I’ve been enjoying everyone’s stories about their kids, so I’ll share a dad-of-the-year story.
When my son was a little older than 2, we switched his crib to one he could get in and out of on his own. After the change I started checking on him around midnight every night to make sure he was where he was supposed to be. He was sleeping ok, not great so I was pretty tired one night when I went to check on him. I walked in the room and it smelled quite bad. I used the light on my phone to look at him and he had removed all his clothes (including his diaper) and was covered in his own poop. Head to toe, face, under his fingernails, etc. BUT, he was asleep. For what is probably way longer than I should have, I considered how bad it would be to just leave him until the morning. I mean, what more could he do to make it worse? I did end up giving him an emergency bath though.
So if you ever feel like you aren’t doing so hot at the parenting thing just remember, I once considered letting my child sleep in his feces so I could get a better nights sleep.
When my youngest was 7 months old, we were still dealing with her being a constipated baby. We were at a beach house that my FIL had rented. I got to have my ulitmate humbling moment by helping pull a large "deposit" from my daughter's hind end.
I watched Batman: The Animated Series for a short bit with my daughter/son because we love Batman in our household. My daughter was absolutely terrified by Mr. Freeze for some reason. She watched the guy who turned into a bat just fine, but Mr. Freeze was too much for her. It's so odd.
My daughter is 2.5 years old. She just got her Kid's Kindle because I was tired of her stealing my phone and calling coworkers. The only thing we need to do for her when it's Kindle time is turn it on. She is perfectly capable of selecting movies, going to the Nick Jr website, etc without our help.
Pokemon has joined Paw Patrol as a favorite show. I actually will not mind one bit if she stays into it for a few years so we can play the CCG together.
My daughter is 2.5 years old. She just got her Kid's Kindle because I was tired of her stealing my phone and calling coworkers. The only thing we need to do for her when it's Kindle time is turn it on. She is perfectly capable of selecting movies, going to the Nick Jr website, etc without our help.
Pokemon has joined Paw Patrol as a favorite show. I actually will not mind one bit if she stays into it for a few years so we can play the CCG together.
Mini-dead loves Pickachu and some of the other pokemon, but the show and game only hold her interest for so long. Teen Titans Go is still number 1 for her right now.
Oh, and Legend of Zelda: BOTW. She's constantly asking me to play that with her. I'm seriously worried about what's going to happen once we beat Ganon. I even bought the DLC so we wouldn't run out of things to do.
Lion Guard is the be all and end all in our house. It raises immense plot holes with Lion King 2 that I feel like I should be arguing with somebody about. Approximate conversation with my wife:
Her: "Well, maybe Kion dies, so Kiara doesn't have a brother with superpowers and an interspecies super team when Scar's mate comes back."
Me: "Ok, sure, but who in the hell's going to be afraid of a few random lions when the Pridelands already united to fight off Scar's soul embodied in an all consuming fire god leading an army apex predators?"
Her: "Look, it's a stupid kid's show, why are you paying more attention than the kids?"
Me: "And why doesn't Scar's mate mention the absence of the lion who's roar threw her whole pride over the mountains last time she was in the Pridelands? That's the kind of thing a cartoon villain is legally required to monologue about."
Her: "I'm getting pizza, do you want some?"
Me: "I want to argue about how Kion is friends with a gazelle with Worf's voice but still eats gazelle."
Her: "Well, too bad, you're getting pizza."
Grown ups on the internet want to argue about the squicky overtones in Thomas the Tank Engine, well, Simba had a son who commanded the elemental power of wind itself and for years nobody talked about it.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
oh man, the theories about the PJ Masks that I get up to.
But really, we are currently on a
Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, Ben & Holly (I legit love Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom), Robocar Poli, SuperWings, Tayo (ohgod I hate Tayo), and sometimes Thomas (I dislike Thomas even more than Tayo).
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Sapling is starting to kind of get into tv shows, but I never really watch TV, so I never really think to put stuff on for her. I'm not sure how much stuff she watches with her mom while I'm at work, but I assume a fair amount of it is just The Office/Friends/Random youtubers who visit Disney parks.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
oh man, the theories about the PJ Masks that I get up to.
I got my wife to accept my theory that Romeo and Luna Girl are from rich families. They're the technological rather than martial villains, but they're the only ones that don't hide their faces, but the PJ Masks (and Armadillon, the older kid antihero) don't recognize them because they go to a fancy private school.
And I'm somewhat sure it wasn't because I thought "OMG there's a bear coming to get me!!!" It was just... fucking terrifying to my underdeveloped lizard brain.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Adventures of Gumball is surprisingly entertaining for parents, as well as the kids. The cartoon violence can be a bit much, but I get some good giggles out of the episodes.
My son's favorite shows have gone Rescue bots => paw patrol => Doc McStuffins.
He doesn't do that thing I did as a kid where you watch the same show 1000 times. Which is good, because Netflix pulled all but season 1 of rescue bots.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
oh man, the theories about the PJ Masks that I get up to.
I got my wife to accept my theory that Romeo and Luna Girl are from rich families. They're the technological rather than martial villains, but they're the only ones that don't hide their faces, but the PJ Masks (and Armadillon, the older kid antihero) don't recognize them because they go to a fancy private school.
ooh. We don't know Armadillon.
We only have Romeo, Luna Girl, and Night Ninja.
my theory is that they're all the same kids. and the 3 kids are just playing at recess. Because that's totally what I did at recess My best friend and i had a whole complex world wth multiple characters that we each played and voiced and acted out, but only with the 2 of us because nobody else liked us.
Adventures of Gumball is surprisingly entertaining for parents, as well as the kids. The cartoon violence can be a bit much, but I get some good giggles out of the episodes.
I find We Bare Bears delightful, assuming it's still on. There's nothing objectionable in it, it generally has positive messages, and it's relentlessly charming. And it stars stackable bears.
Ice Bear is my hero.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
There's Armadillon and a team of three wolf themed villains in season 2. The PJ Masks also have a robot they stole from Romeo that somehow gave them each new powers.
Armadillon is an older kid named Dillon with anger issues and his own armadillo themed PJ Mask powers, in a few episodes he's already fighting a bad guy when the masks show up and he takes it too far (like straight up beating the crap out of a Ninjalino) and they end up having to rescue the villain.
Luna Girl is also kind of an antihero now, too, usually works with the masks against Romeo.
In light of season 2 at least Dillon and Luna Girl feel like they have to be other actual kids in your theory, and it makes total sense that a 5th grader would crash a bunch of 3rd graders playing super heroes by beating up the bad guy and saying, "What? I'm helping lol!"
I've been reading comics too long not to blindly accept the superhero thing at face value, that never occurred to me, and I always assumed most of South Park was just the kids make believe and didn't really happen.
Holy shit I know way too much about this show, it's been years since I've typed this many words about super heroes...
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
If you haven't checked it out yet, Storybots on Netflix is fucking awesome. Like, when new episodes come out I'll force Jaina to watch them because I want to watch them.
If you haven't checked it out yet, Storybots on Netflix is fucking awesome. Like, when new episodes come out I'll force Jaina to watch them because I want to watch them.
Fucking storybots
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
The only Storybots we've seen is the one with the Sun "I'm hot, I'm hot".
Also, we like Baby Bus. Kiki and MiuMiu and all their friends with their weirdly specific songs about no running on escalators and how to escape a building during a fire or an earthquake. Oddly appropriate for our area.
We only watch Blippi and Cocomelon on YouTube. They are pretty educational actually so it's fine. Can't get this kid to watch any regular shows though.
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
If you haven't checked it out yet, Storybots on Netflix is fucking awesome. Like, when new episodes come out I'll force Jaina to watch them because I want to watch them.
The bestie boys style velocirapter rap is my favorite.
Storybots are great. The show is made by Jib Jab, the people who made the really high quality political satire songs around 2008. Then they made the storybot app, which is a digital app that contains animated songs and stories. The gimmick is that you can take a picture of your child's face and the story will star him/her.
There is a season on netflix of "Storybots Supersongs" which is just a collection of all the songs from the digital app. The songs are all really high quality. The best being the solar system and dinosaur raps. Their most recent show is "Ask the Story Bots." The show recycles a few of the songs but is also very high quality and tends to features celebrity cameos.
I played a lot of the super songs for my son when he was 1-2. The songs are fun and are about dinosaurs/farm animals. He is 4 now and could follow the narrative of the show, but if he is watching TV he wants to watch "Dino Dana" on Amazon. Actually, he wants to watch Season 2 Episode 13 of "Dino Dana" called "Game of Bones" where they play a fantasy board game with real dinosaurs to compete for a throne of bones. And he wants to watch that episode every day.
Unfortunately, this hasn't translated into him wanting to play other fantasy board games.
We got our kids into anime and I couldn’t be happier. We also watch We Bare Bears and Bob’s Burgers although, kids being kids, they were scared by some episodes of We Bare Bears.
My son is 4 and has been super into dinosaurs since 18 months. When he was turning 2 I suggested dinosaur t-shirts to anyone who asked for gift ideas, as he was refusing to wear clothes without dinosaurs on them at that point. Every time we visit my dad in London we go to the Natural History Museum and chill with their animatronic t-rex. He can name over 40 dinosaurs (and has over 100) and despite not watching as many dinosaur shows, or reading as many dinosaur books lately, he still recalls many names and dinosaur facts upon request, and his favourite movie is still Jurassic World.
I have enjoyed his obsession. It’s also made buying him presents or clothes extremely easy!
It's odd how my kids view shows. Like, we don't have cable, so we just watch streaming. When we went on vacation, we watched a little bit of t.v. at the hotel, and they couldn't quite get that what was showing was what they had. And when we got home, we couldn't watch more of the show they had seen, since we don't get Disney shows unless they come out on Netflix,etc. Although, the 5-year-old knows how to turn on the computer for watching things, and has picked up how to open chrome and select Netflix.. We've avoided youtube so far, so we're mostly safe for now.
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Although, the 5-year-old knows how to turn on the computer for watching things, and has picked up how to open chrome and select Netflix.. We've avoided youtube so far, so we're mostly safe for now.
My son (11) has reached the point where he can probably find workarounds for any tech based restrictions we could implement*, so we have to rely on him being honest and well behaved.
Fortunately, he's very honest and very well behaved. But it does mean we kind of fasttrack his ability to contextualize adult content, so when he eventually stumbles across stuff (or goes looking for it) it doesn't fuck him up any more than any random grownup is fucked up by the internet.
*When he was 6, one of his teachers pissed him off, so he retaliated by secretly changing the orientation on all the monitors in the classroom to portrait, then refusing to tell them how to fix it. Our reaction to this was giggly pride followed by the realization that we are so fucked.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
We’ve been pretty blessed these first few months as the kid doesn’t often cry. It’s actually really funny, because instead of crying, when she gets hungry, she would just scrunch up her face and the let out a quick yell. Like “hey, what the fuck guys, lets do this.”
Anyways, the last week or so she has been getting more upset. But the part that’s confusing me is to swaddle or not to swaddle. If I leave her free she will often not sleep for hours on end, getting more and more fussy (easily upset). If my wife tries to feed her she immediately (like 30 seconds) falls asleep, but when we put her down she’ll wake up after 10 or 20 minutes.
Seems like a no brainer right? Swaddle that shit. But she’s started doing this thing when we swaddle her. She basically hulks out. Her face turns red, and for like 10 seconds at a time she will flex all her muscles as hard as she can. If we hold her tight enough that she can’t break out, after like 5 or 10 minutes she will be asleep and everything is great. But it seems so weird.
Does/did anyone else’s kid do this?
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
My 3 year old started saying something I didn't recognize, and said he got it from Papa's phone.
Turned out he somehow found a YouTube channel playing with his grandpa's phone which consists of a Japanese man counting or naming toys and throwing them into a bucket of water, and he's watched the whole playlist, which has been running for like five years.
So, yeah, my kid can count higher in Japanese than in English because some weird guy throws Thomas the Tank Engine toys in water.
My 9yr old son still likes Peppa Pig and Ben and Hollys, otherwise hes really into Godzilla and Shazam (kid must of watched that 50 times by now)
My 4 yr old daughter is into Fancy Nancy, Vampirina Peppa, Masha and the Bear, Tayo (shudder), Super Wing, and Barbie life in the dreamhouse.
My 5 year old is "educating" me on Godzilla. Like, I've been watching the Big G for at least 35 years kid, slow your roll and check your ego. Which I, of course, don't tell him. Can't risk dulling his enthusiasm for all things Godzilla.
We’ve been pretty blessed these first few months as the kid doesn’t often cry. It’s actually really funny, because instead of crying, when she gets hungry, she would just scrunch up her face and the let out a quick yell. Like “hey, what the fuck guys, lets do this.”
Anyways, the last week or so she has been getting more upset. But the part that’s confusing me is to swaddle or not to swaddle. If I leave her free she will often not sleep for hours on end, getting more and more fussy (easily upset). If my wife tries to feed her she immediately (like 30 seconds) falls asleep, but when we put her down she’ll wake up after 10 or 20 minutes.
Seems like a no brainer right? Swaddle that shit. But she’s started doing this thing when we swaddle her. She basically hulks out. Her face turns red, and for like 10 seconds at a time she will flex all her muscles as hard as she can. If we hold her tight enough that she can’t break out, after like 5 or 10 minutes she will be asleep and everything is great. But it seems so weird.
Does/did anyone else’s kid do this?
Sapling didn't have any problems with swaddling, but even at 2 years old she will respond to pretty much any sort of restrained sitting position with an unlimited crunches session. She gets all sweaty, and her skin turns red and splotchy, and at first I joked about her getting swole, but now she has ab muscles like I don't even know.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
My 3 year old started saying something I didn't recognize, and said he got it from Papa's phone.
Turned out he somehow found a YouTube channel playing with his grandpa's phone which consists of a Japanese man counting or naming toys and throwing them into a bucket of water, and he's watched the whole playlist, which has been running for like five years.
So, yeah, my kid can count higher in Japanese than in English because some weird guy throws Thomas the Tank Engine toys in water.
It's a whole genre.
There are people out there that do this with Animals, or things of certain colours, etc.
My little nugget is now officially 2.5 years old.
Her newest toddler oddity is, when picked up and relocated against her will, she will stick her arms and legs out as stiff as she can and exclaim "Oh NO! Stuck!"
It absolutely never fails to crack me up.
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
It was such whiplash to go from enjoyable engagement to having to manage a meltdown (which are rare for her) that it kinda threw me! I mean, we try to shelter her from disturbing imagery as much as possible, but she likes Teen Titans Go, and they get gross and even existential at times, so I never expected 25 year old video-game imagery to have such an effect, but there you are.
Brains are weird, and the phobias and picadillos that can affect them are hard to get a grasp on. I know now that I've got a real thing about unwilling transformations. These days, I can look at it and say it's something in my neural wiring that is really unsettled by that kind of stripping of autonomy, control, and self. But when I was a little kid, I just knew that that scene in The Little Mermaid of the people turned into polyps. when it happens to the king at the end, really unsettled me and made me uncomfortable and I'd skip it whenever I had the chance. People getting turned to stone is still one of those things that has something in the back of my mind screaming inside.
I'm guessing that she was old enough to grasp, 'this is the world where everyone and everything lives, and it's about to be blow'd up!' and something about that was very very distressing. We're got the mental development that we've got a handle on it, make jokes about how little damage a spell that displays complete solar annihilation does. This is a good example of what people are talking about when they discuss how young children can have trouble separating reality from fantasy. It's not that she was expecting the world to blow up, but she couldn't put the same abstract distance into the world exploding that she could if older.
The five year old got a hold of his gummie vitamins by pulling a King Kong and scaling the fridge. Luckily the vitamins didn't have iron or calcium so an ER trip wasn't necessary. We were ready for the pooping and puking and crying but it never came, which is a good thing, but also means he's not learning any lessons from not listening to mommy and daddy other than "now I don't get to play with my games and toys". In the very least an upset tummy would have helped drive home the point that we aren't just telling him no because we can. The kiddo is a stubborn bull made of sterner stuff that only learns lessons when his actions bite him on the ass. A fact which makes my wife and mother look at me and cackle, for some reason.
My 3 year old started saying something I didn't recognize, and said he got it from Papa's phone.
Turned out he somehow found a YouTube channel playing with his grandpa's phone which consists of a Japanese man counting or naming toys and throwing them into a bucket of water, and he's watched the whole playlist, which has been running for like five years.
So, yeah, my kid can count higher in Japanese than in English because some weird guy throws Thomas the Tank Engine toys in water.
It's a whole genre.
There are people out there that do this with Animals, or things of certain colours, etc.
Well, as weird as it is, it clearly works. Sam can count to 25 in Japanese but in English is still resistant to the idea of numbers with two digits.
To all the soon-to-be parents ITT, I want to share a little advice about all the advice you are guaranteed to get. My wife and I are nerdy types and tried to learn as much as we could before our little angel arrived. Out of everything, the pre-natal class we took at our birthing center was the most valuable time and money spent. Just two anecdotes about all the good stuff we learned there: 1. Installing car seats correctly is hard. 2. When our little one choked on a piece of mushed banana (seriously?), we felt relatively calm and knew the baby-heimlich steps.
On the other end of the spectrum, there will be a lot of hard contradictions. In the US right now, everybody will teach you that co-sleeping is the devil and you will murder your child. Meanwhile when we were in Germany, everybody (including professionals like midwives and trade-magazines) were like: do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, co-sleeping? It was a really bizarre dichotomy that's still with me.
To all the soon-to-be parents ITT, I want to share a little advice about all the advice you are guaranteed to get. My wife and I are nerdy types and tried to learn as much as we could before our little angel arrived. Out of everything, the pre-natal class we took at our birthing center was the most valuable time and money spent. Just two anecdotes about all the good stuff we learned there: 1. Installing car seats correctly is hard. 2. When our little one choked on a piece of mushed banana (seriously?), we felt relatively calm and knew the baby-heimlich steps.
On the other end of the spectrum, there will be a lot of hard contradictions. In the US right now, everybody will teach you that co-sleeping is the devil and you will murder your child. Meanwhile when we were in Germany, everybody (including professionals like midwives and trade-magazines) were like: do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, co-sleeping? It was a really bizarre dichotomy that's still with me.
... and that's how it goes as a parent.
I agree with this. The only real advise imo is to not sweat the small stuff and find what works for you.
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When my youngest was 7 months old, we were still dealing with her being a constipated baby. We were at a beach house that my FIL had rented. I got to have my ulitmate humbling moment by helping pull a large "deposit" from my daughter's hind end.
Pokemon has joined Paw Patrol as a favorite show. I actually will not mind one bit if she stays into it for a few years so we can play the CCG together.
Mini-dead loves Pickachu and some of the other pokemon, but the show and game only hold her interest for so long. Teen Titans Go is still number 1 for her right now.
Oh, and Legend of Zelda: BOTW. She's constantly asking me to play that with her. I'm seriously worried about what's going to happen once we beat Ganon. I even bought the DLC so we wouldn't run out of things to do.
Me: "Ok, sure, but who in the hell's going to be afraid of a few random lions when the Pridelands already united to fight off Scar's soul embodied in an all consuming fire god leading an army apex predators?"
Her: "Look, it's a stupid kid's show, why are you paying more attention than the kids?"
Me: "And why doesn't Scar's mate mention the absence of the lion who's roar threw her whole pride over the mountains last time she was in the Pridelands? That's the kind of thing a cartoon villain is legally required to monologue about."
Her: "I'm getting pizza, do you want some?"
Me: "I want to argue about how Kion is friends with a gazelle with Worf's voice but still eats gazelle."
Her: "Well, too bad, you're getting pizza."
I can spend all day talking about the hellscape that is Adventure Bay.
But really, we are currently on a
Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, Ben & Holly (I legit love Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom), Robocar Poli, SuperWings, Tayo (ohgod I hate Tayo), and sometimes Thomas (I dislike Thomas even more than Tayo).
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The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I got my wife to accept my theory that Romeo and Luna Girl are from rich families. They're the technological rather than martial villains, but they're the only ones that don't hide their faces, but the PJ Masks (and Armadillon, the older kid antihero) don't recognize them because they go to a fancy private school.
I have a very clear memory of being a little toddler and being scared of this, running behind the couch so I didn't have to see it:
And I'm somewhat sure it wasn't because I thought "OMG there's a bear coming to get me!!!" It was just... fucking terrifying to my underdeveloped lizard brain.
He doesn't do that thing I did as a kid where you watch the same show 1000 times. Which is good, because Netflix pulled all but season 1 of rescue bots.
ooh. We don't know Armadillon.
We only have Romeo, Luna Girl, and Night Ninja.
my theory is that they're all the same kids. and the 3 kids are just playing at recess. Because that's totally what I did at recess My best friend and i had a whole complex world wth multiple characters that we each played and voiced and acted out, but only with the 2 of us because nobody else liked us.
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I find We Bare Bears delightful, assuming it's still on. There's nothing objectionable in it, it generally has positive messages, and it's relentlessly charming. And it stars stackable bears.
Ice Bear is my hero.
Armadillon is an older kid named Dillon with anger issues and his own armadillo themed PJ Mask powers, in a few episodes he's already fighting a bad guy when the masks show up and he takes it too far (like straight up beating the crap out of a Ninjalino) and they end up having to rescue the villain.
Luna Girl is also kind of an antihero now, too, usually works with the masks against Romeo.
In light of season 2 at least Dillon and Luna Girl feel like they have to be other actual kids in your theory, and it makes total sense that a 5th grader would crash a bunch of 3rd graders playing super heroes by beating up the bad guy and saying, "What? I'm helping lol!"
I've been reading comics too long not to blindly accept the superhero thing at face value, that never occurred to me, and I always assumed most of South Park was just the kids make believe and didn't really happen.
Holy shit I know way too much about this show, it's been years since I've typed this many words about super heroes...
Fucking storybots
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Also, we like Baby Bus. Kiki and MiuMiu and all their friends with their weirdly specific songs about no running on escalators and how to escape a building during a fire or an earthquake. Oddly appropriate for our area.
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but they're listening to every word I say
The bestie boys style velocirapter rap is my favorite.
There is a season on netflix of "Storybots Supersongs" which is just a collection of all the songs from the digital app. The songs are all really high quality. The best being the solar system and dinosaur raps. Their most recent show is "Ask the Story Bots." The show recycles a few of the songs but is also very high quality and tends to features celebrity cameos.
I played a lot of the super songs for my son when he was 1-2. The songs are fun and are about dinosaurs/farm animals. He is 4 now and could follow the narrative of the show, but if he is watching TV he wants to watch "Dino Dana" on Amazon. Actually, he wants to watch Season 2 Episode 13 of "Dino Dana" called "Game of Bones" where they play a fantasy board game with real dinosaurs to compete for a throne of bones. And he wants to watch that episode every day.
Unfortunately, this hasn't translated into him wanting to play other fantasy board games.
Also, do not google 'game of bones'.
My son is 4 and has been super into dinosaurs since 18 months. When he was turning 2 I suggested dinosaur t-shirts to anyone who asked for gift ideas, as he was refusing to wear clothes without dinosaurs on them at that point. Every time we visit my dad in London we go to the Natural History Museum and chill with their animatronic t-rex. He can name over 40 dinosaurs (and has over 100) and despite not watching as many dinosaur shows, or reading as many dinosaur books lately, he still recalls many names and dinosaur facts upon request, and his favourite movie is still Jurassic World.
I have enjoyed his obsession. It’s also made buying him presents or clothes extremely easy!
Also Hilda. Hilda. Probably scary for real little ones but around 4 or 5? Wonderful.
My son (11) has reached the point where he can probably find workarounds for any tech based restrictions we could implement*, so we have to rely on him being honest and well behaved.
Fortunately, he's very honest and very well behaved. But it does mean we kind of fasttrack his ability to contextualize adult content, so when he eventually stumbles across stuff (or goes looking for it) it doesn't fuck him up any more than any random grownup is fucked up by the internet.
*When he was 6, one of his teachers pissed him off, so he retaliated by secretly changing the orientation on all the monitors in the classroom to portrait, then refusing to tell them how to fix it. Our reaction to this was giggly pride followed by the realization that we are so fucked.
Anyways, the last week or so she has been getting more upset. But the part that’s confusing me is to swaddle or not to swaddle. If I leave her free she will often not sleep for hours on end, getting more and more fussy (easily upset). If my wife tries to feed her she immediately (like 30 seconds) falls asleep, but when we put her down she’ll wake up after 10 or 20 minutes.
Seems like a no brainer right? Swaddle that shit. But she’s started doing this thing when we swaddle her. She basically hulks out. Her face turns red, and for like 10 seconds at a time she will flex all her muscles as hard as she can. If we hold her tight enough that she can’t break out, after like 5 or 10 minutes she will be asleep and everything is great. But it seems so weird.
Does/did anyone else’s kid do this?
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My 4 yr old daughter is into Fancy Nancy, Vampirina Peppa, Masha and the Bear, Tayo (shudder), Super Wing, and Barbie life in the dreamhouse.
Turned out he somehow found a YouTube channel playing with his grandpa's phone which consists of a Japanese man counting or naming toys and throwing them into a bucket of water, and he's watched the whole playlist, which has been running for like five years.
So, yeah, my kid can count higher in Japanese than in English because some weird guy throws Thomas the Tank Engine toys in water.
My 5 year old is "educating" me on Godzilla. Like, I've been watching the Big G for at least 35 years kid, slow your roll and check your ego. Which I, of course, don't tell him. Can't risk dulling his enthusiasm for all things Godzilla.
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Sapling didn't have any problems with swaddling, but even at 2 years old she will respond to pretty much any sort of restrained sitting position with an unlimited crunches session. She gets all sweaty, and her skin turns red and splotchy, and at first I joked about her getting swole, but now she has ab muscles like I don't even know.
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It's a whole genre.
There are people out there that do this with Animals, or things of certain colours, etc.
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Her newest toddler oddity is, when picked up and relocated against her will, she will stick her arms and legs out as stiff as she can and exclaim "Oh NO! Stuck!"
It absolutely never fails to crack me up.
Brains are weird, and the phobias and picadillos that can affect them are hard to get a grasp on. I know now that I've got a real thing about unwilling transformations. These days, I can look at it and say it's something in my neural wiring that is really unsettled by that kind of stripping of autonomy, control, and self. But when I was a little kid, I just knew that that scene in The Little Mermaid of the people turned into polyps. when it happens to the king at the end, really unsettled me and made me uncomfortable and I'd skip it whenever I had the chance. People getting turned to stone is still one of those things that has something in the back of my mind screaming inside.
I'm guessing that she was old enough to grasp, 'this is the world where everyone and everything lives, and it's about to be blow'd up!' and something about that was very very distressing. We're got the mental development that we've got a handle on it, make jokes about how little damage a spell that displays complete solar annihilation does. This is a good example of what people are talking about when they discuss how young children can have trouble separating reality from fantasy. It's not that she was expecting the world to blow up, but she couldn't put the same abstract distance into the world exploding that she could if older.
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Well, as weird as it is, it clearly works. Sam can count to 25 in Japanese but in English is still resistant to the idea of numbers with two digits.
On the other end of the spectrum, there will be a lot of hard contradictions. In the US right now, everybody will teach you that co-sleeping is the devil and you will murder your child. Meanwhile when we were in Germany, everybody (including professionals like midwives and trade-magazines) were like: do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, co-sleeping? It was a really bizarre dichotomy that's still with me.
... and that's how it goes as a parent.
I agree with this. The only real advise imo is to not sweat the small stuff and find what works for you.