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

We also had a LC telling us our kid was tongue tied and we needed to do something about it. We didn’t go back to that person (for that and other reasons). I had no idea this was such a thing with LC’s.

Whatever works is good. The first few months of having a baby was the most draining chaos I’ve experienced, and it was of course much worse for my wife. It will get better!!!

as an onlooker the misinformation on tongue tie is so crazy!

i would hate to know how many families pony up for the operation based on advice from an ill informed “expert”

i am outraged for all of you

(congrats on the babby, horseshoe!! <3)

thx VG!!!

Here's my woo woo anti-science story: we had a planned c-section at 36 weeks because of vasa previa, which is when the umbilical cord is between the baby's head and the cervix such that if you go into labor and there's any pressure on the cord, it will rupture and very bad things will happen. For me this was diagnosed at the 5 month ultrasound. So I panicked (I panicked so hard they ended up hospitalizing me overnight to pee in a jug because my blood pressure went through the roof) and began web searching immediately because I hate myself, I guess? I came across a message board for doulas/midwives/LCs and read a post where they were debating the merits of the five-month ultrasound. Someone pointed out that this is the scan where they catch vasa previa, so she recommends her clients get at least this one ultrasound. And the consensus response was that if some babies/mothers died from an undiagnosed complication, that was a small price to pay for staying true to the ideals of natural birth and allowing women to rely on their intuition alone. So that was cool.

Luckily nobody said that shit to my face, but that was roughly when I decided to fully embrace the medical model of childbirth (sorry Rickie Lake) and do what needed to be done to get my child safely into this world.

ohhhhhh my lord. First of all, I’m sorry you went through that: vasa previa is scary! second of all, I know medicine has its pitfalls when it comes to prenatal care and delivery, particularly for black women, but whenever I hear people waxing poetic about natural childbirth, all I can think of is the long history of women dying in childbirth in large numbers. I’ll take medicine, thanks.

Lol the LC I’ve been seeing took an inventory of my labor and delivery experience at our first appointment, and both she and the dreadlocked white intern couldn’t hide a Look when I related that I had an epidural. I wanted to be like, no regrets; the epidural was magical!!! Because it was.

jesus carl, some people are lunatics. I've always been pro-hospital, medicalise anything I need, please!

I played my boys quincy’s “dude” and sly stone’s GH today. 😊

i liked this http://notokensjournal.com/non-fiction/sunbeam/

may be of interest to parents of kids with tempers, kids of parents with tempers, parents of girls, etc.

I know it's not the point of the article but I don't really agree with how the way in which a baby was born gets written into/ becomes emblematic of their personality.

haha fair (although i suppose it's better than using tarot to divine the baby's personality, which is apparently the writer's other interest, admirably absent from the article)

lol oh dear, no wonder the kid is mad (angry mad not loco)

Yeah it kind of reads like the author holds a grudge about those early baby days. Babies can be really annoying but it's really not cool to hold a grudge against them for it.

"'She has to have things her way, or she loses it,' I complained."

It's been almost 8 years since I was frequently around a four-month old but I don't recall Ivy having a way that she insisted on getting. Like, she cried a lot but what was she supposed to do? "Mother, I understand you are trying to work, but I am hoping you will consider taking out a boob for me as I am feeling peckish. Also, I've shat myself again."

Yeah honestly there isn't really anything four month olds want that I can recall except boob/bottle, sleep, and comfort (being held, appropriate temperature, diaper change, either being swaddled or not depending on the baby, my first very much hated it). 95% of crying, if not 100%, was due to one of those things, and the more aware I became of that the easier it became to have a baby.

also, lol carl agatha

I have a temper and my 2nd kid has a temper. I felt this article a LOT. Thanks for sharing.

xp but sometimes there's colic ie unexplained screaming, for hours every evening no matter what you do ;_;

that only lasted ~2 months of my life but it was hellish (and we thought it would go on forever because hey, babies cry)

some of the author thinks about her own kid seem weird/unkind/projection. but glass houses and stones is my take on that!

glad you liked it cow_art!

My son had ridiculously horrible colic for the first 6 months and it honestly kind of broke me - I don't hold it against him but it really affected how I dealt with issues like leaving my spouse home alone with him for a long time.

Just got an introductory powerpoint presentation about the 5th grade team at my daughter's school today. Her teacher lists her favorite store as Hobby Lobby and her favorite restaurant as Chik-Fil-A. Dog-whistle or just a crummy coincidence?

As of today my child knows Father Christmas doesn't exist. It's been emotional!

How did that happen? It was really emotional when my son found out. He was very upset and accused us of lying. I haven't probed my daughter's thoughts on the matter, but we have sorta phased out the tooth fairy with her and have never been good about changing our handwriting for the xmas gifts. She has a cooler head, anyway.

XXP sounds like a dog whistle to these ears 😕

so... you are a dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5OY_H2_rQ8

XPs it was a fucking children's book from the 50s that casually mentioned a nice mother who puts presents in stockings. FFS. But he has definitely suspected for the last Christmas or two (he's only 6!) Anyway he's questioned us before and we've brushed it off with vague chats about the story of Santa etc, but he is very scientifically minded and doesn't really do nuance, he knows magic isn't real even though we have discussed how some amazing real things seem like magic if we can't explain them. In the end he asked repeatedly who puts the presents in, and I asked if he wanted to know the real story or the nice magic story. So I confirmed what he probably knew (when I asked what he believed, he said he half believed it was us and half believed it was Santa) and he cried! Felt awful. But he was fine again a few minutes later. I think he was partly crying because the presents aren't 'free' and we have to buy them! In our house it's just small (unlabelled) stocking-fillers from Santa anyway and main presents from family etc.

He brought it up a few days ago and we attempted to put it off until after this Christmas... he's under strict instruction not to mention it around his little sibling, or any other children. We've always tried not to overdo it or overtly lie too much but I don't think that makes much difference if they buy into the belief.

I suspect he believes/d far less in the Tooth Fairy too and would've started putting two and two together, especially as his best friend's mum warned us he doesn't believe in fairies...

my strategy so far has been "wow, if he isn't real, then who's been buying all those presents?" but I think they both (6&10) have known for ages

The north pole tracker thing kept our kids believing for a couple more years when they were starting to question. They were done by age 8 or so, though.

Santa is always tricky with Jewish kids in a school with a lot of Christian kids, bc you're torn btw not ruining it for other kids and not wanting to sell your own kids on a myth that isn't really part of your thing. Was never really sure what to do with it.

I will say that with the tooth fairy I sort of eased my kids out of it. It was too much fun keeping it going, so what I did was just sort of got more elaborate and outlandish with the explanations and stories and winked at my kids about it so that they could stay in on the fun and enjoy belief while gradually having the difference between fantasy and reality come into sharper relief. Our tooth fairy has left them some pretty detailed notes and drawings, and we had all kinds of stories about what she does with the teeth, how she manages to cover all the ground, etc.

We never figured out when my son (who is 13 now) stopped believing in Santa Claus. I am pretty sure he at some point must have thought that if he admitted to not believing in him, he wouldn't get an extra Christmas present from Santa anymore (our kids generally got one present from us and one from Santa). Basically, continuing to believe kept the presents coming, so he chose to continue to believe. A kids version of Pascal's wager.

I started telling my kid that none of these existed from as early age as possible. Disappoint them from the beginning rather than years later.

I like the tooth fairy idea!

I go the other way from Jeff and invent lots of other lies to tell them too, who knows, maybe they do exist?

F gets incredibly angry if people even mention the tooth fairy to him, he sees it all as a monstrous lie perpetuated on children. He also expects the tooth fairy's duties to be carried out to the letter, so he dutifully leaves his tooth under his pillow and expects to wake up to cash.

yeah I've worked with people like that

lol stet

I don’t know what to do about Santa when the baby’s old enough to care. Was raised Muslim, didn’t celebrate Christmas; was coached by my parents not to ruin the whole Santa’s not real thing for my classmates. Am still kind of militant about the experience of being a religious minority in a Christian imperialist culture. Husband’s fam is evangelical Christian and Christmas is a big deal to them, but he’s no longer personally religious. I think it will likely mean a lot to his parents that our kid buy into the Santa thing. Part of me is like, who cares? and part of me feels a weird sense of loss at the dilution of my father’s insistence that one could be American and not celebrate Christmas.

to be fair, Santa Claus is about the most innocuous thing my evangelical in-laws will likely try to indoctrinate the baby about.

some kids seem to enjoy there being a fantasy world which could be or could not be real, some are dead set against this and want everything clearly delineated, I seem to have one of each of these

He was very upset and accused us of lying

he was correct! you were lying!

Yeah, he wasn't wrong. It was a sad scene. He held on to the belief until 5th grade I think, which was a few years longer than I did when I was a kid. His mother and I had discussed early on whether we should let him believe in Santa. She was slightly against, but I was very in favor. Something about "kids need to believe in magic" that I'm now not sure is true. Also the awkwardness of being a kid hiding a secret from his other friends. He has always been a terrible keeper of secrets - like, known to blab about things we tell him to keep private. If we had been upfront with him at a younger age, I'm sure a significant portion of his daycare would have been questioning their belief in Santa. Again, at the time I didn't want that on my head, but at this point I couldn't care less.

when I was young my dad was a dedicated atheist and my mum was a practicing Catholic, so I had the odd experience of going from the hippy commune we lived in to Sunday school at the local church, cannot conceive how she thought I would keep it up.

anyway, point is that for quite a while I was dead set against any/all lying to kids, but since having my own I've done a bit of a 180 on this, feel like teaching kids to trust entirely in established facts and logic holds them back from (eventually!) making peace with our fundamental irrationality as a species, so many of the best things in life are just not interesting when viewed through a binary true/false perspective, I think my younger son at least kind of gets this. I'm still against religious schooling but have mellowed a great deal on it now. I don't want them to grow up to be atheist edgelords, though my oldest seems to be heading in that direction already, so maybe my approach doesn't work for him, or maybe he needs it most.

some kids seem to enjoy there being a fantasy world which could be or could not be real, some are dead set against this and want everything clearly delineated, I seem to have one of each of these

So otm.

anyway, point is that for quite a while I was dead set against any/all lying to kids, but since having my own I've done a bit of a 180 on this, feel like teaching kids to trust entirely in established facts and logic holds them back from (eventually!) making peace with our fundamental irrationality as a species, so many of the best things in life are just not interesting when viewed through a binary true/false perspective, I think my younger son at least kind of gets this. I'm still against religious schooling but have mellowed a great deal on it now. I don't want them to grow up to be atheist edgelords, though my oldest seems to be heading in that direction already, so maybe my approach doesn't work for him, or maybe he needs it most.

― fc_TEFH28mo (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, September 2, 2021 9:06 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is well put. I think it's life-enriching to push at the borders of imagination and reality sometimes, as long as you know what you're doing. To a certain extent our lives are all governed in part by narratives that have at least some element of unreality to them, or at least have a dimension that lacks grounding in provable reality.

I’ve swore I’d never be anything but totally honest with my kid about Santa but it was so easy to just maintain the ruse when he was a toddler and excited about things. I’ve been cagey and non-commital though, with lots of “that’s what people say” and “what do you think?” when he asked questions. It didn’t come up much last year but being quarantined meant he didn’t have any contact with other kids to exchange information. Now that he’s started school 528 days leaving preschool I’m sure there will be more questions and some other kid will hopefully spoil it.

Sometimes I just run out of gas and stop talking and interacting. I’m not going to feel bad about this

My girls fight too much, and my latest discovery is that I can defuse any conflict by merely putting Send Me On My Way on the speaker and doing an embarrassing dance/singalong to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMabBGydC0

Amabadysey Amabadyoo!

i have a KIDS DANCE PARTY playlist on Spotify, will have to add that. It'll fit in nicely between Surfin' Bird and Balloon in the ilx inspired section of the list

The other day we stayed a night at a friend's for the first time in forever, a two or three hour drive away. Our five year old had a great time but then at bedtime started saying "I want to go home". I spent about ten minutes saying "were not going home, it's too late, it's too far, think of the great time you'll have tomorrow, playing on the trampoline", etc etc. She starts calling for mum who luckily has managed to get our two year old to sleep in record time, mum comes in and the first thing she says is "if you don't stop messing around we're driving straight home"!