Parenting thread

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I wanted to start a thread of peers sharing parenting advice/stories/etc…
I couldn’t find anything specific, if it exists, feel free to delete and point me to it.

New, old, expecting, whatevs

I’ll start:
I’m new at it, but not that young. We have a two year old daughter.
We quit bands and touring and decided to pull the trigger and she was born right before Covid hit, so we’ve basically been with her 24/7 for her whole life.
Honestly, it’s been awesome, I love it. And luckily my wife is really good at it, so less pressure on me, lol.
All the cliche things everyone says about having kids has all be true, for us, so far.
It’s exciting, interesting, frustrating, tiring, funny, anxiety inducing. All the things.

One thing that I’m reflecting on a lot lately is something I heard Dave Chappelle say on a podcast. It was something like “not only did having children increase the love in my life, it increased my capacity for love”
And he’s right, same for me, it’s beautiful.

Anyway, I was prompted to do this because right now we are living with my in-laws who are in their late 60s. We just moved to Australia to be near my wife’s family, so during lockdown we’ve been spending a lot of time around her folks and I’ve noticed that they don’t necessarily approve of everything we do in regards to parenting.
They’re far too polite to come right out and say that, but I get it, and they make “suggestions” a lot.

How did everyone figure out their roles as parents? How did decide what kind of discipline, what tools you need to give them?

I’ve been thinking even before my daughter was born that I wanted my role to be more of a guide than just someone who tells her what to do all the time.
When I was a kid, I thought all adults just existed to yell at me and tell me what to do, or not to do. I don’t remember a lot of help, at least not the kind of help that would have guided me to make good decisions rather than just scare me into a particular path.

I want to help my daughter. I want to give her the tools she needs to succeed. I’m not so sure I can do that by just telling her she’s wrong all the time. She needs to learn how to make decisions, not just be told what the right decisions are.
I can already see a lot of myself in her. Which I didn’t expect this soon. Some good, some not so good, but it’s me, I can tell, and that’s actually trying to be objective, because some of it I don’t want her to have. But here we are.
This just tells me that no one will probably understand her better than me, so I need to figure out pretty soon what she’ll need. I’m still not 100% sure what that is. Besides like critical thinking skills. I can do that. But I feel like everything else is guessing.

Luckily I listened to a podcast recently and this child psychologist was talking about how parents early decisions don’t actually make as much of a difference in their children’s lives as they might think.

Thank goodness for that.

So, what about you other parents?? You nailing all this parenting stuff or what??

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#3

Oh sweet, thanks!

Should we delete this one?

#4

I don’t think the subject is exactly the same.

As a parent, I set myself a goal: teaching my kids to become autonomous, develop their skills, and most of all know how to love.

Any limit I set, I explain why and accept to be challenged if the arguments are wise. I try to be as coherent as possible.
If I am vulnerable, tired or whatever, I explain to them why.

I have found that being a parent is less saying things that being.

As for the grandparents, I made myself clear that I need to do my own mistakes and learn by myself, unless we’re talking medical.
If I need to ask for advices, I’ll do, but I see unsolicited “advices” as harassment.
At some point, I decided to give a life advice each time I was given one. It stopped.
I don’t consider a 70 yo to be wiser than a 40 yo person.
At home, our rules, at grandparents’ their rules.

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#5

This is wise
Thank you

Especially the parents thing

My mother-in-law slapped my daughters hand and I nearly lost my shit.

I had to lay down some rules then.
I respect them, but you’re right, a lot of their wisdom was also divined from a now irrelevant time.

I’ve also come to believe some of my wisdom is going to be useless as well. I decided that the world she is going to inherit is not mine, it’s hers, so it’s not up to me to determine how she should live her life.
Same as it isn’t my in-laws on how we live ours.

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#6

I’ve had a lot of training in child development, and a lot of experience dealing with the consequences of bad parenting.

The first 18 months are crucial to a child’s ability to form, build and maintain relationships. In order to do this, a child needs to be loved and cared for consistently by at least one person. This allows them to form a healthy attachment to that person(s), providing them a secure base from which to thrive.

The things that do not matter at all in terms of child development during the first two years are as follows:

  1. What time they go to bed¹
  2. What time they get up²
  3. Whether or not they can sleep on their own
  4. Whether or not they can self soothe³

¹as long as it doesn’t significantly reduce the overall amount of sleep the child gets.

²see above.

³self soothing is an important skill, but it is one better learned later on with the security afforded by a secure base than one learned whilst screaming in terror on your own as an infant.

My kids are 3½ and 1, both still sleep in bed with us and probably will for the foreseeable. Neither has a bedtime, they go to sleep when they are ready and neither were ever left to “cry it out”. For some reason, people seem to think this makes us mental in some way, which they all like to tell us about constantly (even though it ain’t my kid smashing the place up and screaming the house down).

The benefits of this upbringing were clear when dropping my oldest off at his new playschool on Tuesday. No anxiety, no stress, no tears, which is more than can be said for most of the kids going in.

We seem stuck in this very Victorian attitude to raising kids, people’s priorities still seem to be keeping kids quiet and out of the way as much as possible, it’s fucking nonsense.

Now I don’t give a shit how people raise their kids, it’s up to them, but don’t kid yourself that you’re putting your kid to bed at 7 for their benefit, your doing it for yourself, and that’s fine, if that’s what you need to do. As humans we do damage to our children, but it’s important to reflect on our behaviour so that we can minimise that damage, or at least chose the least damaging path.

Seriously, I’d have punched her in the face.

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#7

Our daughter has had us both around 24/7 her entire 2 year existence.

I was a bit worried she’s going to be a clingy weirdo, tbh.

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#8

Yeah, that’s what everyone seems to think.

The truth is that your kid is way less likely to grow up clingy, as they now hopefully have secure attachments to you both, which will significantly reduce the likelihood of the sort of anxiety that makes children clingy.

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#9

a bunch of observations after parenting our son for 9 years:

  • there will be times that make you think things are “better” or “worse.” we’re wired to see patterns, so we tend to associate behavior with trends. that may be true, but the only constant is change. your kid will be different today than some other day. just go with it.
  • people take different approaches, but we basically started a bedtime routine from birth. there were definitely rough nights for the first year or two, but that tapered off eventually. it’s pretty amazing how babies need to learn things that seem natural to us as adults (like how to go to sleep).
  • read to your kid, encourage her to think about the world. one of my goals as a parent is to help foster curiosity and engagement with the world. i struggle with this every day, especially when my kid seems not to understand what we’re talking about or doesn’t use context to derive meaning from a situation. like anything, all of these skills take practice and repetition. i constantly have to remind myself that it’s a process, and our kids are different people — they’re going to have their own experiences and ways of learning. it’s tough. my context is my own. it’s what i know. but this is a totally different person, so your context may be of limited utility.
  • my parents had me when they were pretty young, like 20 and 21. i’d stay up till midnight watching late night talk shows with them. they gave me strawberry quik in bottles. i turned out okay, i guess. but it’s good to set expectations with your parents. i always tell people grandparents may have experience, but it’s not current. maybe they took care of babies and toddlers 40 years ago. that counts for something, but times have changed. we went through some conflict with my dad, which prompted me to write up some rules for him. i tried to stress that when my kid spends time away with grandparents, we’re all part of a team helping him get through life. here’s what works and doesn’t, so try to stick with these guidelines. i don’t know if it worked, but it felt right to communicate my expectations. grandparents are going to do what they do, but it’s totally in your rights and best interests to make sure they know you’re boss.
  • parenting is challenging, exhausting, joyful, a journey. there are many times in a day or week where i doubt myself. there are things my son does or doesn’t do that drive me up the wall. i regret things i’ve done and not done. my kid still seems pretty okay despite all this. i always try to make space, usually at bedtime when there are no distractions, to talk about stuff or just reinforce the idea that i’m here for him. i’ll be up front when i’ve messed up, apologize if i’ve reacted too strongly or whatever, and talk about trying better next time. one of our house rules is “always try.” have some humility, pick yourself up, and agree to try again tomorrow, even if today was crappy.
  • a friend of mine always reminds me that humans’ bodies and brains develop at different rates. your kid may look bigger but still not be able to make rational decisions. it seems unbelievable but is true. especially during the toddler years, i found myself thinking “holy crap, why can’t this kid do whatever yet?!” there’s a long list of things that, if he’s not capable of doing them by age 30, i’ll be worried. it just takes time.
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#10

I’m looking forward to reading this thread. Mine are 16 and 18, and honestly, I didn’t do a stellar job. Took me years to get into it, made a lot of mistakes. They’re both great people, and I love their company, so maybe I wasn’t too terrible (or their mum really made up for my shortcomings). They had some rough patches (personal/family problems etc) but I have been reflecting a lot about it of late, since the eldest is packing up for university.

My one bit of advice would be don’t wish it away, it goes FAST.

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#11

a former co-worker used to drive his kid to school every day. their routine was to listen to george carlin tapes on the way. they’d have a laugh, but the real goal was to break down barriers. nothing was taboo. it ended up working. his kid felt like he could talk with his dad about anything.

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#12

That Dave Chapelle quote is so true. To be honest while I love my wife, but the love I feel for my kids is so much vaster. I start missing them from the first second whenever I travel by myself. It’s like a part of me is missing when I’m not with my family…

We said early on that we wanted to create a climate in our family where our kids can feel like they can talk to us about anything. We try to explain why we were mad and so on or answer any question with an honest answer no matter how awkward the question.
And when it comes to scientific and technical stuff I’ve always tried to explain how things work in proper terms not so much for them to understand but rather for them to be exposed to that sort of language and thinking… And if they say that they still don’t understand something, then we dig a little deeper and I explain things in a easier manner…

And as for grandparents, we’ve always said that when they are with their grandparents they oboes by their rules, whether that be eating alot of candy or something else.
We want their bond with our parents to be special, we don’t want our parents to feel like they have to do the raising (in a sense they are, but you know what I mean). So we don’t set the boundaries whenever they are with their grandparents, their grandparents set the boundaries… so far it has worked out for us.

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#13

To iterate about the grandparents stuff, that is when the kids are alone with their grandparents… when we are together, we set the boundaries and if our parents have problem with how we raise them then they can sod off, because most probably our parenting is many regards an antithesis to their parenting.

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#14

None of our kids’ grandparents have earned the privilege of ever being alone with or in charge of them, and likely never will.

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#15

Thanks for sharing.
I didn’t have a great childhood, it was prettt rough, tbh. Better than some people’s, I’m sure, but certainly worse than most of my friends’ and my wife.
One thing I know from my own experience is that love for your parents, no matter what the situation, is hard to turn off.
So, I’m sure you’re ok man. It’s never too late.

And no, I don’t take it for granted, I’m savoring every moment. I’m kind of dreading the end of lockdown and back to “normal life” tbh. I love spending all this time with my girls.

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#16

I read something some number of months back that talked about this, albeit with a spin many won’t have considered. Humans are electric in nature and from time to time we need to “sync up” or “ground” ourselves to reset. Surely some will have heard how if a newborn isn’t held it will likely die in 2 weeks? The screaming young ones aren’t being bitchy or manipulative, they need the physical attention to reset their electrical circuit and they need the oxytocin. They shouldn’t be deprived of this and be allowed to scream it out unless the goal is to raise children with insecurities and poor connections to their parents.

My grandparents were the “let the babies scream until they stop” sort and this is most definitely not something we’ll pass onto our 16 year old when it’s his time to start a family.

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#17

This is great
I worked with this guitar player who had a daughter that talked to him about losing her virginity before she talked to her mom about it.
At first, I was thinking, man, that’s weird. But he was so happy, he said he made it feel like he did his job right that his daughter felt safe enough to talk to him about literally anything, even something like that.
It was kind of beautiful.

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#18

Repeatedly so. With some serious verbal abuse added for good measure.

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#19

Says it better than I ever could.

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#20

It depends of the grandparents I guess: one of my closest friend’s parents have become completely clueless about how to behave with a child (especially some men in their 70’s that never raised a child).

But I told myself it’s important for the kids to have different sets of rules, to learn that ours are not generic but very personal ones.
So I’m OK and even encourage my kids to got to their godmother’s/godfather’s place, grandparents, aunts/uncles and stay a few days.
I even like it better when they are alone than with another kid, because then they develop some kind of relationship with another adult, which is IMO a very important thing to help decipher our world.

But of course x1000, my wife and I must have a total trust in such persons.

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#21

The only thing my kids could possibly learn from their grandparents is racism, psychopathology and how to tell a bloody good lie.

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