I have a toddler, his hair is getting long and I want to put it in french/dutch braids. We are extremely white Irish, so perhaps braids are not as normalized for kids who look like him -not that I personally care but not sure if I should?

My husband is very against braiding his hair. I think he thinks there's a feminization aspect. Im curious if anyone has had a similar experience or if they received unsolicited comments from the public or their peers?

I think long hair is beautiful on boys and men, I think braids are the healthiest way to take care of long hair. I do not see braids as a gendered expression.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there a productive way to have this conversation with my husband? I want to prevent bullying while also not bowing down to sexist ideology/gender stereotypes. I also want to keep my son cooler while keeping his hair out of his face, logistically it's makes sense to me.

What's your take?

I feel like I might be doing something wrong and Im genuinely at my wits end.

My son is about to turn two this August and is due to start daycare, as I get ready to return to work. And we have A PROBLEM.

Whatever we do. However early we start our morning routine. We. Never. Can. Get. Out. Of. The. House. Before. 9. AM.

We have the mornign routine down: potty, teeth, breakfast. Fairly efficient. But then when it comes to the time to put on his clothes and start to leave, somehow he inevitably digs his heels and just won't budge. They're not usually meltdowns per se, it's more that he's a master at stalling. He will bring one toy after another to play with. Then he will want a snack. If I do try to just grab him and start putting on clothes, then he will actually have a tantrum/meltdown.

It is NOT a sensory issue about clothes. He likes the clothes. He is now learning to answer basic emotions questions and he's consistently indicated that he is worried/sad about leaving the house - even if it is for an activity that he enjoys, such as his favorite playground.

Usually around 9.30-10 he's magically ok to go wherever. But daycare needs him by 9am at the latest and my boss said I should ideally aim to already be at the office at that time. Which is perfectly reasonable. 9 am is NOT early. I just dont see it happening.

Will be grateful for any practical advice, especially from parents with emotionally sensitive kiddos.

My partner recently got custody of our 8 year old daughter and is gone 36hours back for 12 where he sleeps and leaves for work again. They are unreachable by phone during this time to ask for advice. I dont know a thing about children but Im doing all the parenting shenanigans, throwing fake parties, doing crafts, taking her to all the parks she wants to go and am so confused Ive been checking out parenting books from the library but they are all so conflicting. And none prepare me for things like her refusing to listen to me as a parent beacuse she thinks im a kid too. (Ive tried to explain 18 years is when you are an adult) Or her hitting and refusing when I ask her to stop doing somthing dangerous . Anger spells where when i try to confort her it makes it worse. anyone know any good books or websites to learn about how to gently parent a child who is not gentle and cant communicate well ? Or just general good information on how to help them regulate emotions? She wont tell me what has caused her to become upset, she just starts acting out seemingly out of nowhere. Im sorry if this is me being ridiculous I just feel way over my head and I dont want to cause a delay in her growth and learning beacuse i am uneducated. And im super worried beacuse she probably feels scared being with someone she dosnt know in a new place . Just in typing this she has come in here 6 times to throw somthing or kick me but won't say what's upsetting her or accept any solutions I offer to help her feel better . I feel like im failing her as an awful caregiver, I cant get her to eat anything but grilled cheese either, or get her to shower even with bribery or a compromise, this is borderline neglect and im trying my hardest. Im trying to access the rest of the wiki pages of this group now but im so confused. Sorry for the book, I just need some sort of guidance on how to help her. Please remove if not allowed.

Okay fellow parents, I need some advice on how long to allow my 4YO to leave out her constructive toys. I'm talking her Magnatiles or blocks or play tent; Toys that allow her to use her creativity and independent play. I love that she has fun with these and they keep her entertained for so long and make her use her imagination but...they are in the way! They take up space on the table or floor and she begs to leave them up for DAYS.

How long do you allow your kids to leave this stuff up? Do you just...work around it practically indefinitely? Do you have a set time limit for how long things like this can be up?

As the title says, husband keeps telling the dog off saying “stop it”, “stop” in a very loud and stern voice while the baby is strapped to his chest. I suggested he put the baby down before telling off the dog because it may be a bit frightening or give the baby a bad experience. I’m not sure what my logic is but it just seems wrong to me to be yelling or making angry noises over the babies head. Am I being a bit overly sensitive? Honesty please, I am fine to be told I’m wrong and that it’s okay.

We have a neighbor a few houses down who's son is a year younger then my son (my son is 7) I know that this child has two younger siblings as well.

The issue is, he comes over our house knocking on our door every single day, sometimes multiple times a day asking to play. Now, my son does sometimes play with him, but most days he'd rather play by himself (he's an only child) he is also really close friends with a little girl who we are close friends with her parents.

We are not close at all with this kids parents, and while our children do play together occasionally at each other houses, we regulate how much our son is running off, and don't allow him to constantly knock on people's doors. I have no idea if these parents even realize how often their son is coming down to our house through out the day either.

My son, and my husband and I are growing tired of the constant knocking on our door asking to play. We've tried keeping the garage closed, but he'll just knock on the front door multiple times and stand there...I feel terrible sometimes telling him no, and I've gotten to the point I make my son make the decision and answer the door (sometimes he does say yes, and that's cool too). This kid at times have stood there and questioned/grilled my son, on why he is saying no but I wanna respect my child's wishes on who and when he wants to play with.

I don't want to be rude to this child and tell him to stop coming down to our house so often, but it's becoming excessive and tiresome.

My kids are 4, 7, 9 and I’ve been trying so hard to get them to complete a simple chore once a week. I didn’t grow up doing chores and I just never have been able to be consistent with asking my kids and now I feel like it’s too late.

I also feel like a horrible mom ruining the end of summer because I’m pushing this. I worked a lot this summer and I was really sick for an entire week. I’m sitting here with that mom guilt that they will never be these ages again ever and we didn’t hardly do anything fun this summer. and here I am focusing on chores.

How do you teach a child to stand up for herself?

My daughter is 14, an only child. She’s been a top student since grade school and very competitive in academics. She’s a "secured" kid and very open with me about what happens in school.

I don’t remember a time she fought back or defended herself. When someone tried to bully her, she just ignored it.
One time a girl purposely bumped her shoulder. She was affected by it and told me, but when I asked what she did, she said "Hindi ko pinansin."

There was also a time she found out a friend was lying to her and she had proof. But she never confronted her. She still talks to her like nothing happened.

Is she just too nice? Is she afraid? Or is this common for only children who never learned how to fight back or set boundaries?

Made a previous post about 12 month old crying all day at daycare and the consensus was to give her more time.

It's been 3 weeks of 3 days per week and they just emailed me to basically say that she's not adjusting. She often refuses to eat and doesn't play or participate. She needs to be held constantly in order to keep her from crying. She's not like that at home. They do their best but have to balance the needs of all the kids - of course. There's 3 teachers and 10 kids ages 10-18months. They are asking me what I recommend they do to help her.

I don't have any suggestions for them because the truth is that she just wants to be with her parents... she's always been a velcro baby. So, I'm tempted to just pull her out and try again when she's 18 months (this wouldn't be simple but we could make it work) and would be in the toddler room (January). Would this mess her up even more?

Only other thing I can think of is going all-in and doing 5 days per week and hoping that it forces an adjustment but this feels... cruel? I need the time away to keep our lives running smoothly, take care of our house, myself and eventually get back to work but I'm torn between that and knowing that she's struggling all day wanting to be home.

The kicker is that we have another baby on the way, arriving in January so I really need to get her settled into a good routine.

I was a loser before meeting my wife, once we got together i locked in and became closer to the man i wanted to befor her, went on with my career until i opened my own business

Now we have a beautiful daughter of 7 week when we were expecting her i was waiting for this lock-in to upgrade instead... i downgraded, i'm tired but everything i think of is her, i'm distracted at work, i just want to stay home and enjoy my baby girl with my wife, help her and everything.

i hate being away...

When does the "i have to work harder for her" locks in? it's not only her, i also have the responsabily of my employee, and i'm slacking, this is not right,

New mom here to a 7 month old, had such a hard time sending my baby to daycare and have finally adjusted. Everyone is happy and baby seems to be having better days. I am always extremely on top of babies hygiene, but recently, baby has begun biting during nursing sessions which is when I would have typically done a nail trim. Because of that, I’ve started trying to do it during calm times of the day as baby has also become a lighter sleeper. Long story short I got one hand cut over the weekend before baby wouldn’t tolerate any more.
Fast forward, I had to do drop off this morning as my husband had an obligation and he typically does drop offs. Baby had a HUGE blowout in the 5 minutes to daycare. I cleaned them up in the car, sanitized their hands, and took them inside to wash them at daycare before handing over to their teachers. Still not as nice and neat as I would typically drop off as their hair got ruffles around with the outfit change. (Not much hair haha)
When I picked up the daycare teacher asked me to trim babies nails. That’s it. That was all. But I felt so embarrassed because I try to stay so on top of babies hygiene. Can someone please tell me I am taking this way too personally? I don’t want to be viewed as a parent that doesn’t care as I very much do care. I’ve just always been sensitive and it obviously wasn’t on purpose by any means. They just grow so fast and baby is so wiggly 😅 I give baby a bath every night, always clean clothes and diaper at drop off. Thanks guys - nervous new mom

I try to be as open and honest with my kids as I can. But im having a hard time trying to help my 12 year old daughter through loosing some friends. Shes had a close girlfriend for a while now and all of a sudden she decides she doesn't want to talk to my daughter anymore. She doesnt have many friends to begin with so its gonna be hard, and I just dont know if I should let her be and deal or .... any advice from someone whos been here before?

We just added our third child to the mix at the end of June, and her birthdate is affecting our summer more than I had anticipated.

Parents with multiples who had kids during the summer .. what are we doing with the older ones?

I can't swim until after 6 weeks postpartum, so our swimming pool and beach days are out.

I can't bring the little one to anywhere crowed until her immune system is better.

I can't go on long drives with a newborn, so I'm surrently thinking of cancelling our yearly trips my girls look forward to.

What can we do? It's been too hot for the park. I'm 3 weeks postpartum, my house is in no condition for play dates.

I feel like I'm ruining my kids (6F, 2F) summer. I tried to explain why we were doing less this summer to my oldest, and she was like "well what do other people who have babies do with their older kids because they have to do *something*"

I have two girls. They have a 4.5 year age gap. When my youngest started moving around more we put a baby gate on my oldest daughters room so she could have her toys with tiny pieces out without it becoming a choking hazard for her little sister. Fast forward to now, little sister is almost 3 and has no oral fixation. My oldest has just about every toy that in theory should be shared (blocks magnatiles, cars, little animal figures, etc.)

When my oldest plays, she plays hard. Everything is used and she has a big imagination that goes right along with it. Her younger sister sees the toys and wants to play but she doesn't want to share with her younger sister. I am having a hard time trying to make her share. I don't know what it's like to have a sibling close in age so this wasn't something I ran into growing up.

She has a trofast system with all of the bins filled with her most used toys. My thought when we moved into this house we would eventually move the trofast system into the nook in the hallway making it communal but I feel like I am taking all of the toys away from my oldest if I do that.

Lately my oldest has been a little more laxed with her gate being closed. This morning her little sister went straight into her room and started playing with her paw patrol toys. Little sister loves Paw Patrol as well. My oldest was losing it that she could not get her sister out of her room.

We asked if she would be okay moving the paw patrol toys out so they could both play with them and play together. She was not too happy with that and said she's been incorporating her hello kitty and gabbys dollhouse toys with her paw patrol so she doesn't want them moved out of her room. She did allow us to move the toys out but now she's avoiding the toys and her little sister like she was just forced to give all of it to her.

At this point what do we do? Do we just make all of these more open ended toys communal? Do we start getting duplicates of things for birthday and Christmas so they don't need to share? Our oldest likes to retreat to her room if she needs some alone time and we have encouraged her to close her door when she wants to because everyone just needs some time to themselves every once in a while. I feel like if the toys are moved out that she will avoid alone time which will cause more issues since she wouldn't be getting the downtime she needs.

I have a 5-year-old and a 4-year-old, and bedtime has become absolutely atrocious lately.

No matter what we try, they constantly come out of their rooms after we’ve put them to bed. We’ve even tried letting them stay in their rooms and play quietly until they fall asleep, but they still come out.

The reason is always different:
“I have to tell you something.”
“I’m not tired.”
“I’m scared.”
Or some other excuse every single night.

We’ve tried sticker charts and reward systems, but they only seem to work for a couple of nights before the kids lose interest.

Our current approach is to calmly walk them back to their rooms every time they come out. The problem is that bedtime is really the only alone time my husband and I get together. Sometimes we’d like to relax upstairs and watch TV, but they just keep coming into our bedroom, making it incredibly frustrating and it’s no longer us calmly walking them back.

Other times, once they realize talking to us isn’t getting the reaction they want, they’ll sneak into each other’s rooms to play. That eventually turns into fighting, which means we have to separate them and basically restart the entire bedtime process all over again.
I’m at a loss. Has anyone dealt with something similar or found something that actually worked long-term?

Hello!

My child's elementary school lets students out everyday the first week at noon (12). They offer no daycare before or after school the first week. I work full time and I can't take off a week...not sure if this school is in the norm.

Does this happen for anyone else? Is this normal for a school? Any ideas for solutions when you are the only person?

What's a dad to do with no other help?!

My almost four year old is having a tantrum day. Screaming tantrums over little things like screaming at me for milk as I’m literally pouring it.

I don’t usually do this but I had her take a break in her room, with the door not locked. I’ve been researching tantrums and cannot be followed around the house by a screaming child several times a day. It gets to the point where I need to have boundaries.

Well my sister (who is not a mom) decides she wants to go in after two minutes to coddle my child and I had to set a firm boundary that tantrums do not get attention from now on because I need the behavior to stop getting coddled by the family I live with, which is why they aren’t getting better.

I’d appreciate any advice. I feel bad having to set boundaries around family and basically parent them too about this age group and normal parenting strategies.

Edit: I went into the room after ten minutes with snacks and no judgement. We talked about how screaming hurts our ears, and if she’s screaming she can go take a break in her room to calm down.

How are you Mums dealing with having long hair and a baby? I don’t want to have to cut it if I don’t have to but I’m constantly nervous about the baby getting it wrapped around their fingers and toes while she’s grabbing a playing with it while she’s feeding I am constantly trying to put it over my shoulder so she can’t reach it, but she always seems to find some here to play with.

My son (soon 2.5) is always hurting my younger son (10 months)

He’ll hit him, kick him, grab him by the shoulder and yank him around, grab matchbox cars and whack him on the head. Or just throw them at his head all together.

At the moment, we’ve asked him to just apologise to his brother and if he is not ready to, we ask him to sit down in a chair and wait until he is ready to.
He says sorry, we ask him to give his brother a cuddle and a kiss (if he doesn’t want to, we move on. As long as he has said sorry)

Note - I try to get the baby to apologise to the toddler when he hurts him (I just hold baby’s hand and stroke the toddlers arm to say sorry)
I do this in an attempt to get the toddler to not feel targeted or his feelings don’t matter when baby hurts him.

But i’m at my wits end.
He just smashed a car on baby’s head.

I don’t believe in hitting or spanking.
I just literally do not know what to do with his behaviour right now. I know it’s age appropriate just i’m clueless at the moment.

Hi everyone,

I am a teacher currently on summer break with a toddler in daycare. We have to pay for his spot throughout the summer, which is fine. What I’m struggling with is deciding each day to send him or not.

My thinking is this: he does well on routine, he loves his teachers and his friends there, he eats and naps well there, he learns a lot, etc etc. it’s a great daycare.

But, I also want to hang out with him all day! But I do feel guilty keeping him home. I worry if I don’t send him consistently over the summer he’ll be a wreck every time he does go. I know the teachers want me to send him consistently as it’s easier for them when he’s used to the routine, which also creates some guilt.

What would you do? I want to be able to just send him if I have errands or something one day, and other days just keep him home so we can hang out and enjoy summer. But the inconsistency def isn’t great.

Help me feel better about this 😊

Are Enfamil GENTLEASE & Parents CHOICE GENTLE exactly the same thing????
My little one is 11 months old and has a sensitive Stomach
I need to buy more formula, but its so expensive I know parents choice is cheaper for more formula

My 3 year old will be starting preschool in the fall. I am so stressed about not being near him. My partner and I both work from home and our son has been with a nanny during the day while we work so he has always been within reach of us. I am so stressed about the idea of him not being close. I don't trust others to keep him safe while they are also overseeing a dozen other kids in a preschool setting. I have seen summer camp groups on outings this summer and witnessed many instances where children were not within sight of the adults and could have just ran off. How do you all find peace with your child being away from you in a preschool setting?

Why do my girls hate bath time?
I have a one and five year old who hate bath time it’s always constant war with my two babygirls it’s like you go in the bathroom completely dry the next your fighting a war and the next it’s like a tsunami of bath water and bubbles are all over the floor 🤣🤣😭😭

Me and my wife are mentally MD physically exuasted from all the fighting between our two children. We have a boy and girl under 10 years old. I know alot of people say we should cherrish the moments. Oh time passes so fast! All that talk.

Honestly I’m ready for the kids to move out. I want to spend an evening with my wife alone without the kids. We tried leaving them at grandmas house but we are so tired and overstimulated it just becomes a time where you can rest and not actively do anything.

I get why people divorce. It’s for the every other week. Yes part of is it the relationship bla bla bla but it the kids that make us not enjoy eachother. We rarly fight over anything when it comes to our relationship. We had rough patches but solved them. It feels like we are just drifting towards old age together been (for the lack of better words) slaves to our kids. This summerbreak has been tough.

what factors did you consider when picking a school for your child? what are some red & green flags when choosing a nursery/primary school?
if it helps for context we’re in london UK