ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

actually turned out to be great overall, it just took a little time to recover from the packing and planning and travel, and next time I'll probably make it longer

Potty training has commenced. Pray for us and our rugs.

Once you realise that holidays are just the same old childcare but in a place that's not childproofed and all routine goes out of the window leaving the kids unsettled pain in the arses, I find them much more manageable.

Best most relaxing holiday we had was when Molly had chickenpox - all expectations of doing fun things together went out of the window and we had quality one of one time with them both as Aidan still wanted to go to the pool, which meant that they got on really well together the rest of the time and bickering went out of the window.

We're planning a major relocation next summer - London to York, coinciding with applying for a secondary school for Aidan. The logistics are giving me cold sweats already, not least sorting out a new primary school for them and the whole having to make new friends thing.

Whoa!

post Potty training can be awful. My oldest learned it in a weekend (at my PIL). But Elisabeth steadfastly refused to go on a potty. I was so fed up I pushed her on one while she screamed. It as good after that.

Oh gosh, Vicky, I feel for you! I have Ophelia's high school already sorted and she still has to start sixth grade. It was mostly cause she was bored/unhappy at school so we figured maybe skipping another year. Decided against it and now opting for CLIL (Latin and some subjects taught in English) in two yrs time.

the most relaxing time I've had since the baby was born was when I was at home recovering from an operation and my partner had time off to help out. It was bad enough that I didn't feel bad being off work but OK enough that I felt OK most of the time.

parents of teen children: do you read their tweets?

my teen daughter uses instagram but not twitter; & no, I don't follow her on there

evidently my youngest daughter likes to watch youtube videos of baby ultrasounds.

http://misszoot.com/a-fourth-grader-and-social-media/

My daughter gets REALLY pissed off at anything to do with babies these days! It's weird because a few months ago she was super into the idea of a new baby, inspired by the new baby episodes of Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. And Mrs. Life and I even started talking about it too, throwing the idea around, thinking about if we were ready again. But for the last month or two she'll start growling if her mother or I talk about babies or even see a picture of a baby.

She plays a mother all the time in playtime, where she imagines herself to be an animal. One day she'll be a mama fox, the next day she'll be a mama eagle and sit out in the yard in a nest made out of sticks with an old plastic easter egg underneath of her. But when it comes to human babies, hell no.

the only sensible solution is for you guys to have a baby egret

Do you guys ever pinch yourself that you have kids? I had a two day work trip that was kind of packed, and when I finally got on the plane home I pulled out my phone and started looking at pictures of the fam and was kind of overcome with emotion and wonderment.

Not just kids, but fucking amazing kids. I have fucking amazing kids, as I'm sure all of you do too.

nah my kids are mediocre at best

ok I guess they're sort of adorable
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7179/26890741881_54c84c0691_b.jpg

otoh last night Judah had some food in his mouth for 2 hours that he refused to swallow. He was just walking around with his mouth full, "I don't like it!", etc. Eventually half an hour after he went to bed and after much arguing and crying and screaming I managed to make him spit it out.

lol

K once held the same lollipop in her hand for literally three hours and forty minutes.

I picked my daughter up from daycare the other day, five or six hours after my wife dropped her off. She immediately reaches into her mouth and hands me a chewed up piece of Trident. The daycare workers had no idea she had been keeping it in there.

haha I've gone to brush Ivy's teeth only to find she'd been keeping a paste of whatever we had for dinner tucked into her cheek like Skoal.

lol

hahaha, our daughter did that a few times with a piece of bacon

My 5yo son loves learning about space, loves planets, moons, constellations, etc. Last night while getting ready for bed he told me that the sun will burn out in 5 billion years, and man did he have a lot of questions about that. Will the earth fall since the sun’s gravity won’t be holding it anymore, will it be cold, how will we read outside in the dark… I got the sense that he doesn’t understand that we won’t be around to witness it, and I didn’t want to bring up something that heavy right before bed. On the other hand I hate to think that he might be having quiet anxiety over how we’re going to handle a sunless world.

just play this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9KKBvWTdMQ

sooo... uh just found out my 7 and 4-year-old searched, on google, for this search term:

naked sex very disgusting

on my computer. i was really thrilled about that obviously. i think i handled it right though. i didn't get mad or tell them off, i asked them what they searched for and what they saw. they were obviously super shy about it and didn't want to say anything. i told them that whatever they saw was not what real sex is like, it's pictures of people who don't actually love each other. that real sex is different. and that pictures like that are for grown-ups and they should not search for things like that again.

and i turned on safe search (duh??!!!!?)

Oh man

My kids dont know how to use google yet but looking forward to it

My kid keeps asking me to enable safari on his iPhone. Nope.

it's like BAM right there. welp. i think this is going to be a very relatable experience for kids of this generation.

I just searched this and the top result was a YouTube video with the following description:

Mobile-friendly - Jun 2, 2015 - fat naked people farting in a hot room at a disgusting romp. ... Most disgusting sex video ever!

thank goodness it's mobile-friendly, don't know what i'd do without access to that page on the go

Hey, I hadn't heard "Get Lucky" in a while!

we've been trying to get our 1-year old to sleep through the night and while we've had some success in getting longer stretches of sleep he is now basically waking up for the day at like 4:30am. before he would wake up every 1-2 hours but be up for the day at like 6:30am, now he's often sleeping straight through from 8pm-4:30am but fuck 4:30am really?

sick of this bullshit tbh

I feel you. we've at least got Judah pushed back to around 6:30am now that he's um... three and a half.

Youngest is suddenly mad into this batch of fuckin my little pony movies, called the Equestrias or something? OH GOD THE HORRIBLE SONGS MAKE THEM STOP PLEASE.

Do you guys ever experience panic over the possibility of your kids getting hurt? Lately every time we drive I suddenly have the terrible feeling that E (the baby) is not strapped in propertly. Yesterday I was roughhousing with K and she was kind of tumbling upside down over me and I was flipping her around a little and I heard a crack from her neck, and she goes "did a bone break?" Fucking shit. (she was completely fine of course and it was presumably just fluid popping or whatever)

E also is like super physical now and super into climbing/pulling herself up etc., and she's always banging herself. Very hard to prevent.

All the time. I live in total fear. My oldest's stated life goal is to become a stuntman. My younger kid is equally adventurous . Haven't had a big accident from either of them in a while. Guess I better knock on wood.

On a separate note, do we have any other preteens/teens who are experiencing mood swings? Because holy shit this weekend was a nightmare. Three or four separate melt-downs, including breaking stuff. I'm guessing and really hoping that it was puberty-related. My wife and I were completely and totally unable to de-escalate, no matter how calm and patient we were. I don't think there have been many times I've felt inclined to read a book or even a parenting blog to find solutions for our troubles, we've had it so easy. There were times this weekend when my wife and I looked at each other like "we didn't know it was going to be like this."

bf's oldest is 11 now, and starting to get moody and self-righteous "why the hell should I do that, you do it!!!" sort of shit. I'm not looking forward to his teens, not least because as Ive mentioned before, my idea of discipline is to straight up loud-voiced tell someone off when bratty, but theyre not my kids, so...

Yeah, I've found that tactic to be incredibly unhelpful. I try to strike a balance between stern parent and listening, supportive parent. Neither of these techniques worked but "listening, supportive" worked better, but really only for a while. Then I'd be sitting there trying to give him calm, reasoned advice and his volume and intensity kept ratcheting up. Eventually we just decided to back away and give him some space. Let him chill out in his room as long as he wasn't breaking things anymore. It was no fun. He's been doing a little better in the last couple days, but I don't look forward to the next time this happens.

By the way, I've had this stuck in my head ever since your last post, so thanks, Trayce:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4WLuR70ZO4

I actually really like Daniel Ingram's songs from the first few seasons of MLP:FIM, but the movie was a little bit of a turning point for me. My girl likes it though, so I guess that's what counts.

Being an adolescent is really really hard. I remember some of that. At some point after having come out the other side, I thought back and realized it made the most sense to consider myself temporarily insane during those years. The way I felt and experienced things in that time was just so different, it barely connected to my post-teen reality at all.

Yeah, I completely remember behaving similarly with my parents, sadly. I was tantrum-prone both as a younger child and as a teen though. Since he hasn't been much of a fusser up until now, I was just optimistic that we would continue our smooth emotional sailing. I guess there's no getting around adolescence though.

on the topic of adolescents, I started this thread some time ago, though it's never seen much action (like our ados?)

my two ados have mood swings, sure, but they're mostly funny to watch. We are very much not tight asses about anything and the tantrums don't really have marks to miss, let alone hit. They cuss like sailors, but not in English: French, Créole, Arabic, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, sure, those are all ok, they pick up hilarious expressions at school, and they fly freely at home, as do middle fingers and general horsing-around "violence" amongst themselves.

my little one, about to turn tween, is having mood swings right now, which could very well be pre-pubescent. They're more alarming since she tends to amp up the threats, I gather just to get her point across when the older two dominate discourse. We find letting them run off and be sullen for a while is the best way to go.

There is some neurological evidence to suggest adolescents are genuinely mentally different--they develop a temporary autism-like inability to read other people's faces and moods properly, or consider others' needs before their own

LOL I remember stoutly informing my mother I would NEVER be a terrible bitch like all those teens I saw on TV, when I was pre-teen

Then of course I was a horrible bitch in my teens.

last night my little one, the near-tween, was crying because a lot of kids at school have suddenly gotten into "summoning spirits". Evidently they write yes and no (well, oui et non) a few times on a piece of paper, set up some pencils in a stack, then chant a song about Charlie and see if the pencils end up pointing to yes. If yes then Charlie the spirit is present and everyone panics. My daughter doesn't want to believe in it but everyone's scared by it and yet big crowds of kids keep doing it.

I remember at around the same age doing similar things, going into the bathroom with other kids and turning off the lights, then doing some weird "ritual" around the garbage can to talk to the dead. as I told my daughter, it's probably rooted in a desire to control things that seem uncontrollable, the possible permeability of the material world; what I meant was awareness of death but I didn't want to put it that way.

she was pretty spooked!

Dude!

She was worried about whether to tell on the kids and I said go ahead, probably there's a bunch of spooked kids. Evidently there was something similar at my older kids' school last year (also in France) and it was banned by the teachers. Maybe it violates laïcité? Or it just ends up with kids who haven't slept enough because they're worried about "spirits".