dimitri who at one stage went around biting everyone. One day he was biting his mom in the grocery store all the time (my mom was there and saw this scene) and she'd had enough. She rolled up his sleeve and bit his arm. Apparently after that he realized biting is no joke and that was the end of his biting spree.

I don't remember what we did when abby went through a brief biting phase. She was probably two at the time. We managed to get through it pretty quickly though. I have tried ENBBs technique on my cat and it didn't work for us.

I probably wrote this before on here but when #3 was little we went to the All Chinese Buffet in town a few times and in addition talked about the Old Country Buffet quite a bit ("you can just take all the country fried steaks you want if you go on Tuesday! they're appalling but plentiful!"). #3 mixed these together and "played a game" where she'd run around the house yelling "it's the Old Buffet" and would then bite whoever she caught. I guess we were the buffet. This game sucked and we eventually got the point across. years later now she's embarrassed by all this so naturally it comes up all the time; thus in time you too can get your revenge for the biting days.

Ivy is kind of experimenting with biting. It's not malicious but more like, "I am playing and I have teeth and no impulse control!" She doesn't bite hard but we're definitely trying to lay the "no biting" foundation now by just pulling her off and saying, "We don't bite!" or "People are not for biting!"

If the baby is biting for play, that seems like it's a lot easier to handle than a baby biting out of frustration or overstimulation. Then you can just be like, "We don't bite! Look over here at this other fun thing to do instead!"

They also taught her "linda" ("gentle" in Spanish) at daycare so when Ivy gets super excited and starts smacking me in the face, I'll say, "Linda... linda..." and she'll stop and just kind of pet me. So if you have something similar you might try that so the kid knows that "biting" is the opposite of linda.

It's harder I think if the kid is biting or whatever because of anger or frustration. When Ivy's really upset she'll scratch - her own face or mine. Whether the scratching is a means to an end or just the accidental result of a lot of angry flailing, I don't know. I've got some good sized scratches on my neck from a random temper cyclone last night.

She actually started doing that this morning and I said much more firmly than I normally do, like not yelling but definitely coming from a place of irritation, "No! No! Don't scratch me!" and weirdly, that snapped her out of it and then she was fine.

once at primary school in France my son got bit by another kid and he told the teacher; the teacher told him to bite the other kid back

I've been finding it fascinating to see where K does and does not fall into traditional "gendered" play so far -- e.g. on one hand the moment she saw a video of ballet she became completely obsessed with it. She wants to wear her frilly dress every day, and she likes being a "queen" (this was sort of my idea -- pushing "queen" rather than "princess" since a queen has real power). On the other hand, she loves playing with cars, she loves trucks, and she shows immense curiosity every time we pass someone doing road or construction work, sometimes even saying "I want to do that." She also loves jumping, banging, making noise, etc. Trying not to push one way or the other too much and let her curiosity lead her.

Oh yeah, that's definitely a weird, but fun, thing to try to balance out.

http://usvsth3m.com/post/21-struggles-faced-by-a-dad-raising-a-daughter-in-a-sexist-world

quite glad i have a boy atm

7) Encouraging her to reject pink

It is now your duty to vocally declaim pink and all its minions at every available opportunity. In the face of a culture that is trying to brainwash your daughter, you must, at every turn, point out how silly the person dressed all in pink is, how the girls in Lelli Kelly adverts look dead inside, the fact that real castles are usually greyish.

When offering her something you should list every other colour before acknowledging the existence of pink, and that it might be the one she wants.

Then, when you have openly mocked pink in all its forms, you can proudly ask your child what to think of something pink, and she’ll answer:

“You’ll think it’s bad because it’s pink and boys don’t like pink.”

Not for the first time, you’re a fucking idiot.

My girl LOVES pink. One of her 3 favorite colors, along with light blue and black. Good taste, I think. So instead of trying to sway her away from it, I've decided to like it too, to show her that I like what she likes. I've bought some pink shirts and ties and things.

quite glad i have a boy atm

it's not that hard imo. V went through a princess phase - it's pretty much over now although she still has barbies and will play fancy dress-up occasionally (although she's more likely to wrap herself in fancy scarves and pretend to be a Bollywood dancer). I've just encouraged her to be assertive about what she likes, while exposing her to all sorts of different stuff. Some of the stuff she likes has ended up being trad female gender-coded (Barbies, tinkerbell movies) and others not (superhero comics) and then stuff that's fairly gender neutral (science-y stuff). It seems to be working out well so far.

It has been a trip to see how quickly my son, on the other hand, went instantly for trad-boy stuff, with absolutely no encouragement from me or anybody as far as I can tell. Dude freaks out about cars, construction sites, and heavy metal guitars and is super-physical (well coordinated, into anything involving balls, surprisingly strong). We didn't surround him with a bunch of boy-gendered stuff as an infant, it's just his connection with some of these things when initially exposed to them was instant "YUP! That's for ME!" We'll see how things develop.

gender is weird

I have to say though, that article is pretty confusing and jumbled.

gender is weird. J is just starting to talk about it. he'll some guy and point to them and go "MAN" or "LADY"

or "LADY"

if it is a lady

I think one of the challenges is that you don't want to teach her that things society associates with her gender are bad either. So if you put too much negativity onto pink, you might be subtly suggesting that things that are seen as "traditionally feminine" should be avoided. But it does frustrate me how gendered most of the clothing I can find for her is. One exception I've found is Uniqlo -- some nice "unisex" toddler stuff.

I don't like that article.

I guess my philosophy is that your job as a parent is both to teach your children to live in the world and to change it. But you can't ignore the first part -- straining to raise your children with no gendered ideas whatsoever will not create a bubble around them that prevents them from living in a gendered world.

That article is ugh

But I did just spend 10 minutes watching this GIF

http://usvsth3m.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/giphy-26.gif

http://usvsth3m.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/giphy-26.gif

That article is the same conversation that's happened here over the past ~10 posts?

I LOVE [insert babby's preferred pronoun here]

I guess my philosophy is that your job as a parent is both to teach your children to live in the world and to change it. But you can't ignore the first part -- straining to raise your children with no gendered ideas whatsoever will not create a bubble around them that prevents them from living in a gendered world.

^^^otm

gender is weird. J is just starting to talk about it. he'll some guy and point to them and go "MAN" or "LADY"

― marcos, Thursday, January 29, 2015 12:23 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or "LADY"

if it is a lady

― marcos, Thursday, January 29, 2015 12:24 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We lived in Key West during the winters until I was around 7. Supposedly one time when I was about 3 and out to dinner with my parents, I very loudly told said to my parents upon observing a group of men at the next table, "Hey, those men are talking like ladies!".

(luckily the men at the next table found it hilarious)

there are plenty of non-CIS gendered folks where we live, my daughter absorbed the idea of drag queens and bull dykes p early

I forgot to mention that K often asks me if I want to be a queen or a ballerina too.

Been there.

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/393001_10151412740408783_1810902745_n.jpg?oh=d5c59007f81353087c8eea901ef945e4&oe=55248A7B

(not in the past couple years though)

a+ accessorizing

man alive-That's August, right now, she will be three in April. She loves her "Missera" [how she says Cinderella] dresses and loves to be a princess [I haven't been successful pushing queen] loves being Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ and any frilly foo-foo thing you can think of. But in her purse is a matchbox car she will take out and drive all over the wall. When we visit her three friends, all brothers, she fights over the dump trucks, loves dump trucks. She is also fascinated with construction sites. She has three toy cars she loves.

When we met a little boy at the park wearing a Frozen costume and red sequined shoes August thought nothing of it and loved his outfit. My first thought was now there is a true kid being a kid! They became instant friends despite the two year age difference. I must say I appreciate how Frozen has brought blue back. August has less pink and really more red in her wardrobe and I'd like to keep that up.

Between the ages of five and seven I would express that I wanted to be a boy and don't remember anyone saying anything to me. I had short hair and I remember feeling so pleased when a woman told my dad he had two great boys.

Ivy can reliably point to "Ivy's belly," "Mommy's belly," "Ivy's nose," and "Mommy's nose" so cute levels are off the freaking charts around here. Also: baby kisses! Has there ever been anything so simultaneously wonderful and slimy?

lol

awww :)
We've got baby laughs now that Alden's 4 months old :) and lots of assisted standing and bouncing - strong little guy! He also cries A LOT. I read the dr sears fussy baby book (that we just happen to have picked up at a used book store during pregnancy) while feeding him and kind of laugh...

I love baby laughs! It's like fresh air.

Addendum to the slimy baby kisses: Ivy has also recently learned to blow her nose, and sometimes she even waits until you are holding a tissue in front of her face. Most of the time, though, she just farmer blows including occasionally all over my face. It's like to babies, what makes a really good kiss is the volume of bodily fluids they can transfer from inside their heads onto your face.

grown-up kisses must seem
super boring to babies