The Parenting Thread • Page 99

Shoe game on point today. Love hand-me-downs.

 

My 7 year old busted a tooth out and chipped her front left tooth pretty good after falling off an electric scooter today... fun times. Just glad it wasn't pushed up into her gum as we later found the tooth while looking for it where she fell. Dental is covered, so thankful for that.

 

My son’s school is doing a virtual See’s candies fundraiser if you’re looking for small gifts for people! Hey, might as well post our fundraisers here, right? See's Candies Yum-Raising - Woodcrest Preschool - Woodcrest Preschool

 

My daughter is one hell of a sassy three year old, this is what I get for being a bitchy person for most of my life.

 

Whenever my son is down for a nap, and I lift my glass up not realizing the coaster is attached to it still.....it’s like that scene in LOTR when the skeleton falls down the well. Awakening the goblins.

 

My kid hates going to sleep at a reasonable time and hates waking up from naps. He’s almost three and it’s been hell getting him to stick to a schedule his whole life. We’ve literally done everything. I also have to walk him or drive him to get him to pass out at night. It’s exhausting.

 

I’m dealing with this too with my daughter. Every night is a constant struggle, sometimes she’ll pass out quickly and other times, she’ll stubbornly stay up till like 10 and I wanna rip my hair out. She also flat out refuses to take naps so there’s been some legendary tantrums at night because she’s so tired.

 

I wish my son would go to bed at 10:00. I’m currently trying to get him to sleep and it’s after midnight. It always takes me 4 - 5 hours to get him down. It blows. Saturday he took a 30 minute nap during the day and I couldn’t get him to sleep that night until 5:00am. I’ve asked his doctor about melatonin, but they advise against it because they’re linking it to behavioral issues. I don’t want to drug him but I’m getting between 3 and 5 hours a night myself.

 

Older dude here. I have two kids who had similar sleep issues. This book helped a ton:

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, 4th Edition: A Step-by-Step Program for a Good Night's Sleep https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553394800/?tag=absolutepunk-20

It’s a program and I know you’re exhausted now, but if you follow this and give it a few weeks, it WILL WORK. More importantly, they’ll be set up for good sleep for life - and they won’t love you any less. In fact, they may love you more if you’re all not so fucking tired all the time.

Best of luck.

 

Is your son still sleeping in a crib? Or have you transitioned to a bed?

Both my kids, we changed them into a bed when they were a little older than 2, and in both instances, their sleep patterns magically improved. To this day, we've never had a problem putting either kid to bed once we transitioned them from a crib to a bed.

 

Man, we when got our kid into his sleeping schedule, around 8 months or so, it was HEAVEN. From 1 y/o til now (5), he's slept from 8pm-7am. It was tough at the beginning, but worth it.

 

My son used to be so hard at sleeping. My wife or I would be in there with him for hours and if you'd make any noise leaving the room he'd wake up. Now he's asleep in minutes and sleeps through night. He's 5.

Daughter is almost 2 and she's been difficult lately going to sleep, but once she's asleep you could drop her into bed and she'd stay asleep.

 

I credit my wife completely for our sons sleeping pattern. Bath every other night, story/coco melon while brushing their teeth, and then some light rocking before we put him down at 8p. He does wake up usually around 2/3a, but we go in there and rock him a bit more. I do think when he gets a bed(he just turned 2) it will be even more fluid. The crib probably hinders his natural leg or arm movement at night.

 

He slept in a crib for maybe the first year of his life and then he wouldn’t do it anymore. I don’t know what happened, but the crib terrified him. He sleeps in a full size bed now in the middle of the pregnancy pillow. He does wake up at some point in the night/early morning and comes into our bed (trying to break him of that as well).

 

Neither of my kids ever slept in their crib. It was always a nightmare, and they always ended up back in our room at some point in the night. To the point where I thought for sure we'd have those kids who are older and never shake out of the 'sleeping in mom and dad's bed' phase.

But as soon as we switched both to their own bed, it was a literal miracle. To this day, neither kid has ever came back into our bed and my son is 6 and my daughter is 3. It's like they take so much pride and excitement of having their own bed that they can't imagine not sleeping it it. We've always had an established bed time and bed time routine, which helps too and on weekends we let them have sleepovers in each other's rooms.

We've been lucky because the first two years of both of their lives were similar to what a lot of you are saying, just a refusal to sleep and/or sleep in their own crib/bed but fortunately, both just snapped out of it.

 

I’m picking up this book. I feel like before the lockdown we had finally gotten him on a reasonable schedule, but then the world went to shit and so did that schedule. He and I spent eight weeks together because my lady was considered an essential worker. Now he won’t go to sleep for her and waits until I get home from work to even consider sleeping. Sometimes I get home after midnight so he’ll just be up waiting for me. He has a big attachment to me. My fiancé tries, but she works mornings and has to be up early so it’s usually my job to get him down.

 

Do any of your kids know how to read? If so, how did you get them to learn? Ours just turned 5, should be in Pre-K, but because of COVID, isn't in school at all. I'm trying to do as much as I can at home, but he gives up very easily and his attention span is horrible.

 

Does he have a desire to at all?

Our son's are pretty close to the same age I know. He doesn't know alot but he's picked up sight reading pretty well and I've been working on reading with him using Bob Books through the Noggin App. He used to use ABC Mouse a decent amount and he kinda just took to it but he really has a strong desire in learning in general.

 

We did ABC Mouse for a while, but then I switched to Education.com, because they have physical and digital exercises. He's more interested in the gaming ones then actually learning. So a lot of the math games or letter games, when you solve stuff vs read.

 

We’ve tried ABC Mouse multiple times (prior to and at the start of Covid) and just didn’t catch on for our 7 year old. She’s doing full time home
Schooling this year and hasn’t had any problems with that at all.

 

Our 5 year old can slowly sound stuff out with help and has some sight reading skills. If he knows what something says or has it memorized, he can point to words as he recites it. It’s a start!

 

Is he learning at school, or home? If home, what are your techniques? I'm nervous about sending him to K without any reading skills that he might have picked up if he were in Pre K.

 

In school. My wife and I are both back to work and his preschool is open with reduced class sizes and safety protocols in place. He was supposed to start TK this year at the local public school but with my wife working detail and me bringing our 11 month old to work or watching him at home when I CAN work from home, we couldn’t do online learning for him. Ugh just typing all that out makes my head spin. This year is terrible. And because we’re all so out in the world all the time I get super triggered when my parents are like “so when do we get to see you?”
Ugh, sorry for venting. He seems intrigued by reading but they’re mostly just working on fundamentals. Sounds like you and everyone are doing the right thing if there is such a thing. I know they use these videos a lot in class when learning letters. My son seems to dig them. They’re exactly as bad as they look but the kids are into them.

 

It is exhausting now, but there is pure beauty in the words about how attached your son is. It goes in an instant. My son is my friend now and we do stuff, but he doesn’t cling to me like my daughter does, and there are a lot of days I really miss it. Someday, you will too.

If you haven’t bought the book already, DM me your address. I’ve got some Amazon credit to get rid of.