theinfamousj @ theinfamousj @parenti.sh

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2 yr. ago

My thoughts are that puberty is a hard time. And a sleepy time. And a time that basically the brain is taken over by a chemical soup not far divorced from pregnancy-brain or postpartum-brain. If pubescent children were on the whole tidy, there wouldn't be tropes about horrifically tossed teenager rooms, so not cleaning up after themselves seems developmentally apt.

If the child doesn't meet your standards for cohabiting or vacationing, don't take them. Your own child can relate to their friend in a different scenario.

Sleeping in a closet isn't typical behavior, no, but it is also harmless. Perhaps the closet was a dark or quiet space which they needed in order to sleep and while they, too, think closet sleeping is weird, the alternative was no sleep at all because too bright or loud. It is tempting to fill in an unknown with a narrative, but your narrative is no more valid than my counterproposed narrative in this paragraph.

I wouldn't tell her parent anything unless asked directly. I wouldn't assume that the parent lacks the ability to see the same things you've seen as I doubt the behavior you saw is any different except in the better direction than how she behaves at home.

The only thing I can offer you is that motivation isn't the currency of the ADHD brain. Importance isn't the currency of the ADHD brain. The only currency of the ADHD brain is INTEREST. As in, "Oh, this is interesting to me."

It sounds as if school isn't capturing their interests. Can changes be made so that school is interesting? Harder classes? Different electives? Anything?

And trust me, you don't want unmanaged ADHD behind the wheel of a car. There's a reason we of the ADHD brain have a shorter life expectancy on average, and that's because the deaths that bring down the average are almost all vehicularly related. I'd back off that expectation until the ADHD is under control.

Is there a psychiatrist in play? Medication ought to be lowering the activation energy/removing or easing the barrier-to-action between your child and the things they are interested in and actually want to do, and it sounds as if that isn't happening.

As a parent with ADHD and a parenting coach with lots of experience parenting ADHD children (though none my bio kids; my own bio kid is too young for their ADHD to be any of the known struggles) -- You have to back down, not ride harder. Sure, one of the ways to overcome the barrier-to-action is unholy terror which puts in place fight-or-flight and can get one over the barrier BUT existing in that state endlessly is super duper bad and leads to serious hard burnout and trauma from constantly being The Problem. I know that riding them has been effective thus far, but under the hood, the way it has been effective has done long term harms. As a family, you all need to learn new management and coping skills. You need to stop overfunctioning. Family therapy (which is different in nature than couples therapy or individual therapy) is the direction to go here. ADHD isn't a person's problem, it's a family problem. Especially when it involves a child who need parents to teach and guide them in to how to exist as prosocially as possible with the brain they never asked for but nonetheless were given. You aren't teaching them how to exist with their brain, you are teaching them how to exist with your brain; they don't have your brain. ADHD isn't a malfunctioning neurotypical brain any more than neurotypicality is a malfunctioning ADHD brain. Both are okay and both are different. Think horses and zebras - both okay, both different, both rideable, both with manes and tails, both with hooves, both about the same size, but a zebra is not a malfunctioning horse nor a horse a malfunctioning zebra. A horse cannot teach the zebra how to horse, it would be bad for the zebra.

My own Mother called my ADHD Father some names (deadbeat is the one you chose to call) and when I realized I related to my Father due to same neurotype, I realized two things: (a) my mother would call me a deadbeat too simply because she doesn't know how to coexist with a neurodivergent person and so her response is disgust and shaming and (b) living in the house with her was going to be supremely traumatic to me because she's going to take out her discomfort and ignorance on me in the worst ways. I got out of the house. Your child has not.

Might I suggest that your education come from ADDitude Magazine's webinar series? It is free as a podcast. And I would like to extend an invitation to you to join the How to ADHD Discord as there is a whole parenting section for advice on parenting ADHD children as well as another section called "Hearts asking Brains". You, not having ADHD, would be a heart. And the adult ADHD brains can offer insights you might not otherwise have been exposed to.

If you feel comfortable with a book in English, check out the book "Why Will No One Play With Me". It sounds as if there may be some neurodivergence going on and from only what you have mentioned here, this limited information fits almost exactly the pattern for ADHD. But there's obviously more information you aren't disclosing.

ADHD is highly heritable which makes sense that like parent like child.

Child psychiatrist is who you take her to for a diagnosis. Once you know where to look for strategies, which is what that diagnosis tells you, then you can start supporting her in all the best ways she'd benefit from.

Thanks for being a concerned parent.

Having to do the work to learn healthy techniques to healthily regulate one's own emotions so that one can coregulate small humans who are just learning how to do the alive thing and then actually putting into place what one has learned is a challenge vs not doing any of this? You don't say. /s

These preliminary findings, which will be submitted soon for publication, should be interpreted with caution since the diversity of our sample was limited.

The authors polled 100ish parents across the country; just 100ish parents. Are any of you all family studies scholars? Is this really something which would be published with this kind of study design simply due to the inclusion of the "should be interpreted with caution" caveat? Like, in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, published? My background has me completely flabbergasted that something of this nature would come to be and I need reassurance that it is okay in its field.

a 36-year-old mother of two children under 5 reflected that she often feels like she “has nothing to give” and gets “easily overstimulated and overwhelmed all day every day.” She ended her reflections with the simple confession: “I often feel out of control.”

Oh lovely woman, you've skipped a few grades in Gentle Parenting. The first steps are to learn effective and healthy techniques to regulate one's own emotions. You, my darling lovely woman with two under five, have not. You are burned out, overstimulated, and overwhelmed because you haven't. One cannot pour from an empty teacup and no teacher was ever deemed effective who taught from the textbook without having a deep understanding of the material.

I fear that situations like the above will lead to mass impressions on the youth that respectful, emotionally intelligent parenting is useless simply because children are not unaware of burned out, tapped out, stressed out, touched out, and overstimulated parents. They are more attuned than we know.

It took me twenty years, a lot of therapy, several post graduate degrees, and twenty one children raised from bottles to backpacks as the AIC (adult in charge) during weekday daytime hours as a nanny to dial in my ability to healthily regulate my own emotions and sensory needs without disadvantaging any children who came into my area of effect. Save the Duggars, I don't think any actual parents (note, gentle reader, I am also an actual parent of a darling son) will have the opportunity to go through 20+ children as part of their learning curve. I think that Gentle Parenting is a fabulous and delightful ideal to aim for, but perhaps more realistic is Good Enough Parenting where you sometimes let them be angry without having to tell them that they are angry (footnote), while you go sip your tea in another room while it is still hot.

(footnote) Telling someone the name of their emotion in the moment without, you know, helping them with what to do with it, is unhelpful but it makes for great Instagram reels. Imagine yourself, very, very, very, very thirsty and unable to get a drink. Along comes someone who can provide you with a drink. Instead, they turn to you and say, "You are thirsty." And then they sit with you in your thirst. Rather than, you know, getting you a drink or anything. You'd gain a vocabulary word, but no skills. Same here with naming emotions. Magda Gerber was on the right track but she didn't get to the station, if you follow my analogy. And "Good Inside" can be summarized on a fortune cookie as: "They aren't giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time. Your experience is accidental." This, too, isn't the station.

I'm reading this from my laptop in my bed with my baby tucked up in his bassinet within arm's reach (which, amusingly enough, is the product name of the bassinet as well). My goal is to co-sleep in the roomsharing sense for the first year since I am breastfeeding.

Have I fallen asleep with him in the same bed as me? Absolutely. Did it the first night after he was born, in the hospital, even. I was in labor for over 24 hours and was knackered. The nurse came in and gently took him from me and put him back in the plastic box by my side. Hospital was big on "rooming in".

So, because I knew I absolutely could involuntarily head off to slumberland while breastfeeding, I took care to set my bed to be as safe as possible should this occur. It's like wearing a seatbelt in a car -- no plans for an accident, but just in case.

And let me tell you, my mental health is great! I know enough about me to know that my mental health would be far worse if I had to trudge down the hall in order to breastfeed at night or chastised myself for sharing a bed at such times as my body desperately needed sleep so took it. And with me sane in the membrane, I'm the kind of parent kiddo deserves in terms of personal quality. He doesn't deserve me loopy from sleep deprivation; so I'm not, mostly.

I'm a nanny. I provide childcare in the child's home. I'm hired by the parents. And those essential oil, antivax, homeschooling parents? They PROUDLY tell the world that they bedshare. In fact, during interviews they quiz me to find it out if I'll cuddle their child for the child's naps because that's the only way kid knows how to sleep.

I'm pretty sure the ones who lie to their pediatricians are those who are much more mainstream, based on how many times I've gone searching for a child's sleep sack only to find it in the parent bed, the parent bed unmade, and a clear impression of a sleeping child still in the pillowtop. But they won't even admit it to me, who doesn't care and just wants to know where the sleep sack is.

When did this become a contentious topic.

When people decided to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I don't know what concise term it is that is happening here, but it is the same as Time Out. So before Time Out was a thing, parents would assault their children simply because they, the parents, felt upset or frustrated with their children existing as new people who were still learning. In order to keep children from being hit so hard they'd welt or bruise, the public health authorities convinced parents that Time Out was by far more effective -- go sit in a corner by yourself! The only thing it was more effective at was getting that child out of the walloping range of an emotional parent; the goal. But if the public health authorities told those parents that, they'd keep hitting their kids. Time Out is not actually an effective teaching tool and for parents who aren't inclined to beat children, it's actually a poor choice to make vs taking the teachable moment to teach. So it isn't really A Good Thing as it has been branded. But if it saves even one child from harm, let's spread the good word.

Same with this one. Some children were overlaid by inebriated parents. Saying that children in the bed is A Bad Thing will save the lives of children whose parents are prone to inebriation and would otherwise have bedshared with them. And since it saves even one child from harm, we spread the good word. However, much like the parent who isn't going to beat their child above, there is also the parent who avoids intoxicants.

Yet people like hard and fast rules and like sanctimony. So they'll stan No Kids in the Bed under all circumstances without noting the nuance.

Personally, we follow the Safe Sleep 7, though baby spends more sleeping hours in his own bassinet than in our bed. Yet sometimes, only proximity to parents will do at night and so we make it as safe as possible so we can all get some much needed sleep.

Weird how they lump cosleeping as both the same surface and same room. Very different situation for the safety of the child, especially when they are under 2.

They do that because in both cases, the child can hear the breathing of the parents so is unlikely to succumb to the part of SIDS where they stop randomly breathing during the night (happens to all children as brains learn to brain) without restarting (this part doesn't happen to all children). Apparently hearing breathing is good for reminding a new brain to do the breathing thing.

That said, bedsharing and roomsharing have been studied separately under their own titles.

A lot of people like the Fair Play deck of playing cards.

My answer is that there are work hours and there are parenting hours. When the full-time worker is at work, so is the at-home-maid-of-all-work (stay at home). BUT, and here's the key, when the full-time worker comes home, the at-home-maid-of-all-work is off duty as well. Which means that weekend cleaning chores are shared, childcare is shared (it's called parenting), loading the dishwasher is shared. Just because there's a stay-at-home spouse, it doesn't mean the full-time worker is exempt from household duties.

Since there are children in the picture, the main duties of the at home spouse are the safe care for the children and the age appropriate education and stimulation of the children. Perhaps children's laundry. If you are lucky, household laundry. And maybe supervising contractors and vendors coming to service the home. But that is the entire job description of the at home spouse. Nanny (what I've just described) is a FULL TIME PAID JOB. Expecting an at home spouse to be able to do more than a full time job in the hours of a full time job is tempting, but unreasonable.

Does this make sense?

(For reference: I'm a nanny by profession so I am in a house all day with children and can give reasonable guidance as to what one individual can accomplish with children underfoot. By simply duplicating the nanny role, the at home spouse is saving the family five to six figures in outlay were they to hire me, instead. That's enough. And ought be equivalent to the earnings of the full-time worker.)

I avoid confusing phrases once I've learned that the phrases confuse the children. So for this child, I would have "put" and I would have "trash". And as I pointed to something or handed them something I would either say "put" or "trash". Clearly, the word "away" is presenting a challenge to them that is making this more difficult than it needs to be at this time in their life. Later on we can work on multi word phrases, maybe closer to 1 1/2 or two. Right now, one word.

I like to play a game I call toddler fetch. You throw a ball, and then they go fetch it and bring it back to you, and then you throw it again. You can use a soft inside ball to do that.

Another game I like to play involves them running back and forth across your field of vision, and you have a ball, and your goal is to hit them as they run back-and-forth. This is usually a soft ball, and an indoor activity, and you need to be intentionally bad at hitting them because the whole point is to get them to run back-and-forth and get tired. I play this particular game while sitting down, when I'm tired myself.

As a non-verbal crawler, they can still do a version of toddler fetch which is more like crawler fetch. Since they are crawling they will have to dribble - think soccer - the ball back to you instead of simply bringing it as would happen in toddler fetch. While you can explain the rules, it does help to just simply get excited when they bring the ball back and they figure that out really fast.

Slice the homework into small chunks and allow her to alternate: bit of homework - play for a short period of time (15 mins? 5 mins?) - bit of homework - play for a short period of time

It seems like this proposal will make the completion of homework take more time than sitting down and doing it one go, but if you add in the procrastination and struggle of sitting down and doing it in one go, this is actually shorter in time frame.

My chid is too young to have a phone but I'm a career nanny with experience. You've tried the rudeness angle and it isn't sticking, so let me ask some questions:

1. Do you put a Call to Action in your texts? Something like, "Reply with a 👍 to let me know you received this."? She's still a child so as adults we do still have to do some of the executive load lifting.
2. When you ask her what the barrier is to her replies, what does she report? Is she falling prey to the, "I'll do it in a minute," thing which never happens because you never do it in a minute? If so, can you mentor her through realizing that such an inclination is a lie and what to do instead?

Some of this yes. Some of this no.

Every arm and leg wiggle, every eye blink, every coo and fart and startle.

This is the no. First of all, at this phase the child is a synesthete. The arm and leg wiggles are not communication but stimulus response. Espying the color red may be why the leg wiggled. While delightful to a parent, don't make more of it than it is.

Also, they cannot coo at this stage. You may have confused the social smiling/cooing phase for what the OP is commenting on. The OP is referring to far earlier in development.

The startles are reflexive. The Morrow reflex. It is also not communication. It is just an instinct hardwired in to a primate brain to prevent newborn death by putting the primate newborn in a position to grab on to an adult's body fur and thus prevent falling to their death.

I find this phase personally delightful because you get to see the human BIOS on which their person operating system is shortly to be installed, but it is absolutely okay for people not to, just like some computer enthusiasts love a BIOS and others don't. So long as one isn't neglectful, it is okay to not be enthralled.

She is amazing and I love her so much, but she’s boring! ... How do you feel?

You aren't wrong. And so many people will come for you with pitchforks and torches for having said so. But you aren't wrong. Before ~ 6 weeks when they get social smiling, they really are potatoes that you care for. They have lots of amazing development going on inside, but on the outside you water, fertilize, give sunlight, and weed your potato and your potato ... sits there.

I actually call this The Grub Phase because they remind me of grubs: eating, eliminating waste, growing, leaking fluids in weird ways (not that this stops, mind you, a common statement exiting my lips at the toddler stage is, "Why are you sticky?"), and wriggling/writhing but mostly not going anywhere.

What’s your favorite stage of child development?

I love the lying phase which occurs between 5 and 7 on average. It is also the boundary testing phase. I love seeing what children think might be possible. They sometimes have the freedom of unconstrained creativity to come up with some solutions that are possible and while inelegant are a fresh new approach to problems. Of course, the payment for all of this delight is dealing with all of their sassy pushback on everything and sometimes undetectable lies due to their plausability, but it is worth it IMHO.

Thanks for letting me know. I'm obviously a novice in this area.

Me too! The internet is amazing!

PM me and let’s exchange some details.

PM sent. :)

Sadly, no one has. Apparently the venn diagram of those who know how to 3D model and those who like this bento box have no overlap.

Where I live they also don't encourage loose garbage or even garbage in loosely tied or untied bags. The reason here is that uncontained garbage subjected to a brisk wind, which we have plenty of, becomes litter. And no one wants to award themselves a ZeroWaste badge when they are directly contributing to landscape litter.