OcUK Dadsnet thread

[Devrij]

3.
I have a 1 year old too. He's poorly as well. We have a routine in place at week ends due to our eldest and his condition which will have incorporated into the 6 holidays. At breakfast, they watch a film from the Studio Ghibli line on netflix, then in their rooms to play till lunch. A bit of tv during that then in the pool they go till tea time. Bath/shower then rooms then bed shortly after. Next day its same in the morning then crafts, reading, writing etc We have 1 day each week where we all go out.

My daughter has a Totoro displate in her bedroom, but weirdly that's the only one she likes.

In unrelated news, my 10yr old nephew has just come out as trans and changed their name, so I've had a bizarre crash course in gender and identity fluidity with my 5yr old. She was fairly sanguine about it, and her only concern was "if we get her dresses she better wear them because that would be a waste otherwise".

 

[Devrij]

lol, brilliant. Loves kids attitude to things like this.

Ikr, they're just like, "oh I didn't know you could do that. Whatever"

 

[Devrij]

Do you not have any summer schools near you? Ours and a lot of her friends rotate through two different setups for half of the holidays.
Keeps everyone sane.

Alas the one group near us she went to previously she just really really didn't get on at over Easter. She would just cry at the gates because she didn't get on at all with the other kids. Previously she'd had a blast at the same place, but she was genuinely unhappy (not like, peek in the window 5 mins later and she's grand. Genuinely bad times) so we decided to get a baby sitter in and help a friend out while we were at it. The baked goods on tap are just a bonus (this girl can seriously bake). It was just murphy's law that her family would get a covid case right on time.

 

[Devrij]

We had all sorts of problems with this. We literally never were able to get her to latch on, despite plenty of midwives jiggling and squishing my wife's tit in her face, and so we did a mix of formula with pumped milk, because it also turned out that she had issues with milk production.

She's 5 now and she's grand.

 

[Devrij]

What's thoguhts on taking a 1 year old abroad? Contemplating going abroad first time with Oliver next year and he'll be 1 in September.

Bad idea? Too much hassle?

And if you were to take a 1yr old abroad, where would be an ideal place to go?

We've held off (and then covid etc), but I have a friend who moved his whole family to New Zealand when his daughter was 1, so like anything it's all doable.

Maybe to a local holiday to kick the tyres a bit, like pop over to York and have a Potter about and see how a couple hours I'm the car goes. I'd avoid anywhere where you can't chuck them into a pram though unless you got strong shoulders

 

[Devrij]

my baby boy was born on monday evening and i cant stop kissing his chubby cheeks.

feels amazing becoming a dad

Congrats dude! Best thing in the world. Knackering, but worth it.

I just had a surprise message from one of the school mums offering to take my daughter until 3 today, and after having her solo all day yesterday I am over the moon to have an actual weekend day.

 

[Devrij]

Protip, deal with bedtime routines early.

Battling with my daughter every night to get her to go to bed on her own has been draining. She's nearly 6 and man she is stubborn as hell. We've made some progress though and I can practically taste the extra time in the evening.

The other night she gave me an ultimatum. I heard her shout from her room "daddy I'm going to count to 3, and if you don't come in here...................... You'll be sorry! 3....... 2......... 1...... THATS IT! I am not your best friend anymore!" It was amusing, but other antics have been less so.

We had tried the controlled crying when she was 2 but decided it wasn't for us. Starting to think we should have started even earlier!

But now she went to bed on her own last night so she gets to play Zoombinis and is all proud of herself. Fingers crossed!

 

[Devrij]

Our little one is coming up to 5 months ,we take her upstairs about 8 and aim to have her fed and asleep by 9-9:30 at the latest, she moans for a bit and can be a struggle but hopefully it will pay off.

On another note she has 1 up and awake nappy change and feed in the night between 3-5 then back to sleep for almost bang on 7 every morning, we get at least 6-7 hours sleep a night, think we lucked out with her!!

Watch out for sleep regression around 9 or 10 months (apparently this is a thing). We had the same sweet gig and then she just stopped. We thought it was a phase but now 5 and a half years and a lot more wrinkles later we are aware it was not. In retrospect, I would have filled my heart with tinfoil and steel wool and been a bit harder from the start.

 

[Devrij]

Yeah, budgeting is different to saving. Having outgoings allows you to budget spending alongside them whereas if they are just saving it's easier as they can spend whenever they want without coming up short on something important.

 

[Devrij]

We're heading for this kind of time line. Eldest is 3 and still won't settle on his own, I expect this is going to continue until he grows out of it, whenever the hell that might be. I'm sure our youngest will go the same way.

All because "I just can't do controlled crying" . Who needs sleep anyway, right?

We've had a bit of a breakthrough the last two nights, so we think we may be in the clear. Not only has she gone to sleep on her own, she's also stayed in her bed all night.

The fiddle with leaving it seems to be that they get old enough to resist by getting up etc, but too young to reason with properly. Our girl is now old enough to sit down and have a chat with so it seemed time.

Controlled crying feels awful so I have no idea how people manage it. Maybe because they did it the slow way the first time and can't hack another 5yrs of interrupted sleep!

 

[Devrij]

It's not exactly fun, but when you measure the 'awful' of a few nights of controlled crying vs. the 'awful' of years of the torrid sleep routine you seem to describe... then you'd be insane not to.

Oh yeah, in retrospect I completely agree. At the time we knew the choice we were making by putting it off, but I think the issue was that we had already left it late at nearly 2yrs. If I had a time machine I'd have done it younger.

 

[Devrij]

I thought I'd have until our daughter was at least 8 or 9 before she started giving me sass. She's only 4 and some of the stuff she comes out with is hilarious and troubling in equal measure. I thought I could get away with white lies about unimportant things for longer than this, however she picks me apart of there's any inconsistencies in the things I tell her. I probably get corrected by her at least twice a day.

We didn't really put too much effort in to the whole sleep thing until she started school, and she would end up in our bed frequently whilst at nursery. Shortly before starting school, we just told her one day that school kids don't sleep in their mummy and daddy's bed and she hasn't even attempted to come in since then. In fact, the opposite is true and she wants to spend more time in her room playing or watching stuff on YouTube kids.

I feel guilty now that I don't get to spend enough time with her on the weekdays after school. She's in after school club and isn't usually picked up until 5. She goes up to bed between half 7 and 8, and she's definitely a lot more tired after finishing school, compared to nursery. She just wants to play a board game or two and have a little play fight, then is usually happy to just wind down with kids TV or a book until bedtime.

The sass I get is unreal. In good humour, but sometimes I have to tell ours to wind her little neck in a bit. She's an absolute joker though so it's usually hilarious.

When she's really ****** off it can be so funny, but you gotta keep a straight face. One night we were explaining that if she wanted to play Zoombinis (epic game btw if you never played it as a kid) the next day she had to go to bed one her own. She didn't want to do that so I said she wouldn't be able to play it. Her response was the most empassioned "but daddy I can't LIVE without Zoombinis!" and my wife and I couldn't keep it together at that point.

 

[Devrij]

Absolutely - had it at school on our school's one computer in the library. A rare actually decent educational game on there, later managed to get a copy at home and played the hell out of it

It's on steam, FYI. EE had played trine to death so I was looking for something else and there it was. It started off really easy, but I tried it on the hardest difficulty and it is brutal! Bloody fleens

 

[Devrij]

Had a hell of a scare last night. Got a call from my wife "we're at the hospital and I need you to pay the parking on the app, Riley had a bad accident at gymnastics. I'll call you later". I knew she just needed to crack on and not have me ringing her for more details, but was a rough hour wondering what the hell had happened.

Turned out she was standing on this 4ft platform to jump onto the asymmetric bars, decided she didn't need to wait for the trainer and jumped on her own and slipped on the out swing, falling 6 feet or so. She walked over to my wife and collapsed with her eyes rolled into the back of her head and started twitching. So yeah, rather terrifying for my wife and I'm glad I don't have that memory.

Docs gave her a good once over and she's fine, with the only lasting trauma being with my wife and I.

Bloody hell having kids is bad for your mental health!

 

[Devrij]

I rarely get ill but my lord, kids really are disease carriers . My son has been going to baby groups and started nursery over the winter...

In the past 3 months we've had 1x serious bout of gastroenteritis and currently on our second lot of 'orrible cold that for me seems to have developed into an ear infection and tonsillitis...

Thanks Edward...

Oh yeah, once they start going to nursery you have a good run of it, but I think with us it was around 3 months of having to take days off work to collect her from nursery because she was ill, and then it settled into the usual seasonal stuff.

 

[Devrij]

Congrats to the new arrivals. After a couple weeks of baby boot camp you are no longer "green" and will hopefully have gotten over the shellshock of being allowed to leave the hospital with a real live baby without passing some kind of test. The rest is pretty doable: nappy, hungry, tired, hugs is the checklist and you will have sussed by now that muslin squares and baby grows are your best friends, as are wipes. Who knew how awesome wipes were until they had kids!

 

[Devrij]

My experience is certain words that are not "child friendly" seem to be the easiest they pickup.

I recall first hearing them while my daughter, 2 at the time, was struggling to get a shoe on. It was perfect context tbf.

To anyone saying it's as simple as training bad behaviour out, I agree to an extent, but my daughter's 6 now and is a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes she'd rather I set fire to everything she holds dear than give in. You gotta be careful not to make threats you don't actually want to go through with!

 

[Devrij]

Well after we had our 4th child a couple of months back I am now fully snipped. Not a great experience at all but I'm glad I've got it over and done with.

Welcome to the shooting blanks club! Best thing I ever did. Wife had all kinds of reactions to various birth control methods, so after 13 years of wrestling with bloody condoms I finally got to say goodbye to them. Just be sure you wait until you get the all clear from your sample.

 

[Devrij]

My daughter has officially lost the plot. She's 6, and suddenly she has just started flipping out in a really worrying way. I don't mean tantrums. That would be normal. I mean she hits and kicks and bites, and laughs the whole time and says whatever she can to make us angry. Tonight she decided to try swearing on. "I can say ****, it is the best thing to say. **** this, **** that."

Now, we are not of the punitive parenting type, which doesn't come easy when she is hitting and kicking and calling my wife a ****box and laughing the whole time. It sounds, on the surface of it, like she is testing the extremes of our boundaries, but it also feels like a defense mechanism. She isn't really happy when she's doing it, it's more like she is scared and WANTS us to flip out.

It's really messed up and I don't know what to do. I ended up having to pin her down until she'd stop hitting a few times. A large part of me wants to come down on her like a tonne of bricks, but I feel like I might be missing something serious under the surface that is causing all this behaviour. She won't talk to us about it, just puts on a baby voice and says "I don't know, I'm just a stupid kid", and she knows she is smart. She's top of her class and we are always telling her how proud of her we are.

I am at my wits end and she's had my wife in tears all week doing this.

Just needed to vent a bit, soz!

 

[Devrij]

I'd imagine parents or friend generally.

bingo, there is a girl in school who has taught a few other kids this language. We were aware she knew the words, but she had never used them before because she knew they were rude words.

We made a bit of progress after finally coaxing out of her that she just wanted to spend more time with both my wife AND I present playing together with no phones or screens. We have been super busy and mostly tag teaming on parenting, so we are making an effort to give her as much of our time together where we just play with her, and she has been much more her old self. We have had a few flare ups, but nothing like the major outbursts from the last week.

We certainly tried the taking priveledges away, punishments etc and it only made her push back harder, so I can categorically say that was counterproductive and that this positive approach is working much better. She has gone into school with no hassle the last two days now since we started making time for playing in the morning.