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NEVERENDING ♾️ The NEVERENDING Raising Children Thread

Start them as young as possible on great American literature:

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He unilaterally decided to seek this on his own...though after a couple years of me expressing my vast enjoyment of all things Vonnegut, so....
 

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We have a rope in a tree in the back yard. Greatest invention ever. They also love the weeping mulberry in the front yard because it creates a hiding spot from the world. Like KMS said, open the door and they'll go out there. They hunt toads, chase squirrels, go to the park, whatever.
 
kms said:
I opened the door and put them outside.
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Like my mom did in the pre electronic devises everywhere era. When I wasn't sick, I was outside with the neighborhood or subdivision kids doing whatever. When I got old enough, I worked both at my dad's part time businesses or my own job.
 
Time marches on and we all grow older. My son is growing up and will turn 12 in a few weeks. Already he's starting to exhibit behaviors associated with teens. I confess I miss the days when happiness consisted of hanging out on the back porch with him eating popsicles and throwing paper airplanes. I don't think he's going to visit Puff anymore :(
 
My 27 yr old son has sold everything except what fits in two suitcases and his bike and is moving from Santa Cruz to Brooklyn tomorrow. No job.

My parental instincts tell me to worry but I am more envious than anything.
 
TOFB said:
My 27 yr old son has sold everything except what fits in two suitcases and his bike and is moving from Santa Cruz to Brooklyn tomorrow. No job.

My parental instincts tell me to worry but I am more envious than anything.
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He's living this reality...while he can. Good for him.

From the parental instincts perspective, as long as he's not an alcoholic/drug addict and is a responsible free spirit...good for him. :D
 
TOFB said:
My 27 yr old son has sold everything except what fits in two suitcases and his bike and is moving from Santa Cruz to Brooklyn tomorrow. No job.

My parental instincts tell me to worry but I am more envious than anything.
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A part of me wishes I could have done either that or joined the Peace Corps when I was that age. However, I had loans to pay and was working two-three jobs to keep afloat at that point.
 
Attended kid end of year activities and I really don't understand how I'm about to have a middle schooler and, finally, all three in school at the same time. On one hand I'm stoked about the lower daycare bill but on the other... this went by way too fast. I'm feeling older, and that's not just after effect of buying a minivan.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
mendelman said:
He's living this reality...while he can. Good for him.

From the parental instincts perspective, as long as he's not an alcoholic/drug addict and is a responsible free spirit...good for him. :D
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He claims to have saved $7000. Hard to do when you are making $16/hr and paying $1150/mo in rent - - - and be an alkie/druggie
 
TOFB said:
He claims to have saved $7000. Hard to do when you are making $16/hr and paying $1150/mo in rent - - - and be an alkie/druggie
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Good for him. Actually, by proxy you should be proud of your excellent parenting skills creating such a 'good kid'. :D

My sister makes about $27/hr working as a senior peon for a District Library system and has ample savings, a new Volvo every 7 years and a nice house. Mainly because she's single with no kids and likely to remain such.

God damn, kids are expensive.

But we love them...I guess.
 
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Just need to vent a bit....

Last week, I received a very general call from a school counselor regarding my oldest. She left message, and 30 minutes later I called her back, and left a message for her to give me a call back. This was over a week ago and I figured if it was something important, she would have called me back.

My wife attends a meeting with a speech pathologist yesterday and was informed of a serious incident and issues with my oldest being bullied at school. I am not going to go into details, but it was significant enough that my wife called me to ask if the school counselor had ever called me back. When I responded no, she said we will talk about it when I get home. As soon as my wife gave me a rundown of what the speech pathologist said (and apparently she witnesses the incident first hand and heard everything that was said). While my son was not physically harmed as part of this situation, what was said to him is something that if it was older kids, the police would have been called and it would have been investigated. Once I got a full rundown, I called the counselor and left a message explaining what we were informed and that I would like her to call me.

Realizing the level of anger, the counselor called me back this morning and explained while there was no excuse for not calling me back and informing either my wife or I of the situation, she is responsible for two schools and many other situations. I finally just asked for her supervisor's contact information (e-mail so there is a paper trail) and sent off a formal complaint. I sent the e-mail and am waiting to hear back.

The part of this that is the most frustrating, is my son is a tough little guy and stands up for other kids. He knows that doing nothing is just as bad as doing something wrong if other kids are getting picked on. I have witnessed him step in to protect other kids on multiple occasions. Apparently he feels the school is not a safe enough environment and he is being targeted for doing the right thing, and the school is not doing enough to prevent these situations from occurring. I have two other kids, one with special needs, that we expected to send there in the future. But if my oldest is being targeted for doing the right thing, what will happen with my special needs son?
 
Well the boy is going to be just fine, IMO. Landed a good job at a top 50 NYC restaurant making about 45K to start and the phone is still ringing. What is disturbing is the crazy amount of gentrification going on in Brooklyn. Yowza.
 
Let's shift away from mendelman lack of manliness for a moment and talk birthday parties.

For those of you with young children, how much effort do you put in your kids birthday party? Which spouse takes the leadership roll in planning it? Do you have elaborate decorations, creative named snacks, and goodie bags that you hand out?

This year we have been to a range of parties. One person had a very elaborate party where it was creativity instead of cost. Another kid had his dad buy a ton of decorations, and a third had next to nothing. It was simple and the kids played normal yard games outside for a while, came in to do cake, and then they were off playing again.

Also, do your kids open gifts at the party?
 
michaelskis said:
Let's shift away from mendelman lack of manliness for a moment and talk birthday parties.

For those of you with young children, how much effort do you put in your kids birthday party? Which spouse takes the leadership roll in planning it? Do you have elaborate decorations, creative named snacks, and goodie bags that you hand out?

This year we have been to a range of parties. One person had a very elaborate party where it was creativity instead of cost. Another kid had his dad buy a ton of decorations, and a third had next to nothing. It was simple and the kids played normal yard games outside for a while, came in to do cake, and then they were off playing again.

Also, do your kids open gifts at the party?
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We've done it both ways: my son had a Chuck E Cheese party one year and another year we hosted an old school back yard party games event. We got much more positive feedback from parents on the back yard party game theme (with some decorations too). I think many of the younger parents were impressed with how much fun their kids had kicking it Old School. You should go that route.
 
michaelskis said:
Let's shift away from mendelman lack of manliness for a moment and talk birthday parties.

For those of you with young children, how much effort do you put in your kids birthday party? Which spouse takes the leadership roll in planning it? Do you have elaborate decorations, creative named snacks, and goodie bags that you hand out?

This year we have been to a range of parties. One person had a very elaborate party where it was creativity instead of cost. Another kid had his dad buy a ton of decorations, and a third had next to nothing. It was simple and the kids played normal yard games outside for a while, came in to do cake, and then they were off playing again.

Also, do your kids open gifts at the party?
Click to expand...

We just go with what the kids want. The one we just did was a few balloons and streamers around the house. We always do some kind of goody bag. This time it was cool hats. The kids run around like crazy. We cram them with cake and ice cream. The kid opens a bunch of presents and they go play whatever games they want. We did a pinata. A couple of the kids slept over and watched a movie. Nothing exciting.

We've done others where we put together a couple games like pin the tail or something. We've done the bounce house before or take them to the roller rink. It's all up to the kids.
 
Maister said:
We've done it both ways: my son had a Chuck E Cheese party one year and another year we hosted an old school back yard party games event. We got much more positive feedback from parents on the back yard party game theme (with some decorations too). I think many of the younger parents were impressed with how much fun their kids had kicking it Old School. You should go that route.
Click to expand...

dvdneal said:
We just go with what the kids want. The one we just did was a few balloons and streamers around the house. We always do some kind of goody bag. This time it was cool hats. The kids run around like crazy. We cram them with cake and ice cream. The kid opens a bunch of presents and they go play whatever games they want. We did a pinata. A couple of the kids slept over and watched a movie. Nothing exciting.

We've done others where we put together a couple games like pin the tail or something. We've done the bounce house before or take them to the roller rink. It's all up to the kids.
Click to expand...

For each of you, if you have sons do you plan the party or does your wife? What about daughters, who plans it?

Did they open the gifts at the party or was it after the party?
 
michaelskis said:
For each of you, if you have sons do you plan the party or does your wife? What about daughters, who plans it?

Did they open the gifts at the party or was it after the party?
Click to expand...

A birthday party at Chuck E Cheese does not involve much 'planning' - that's the beauty of pursuing that route. As for the back yard party planning, it was a 60/40 venture with me doing the 40.
 
Usually my wife plans all the household stuff, but that's because I'm too [STRIKEOUT]busy [/STRIKEOUT]lazy to do it. The kids throw out a bunch of ideas of what they want. [STRIKEOUT]We[/STRIKEOUT] she shoots down a bunch because it's out of the budget. She takes the kids to Party City to pick out plates, balloons, and goody bags. We usually let them open presents from the family 1st thing in the morning and then they open presents before the cake in front of everyone so they can say thank you. Cake after presents so there is less mess.
 
For birthday parties, our daughter has only had two of her own so far with friends: When she turned 5 she had all the girls from her pre-school class over and they played in the yard and had cake and ice cream. My wife planned/purchased the decorations and I planned the activities (a 5 and 6-year-old-friendly obstacle course, a pinata, 30 minutes of running through the house and playing with toys, and letting them climb in and out of the hammock for a while (that was unplanned but one of the girls saw it in the backyard and they all had a blast with it)); when she turned 6, we invited everybody from her kindergarten class to her karate school and they all had a lesson. We provided pizza, cake, ice cream, drinks and the karate teacher set out decorations and had plenty of activities. The kids had a blast and it really wasn't expensive at all. My wife planned everything for that party and my job was just to go get the food.

One nice thing is that our daughter's birthday is in the middle of the summer so we can get away more easily with not inviting everybody or even if we do invite everybody, we know that a lot of kids will be away on various vacations or whatever. My wife was trying to get away with just having a family birthday party this summer at the beach house but I told her there's no way the daughter is going to want that - she's turning 7 and is definitely at the age where she wants some friends around. The daughter wants a Harry Potter themed birthday so we are thinking of inviting 10 or 15 kids over and having some Harry Potter themed games and then maybe the 3 or 4 kids she talks about Harry Potter with all the time can come over the next evening to watch the 1st movie.

Most of the birthday parties she gets invited to are at locations other than people's houses - gymnastics, bounce place, bowling, Chuck E Cheese, roller skating, ice skating, etc. One of the more interesting ones was a girl who had her party at a dog rescue place where the kids just sat in a room with 1,000 rowdy, rambunctious puppies. Most of the kids in her class live right in the downtown of our city and have absolutely teeny, tiny backyards so I can see why they don't have parties at home, especially when the kids are so young and they are more likely to invite the whole class. She does have one friend who this year and last year had her birthday party on the last day of school at her house in her backyard. The parents set up karaoke or music and party lights and put up a party tent in the yard and the kids always seem to have a blast. The yard is so small though that they need to have the tent attached to the garage and the house instead of on any actual tent poles. I know the parents of this girl and it's definitely the mom who does all the planning.
 
One of the kids friends just did a Harry Potter party. A couple of ideas I remember from her telling me:
1. Put a picture of Moaning Myrtle in the bathroom.
2. Magic wand craft - get some wood chopsticks, paint, hot glue gun (it makes great spirals around the wand), add ons like stickers, beads, or feathers and let them go nuts.
3. Some kind of gold cup craft thing (little mug painted gold somehow)
4. Find the snitch (hide a little golden snitch in the room and get a prize)
 
dvdneal said:
One of the kids friends just did a Harry Potter party. A couple of ideas I remember from her telling me:
1. Put a picture of Moaning Myrtle in the bathroom.
2. Magic wand craft - get some wood chopsticks, paint, hot glue gun (it makes great spirals around the wand), add ons like stickers, beads, or feathers and let them go nuts.
3. Some kind of gold cup craft thing (little mug painted gold somehow)
4. Find the snitch (hide a little golden snitch in the room and get a prize)
Click to expand...

Those are all great ideas!
 
dvdneal said:
One of the kids friends just did a Harry Potter party. A couple of ideas I remember from her telling me:
1. Put a picture of Moaning Myrtle in the bathroom.
2. Magic wand craft - get some wood chopsticks, paint, hot glue gun (it makes great spirals around the wand), add ons like stickers, beads, or feathers and let them go nuts.
3. Some kind of gold cup craft thing (little mug painted gold somehow)
4. Find the snitch (hide a little golden snitch in the room and get a prize)
Click to expand...

Wow... been on pinterest much?
 
I'm guessing that's where the mom got the ideas. Kid had fun though and was proud to tell me she only burnt her hand on the hot glue gun once and the other girls did it several times.
 
Okay so The pottermania took over the senior table last last day of band camp. This Amazing Mom went all out on the Hogwarts theme, most of it crafted by hand and with the help of others. I had 18 pickle jars, industrial sized I was assigned to scrub labels off. Drying in my front yard. Glue gunning, wire twisting, painting symbols hanging candles bronzing plates. YES there were wands!! lol that class of 2017!8-!
 
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NPR Story -

A Plan For Raising Brilliant Kids, According to Science
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017...ign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170704

You present something you call the 21st-century report card. And it contains six C's, which I've seen versions of elsewhere:
collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation and confidence.
But what's new is the way you relate these skills to each other, and also, you've described what they look like at four levels of development.

Level 1, we call it "seeing is believing."
Level 2, you see that truths differ; there are multiple points of view. - This is kind of when critical thinking starts.
Level 3, we have opinions.
Level 4, we talk about evidence, mastery, the intricacies of doubt.
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Over the course of about 36 hours this weekend, our youngest (who is not quite 17 months) figured out how to open the front door, then figured out how to also unlock and open the door (at least the lock that is on the door knob), and last but not least she figured out how to climb out of her crib! 8-!

Usually, during the day, we go in and out the front door so often that we leave it unlocked. Now we not only have to leave it locked, but we also need to make sure the deadbolt is locked as well since that's up high enough that she won't be able to reach that for some time.

We had set her down for a nap and my wife was walking past her bedroom and heard somebody in there playing a xylophone. She somehow managed to pull herself up and out of her crib, make a mess of all of her toys and stuff from her changing table and then take a little toy xylophone and sit in a chair in her room and start playing it. Luckily she didn't hurt herself climbing out. I lowered her crib down to the lowest level but that's only about an inch or so lower than where it was when she climbed out. We'll see how long it takes her to get out of there this time.

Our oldest (who turns 7 tomorrow) never tried climbing out of her crib. Even after removing the sides altogether it probably took her 2 months to realize that she could get out of the bed all by herself and didn't need to call for us when she was ready to get up.
 
My oldest was an escape artist with the crib. We lowered it as far as we could and put this tent thing over the top to keep her from climbing out, but she bent the tent out of the way and was FREE!!! It was after that the wife decided I might be right about getting a toddler bed once they can escape the crib. Then again, mine wasn't a lock smith. We were able to just lock the door on her room so she couldn't get out and hurt herself. Although one time we forgot and found her sitting in the kitchen with the freezer open eating a pint of coffee ice cream. Still her favorite ice cream.
 
I've seen those tent things and everybody I know who has tried one or something similar said that if the kid wants out, and can climb, they will find a way through. I was thinking of something more along the lines of plywood with a couple sandbags on top to weigh it down. Or maybe some concertina wire? I've got to put those skills I learned on many Marine Corps working parties to use!

The doorknob in her bedroom is one that she cannot open on her own so for now we'll just make sure there's nothing around for her to hurt herself with and that the door is closed completely. It does make me wonder how long she has been working to perfect this skill though...

I did tell my wife that it would have been pretty funny if it were late in the evening and we were sitting on the couch and she had happened to wander into the living room. Once our oldest finally learned that she could get out of bed, she used to like to quietly come to a side door into our living room and stand there in the dark just staring at us watching TV until we noticed her. I thought there was going to be more than one occasion where she would give my wife, who scares easily, a heart attack.
 
My oldest does the quietly stand by your bed until you notice her. Always scares the crap out of the wife even when I speak up and say hi to the child. Maybe it's something little ones learn in some kind of creepyness school. At least they're not driving windowless vans.
 
dvdneal said:
My oldest does the quietly stand by your bed until you notice her. Always scares the crap out of the wife even when I speak up and say hi to the child. Maybe it's something little ones learn in some kind of creepyness school. At least they're not driving windowless vans.
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Mine whispers about seeing the ghost in her room. She draws photos of the ghost too. Creepy stuff. She does it for a laugh, or that's what she makes me think, but she scares people with her stories. She also hides dolls in her sister's room. She will go in and hide them behind curtains or doors, or move dolls to stare at my daughter (long story, we have some in a glass case) if she falls asleep in the same room. I finally told my husband we needed to put all the dolls away because it was getting mean. Hilarious, but mean.
 
Habanero said:
...She also hides dolls in her sister's room. She will go in and hide them behind curtains or doors, or move dolls to stare at my daughter (long story, we have some in a glass case) if she falls asleep in the same room. I finally told my husband we needed to put all the dolls away because it was getting mean. Hilarious, but mean.
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Parent are still doing that? Confiscating an item rather than guiding your kid? No offense but...

When we were tweens, and assigned to clean up after a meal, we'd use the sink sprayer to squirt each other. So when speccing out the kitchen in the newly-built house, the parents decided to forego the sprayer. Needless to say, this was a major inconvenience for sink use for the following 35 years.
 
Habanero said:
Mine whispers about seeing the ghost in her room. She draws photos of the ghost too. Creepy stuff. She does it for a laugh, or that's what she makes me think, but she scares people with her stories. She also hides dolls in her sister's room. She will go in and hide them behind curtains or doors, or move dolls to stare at my daughter (long story, we have some in a glass case) if she falls asleep in the same room. I finally told my husband we needed to put all the dolls away because it was getting mean. Hilarious, but mean.
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Must resist telling the oldest this story. She would do something like that to her sister who would not even notice until someone mentions it and then it would blow up into a big thing.
 
dvdneal said:
Must resist telling the oldest this story. She would do something like that to her sister who would not even notice until someone mentions it and then it would blow up into a big thing.
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These dolls were made in the early 1900s, the creepy factor is strong. I'm not a doll person by any means, and these have family value, but I really dislike them being part of the decor, despite the hilarity. I call one "handsy" because she was so brittle they fell off. Having a doll that looks almost exactly like Annabelle stare at you is unnerving. And yet somehow, they all like the Elf around the holidays.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Habanero said:
These dolls were made in the early 1900s, the creepy factor is strong. I'm not a doll person by any means, and these have family value, but I really dislike them being part of the decor, despite the hilarity. I call one "handsy" because she was so brittle they fell off. Having a doll that looks almost exactly like Annabelle stare at you is unnerving. And yet somehow, they all like the Elf around the holidays.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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That was one of the things my ex used to collect. I agree with the creepy factor of the dolls.
 
My youngest completed his first two years of college at a campus near home, and is finishing at a campus that's three hours away. I've spent the most one on one time with him, and I'm feeling pretty sad this afternoon. When I went by to see him before I came home, four friends were there. I felt out of place, so I left rather quickly. I wish I could have spent more time with him, but I'm glad he has friends there.
 
kms said:
My youngest completed his first two years of college at a campus near home, and is finishing at a campus that's three hours away. I've spent the most one on one time with him, and I'm feeling pretty sad this afternoon. When I went by to see him before I came home, four friends were there. I felt out of place, so I left rather quickly. I wish I could have spent more time with him, but I'm glad he has friends there.
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Sorry to hear that K. You're an empty nester now.
 
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