shut up

This is so powerful. I had read years ago that positive reinforcement was just the other side of punishment. So we strove not to do any positive reinforcement with our kid. We basically try to just live with her, and explain things to her. This article is a good refresher for me. I sometimes have to deal with the ways she negatively impacts me and I am having a hard time navigating that. Example: this morning, she got in the way of me putting on my shoes. My back has been out a lot lately (I am seeing a chiropractor and going to physical therapy for it). The last time it went out was being in a bad position tying my shoes. I tried to tell her she was in the way without pushing or telling her what to do but I still somehow upset her. I wonder if it felt like name-calling to her...thanks for posting this, it gives me something to think about.

Great piece! (and a nice easy read)

The part about positive reinforcement is something that I haven't seen talked about much. Seems pretty obvious how blatantly manipulative it is but it apparently few people have a problem with acting this way.

As if there weren't enough reasons to avoid having a baby

I spent most of the day at work when I did it. It was doable to make it a part time thing. Saving laundry detergent was more of a goal than rushing to grow up.

I was doing in-home care for an octogenarian who really needed a trained nurse at that point so she needed my full attention, even though we did "bend the rules".

My kid slept in a carrier on my back and of course I fed him and changed diapers, but I couldn't do EC or many of the things I took for granted when I was a full time parent.

Bloodrose said that's why she wound up using 'sposies too. I'll try to be better about sharing old timey parenting skills in the future.

Congratulations. I'm supposed to say, "It gets easier." but we both know that's a crock of shit. It just gets different.

Welcome to the Universe, mofongo. <-----------------not typo. ;)

Welcome to Earth, twins.

Thanks for your reply!!

I made this post a while ago, the twin are already born and turned 3 months old recently. We got gifted enough disposable diapers by friends and family that I still haven't had to buy any. At this point, I don't think I can convince the miss's to use diapers.

The elimination communication bit is really interesting and something I something I would like us to apply but I got told "you do it" which isn't very productive because I spend most of the day at work.

I didn't use strollers so I can't help. People gave them to me, but they were awkward, clumsy, and they made my newborns cry. I was the stereotypical new twentysomething parent who left the house pushing the baby in a stroller and carrying the diaper bag and came home pushing the diaper bag in the stroller and carrying the baby.

Eventually I pushed a strollerload of outgrown baby clothes to the nearest Goodwill (donation) drop-off and walked home carrying both the baby and the diaper bag.

What I did use was ring slings for the millenials (Nojo and OTSBH--don't laugh!) and for the digital native, I made a ton of pouch slings until he got too heavy and then I used woven wraps.

This link isn't too old and should be helpful:

https://bwi.mystagingwebsite.com/what-is-babywearing/choosing-a-baby-carrier/

if you want to go that route instead of a stroller for a gift. Remember your friends' clothing preferences or make sure that it's returnable, though, because my carriers were much more visible than my shirts when I had babies and it would be unpleasant for a first time mom or dad who loved fashion to have to tolerate a random or careless choice of colour or print.

This is a new reply to an old thread about a recurring baby shower issue. The stroller is the biggest ticket item on every first time parent's list, in my not-exactly-limited experience, and spacersparanoid obviously cared a lot about their friends and already bought them a stroller.

There will be other friends, other baby showers, other stroller ads, and other people who care about their friends and want to give them great presents. hth.

I didn't wash every day.

My millenials had diaper service, paid for by my parents, with a weekly pickup. That's great if it still exists--they have special washers that can get the diapers cleaner than a standard home washer and dryer and with twins on the way, you certainly deserve a bit of help.

My digital native was much more low budget. He wasn't a spitty-uppy baby and we did part time EC (Elimination Communication) so I certainly didn't need to wash a load every day. I probably never even owned more than a dozen dipes in any one size.

Since I owned my own dipes, I got to make them out of fun fabrics like organic cotton and bamboo, upcycle cute flannel sheets from the thrift store into "flats", and check out then-popular Fuzzi-Bunz and other adorable fitted styles.

I never got as into it as some of the people on diaper swappers dot com or anything.

You use fewer as the babies get older. Exclusively breast fed poop and pee don't smell nasty. After awhile, you get grossed out by chemical gels and the nasty rashes caused by 'sposies much more than you do from soggy cotton.

It's been eleven years but I'll talk your ear off; what do you need to know? You dump the poop in the toilet when it's solid and just swish them around in the potty before that if you're concerned about stains. No fabric softener and two rinse cycles.

If you don't have enough dipes for a full load, it really won't hurt anything to toss them in with a load of T shirts or towels or something. The internet says you have to use hot water, but the earth didn't stop turning when my then-teenagers used it all up and I had to use cold.

Once a week is probably going to be fine if you have enough dipes. I lived in a studio apartment with the millenials. You probably knew we had two in diapers if we forgot to put them out for the diaper man that week, but otherwise it wasn't that bad. Their cousins were formula fed 'sposie-butts from birth and the two-story house they lived in smelled like used formula diapers. It wasn't enough to make you gag or vomit, but it did smell like shit.

It's almost like human mothers and children co-evolved...

Unlike cows, goats, and all the other mammals out there humans like to drink the milk of.

She was very proud of her parenting. It horrified me.

I like this book already! Teaching kids "grit" is really in right now, and while I think that's a valuable trait, purposely creating difficult situations for kids is definitely the wrong way to go about it. Kids are going to experience enough trouble and challenges in their lives, and if you're supporting them and encouraging them to work through it, that's what's going to be important. I feel like that quote about setting them on fire sums up the whole argument pretty damn well.

wtf, that person should not be working as a therapist

exactly and the first couple of chapters are just the author going through and showing, with actual evidence, how this way of thinking and behaving is harmful and just plain wrong.

I love this quote. It reminds me of some fucked up shit my therapist told me. She said when her kids were younger she would purposely disappoint them. Like, she'd say they were going to a birthday party or some shit and then randomly just say "nope, it's cancelled." She said this was to get them used to disappointment. It made no fucking sense to me. Why would you pre-traumatize your child? Wouldn't it be better to be there for your kid when they did experience disappointment rather than create disappointment for them? Life sucks enough.

you'd have to read the book and it challenges exactly what you're saying with actual evidence not just popular thought

this is just one little snippet, I'm only a couple chapters in and the whole thing has been great and helping me in trying to rethink what I'm doing and why. highly recommend this for anyone who works with kids in any way.

Nice quote! Thanks for sharing!

This is the sort of thing that makes me crazy. My daughter is 7 but mature. I can see the school from the back bedroom of my house. I could watch her from my house enter the school. Yet no students are allowed unless accompanied by an adult. I hear so many stories of walked to school at 5, 6, 7 to the other side of town "when I was a child". Yet, she can't go even though she begs she is old enough.

Don't get me wrong. I would panic as much as the next parent of "has she got there safe", but this tight control of you are a bad parent for letting them out to roam for 2 minutes needs to stop.

So cute!

I went to visit my grandparents with my mother and her sister. My grandfather, who is I'll from Parkinson's and has little he can do physically very well now, started the visit with a discussion of who was thinner than whom between his daughters and his wife. Both daughters present suffer from anorexia. I have no doubt in my mind he is to blame.

At work, I was joking with a coworker about how much of a corn chip addict I am, saying I could eat nothing but chips and salsa and be happy. She then told me something that horrified me. She said she gets the big Costco bags of corn chips and then when her daughter comes home from school, if they see her wolfing down too many of them "on the cameras", they tell her through the house to stop eating so many chips. I was so disgusted. They have cameras in their house to monitor their children when they aren't home!

Haha that's about the look I get from my kid after a minute or two of trying to explain life. You're right though, kids rarely ever get to hear "You're right" from parents. My kid told me the other day, "It was your fault Daddy" and my first instinct is: You don't get to say that, you're a kid. Thankfully I stopped before I actually said that, and admitted that indeed I had been in the wrong.
Also, I have the hardest time keeping a straight face whenever my kid says "Fucking." It's just so innocent and adorable, and I want to laugh so hard! We try so hard to watch our language, but that just sneaks out sometime, and he knows it's not a good word so he always pauses for a moment before saying it, and then usually uses it as an opportunity to list off the other impolite words :)

They also don't hear adults say "you're right" to children. I said fucking the other night and my kid said "mommy, fucking is not a nice word," and even though I was still frustrated and not ready to switch gears, I made sure to say "You're right, honey, I'm sorry." And it was perfect because then she felt like asking why I used it and I got to explain that sometimes we use it like the word "a lot". She started to glaze over and didn't take all the info in but it was a start, lol

I like that this article discussed how children are denied access to public spaces. I often lament this, particularly because I like to go out as a family! My father in law often talks about growing up in Spain, and how children were always brought along to the bars/pub/restaurants, they were fairly free to run around and be kids. Now, I feel so rebellious just bringing my kid to a decent restaurant! I get the impression that my kid is expected to be almost unnoticeable otherwise it ruins everybody else's meal. I had a friend who tried to take their infant in a carrier to a quiet bar during the afternoon with an outdoor patio where they intended to sit. They were denied service because they couldn't have a kid at the bar. We have been fortunate to find a local pool hall that serves beer and is family friendly. My kid loves to run around playing the various games, playing with the balls at the pool table, and playing shuffleboard. It's one of the only times I feel my kid is really actually welcome in the space, and free to behave like the little kid they are.

I think apologizing to your kid is one of the best things we can do as parents. It shows we aren't perfect, that we make mistakes, and it models to your kid that it's important to be a big enough person to admit that. Adults don't often apologize to children, at least not genuinely. Kids may hear "sorry, I know you want that toy but we aren't going to buy that." They don't often hear adults say, "Sorry, I lost my cool and that wasn't fair to you, and it's something I am trying to work on." That's realistic! We weren't raised in an Inuit culture, and anger is very much a part of the culture we were raised in. I feel like the best we can do is try to model healthy ways of expressing our anger, and acknowledge when we fail to do that ourselves.