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

There's an Australian play called "year 9 are animals" which we studied when I was in high school :) Its true!

I'm so happy. We bought my teenager a drumset last night. Used, off of one of his friend's parents. Some cheap no-name brand that doesn't even exist anymore, as far as I can tell. But he's in there practicing and trying to figure things out now. I had really been worried about how he's been spending his free time, because other than building bmx jumps in the woods, his hobbies have sort of consisted of smoking pot, CS:GO, watching Netflix, and being at anyone else's house other than ours. He played violin for a couple years in elementary school and I showed him how to play Smoke on the Water or something once on guitar, but that didn't really stick. I love the sound of kids making music.

That is awesome!
My 5-year-old has been having piano lessons with my mom (a piano teacher) a couple of days a week for the past few months and he’s reading music now! So he’s officially learned to read music before he’s learned to read words ha! I’m fine with that.

I think my kid took the piss out of me for the first time today. She’s ten months. She snatched the book I normally read to her out of my hands, opened it out, and started “reading” to me in a mock-pompous voice.

get used to it!

...boomer

My 11yr old (going on 25yr old) tagged me in her Instagram story today as the 'most boring person in her life'.

I mean, she's probably right but OUCH.

hahaha lmao

haha

I’m down to only two teenagers today, like, forever. It’s weird.

Two days into the new term and I’m trying to get anti-climb paint out of a school sweatshirt fml.

“It kind of happened magically” at playtime, according to F. His new teacher was veeeeerrrrrry apologetic.

Recommending things to your kid: classic or impossible?

My older kid, I rarely had any influence over. His mom had more luck than I did. I've had mild success with introducing my fourth-grader to things. She went on a big Homestar Runner kick last year and earlier this summer we enjoyed Avatar: The Last Airbender together when it came to Netflix. These days, her tastes run almost entirely toward Minecraft and Five Nights at Freddy's youtubers.

I can't get her to read a book with me anymore. And I respect that she wants to choose things for herself. She's been big on Warrior cats books and reads them and enthusiastically discusses them with me about them when she's done. But anything that I loved as a child and I try to introduce to her - C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, etc. - I get shut down with a firm "no", which I honor and respect but... Anyone know any tricks, or do I just respect that Warrior cats are the new classics and give the fuck up?

Warrior Cats are a phase that will pass. Generally think people should come to classics because they want to, not as an "eat your vegetables" thing that parents do. You've done your job by letting the kid know about them.

School may require some specific reading, and sometimes hearing it from a different authority works better.

Fair enough. To be clear though from my perspective , I'm not approaching/proposing these things from "eat your veg" as much as "I want to enjoy this thing with you".

I've found it very hit & miss - some stick others get dismissed after one or two episodes/chapters.

Sometimes it also seems to be about catching them at the right time - first time I tried Avatar with my son he wasn't really interested but then gave it another go a couple of months later and he was hooked.

"I want to enjoy this thing with you".

Oh yeah, I totally get that! My wife and I were thrilled when our daughter put down the Warriors for a bit and picked up Wrinkle in Time. We tried not to show it too much, though. Our acting like eager puppies over her enjoyment of something we can share can have a backlash effect in tweens (just as much as teens).

I should add that she got into L'Engle not because we'd lobbied for her to do so (see above) but to be in a school play.

This is complicated for me because my family of origin definitely had canonical movies and books and musicals that we felt obligated to like Or Else. It was only as an adult that I realized what a dud that can be, how limiting and prescriptive. I spent a lot of time feeling that my taste should align with my parents' taste in order to think of myself as cultured, when sometimes I probably would have been better off finding out what *I* liked on my own.

Also I'm sure there were people in my family that kinda resented how much of our interaction was based around certain references and in-jokes and quotes from "Auntie Mame" or whatever. Stepsiblings and new spouses and such who either felt left out, or who felt they needed to wlbe given a read/watch list before they could participate.

The ritual of "you haven't seen Princess Bride (or whatever)?!?! We need to rectify this immediately!" can be well-intentioned and feel like generosity and a desire for shared enjoyment. But it can also feel stifling, and I've deliberately kept that to a minimum with my kids.

That said, they live in a house with thousands of books and people eager to talk passionately about each one. If they become interested in something great under their own steam mand following their own curiosity, the joy is more real.

otm.

I don't think any Onion article has haunted me as much as this one.

https://www.theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-that-will-put-her-en-1819572981

Nevertheless daughter number one has started telling me that none of her friends ever get the movie or music references she drops (tho the last one was to School of Rock for pity's sake).

my kids currently only listen to minecraft parody songs, not sure if this is a disaster or not

Yes, we are firmly in Minecraft parody territory. I'm fine with that and watching some youtubers like Preston or Slogoman or LaurenZSide. She's been down a rabbithole watching Gacha Life vids recently though, and I haven't said it aloud to her, but they are the absolutely dregs.

my kids watch Mr Beast and he’s the fucking worst

I have had more than enough of hearing about "Preson Styles Merch" and have banned him, BeckBroJack too.

Aw, I mean, these guys are annoying don't get me wrong, but when I was my daughter's age I was either watching genuine neon-orange effluvia on Nickelodeon or sneaking over to MTV in hopes of catching the Britney Fox 'Girlschool' video. But yes, I have purchased Preston Stylez merch in the past two months.

Lol @ Piedie Gimbel

Has anyone else had experience with their kid, particularly a young kid (kindergartner in my case) being mean to other kids? We have had the experience multiple times when we will set up a playdate and E will decide in advance she doesn't like the kid, refusing to share anything, refuses to show her room to the kid, refuses to play, says rude things on purpose, etc. We try to model being good hosts and being friendly, we try gently reminding her how to be nice, and we have tried sterner approaches too, but none work because she has clearly set her mind against the playdate and on not being nice. In fact, sometimes the more we encourage her to be nice, the worse she gets. We did move recently so it may partly be a control thing, but it happened before we moved too. I'm not sure what to do and it makes me afraid to set up playdates with other kids - today she made a girl we invited cry.

No real advice, but I've noticed that with playdates, the kid whose house (and toys) it is, generally ends up being difficult. the same kids are fine going to the other's place. leaving can be fraught too even if they're having a good time. is kindergarten age 4/5?

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

Over the past few months, my 16-year-old has just stopped wearing shirts around the house. Just now I was about to exhort him to "put a goddamn shirt on before he opens the refrigerator" but I'm just gonna give up and let him do whatever the hell he wants because these times are hard enough on everyone.

oh i have to bribe my two boys to put on anything more than underwear.

Mine think shorts are year-round apparel

Oh yeah, when he got to be around 10 or 11, my wife would have huge fights with him in the morning because he didn't want to wear jeans in sub-freezing weather. Wasn't a thing when I was a kid, but apparently it is the standard for tween boys these days.

guess what happens if you give an 18 month old some toilet roll from the cupboard and say "go and put this in the toilet".

🤔

How are people handling vaccinated parents and unvaccinated kids?

Do you mean our parents (their grandparents) or their parents (us)?

My wife and I are vaccinated and we live with unvaccinated children. We are extremely unlikely to infect them, and they are extremely unlikely to infect us.

Vaccinated grandparents can socialize with their unvaccinated grandchildren. They are extremely unlikely to infect one another, in any direction.

If there is any potential trouble it comes from cousins, I guess. Like, the under-16 crowd being allowed to cross-socialize because all the adults in their life are vaccinated. But they're effectively in a bubble with everyone in their respective schools, which could entail thousands of people.

Our unvaxxed six year old has seen all 6 of his double-vaxxed grandparents in the last two weeks inside and with no hesitation on our part. He’s not going to hangout with any other kids though unless we know they’ve been isolated for a while - so contact with his cousins who have been in school all year.

I place no restrictions on who my kids can see at this point. I have them wear masks inside when with other kids (or unvaxxed adults but that doesn't happen anymore). I have them mask outside depending on my perception of the comfort level of the other parents (which can be tough to gauge and tends to lead to erring on the side of masks) even though I find masks outside totally unnecessary.

I should also note that I wasn't that worried about my kids getting it based on how uncommon it is for children to have severe symptoms, but we were cautious anyway, and then one of them did get it (and probably both - the other tested negative but had identical symptoms), and as would be statistically expected it was extremely mild, like a cold that came and went in a couple days with no effects lingering more than a week.

When I say cautious I mean that we didn't take them into stores or restaurants and that all playdates were outside and masked, and we had zero indoor gatherings. We made one mistake which was that we rented an airbnb and then one day decided to try skiing at a small nearby mountain, never having done it and thinking "safe outdoor activity." What we didn't realize was that we'd be indoors getting rentals for an extended period of time with people not really observing distance or wearing masks properly, and that's where I think they picked it up.

I keep a close eye on the stats and adjust my caution accordingly. Last week there were 20 cases per 100,000 in our local authority area so I’m pretty comfortable taking our son to see his (double vaccinated) grandparents even if he’s mixing with plenty of others at school, playgrounds, Beavers and gymnastics club. I’d feel differently if the numbers were a lot higher, or if we were in a surge testing area for the Brazilian or South African variant.

Likewise. Our rates are really low at the moment, 13 per 100,000 last week. We're still only meeting outside, either with (vaccinated) family or friends in similar situation to us, and haven't actually done it very much so far. I'm pretty relaxed in general about being outside in uncrowded places, generally moving around etc.
I got vaccinated last week and once it kicks in I'm going to the hairdressers for the first time in a year and booking the family in for dentist checkups.

My daughter and a friend spent some outside time together last week, generally staying masked. They came inside for dinner, but it seemed like a manageable risk level given that we're fully vaccinated and the kids were masked except while eating. It would have been better if we had eaten outside, but the weather didn't cooperate.

my kids are going back to day care in a month and then to school a couple months later, so we've fully accepted that there's gonna be some risk and it's out of our hands. I have been trying to look at this rationally, it's easy to get very worked up about Covid since it's in the news all the time and literally ruined everyone's lives for over a year but I think the truth is that given how this affects (or rather, doesn't) kids I should probably be more worried about pneumonia or even just the regular old flu. it's kind of like how people get traumatized hearing about shootings constantly and when in public actively look for people with guns or "who here might go nuts" when the reality is their chances of getting into a fatal car wreck on the way home is probably higher. that said, I still don't want them around unvaccinated people. luckily the place I live got hit so hard in October and November that our infection rates are actually pretty low now.

yup. And I know this is all anecdotal evidence, but in addition to my own, I now know a bunch of kids who have had it, all extremely mild except one high school student who had a moderate case but not like "should we go to the hospital?" bad. None of these kids have after-effects either.

A similar analogy might be how we tend to get anxious during plane takeoff/landing/turbulence when statistically we have more reason to be nervous on a highway.

sorry my question a while ago was unclear

How are people handling vaccinated parents and unvaccinated kids?

should have been: how are people handling their being vaccinated but their kids not.

i feel like things aren't really changing for us yet even though all adults (parents and grandparents are vaccinated).

parks etc. were already open and the one that's old enough for daycare has been back for a while. i have no desire to go to a restaurant with kids in these circumstances. and the kind of place we'd take our (very young) kids for activities (museums, etc.) don't seem like they're going to open soon in a way that is pleasant to attend.

and that's assuming we weren't worried about the risks to ourselves and others. which we are. the risks are lower than they were where we live, but the CDC is still requiring masks for unvaccinated kids in the same situations they're recommending them for unvaccinated adults for a reason.

so our getting vaccinated in the last week or two has been kind of an anticlimax.

My kids graduated from middle school yesterday, if you can even believe it.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51211169913_e99f5bf470_c.jpg

The dog still has a lot to learn

Celebrated first day of summer with our traditional ice cream breakfast:
https://i.imgur.com/8eUF9VA.jpg

congrats on the graduations!