Parenting Contents Archive

The Birth of Christ at Pre-K

My daughter attends a great private preschool in our small, LDS town. My husband and I are atheist. We received a letter stating they will be discussing the birth of Jesus early next month. I’m a bit conflicted on what to do. Do I use this as an opportunity to discuss religion? Do I keep her home? Do I just see how she interprets the conversation? I don’t want her to feel left out, and I want her to be open minded. I’m worried she won’t understand why other families worship and we don’t. Maybe I’m overthinking this since she’s so young. Advice/experiences appreciated!

Circumcision

My husband and I just cancelled our son’s circumcision apt. He’s 3.5 weeks old and his older brother who will be 4 years old tomorrow IS circumcised. We were both present at our older son’s procedure. It broke my heart to see my little baby scream out in pain so terribly and his father nearly passed out. We don’t need to do that again. Our son’s will ask us why they look different when they’re old enough to notice and we’ll explain to them why we chose not to do it a second time. Living in as big a city as we do with so few pediatricians that practice this procedure speaks volumes to its outdated practice.

Today my therapist told me my husband is a narcissist who will never change.

I don’t really want to go into detail right now. We’ve been having problems for a very long time, I’ve been working really hard at trying to make the marriage work. Today in a couple’s session he got to a point where basically he said he won’t make the changes we’ve all agreed he needs to make for our marriage to work. After that he waited in the lobby for the rest of the session. My therapist told me (to summarize) that he exhibits narcissistic behavior and he will not change. I’m just dealing with that hard acceptance right now. My head is spinning trying to figure out how I’ll navigate being a single mom but I have a good support system so I know right now I just need to sit with this hard acceptance and in my therapist’s words, “think about what you want your life to be”. This sucks.

Contact naps are making me long for the catheter I had for my labor and delivery 😩

Send help 😣

What would you do? ✈️ 🚙 🏡

Our plans for Thanksgiving are to fly out to Colorado, watch my brother-in-laws last college football game, and just spend time as a family in a new place. HOWEVER, my 3 year old caught a cold two weeks ago & now has a lingering cough/runny nose. Her pediatrician is not concerned & she has had zero fevers. My issue is flying with a coughing toddler during a pandemic… I know we will already get nasty looks because we are flying with two kids, but a coughing one?! I’m afraid. 😭 What would you do? Fly? Drive 16 hours? Stay home? Edit: As I typed this and hit submit, I realized that I had already made up my mind. Thank you all for your insight!!!

What time do you and your baby usually get out of bed?

Mom guilt. To the extreme. Hopefully this is the right place for this. I read everywhere that you should have your baby wake up within half an hour of the same time everyday. I work part time so the days I work we get up at 7. Days I don’t work we get up anywhere between 7:30-8:30. He goes to bed between 8-8:30 every night no matter the time we woke up. He’s almost 7 months old. When we do sleep in his days are good and his nights are just fine. I don’t think waking up later is bothering our schedule much but some days it’s just so hard to get up when I have broken sleep from nursing In the middle of the night. I feel guilty for sleeping in an hour as if I should be up at 7 every morning. Does anyone else not have too strict of a wake up schedule?

When you're carrying the sleeping baby to bed and your stub your toe:

What do you do with limiting screens for your kids, if anything?

During the week, we let our kids (7 and 11) have screens (tv, ipads, whatever) in the morning before school, then after school they can have screens before dinner as long as they do their homework first. On weekends they get screens before lunch. I've wanted to limit the amount of screens they get but I'm not sure if our plan is a good one. What success have you had?

FFS it's FREE

I work for a company that specializes in cleaning out houses. They sell the easy stuff and let us have run of the other stuff. I'm giving away a dining room table. Free! It was too nice to trash. So far, I've been asked to measure it. It's free. I've been asked for more photos to prove its solid wood, not veneer. It's free. I've been asked to hold it. It's free. I've had two people no show. It's still free. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few requests. The point is that it's free; why not come take a look yourself? I think I've put more effort into giving away this damn table than I have selling most other stuff. Ugh. People. Happy Wednesday

Daytime naps?

LO is 3 months and only does contact naps. We usually nap in daylight with the house noises aplenty, and she sleeps great. If I try to lay her down once asleep, her eyes open wide right away. At night she does really well with being put down to sleep in her bassinet (knock on wood), but I’d like to be able to put her down for some naps during the day if possible. Is that just not age appropriate yet? How do you do daytime naps? Do you mimic nighttime sleep (sleep sack, dark room, sound machine, etc)? Will that cause confusion between naps and nighttime sleep?

Getting up in the night sucks but...

That stretch in bed you have once the baby is back asleep and your about to go back to sleep is one of the best feelings ever!!

When do I have to stop listening to gruesome murder podcasts?

My daughter is 10 months old and I can tell she is starting to understand more. I play with her, we listen to music, but entertaining a baby all day wears on a person and sometimes I like to put on a podcast so I’m entertained too. The thing, I like true crime podcasts. So when should I change genres to avoid her first words being “family annihilator” or “end the backlog”? Also open to podcast recommendations.

How do I approach my child’s teacher about a classmate making sexual gestures?

I’m not sure how to best approach my child’s teacher regarding one of my child’s classmates. My child had made a sexual gesture, he suddenly grabbed his genitals (outside his clothes) and made a moaning sound and laughed. I asked him where he saw this and told me his “friend” makes this and everyone finds it funny and everyone laughs when he does it. Note, these kids are 7 years old. I talked to my child about this and my child asked me not to tattle since he doesn’t want the teacher to find out who told on that classmate. However I would also like to bring it up to my child’s teacher’s attention since it seems to me that it’s a red flag regarding what the classmate may be seeing at home. Any tips?

When you have a huge pile of laundry and your washing machine dies.

Just wanting to have a short rant if that's ok. I don't think it's worth repairing: smoke, rubber particles in the washing and clothes smelling of burnt rubber. I'm so grateful it happened at the end of a cycle and that it didn't cause a fire! Let's hope I can get a new one before the weekend... Edit: just thought I would add that it's relevant to the thread as a large percentage of the washing is cloth diapers and baby clothes for my 6M. In case you were wondering.

Live-in Nanny

My husband and I are thinking about getting a live-in nanny. Yes we are very lucky to both have great jobs. My husbands job in particular is shift work that is week by week and he would like to be a SAHD the rest of the time (about 25 weeks out of the year), but the rest of the time we both have 10 hour days. We’re thinking a live-in would help provide flexibility. I have no idea where to start to figure out where to find options and start to estimate costs to even see if it makes sense. Any tips on where others looked? If it’s relevant, we live in California.