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

yeah it's working ok for us - we have some structured school-type stuff (math, reading/writing, science), recess (exercising outside), they take an "art walk" around the neighborhood in the morning, they get a little screen time/free time. Oldest daughter has gotten on a weekly video-conferenced D&D game with a couple of her friends, which is great (the local gamestore has set up a network of dungeon masters from their weekly gaming sessions).

Hardest thing is going to be managed the 2yo as well I think

*managing

Just occurred to me today that the 2yo hadn't been out of our house (and garden) for a full week. Took them for a walk down a country lane and saw animals plus tractors, so that's good.

We started potty training a few days ago. Thought today we were finally making progress until I looked over to him on (a towel on) the sofa, half asleep with an absolutely massive shit next to him.

Definitely his? Home isolation does funny things to people.

ha!

lol

my kids have both turned into little liars. they sneak things like videos and candy that they get from who knows where whenever they can and just blatantly lie to our faces about it. it's relatively harmless but my god. "no! i swear! we weren't doing (x)!"

https://66.media.tumblr.com/39eb05d25a4c927dbcb1a1d75c031c9c/tumblr_pdy5viLzqG1tzgg1ao1_1280.jpg

My daughter walked into our bedroom coughing after having something to drink that went down the wrong tube. She said that she had a glass of cider, but there were no empty glasses of cider anywhere. It is likely that she was drinking water from the tap, which is forbidden because our well water is kinda nasty. But she stuck to the cider story.

American or European cider?

(Or other)

American! Just dirty apple juice, basically. Not booze.

I'm recovering from a broken leg and my wife has a bad back that kinds comes and goes. So we're kinda groany and we talk to each other about our aches and pains.

The kids have picked up on this and their ailments are multiplying quickly. "I CAN'T SLEEP, MY TEETH HURT!!!" "I THINK I BROKE MY FOOT!!!" "MY BACK IS SORE!!!"

my 3 year old hurt her foot and was limping around and noticed she got special treatment and now she fakes it all the time

tbf its pretty hilarious to watch her jumping around and then see her face shift and say "my foot hurts!" when she wants to be picked up

When the ten year old has the slightest sort of a leg/foot problem she limps around the house as though her kneecap has been broken.

I will point out that by walking goofy she is likely to hurt her other leg/foot. She will then become indignant: "I CAN'T HELP IT, I'M HURT!!!"

Her school keeps her occupied a good bit throughout the day. The five year old needs waaaay more attention though. It is exhausting to have this much one-on-one time with a little kid, as much as I love her.

Trying to work at the same time is driving me fucking insane

yeah it can be a nightmare. we spent the weekend cleaning the house and it was all trashed by Monday morning. every 2 minutes its something

Yep

Yesterday I FaceTimed with a friend in London with a kid. 15 minutes after our call ended his kid broke his leg on the backyard trampoline. I cannot imagine.

I'm terrified something is going to happen and we'll need to take somebody to the hospital. I cut myself while washing a knife and as I clenched the wound above my head I closed my eyes and mumbled "please no stitches, please no stitches, please no stitches...."

The ten year old was getting ambitious and wanted to help with dinner by cutting vegetables. I told her no, and that if she needs stitches during the pandemic that I'm going to do it and it won't be fun. Her eyes got wide.

tbh the thing that terrifies me most about the virus isn't necessarily the chance that I'll die it's that if the wife and I get sick there's basically no one to take care of the kids

if indeed we get the "sleep 18 hours and can't get out of bed" variety of the sickness

yep I was just wondering what to do in that situation and the answer is still 'I have no idea'

My 2yo keeps lying down near the stairs and calling me saying 'fall down, big bump'

frogbs otm

If it were just me in an apartment full of books and bourbon and guitars, I would prolly be like "yeah, I've had an okay run."

But with a partner and with tiny people depending on me/us? That is a different calculus.

Even just one parent going into a fevered isolated stupor for a month would NOT be workable, as the other person would have to become simultaneously the main breadwinner AND main caregiver.

Not possible for me to accomplish on my best day. My wife is great but also... no. Could not work.

hi people guardians,

just dropping in to say: I'M STILL NOT HAVING A BABY!!

but for those that do, you might find this interesting or useful:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-prep-build-your-own-team-hall-of-fame/

Build Your Own Team Hall of Fame
Overview: A two-week unit centered around the Hall of Fame.

You’ve just been appointed the director of your favorite team’s Hall of Fame. Your first task is to evaluate a single player for possible election to the Hall. Then, you’ll build a new set of criteria for election and determine which players are eligible.

Learning Objectives:

Identify a main thesis or point
Form arguments to support the thesis or main point
Research facts and data to support arguments
Construct a compelling persuasive essay with proper structure
Review criteria for evaluation and suggest changes or improvements to your team’s Hall of Fame
Explain the reasoning behind making those changes or improvements
Evaluate a dataset using a set of criteria to identify data points that fit
Project potential fits based on historical data

just thought it was a cool idea that sneaks in some legit educational value, and although it says Grades 9-10, i think i would have loved this the most when i was in 6th grade.

i'm a big fan of emily oster's expecting better. turns out she has a mailing list that has, for the past couple of months, been pretty detailed explainers on what data we have/how to make decisions about parenting These Days.

https://emilyoster.substack.com/ (click “let me read it first” to see the archive)

some good ones

https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/pregnancy-covid-19-updates
https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/can-kids-transmit-the-virus
https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/grandparents-and-day-care

we're having to decide whether to send my kid back to school for the final 6 weeks if they reopen as the govt is hoping. initially I was like "No way" but I'll admit I'm tempted now. they will be in a group of max 15 kids with various steps taken to keep everything clean.

we live in a fairly rural region with only 350 ppl in hospital for COVID in the whole of the region (population approx 5.6m).

We’re in the same boat Kinder, except we’re in a city and are almost certainly carrying antibodies now (see Rona thread) so the risk of our child passing it on or catching it from others isn’t so much of an issue for us. Our priority is his mental health as a six-year-old only child. At the moment he sees nobody his own age and has an impatient home tutor. Pods of 15 at school, with the entire afternoon spent outside seems infinitely preferable given our set of circumstances. Thank goodness we got into the school with masses of outdoor space - quite the rarity in London.

There seems to be a lot of concern with kids getting Kawasaki disease post-COVID but not sure if that's just internet scaremongering or has basis in fact. (There are some news articles about it but nothing to imply it's widespread)

it is very low risk but it does appear to be real. it’s not Kawasaki but it is like it.

madchen, how are you guys all feeling physically now? hope you're through the worst. I'm sure school will be a welcome return to a bit of normality and sounds like you're well set.

My kids are older (youngest is 13) but we won't be sending them back before September at the earliest. But we have no pressure to do so: both my wife & I have been working from home since the start & for me at least that'll continue for a long time it seems.

There seems to be a lot of concern with kids getting Kawasaki disease post-COVID but not sure if that's just internet scaremongering or has basis in fact. (There are some news articles about it but nothing to imply it's widespread)

― groovypanda, Friday, May 22, 2020 5:24 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's pretty frightening, but it appears to affect about 1 in a 1000 children who get covid.

a teacher suggested we get our kids some noise cancelling headphones to use for school meetings - has anyone gotten anything like this and can recommend something?

I got my kids the Taotronics ones. I think they’re like $70. They seem to work well.

$50 now on amzn

mordy how come?

Noisy house hard to focus sometimes

Our school system, in trying to cope with Covid-19, sent out a message in the beginning of May stating

The final second-semester grade for students in high school level courses can be no lower than the grade earned in the third marking period...

My teenager has had a really rough time keeping his grades up in high school, but in third marking period, he turned his shit around and even managed to get on the honor roll. So in light of the announcement by the school system, he decided to bunk most of his online classes and just smoke pot and hang out with his friends. After all, he was going to get good final grades, so why do the work?

for his own good?

our schools just aren't doing final grades this last term.

Yes, I definitely had to explain that doing the work was integral to his education and the continued development of his brain, as well as respecting his teachers who are still there grading his work. He got really pissed off at me for that.

this was a huge battle here with the 9-year-old. we got a progress report a few weeks ago showing that they were at risk of failing most classes for the last quarter because they weren't turning in homework or classwork. the policy here is that if you get a grade better than your last report card, you get a grade, but if you do the same or worse, you just get a pass. but you can still fail if you don't do enough work. so then we had a ton of stress pushing them to make up a ton of work over a couple of weeks, where my wife and i basically had to sit with them for hours at a time to help them (ie prod them into giving decent answers) and make sure stuff got turned in.
it was really frustrating bc they have almost straight a's for the first three quarters of the year, so the problem obviously isn't intelligence or ability, it's expecting fourth graders to suddenly know how to manage an email inbox and virtual classroom and self-motivate and avoid distractions with no training or information. i guess my wife and i should've been monitoring more from the beginning but all the assignment info is behind the kid's google classroom login that we don't have, plus we're both working full-time and also trying to parent another kid.
anyways we got their grades up to A and B levels but it really sucked and was very stressful

My 9-year-old is doing pretty well, thank god. She gets down to work every day. There were a few problem days where I've gone into her room to check on her and she was just sitting there moping because "I don't know what to write." So I had to reiterate the fact that I would help guide her through her assignments and if I couldn't, then her teacher was available . If there's one thing I'd like to hammer into my kids it's "ask for help". The younger one is often too timid to speak up and the older one just thinks its the assignment's fault for being so useless.

My kids' school was already not very challenging. The distance-learning version of their school was hella basic. I think SFUSD did the same thing where you couldn't get any worse grades than what you had when they started distance-learning. Schools out at this point, and now we are trying to find stuff for them to do all summer.

ours was already complaining about school before quarantine, and it's just really hard to get them to focus on schoolwork when they could be talking to their friends online or playing on the ipad instead. we had set dedicated "academic times" during the weekdays and checked in with them about what they were working on but not actually looking at their work or making sure stuff was getting turned in. which was a mistake.

My (12yo) daughter had good grades going into the last quarter. As and Bs.

Yes, she could have brought some of them up, but... why? Like, none of us could think of a reason. Pretty much every school-age kid in the world has an asterisk placed against this year anyway. And given the inequality concerns (kids without access to tech and internet access, kids in less stable homes, kids with less privilege and less fortunate parents, etc.), we didn't press.

Keeping the connections open, fostering mental health, practicing self-care, doing creative stuff,, maintaining friendships, and the pressing need to focus on social justice instead? Those are all way more important than a bunch of bullshit busywork math worksheets anyway.

Frankly, smoking pot and hanging out with friends is exactly what I would be doing if I were a teenager right now, so I am not really in a position to judge her.

The younger one did take advantage of the fact that she knew I was locked up in a Zoom meeting all afternoon yesterday so that she could spend a couple hours watching Minecraft/Sims/etc Youtubers instead of going back to her school work after lunch. But mostly she's been honest.

The task of parenting full-time, working full-time, running a household, while ALSO being the principal (and the only teacher) of a home school was impossible on its face.

It was and is impossible, and we knew that going in. (For the nerds: Kobayashi Maru.) So everything you are doing, or not doing, is right.

My younger (9yo) child is intellectually disabled. Normally he is in full-time special education. He needs to be walked through each assignment in real time.

Ordinarily he has a 1:1 aide; now it's just us. So we treat school as low-pressure best effort. If he uses scissors correctly once a week we are ecstatic. If he dresses himself 2 out of 7 days we throw a party. This is our life now.