Parenting

I kind of know what you mean, but just to be sure we're on the same page, would you kindly spell it out?

Which part?

Likewise I wonder how you teach kids not to be selfish in regards that don't involve sharing.

Selfishness is a thinking pattern, not a behavior. There are non-selfish reasons why a child would not want to share certain things.

There are a lot of situations in which children can be taught to share not related to having entrust what might be their favourite toy to someone else. Ie dinner...just teaching them to consider that everyone else at the table is also hungry so they shouldn't thoughtlessly fill up their plate is in my eyes a way more important lesson that entrenching in what could be considered their personal sphere (depending on how attached they are to the respective toy).

Btw, you can also rent toys instead of buying them. No need to fill up the play area to the brim.

There's also sharing toys that aren't owned by any specific kid, like in a kindergarten classroom or a daycare.

Or sharing the time on the swing or whatever on the playground.

I remember that at my primary school there were exactly two swings. I never really used them (because my classroom was as far away as possible from them), but whenever I passed the area, there were always children lined up, with everyone being allowed to get their turn without the need of any adult to oversee the process.

Children basically start to police each other at one point. No need for adults to constantly butting in. Only a need to ensure that your child has a lot of contact with other children.

This is something both relevant to parenting, but that could easily go in it's very own thread about the price of healthcare in the US.

"Am I a bad parent?" Why one woman didn't take her daughter to the ER after poison control said to.

A mother tells the story of her young daughter bypassing the child safety lock and getting into some pills. She called poison control and then parked outside of the emergency room while treating her inside their car with activated charcoal (what poison control recommended). Multiple parents share similar experiences in the article, where parents parked near hospitals and ER's but didn't go inside because they feared financial ruin due to the insane cost of care, like a $670 bandaid (100% serious about this, happened to me when I had gallbladder removal surgery).

It's extremely controversial for obvious reasons ("It's your kid, why would you risk it?"), but many parents feel that they have no choice, because treatment from a doctor could literally leave them out on the streets.

That's horrible, and I really cant blame the parent, it's the system's fault, not the parent's. But this may have been better in the US Politics thread, or possibly the economics one if that's the aspect that interests you.

I'll put it in the US Politics thread as well.

The Dangers of Distracted Parenting. An article that goes in to detail of the issues that arise when parents spend way too much time in their phones. Lots of things to think about, such as children receiving more injuries because the parent's attention is constantly averted, children learning less of their language because the parents take too many phone breaks and interrupt the flow of information with their child, and parents completely missing important cues from their children because they're so distracted, which leads to resentment from the child and even potential abusive behavior from the parent when they get irritable for being "interrupted."

Edited by Zanthype on Jun 23rd 2019 at 4:02:37 AM

So, we don't have a thread for adoptions. In the General Politics Thread there was a discussion about dealing with families with LGBT+ children when these are not accepted by their parents.

Typical outcomes are either emotional neglect/abuse, the kids being thrown out or deciding to leave on their own accord. Part of the problem is that getting teens adopted is hard and many of these kids are teens.

Yes, and in addition, we were talking about minors, and how politics could play into this. For example, should such issues be resolved legally, or through a social support program?

Oh, I just realized this thread has been dead since June. Of 2019. Not sure if we are going to attract a discussion here.

Edited by Redmess on Feb 17th 2021 at 6:26:40 PM

Most times, if parents are physically abusive or negligent of their children, the children are placed in foster care. Now the issue here would be do potential foster parents know the sexuality of the children they consider proving care to, and could that end up affecting their ability to be placed in alternate care?

Yeah you run into the basic problem that the foster care system isn’t particularly well resourced, that then a disproportionate impact of the kind of kids who end up in care.

Yeah, there aren't enough foster families to cover the aggregate supply of kids. And I'd imagine that LGBT+ children would be extra problematic to foster, since you need to check that the prospective foster family accepts such a kid.

I feel like you should be checking that anyway, it’s not like kids can’t discovered their sexuality after being placed in care.

That’s and I generally feel you shouldn’t be placing kids with foster families that will teach bigotry.

The problem is that when you do that you reduce the number of available families even more, which causes its own problem.

The other problem is privacy rights. We can't require teenagers to inform foster families what their sexuality is, if they don't want to share that information (esp considering how that went with their biological family), yet the foster parents are likely to figure it out eventually. This is a dilemma with no obvious easy solution.

Not sure if it's a better fit for COBbies subforum or here.

So, is "Dad strength" a thing? My son was born last October, due to different reasons I've switched to one-big-meal-per-day diet (with several smaller snacks around it), in more than 8 months, my (albeit rather small) gut was gone and I thought that I've lost 7-8 kgs or so (with first-child-related stress contributing to it).

Instead, after I've measured my weight a couple of weeks ago, turns out that I've gained 5 kgs instead, and my friend whom I haven't seen before I became a father told me that I've became way wider in my shoulders.

Then I've started calculating and turns out that the baby weighs close to 9 kg now, his stroller close to 15, I've been hauling groceries and been doing the rest of heavy lifting chores all by myself (since my wife gave birth via c-sec and is still recovering) and we've moved to a mountaneous place and most of the walking was done uphill/downhill (not to mention that I've started to walk even more - the baby needs fresh air, it's something close to 12K-15K steps per day now).

I've noticeably became stronger and I wasn't even rempotely athletic before.

Tl;dr: how much do you think lifestyle changes contribute to increasing upper-body strenght of men who recently became fathers?

Edited by Millership on Jun 29th 2023 at 4:16:26 PM

This last few months I’ve been hearing from my ex and the internet that kids are basically chaotic and not very high on empathy or attention spans nowadays due to their upbringing. I don’t unusually interact with kids, so I wouldn’t know. Has anyone had such an experience?

Your ex clearly doesn't remember their own childhood.

Kids being hyperactive and easily distracted and selfish little monsters is nothing new.

And y'know, take random shit you see on the internet with a grain of salt.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 9:35:38 PM

I see…

I mean, I figured it’s just one generation looking down on another’s parenting as more permissive, as is normal.

That and one should probably also consider the advantages of "hyperactive and defiant"...

Parenting has changed over the last generation or so and that likely has had an impact on the psychology of children. In many western countries you’ve seen a reduction in public support for children (youth centres getting closed, libraries being shut down, public grass spaces getting lots of “no ball games allowed” signs, more cars making roads to dangerous for kids to go out and play, etc…) causing them to have fewer ways to expend their energy. That’s before touching on where austerity measures following the 2008 crash have gutted school services.

You’ve then also got a lot more disconnected parenting, in many western countries the real value of wages have dropped compared to inflation and this has forced parents to spend more hours in paid employment and fewer providing social education to their children. The knock on effect of that has been worn out parents passing parental duties to tech companies like You Tube, Tik Tok and Instagram, who make the old “raised by TV” days look like the pinnacle of cooperate responsability in relation to avoiding children being exposed to harmful content. Short-form content in particular like we see on Twitter, Tik Tok and You Tube Shorts are certainly not helping children learn to maintain focus and have an actual attention span.

Parenting itself even when time does exist also hasn’t caught up with technology. How many parents truly understand the risks of letting their child go unsupervised on the internet? How many understand the addictive nature of social media (both for their child but also for themselves)?