I dont mean leaving them alone, I mean he literally comes running flustered and all vamped up… of course you should respond to your toddler, but his behavior continued well over her turning 6.
I think letting them cry out is horrible.
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My point exactly
Well, at 6 years old it’s another story ^^
Witnessing such behavior (of “spoilt kid” as we say in France) is something very uncomfortable.
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I’ve got three ones all grown up, the best advice I was ever given: don’t do anything for your kids that they can do themselves. Kids naturally want to develop their self reliance, and that gets squashed two ways: too much help and interference, or the opposite, no guidance.
Meals for example. Very young children can cook simple meals for themselves and like to do so. Let them!
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Oh absolutely.
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Yeah, that’s solid advice.
My 8 year old has started cooking fried eggs for us… we’ve had dinner of only fried eggs because she wanted to cook for us 
.
I wasn’t as full as I wanted, but seeing how proud she was was well worth the hunger 
.
Edit: another thing is that cooking with kids when they’re younger was at first really annoying to me, since I just wanted to get dinner ready. But after some time I was able to change up my mind set and realize that it is actually a great way of bonding and boosting their confidence. So my tip is to just let go of any type of plan you had for cooking and just follow the pace of your kid…
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I only had kids on the proviso that, once they are big enough, they have to make all my teas for me.
I reckon I’m about 3 years away from Dreamland.
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Absolutely no excuse for that. Upthread my statement was directed specifically at the age that @Fin25 referred to. There are physiological reasons to consider when leaving <18 month olds alone, when you’re talking 4, 5 years in age, etc, you’re working on behavior issues.
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Well, I have to confess I talked about this to my friend, “as a friend”, doing something I’m not very proud of 
During the conversation he dropped that he had been beaten repeatedly as a child. I thus shut the f* up now, and just endure.
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That last bit is spot on, that’s why so many parents do too much for the kids, it’s easier at first.
Son is 4.5 and daughter is a few months over 2. I’m 41 now, though sometimes feel like I’m 101! I will say, it gets exponentially harder with more than one child. We don’t have plans for any more, but even if we did, I’d be reconsidering. Granted, parenting through a pandemic is not something I would recommend to anyone. So every parent in here should give themselves a pat on the back. It hasn’t been all bad, nor all good. The pandemic really has pushed the limits of how much stress I can handle. I am starting to let go of it, though. I don’t like being a knotted-up asshole, yelling all the time. It’s been tough, though. My wife picked up full-blow anxiety and OCD through this, which has also added to the stress level around here. We’re far more penned in than most other families, I imagine. I often think about how I’ll never know what things would have been like were there not a pandemic going on, and this, and that, but those thoughts aren’t good for anyone. It’s not like I can change anything about it.
The grandparents subject is an interesting one. My mom lives on the other side of the country and has only visited a few times (and not in long while, unfortunately). I keep trying to convince her to move closer, but she’s stubborn AF. That’s a whole other topic, though. My in-laws are generally pretty chill. They respect our parenting and don’t intervene without asking. My father-in-law is legally blind, and doesn’t do much, except tell us how much he wants to see the kids. Then, we go visit, and he’s parked in his easy chair 80% of the time. 
My mother-in-law does a ton, but a lot of her energy and time is taken up by two other grandchildren. My sister-in-law and her family live with my in-laws. Yet another topic that could take up volumes. Given our limitations on leaving the house, I am grateful for even a few minutes of peace afforded by having an extra set of eyes when we go visit on the weekends.
Hearing this debate about “cry it out” is interesting. During the day, I don’t come running whenever my kids cry, but I also don’t neglect them. Kids cry, but it’s not always a catastrophe. I do my best to calmly approach and address the situation. Sleeping is another thing, in my opinion. When my son was 10-months, we moved him into a crib in his own room (for our own sleep needs), and did the “cry it out” sleep training method. Night 1 was rough (mostly for my wife), but by night 3, he maybe cried for a minute. Ever since then, he goes to bed no problem. Of course, when he was 3, and learned how to get out of bed, we had to take more drastic measures, because he’d be running around like a madman till 9:30. I put a lock on his door and that squashed that behavior in about a week. Little sister was a great sleeper from early on. I wonder if that says more about us than her though, as we weren’t first-timers by that point.
Yes, my fellow Engineer! My wife sometimes laughs at me when I do this. My thinking is the same, though, just tell it like it is. I try to use language that is geared toward little ones, but I’m still explaining the concepts fully.
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Hey man, hope you and yours will bounce back from this pandemic! It’s been a hard time for sure. Living in a little town in the north of Sweden has probably rendered me very much unaffected by the pandemic (so far) being forced to work from home has been a real blessing actually and I’ve never felt closer to my family and no one I know of have been critically ill thankfully.
My mom moved from Stockholm to a house on the street right next to us, I can see her house when looking out my daughters window, my sister in law and their family live two houses away from us, my other sister in law lives with her family in another part of our small town and lastly my in laws are moving to an apartment in town as well… moving from a “bigger” city to a more rural town has really been fantastic in every way. I wish everyone could live like this, not that everyone wants to though.
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Love this topic!
Our girl is only 3 months old and we started pretty early with “sleep training”. I think we moved her to her own room when she was about 7 weeks I think. We never leave her crying though of course. At first there was a lot of running up and down. But we kept at it and it’s really working. She’s slowly moving into a sleeping rhythm in a natural way. We don’t force a sleeping schedule onto her (which would be rather pointless and stressful for everyone involved). It’s hard work but from what I’ve gathered from one of my brothers and close friends is that it has a very positive effect in the long run. She will learn to fall asleep herself fairly early on which is great and for us it’s nice to have a portion of the day to ourselves. Which in turn has a positive effect on everyone’s state of mind. It’s also easy to read what she wants. She’s now in a phase where, when we lay her on her crib, she starts crying. And it’s just her telling us she’s still hungry (even if she just drank).
Besides all this we cuddle and play a whole lot. Listen to a lot of music, singing, reading etc. Etc. And if I notice she is restless I take her with me in the carrying back on my chest. Which she loves. Sure way for her to calm down and fall asleep.
The two extremes of leaving her scream at early age or keep running up an down even at the age of six seem rather bizarre to me. The former will just cause a lot of stress to the little one and the latter will create a manipulative needy child I recon?
Of course I’m a complete rookie at parenting, so what do I know, really? 
We read and ask around if we are in doubt and think logically about the advice given. We’ve seen a lot of different parenting from out family and friends and know a little which approaches we do and don’t like. We’ll see how it goes. I do believe in setting clear boundaries and explaining everything clearly.
I’ve seen a type of parenting where there are no boundaries set and to me it looked pretty crazy. Kids that just push to extremes and cannot play by themselves, constantly looking for attention. Parents asking their child to calm down a bit, the kid completely ignoring that request and that is that… And then they hand them an iPad to calm them down. Extreme example but I’ve seen it. Wouldn’t be my choice of parenting style. 
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Oh! You’re in for an amazing time. Enjoy it. Every day is something new.
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It’s nice to see you all be able to connect on parenting. I’m always jealous of these threads where people talk about normal parenting stuff.
As many of you already know my 3 year old has Autism so things are completely different for me.
I just hope that he starts to talk some day and pays attention enough (instead of seeking stimulation constantly) to be able to get by in life.
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I can’t imagine how hard that must be. Highly admirable dude. Here’s hoping things will go how you want them to go. 
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Thanks Dave! It’s tough for sure but It’s become my new normal. That’s why these threads make me jealous though. You can all discuss and talk about strategies and ideas. I just feel very alone with a difficult situation most of the time and nobody to relate to.
I’m constantly reminded that our situation isn’t the same as everyone else when I see all this advice everywhere for “normal” child raising. I always think it would be nice to have those difficulties instead of ours.
You can tell he’s a really great person though, lots of love in him. He’s just constantly needing stimulation (most visual sometimes physical, like spinning or squeezing him) which gets in his way of paying attention to everything else.
The best way I can describe what I imagine it to be like is a persistent itch that you can’t scratch. It’s just always pestering you so you can’t think of anything else. It gets in the way of learning or wanting to do anything other than try to scratch your itch (stimulation).
Otherwise he’s a completely normal boy, capable of learning and doing everything anybody else does. He’s doesn’t have physical issues at all (blessing) and he’s actually super quick at picking up things when he wants.
With normal kids they have a desire to be involved with other people and do things that will help them in life (instinctually even). He doesn’t have those desires so it’s very difficult to convince him to do things or learn things that will help him in even the most basic things. He’s like a wild untamed human out of time who cares nothing of our ways 
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Ive worked in disability support and still support kids with autism in a number of my classes. Can be so tough for parents and while i can never fully understand how difficult it can be i know its not easy and understand your frustrations reading this thread. He sounds like a cool dude and being a wild untamed human isn’t always bad 
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I definitely think that could be a cool thing, I love wild and untamed. Part of me thinks Autism might even be little bursts of human evolution popping through and deciding where to go next. I think that people with Autism who learn to command it can have great advantages to us normal people. Focus unlike anything we can imagine.
Being a parent though, I just want him to be able to manage life when I’m gone. It kills me to think of the possibility of him not being able to survive on his own and me not being there to help him some day.
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I understand that feeling of loneliness, mate. My daughter (5) is not officially diagnosed but me and my wife have long thought she was different and her teachers have confirmed that she demonstrates many autistic tendencies. Cos she’s a girl, she has learnt to mask some of them and ostensibly is a completely ‘normal’, pretty, friendly little girl. However, she really struggles with loads of normal stuff (mostly social and also socks), which so starkly contrasts with how my other daughter is (she loves socks) In fact, today was her first day in her 2nd year at junior school and seeing her disregulation and tears before and after school has broken my heart a bit. And I totally recognise that needing stimulation thing (sensory seeking I think its called) you mention.
It is lonely raising someone who is different; people - even exceptionally lovely people - struggle to compute that someone can be so fundementally different to them in terms of how they experience and understand the world and life. I certainly was and still am a little bit.
In terms of the thread generally, it’s really cheered me up reading everyone’s experience. We coslept with both of our kids till they were about 1 and a half and even though I now sleep a bit better, I miss their snuffling and little fast asleep faces.
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The last 2 days he has wanted to wear some of my more ridiculous longer socks (bacon and eggs socks for e.g.) when I take him to his ABA therapy. They are like leggings on him and go all the way up his thigh.
When he comes home if you try to take them off he pulls them back up. Seems like my son and your daughter would understand each other quite well 
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