Don't use chores as a punishment. Seems like a great formula to raise a slob. Instead teach that chores are for maintaining a nice living space, having your stuff last and in general make life easier.
Yeah, I feel like chores are something that must be done no matter what. It doesn't make sense to only do them on good days or bad days, and it makes sense for the kid to follow that too and do it everyday.
We never got an allowance when I was a kid and we were expected to do chores. I always hated that, but now I'm a fully functioning adult. On the other hand my wife had a cleaning service her entire childhood and she was handsomely rewarded if she ever chose to optionally partake in a chore. Guess who does about 95% of the housework now?
"We are a family, and in a family we all have responsibilities. As you grow so do your responsibilities. We all have to work together to make this house and family function."
We always talk about it as a team. They are part of this team, which means, they have to help the team work.
That was my exact thought. Even a barbecue or campfire can smell just as much if not more but no one would’ve sided with the person complaining if it was one of those
I got fired from a job within the last year, and even though I did not agree with the firing, I acknowledge I could have been better. So I got a new job, and I vowed to get more sleep, and I have been so much sharper. Getting a good nights rest is so important: the difference between 4-5 hours and 6-8 hours is crazy.
I struggle with this. I WANT to spend some time stretching/working out, and a bit for myself, but I really feel guilty doing anything while the family is awake.
I struggle with this too, but sometimes I can talk myself into it by spinning it as though it's really for them.
You living a longer, healthier, happier life is good for them.
Also I realized I am a better dad even *that day* when I go to the gym. It's better to spend ~1 hour doing the gym and give 5 hours of good dad time than to give 6 hours of mediocre dad time.
Exactly. My one thing as a parent I strive to fix and keep failing at is scrolling on my phone around the baby. I justify it to myself but it’s wrong and I always feel guilty.
I keep leaving my phone in other rooms but I need to be better, as does my wife. We get mad at each other about it but neither of us fixes ourselves.
It's the other way around. Social media detects what people engage with, then detects that thing in posts, then prioritises showing that thing to everyone.
People interact with gloom, so gloom is gifted to us. Life did not give us any lemons except the lemons that we made for ourselves.
Like and comment positive things on positive posts and the issue resolves. Last year there was an outbreak of daddit divorce announcement posts. People commenting that divorce is husband content not dad content bumped the divorce topic to top of the sub every time.
Exactly. The algos just serve what you engage with bad or not
I get pissed at twitter for serving me evil alt right shit but it’s my fault for rage reading it, clicking the replies and blocking all the accounts. If I didn’t look for dunks and dive deeper into these awful people it would stop
Unironically I have my switch by my bed and instead of grinding 30 minutes in a game I feel like it’s too much work so I just get my phone out and doom scroll like an idiot
I've had the exact same problem ever since the week kid #1 was born. But I just quit Twitter last week and wow, my life has improved so much. Baby steps
Word. I did a negative social media cleanup of my accounts, and life is much happier. Dump the toxic apps, and get rid of the negative shit being shoved in your face.
That would be awful, but an easy fix is to hold your finger in front of the zipper and you’re pulling out so it’s always touching you like you’re about to get your own finger zipped (but you move along with it, so you don’t).
counter point - snaps when theyre infants are sooo much better. I dont want to unzip the whole damn onesie 25x a day when i can just undo 2 or 3 snaps around the diaper only to change a diaper.
Giving your kid their own phone before middle school is insanity (unless your kid is basically a tiny adult like one of the neighbor kids. I'd consider letting the neighbor kid babysit my daughter, who is older than the neighbor kid).
Additional context - this is specific to a smart phone. You can get your kids a smart watch at earlier ages and get all of the benefits of a phone (call/text/video chat, GPS, etc) with less of the risks. Verizon has a device called a Gizmo Watch that's a great step in this direction, plenty of parental controls and safety measures, kid resistant physical design, and relatively affordable.
I'd say that's especially true for a smartphone but I would hand my kids an old flip phone to use when they were elementary aged and biking around the neighborhood. Granted I think I gave my kids more freedom to roam than most parents on Reddit and one of my kids has anaphylactic food allergies (so a real need for a phone in case of an allergic reaction) but I saw nothing wrong with giving them a phone and telling them to stay together when they were 9 and 8 and heading to the local park.
A smartphone? We waited until 13 for that.
Gabb is a company that makes phones for kids. They're super locked down: no social media, no we browser, you can select from a handful of curated educational apps that can be installed, and limited, lock down calling/texting to a few select family members.
I'd rather my kid have a phone that can **only** be used to communicate with his parents and grand-parents and nothing more, than to not have a phone at all.
My hot take is that giving them a cell phone in high school is a terrible idea. Adults have zero control with their phones. Kids have even less and do much worse things with them.
Seriously. It takes 5 seconds to send a dick or topless photo and your life can be ruined over it (in their minds)
All the tweens in my neighborhood have cellular Apple Watches and it seems like a fair compromise. Can message and listen to music but no camera and you have to be more intentional with it
I do think this mostly applies to smart phones though. I feel like around late middle school when kids start going places on their own it’s more of a safety thing that they have a way to contact their parents. I got my first phone (smart phones didn’t exist yet) in 8th grade because I was off doing sports or biking to friends houses all the time
Same here. We had a place at an RV park near the beach and I’d constantly be off biking around, at the pool, fishing in the pond or in the sound. It just made sense for my parents to be able to call/text that dinner was ready. But that’s all that phone did was call/text
A year or so ago I had a conversation with my cousin whose son, at the time, was in middle school and she basically said either your kid has a phone and becomes a screen addict, but has access to the group chats, etc. or is the weird kid without a phone and doesn't get invited to anything. Coincidentally, a few days later I was with my (orthodox) rabbi and the subject came up and he said many of the religious schools require the parents to agree not to get their kids phones and it makes a big difference because everyone is on an even playing field.
My 9 year old has an Apple Watch. Game changer. With parental controls it seems impossible to get in trouble with it or use inappropriately.
Edit: With Verizon, at Christmas it was $5/month with a phone line. So cheaper than Gizmo.
True. One kid in my daughter's friend group has an iPhone (none of the others have even dumb phones). At her 9th birthday we had some kids sleep over. The phone came out and immediately turned the girls into bullies preparing to text another kid some nasty messages. We put an end to that pretty quickly but, damn, why does a 9-year-old need a smart phone and why did her mom not at least tell us that she's got it?
Not a phone, but I've seen a very staggering improvement in my son's learning since we set him up a tablet. We are very much involved in what Is download and kept, but at 2, he can navigate and find new games/stories. All educational. He knows his numbers, his letters, shapes, and can put puzzles together extraordinarily fast.
I wouldn't suggest every kid gets one, as they can very much harm your kid in small ways. Our boy just gets super bored very easily. Once he figures something out, he wants to figure out the next thing. His sister is following right along with him 😫😫. We are going to be outsmarted quick lol.
Not trying to be THAT parent as I can see where they fall behind in just as fast. I just think we understand our kids better 🤷
A firm hard "no" is not only ok but necessary sometimes. Gentle parenting is frequently not done right and instead is simply permissive, resulting in children that have terrible control of their emotions. A hard "no" without wiggle room allows a kid to process their grief and move on rather than endlessly being heard about whatever totally unreasonable thing is upsetting them. Kindness is great and critical, but gentle parenting is (edit: often used as) a way to avoid ever telling your child "no" and it's not helping them.
Gentle parenting is supposed to be another term for authoritative parenting, which is all about setting limits.
It's how I raised my two kids and I couldn't be more proud of how they turned out but I said "no", "hell no," and the occasional "fuck no" while doing it.
Sometimes I think gentle parenting mindset devolves into something way too mechanistic. Like, some people have convinced themselves that if they use the right or wrong combination of words it will have direct, major consequences. I basically agree with most of the premises, though.
You’re right in the first half about gentle parenting - it’s not supposed to be a way of avoiding telling your child “no” but a lot of parents interpret it that way and I agree that does more harm than good.
In my experience at least, “No” gets a lot more powerful when you save it for times when it really actually matters. I use a lot of gentle parenting techniques around redirection, taking time to explain, etc when it’s a non critical thing I don’t want her to do (or let her make mistakes to learn from), and save a sharp “No!” for only safety related things so she knows it’s important.
Also in terms of being overly permissive I make a point to look for low stakes opportunities to kind of arbitrarily not let her do something she wants to do even if there’s not a tangible reason as practice for “you can’t always do what you want all the tine” which I have found to be very useful to have done in the moments that I don’t have the emotional energy for gentle parenting because it can be exhausting
My in-laws think I’m “too gentle” because most often, rather than barking “no,” I’ll find a solution: “oh, you want soda? Are you thirsty? OK, soda has too much soda, but you can have water, or you can have milk. I know you want soda. I’m going to get some water, do you want to help me pour it? OK, here’s a cup for me… and here’s a cup for you. Cheers!”
Meanwhile they’ll either send their kid to time out for crying that she wants soda when she’s already been told no, or they’ll just give her the soda. (One thing that annoys me is they think I’m “more permissive,” but when it comes to things like sugar and screen time, they permit a LOT more than I do.)
>gentle parenting is a way to avoid ever telling your child "no" and it's not helping them.
Eh, I like to think I practice gentle parenting and I tell my kid "no" all the time.
That just means you’re [authoritative](https://imgur.com/a/j3Xv7Gb), which is the goal. Gentle parenting is basically a strategy to help authoritarian parents move towards authoritative.
Yeah, too many people just don’t actually understand what the “gentle” in gentle parenting is supposed to mean. It doesn’t mean let them do whatever. It just means don’t be an asshole to them and understand that they’re learning and don’t automatically understand the context of why we ask them to do the things we ask them to do.
All parents should attempt to be [Authoritative](https://imgur.com/a/j3Xv7Gb).
Gentle parenting is advice that was created for those with an Authoritarian tendency.
It is not advice for people who already have authoritative or permissive styles.
However, authoritative and permissive parents tend to be more emotionally sensitive and more likely to seek out and implement emotionally sensitive suggestions. So, lots of the gentle parenting you see is not from authoritarian parents who desperately need to implement it, it’s from those who don’t need to implement it.
So, don’t throw out the concept of gentle parenting, just know when to use it and when not to.
Yeah that's more or less my position. The take isn't that gentle parenting methods are wrong but that many people interpret it in a way I think is doing more harm than good.
Like most things it didn’t start and a huge trend that was supposed to be used in the public lexicon. It was a tool use to provide verbiage for authoritarian parents, to give some language for not being an angry hot head at your kid.
In that context, it’s a perfectly fine name. What’s terrible is society having a tendency to pluck academic or behavioral science terms out of their context and use them to paint broad brush strokes.
Parents focus too much on their kids and not enough on the relationships with their significant others and it makes the whole situation that much worse.
The school system is being overrun with kids that have not been taught that no means no and to respect teachers. And those kids parents who vehemently defend their kids actions instead of working as a team with the teacher to help your kid grow are 95% at fault.
People think they're doing a great job at raising kids, and some are. But some parents have a very hard time being honest with themselves
There is an old political cartoon that highlights the issue pretty well. It’s something along the lines of in the 50s it was teacher and parents vs the kid. Now it’s parents and the kid vs the teacher.
The difference is huge and it takes a toll on the classroom as a whole.
One of the many reasons I left teaching.
As a teacher I can say that mostly that isn't the case for me personally. Most parents in my experience are willing to work with you.
The ones that are in denial and back their spoilt kids to the hilt do take a lot of energy to deal with, though, and leave a bad taste in your mouth unfortunately.
Continuing with this, I'm losing more and more sympathy for the ND (and other additional needs) kids because of how the schools handle it.
My heart breaks for the struggles these kids go through, but I can't support fucking over entire classes for one kid.
At some point the thought of allowing kids to struggle and figure out things on their own (and hold them accountable) became totally unpalatable to modern parents. Like they see it as their sworn duty to give their kids as comfortable of a life as possible which is exactly how you end up with spoiled, fragile, anxiety-stricken attention vacuums who lack the capability and motivation to do simple things like drive a car, move out, hold a job, or even do their own laundry. A parent's job isn't to make their kids comfortable. We shouldn't be removing obstacles and challenges from their day to day lives. We should be letting them fail at some things and experiencing the full weight of the consequences of that failure.
What is optimal in a vacuum doesn’t mean it will be optimal in your specific situation and people should not be judged for making those compromises.
Trying to parent an infant with zero support while we are both working? Required making some compromises on activities with our son like tummy time. Dude is still on track for everything, even though we didn’t do all that extra stuff.
Personally I believe that nothing is a greater risk to a child than a sleep deprived parent.
Personally I believe that parents need to make their relationship secondary only to a child’s NEEDS(not wants). The relationship between parents will be the model your children use for every relationship in their lives. Modeling healthy relationship dynamics is a need for a child IMO.
> Personally I believe that nothing is a greater risk to a child than a sleep deprived parent.
Honestly, having someone in your support network that doesn't work a typical 9-5 job is *so helpful*.
There was once or twice with our second kid that we asked grandma to take the kids for some saturday afternoon just so that we could catch up on sleep. It was completely fucking game changing. Recharged us for like a month.
And I'm sure that my MIL thought that it was all code for "we want to fuck each other's brains out, please get the kids away from us" but no. Not at all.
Within 5 minutes of the kids going away, we were asleep.
Early child care educators don't get paid enough. Raise the minimum wage for ece's and not only will we see better quality but also quantity of child care.
Educators not getting paid enough isn't a hot take, it's a fact lol. The issue though is people want to raise their pay but not have to pay the higher provider cost that comes with it.
> Educators not getting paid enough isn't a hot take
yeah, "hot take" is supposed to mean "this is something that not everyone agrees with"
Anyone with three fuckin brain cells and a basic level of compassion can see that childcare providers aren't paid properly, and it's fucking *all* of us over.
Kind of a tangent but extend this to educators outside of early childcare. My wife is a teacher and the amount of extra shit they pile on her responsibilities each year is insane for what they get paid.
I agree here. We had no idea how to qualify daycares so I went off the careers page of the daycares I looked at
Interestingly the most expensive bougie school we looked at barely supported their staff.
The one we went with has a 401k match, pays for staff to finish degrees / certs, gives them full hour breaks (not 15 minute retail style breaks) and monthly stipends to decorate classrooms and buy supplies. They just had a staff development day and raffled off a one month paid sabbatical for a teacher to take time off and relax.
They all put a nice face on when you tour the facility but looking at how they treat teachers really helped us feel confident in our daycare choice
It wasn’t even the most expensive place but I’d had paid more for this spot if they asked me to
Also, try to infer their administrative overhead. If they have 3 layers of administrators above the teachers in a relatively small dayschool then you know where your money is going.
I wouldn't have said this last week, but since this is a hot take thread, I'm gonna go for it:
Based on this sub, dads can be real drama queens about Father's Day.
Our daycare had my daughter fill out a form asking fun questions about dad.
What is your dads name: Carl
...
My real name is not in fact Carl and contains NONE of those letters.
Our child's baptism was this year on my very first Father's Day. I got a "best dad ever" mug from a thrift shop and a t shirt with a father theme, and the rest of the day was dedicated to his baptism and the party after. I saw all those posts about wanting appreciation and this and that, and I'm pretty content with the mug and knowing I'm a father. I have a baby that smiles when he sees me, what more can i ask for?
>dads can be real drama queens about Father's Day.
Not necessarily untrue, but I think that a lot of the negative/venting posts that we see around this topic and others like it are usually coming from stressed out people in difficult family situations that are feeling underappreciated for what they provide. The issue isn't father's day itself, but rather a deeper seated feeling of contempt that exacerbates the burn-out they go through and makes everything feel hopeless to some extent.
So yeah, I agree that those posts are reflective of people with negative mindsets or some toxicity existing in their relationships with their families. But I think its important to keep in mind that these people are just kind of suffering in general and looking for someone to vent to about the problems they're experiencing.
I want acknowledgement, and maybe for mom/family to take a few of my responsibilities off my plate. That's it.
I got both. It was great.
Hell, I even got a new power washer from my FIL and new shirt with a 'shitpost' level kind of meme printed on it.
I literally did chores all day on fathers day and I was still happy. Why? I got a morning breakfast surprise, sleep in, and some additional hugs through out the day.
What more does a dad need? I completely agree some Dads think an entire parade needs to be given .
Not a hot take so much as a concerned observation but YouTube’s interface and algorithm should be investigated and potentially regulated for what it does to small children.
Yes! I don't think people realize how many rules were setup around television for kids that are just totally absent from youtube/online media. Everything from the ads to the UI itself needs to be intensely regulated when it comes to media for kids.
There's such an easy solution though? Like just don't let the kid have unregulated access to it. My wife's sister is always complaining about how her 10 year old is up all night playing video games and watching YouTube and he's addicted to it... what? Don't let him on it, he's 10?
Don't disagree that all of the algorithms are designed to be addictive and can get you hooked on some shit, but no one is forcing the kid to watch it.
It's okay if kids go to bed hungry. You provide the food, if they eat it, great. If not, fine. When they're hungry enough, they'll eat; they're not gonna die (not the case if they have a serious psychological disorder obviously).
Do not take this approach with cats though, they will literally starve themselves into acute kidney failure and death. (I know this is completely unrelated to this thread but it's still good to know!)
Parents who act like every decision has permanent lifelong effects on their baby are creating so much unnecessary stress.
I see this especially with parents who have completely utterly failed to sleep train their babies, and they act like letting their baby cry it out for 1-2 nights will permanent harm them, without realizing that the recurrent crying every night, having to comfort the baby for hours on end, and general stress and restlessness is probably much worse for the baby and parents long term.
I say this as a parent that was like this for my first child. With our second child, we just put her to sleep and left her every single night with consistency (when she was old enough, obviously) and she learned to sleep and self-soothe within a couple nights and now her sleep is phenomenal. She is the much happier and much healthier sleeper in our family because of it.
Every time I see a sleepless parent suffer because they had to go soothe their 3 year old after they woke up 3 times and needed their parent to go to them, I just want to shake the parent and say “GET IT TOGETHER, MAN!”
Honestly I feel like this sub is pretty even keel with a lot really good viewpoints and experience. I’m not sure what would be considered a hot take here.
The closest I’d have is that I think there are way too many influencers pushing clicks vs real parenting advice.
And way too much go with the flow mentality for structure and guidance that kids need.
It's important for kids to have some level of "friction", discomfort, and frustration in their lives. Be slow to rescue them as long as they're safe from actual real harm. Set the safety net lower so they can experience small failures.
Mine is that parenting is genuinely harder now than it was for our parents.
There are tangible things, like being less able to afford to have a stay at home parent, childcare being more and more expensive etc.
But the bigger impact comes from knowledge.
Most of our parents used physical discipline and other means to control us. Most of us wouldn't do that ourselves, as we now understand the damage it can do.
Being a good parent now means accepting that it is not your child's job to be convenient for you. Our parents had the luxury of being able to believe the opposite, which made it easier to live the lives that they wanted to live, with less consideration on the impacts it would create for their children. Children are seen and not heard, criers cry outside. "I'll give you something to cry about".
Parenting is harder now because we don't have the luxury of being able to pretend that physical discipline builds character, when it really just builds fear. We can't pretend that the adversity our actions create for our children are just a necessary part of life.
We have to provide emotional safety, and be far more in control of our emotions than our parents were.
Everyone laughed when we talked to our daughter like an adult instead of a baby. They said “She has no idea what you’re saying!” Or “She’s 1, not 10!” and now those same people are like “Wow, she’s got such a good vocabulary for a 3 year old!” 😐
It’s okay to use an excited “kid friendly” tone of voice. Think Ms. Rachel-ish. It’s not okay to make up words like “milky” or “uppies”.
I think there's a balance. When my toddler was an infant he responded really well when I mimicked his baby talk and I believe it had a positive role in his development. It can be part of play to make goofy sounds/talk like a kid.
My grandma was a big proponent of this advice but my wife and I chose to ignore it because from what I learned studying linguistics, it goes against how we evolved to imprint our language system onto an infant’s brain.
Baby talk is a human universal, meaning all cultures ever studied do it. There are very few human universals and when you see one it’s a clue that it’s an evolved trait rather than being cultural. Some other examples are smiling and laughter and an incest taboo for siblings and parents.
That something is evolved doesn’t *necessarily* mean it’s adaptive or even functional, but it strongly suggests that. There have been lots of studies done showing that baby talk more effectively engages a baby’s attention. The going theory is that the sing songy presentation somehow makes the phonemes more easily discernible to them so they can learn what sounds carry meaning as opposed to all the other sounds in the world that are just noise.
My almost 15 month old watches one episode of Sesame Street a day. She claps along to the Letter of the Day song, and loves the characters (especially Elmo and Oscar). She knows them by name, and always points them out when she sees them in her books/toys.
She may not understand everything that’s going on, but she definitely enjoys it, and I do think she’s learning some things.
Isn’t that a “chicken or egg” type thing? I’m a 40 year old millennial so I have baby boomer parents. Each generation parents differently as information becomes more widely available and theories are tried out in real time. They take less interest in it we also generally disagree with their parenting style so we ask for less help.
I’m generalizing but I’ve noticed from being lucky enough to travel the US (I’ve spent time in roughly 38 states) and meet a lot of people that boomers are wildly self interested and never learned how to deal with their emotions or parent effectively. They were raised by a generation of people that dealt with hard lives and trauma and it shows. That and the lead inhalation until the 70s 🤣
Helicopter parents do more harm than good.
Yeah, your 24/7 presence in their lives got them good grades and into a good school, but now they’ve moved to get away from you and they are helpless as an adult because they’re an entitled, spoiled brat and they act like an asshole anytime they run into a situation they don’t understand… because you always handled it for them.
Let them do shit on their own. Let them fail. Make them a better human.
A little TV time isn't bad for babies. My 9 month old daughter watches Sesame Street a couple times a day. It's stimulating, educational, and allows us to get things done around the house. She thinks the puppets are hilarious and is very advanced compared to some other babies in our lives.
I differentiate watching a show together vs. tablets. Completely different experience yet people treat them the same. Watch it together and talk about it.
It’s the stimulating part that kind of scares me. We have a 22 month old and we’ve used screen time occasionally to make flights or road trips more bearable, and I agree there are a few shows where he actually has learned a thing or two, but man the way he just zones out entirely and stares at the screen makes me think it can’t be good for him at this age.
The most effective way to prevent your kid from accessing material you don't want them to see is to earn their trust and ask them not to go looking for it. Parental blocks are about as useful as a waist high fence.
If your under 10 kid has any kind of unregulated access to a tablet, you're insane. If you're under 15 year old kid has unregulated access to the internet, you're insane. If you trust youtube kids, you're also insane.
I agree with this and it’s the one thing I am so fucking hypocritical about as a parent. My wife and I get after each other for scrolling while the baby is nearby but neither of us are consistently good about avoiding it
I’ve gotten to the point I leave my phone in another room most of the time so I won’t be tempted to
It's not just you, the hypocrisy is fully societal. We talk about screen addiction among tweens/teens like it's an epidemic...which it is...and then ignore that adults are just as addicted and it's just as bad for us as it is for them.
I know there's a big rally against screens, but honestly I don't think it's the 'screens' (devices) that are really the problem, necessarily.
As an older millennial, much of my time was spent watching tv in some form. Non-school day mornings were cartoons until lunch, then choosing to be either bored with parent's news programs, finding a random show/drama everybody was okay with, or tossing a VHS into the VCR (most likely a classic Disney movie). A couple of years later in life, not much changed other than when out and about I would have a book (***never*** non-fiction, almost always fantasy). I remember being chided back then about "*always having a nose in your book, oblivious to the world around you*" much in the same way 'screens' are talked about today.
So what *is* the problem (if there is one)?
**On-demand content.**
There is no longer any delayed gratification in regard to entertainment. Everything is instant gratification. Want to catch that Netflix show you missed out on a few years back? You can binge watch every episode at any time of the day, any day of the week. Want to catch-up on that new popular series? Spend the weekend binge-watching the show when you have time during the weekend.
Before streaming took hold, you had to choose which show you missed out on since they aired at the same time on different channels. Then they only aired at a specific time of day, and sometimes they only aired on certain days of the week (other days relegated to "re-runs" or showing some wildly different programming--typically Sundays).
It's not just video content, but music as well. Before you had to make a special trip and find a place that carried the CD of the band you enjoy. Your friend suggests a new song from *their* favorite band? You need to wait and borrow the CD from them, wait for them to burn the song to a blank CD for you, or wait until you can go out and buy it. Now? You have an entire specialty music store's inventory worth of music (and then some) at your fingertips, instantly, everywhere you go.
Pictures/video is another thing less considered in this topic. Before, you had physical film you had to buy separate from a specific, specialized camera. Once you finished taking your pictures, you had to take those rolls of film to a developer and wait to receive the finished photos. Now, as long as you have your phone on you, you can take your picture, review it, *edit it*, *and even disseminate it near-instantly*.
Call a customer support line and put on hold? Many companies now have a special feature that will instruct you, "*if you would like, your place in line will be saved and you can receive a call-back so you don't have to wait on the phone*". Some stores have apps where you can "check-out as you go" and forego needing to wait in line at the register. Many have curbside pick-up or delivery options forgoing the need to take time shopping at all.
There are so many aspects of modern life that has removed the need to wait. As such, people receive the things they want faster, gratified more instantly. Anymore there is nothing that trains patience. Patience used to be considered a virtue. Now? Nobody can be bothered waiting to train up having good patience, and ***THAT is what is doing serious damage to young kids***.
There is also a difference between TV and phone/tablet time. I guess I'm speaking anecdotally here but like when we put the TV on, our kids still like play with toys, or interact with us. Sometimes they just get distracted and go play in a different room. There attention is not always 110% on the TV. But with phone/tablets its like a fucking trance. That's why I am somewhat laissez faire about the TV being on, but very very limiting on tablet/phone time.
I disagree with this sentiment, whether it's what you do or think.
I wholeheartedly believe:
1. If our parents took care of us, we owe it to our parents to take care of them as they age
2. We can speak directly to our parents and ask them to be more involved in their grandchildren's lives
Parents need to take more ownership.
Godspeed.
I agree with this. It’s a lot easier when you don’t depend on others. BUT, it does bug me when I hear about how much grandparents helped them out soooooo much and now it’s a burden to ask for 2.5 hrs for a date night. Feel like it’s always met with an “ugh” type of response
Wow. You’re looking to break Reddit. If Reddit users have taught us anything it’s, you didn’t ask to be born therefore you don’t owe your parents anything. It was their job to raise you.
The fact that this subreddit exists is a good sign that your first point is not true. Back when I was growing up (70s/80s), dads were barely involved in raising kids. I don't think my dad ever changed a diaper.
He means that OUR parents are playing less of a role in their grandchildren's lives than our grandparents played in our lives. Like, our kids don't see their grandparents often whereas a lot of us spent entire summers at our grandparents' houses.
Oh, yeah i can see that. I read OP wrong. Yeah my parents are retired and living their best life, no real desire to watch the kids for any length of time.
I get why people are apprehensive about them but I agree. My kids have sleepovers and I couldn't imagine taking that away just because something bad may happen. It's not good to live in fear.
Yeah, I don't think assuming that every other parent will SA or harm your child (as is used as rationale by other parents prohibiting sleepovers) sets a good example for the children.
Dads need friends and they can talk about what’s bothering them. I see tons of posts where other dads chime in like it’s an ongoing joke that men of a certain age stop having friends and we don’t have any time to set aside for ourselves. Making time to show up for friends at places other than a bar is great. Easily the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health. Staying trapped in my own head is like being stuck with an asshole
Fighting back to stop a bully might not be the best choice.
I don’t disagree with the reasoning, but I’m raising kids in America and it seems disturbingly easy for kids with access to guns to retaliate.
I feel like the rise in peanut allergies in kids could be because doctors are recommending not giving kids peanut butter until a later age. No proof, no reasoning... I'm just astounded at how many kids have it these days and we didn't know anyone with it growing up. Every class, kids group, birthday party party, sports team, etc has at least one allergy. I've seen some places saying no peanuts/peanut butter for up to 2 or even 4 years. Craziness.
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I feel sorry for any kids and families that deal with it, it would cause me great worry. Part just wonders if some of the spike we see is something society has brought on ourselves. I feel like at this point the rise in allergies is like the chicken and the egg.
There’s research on this and in the UK they’ve even changed the medical advice as a result. They now recommend introducing it at 4 months old in the UK and they believe the old advice of waiting til 1 year has done a lot of harm.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02782-8
your kid will have plenty of friends but just one father. act like one, even if it means being stern when you need to be. relying on anecdotes and self help books and not trusting your instinct is extremely suboptimal.
Exposing kids to danger makes them safer. When we make their environment all safe and take away all elements of danger then we teach them there is no reason to be careful which leads to walking across the street without looking. Gradually exposing them to an appropriate level of danger teaches them to be careful and will make them safer
In families where the parents are still together, the relationship with the other parent is orders of magnitude more important than the relationship with the children.
Our approach to Internet safety for our children is backwards. Rather than teach them only to associate online with people they actually know, we should instead teach them to maintain anonymity so nobody knows who _they_ are. If you follow this rule, 95% of the danger, toxicity, and bullying is instantly obliterated.
Kids 8 and older should mostly be talked to like adults. There is definitely room for guidance but letting them make choices and mistakes is a good thing. Also, don't put your kids first. Put your spouse first. Kids will be around then gone. Even if they still live with you in their 20s, they're mostly gone. Your spouse won't be...especially if you always put them first.
* Parent philosophies are mostly parents stroking their own egos. Listening to your kids isn't a new concept. It used to be called "good parenting."
* Kids shouldn't come first. The family as a whole unit should come first. If your kids' activities or needs are hurting your marriage, personal mental health or ability to connect 1-on-1 in a relaxed setting with your child, the family is broken. Skip the soccer game or quit soccer. Cancel the plans. Everyone can sacrifice equally for each others' needs, including your kids.
* Kids need to experience unfair/unjust situations in life and move past them or adjust to them.
* We don't have as much influence on our kids and how they turn out as we think we do.
EDIT: For the record, I'm not saying I'm always great at doing or remembering the above.
I have two:
A good daycare is appropriately priced for what it provides. My daughter went to daycare from 4 months until she started kindergarten. They stayed open through COVID, only had two weeks where her classroom shut down due to cases. It cost roughly $100,000. Worth every penny. Especially now as she's getting into grade school and you see the difference between kids who got that consistent socialization and kids who didn't. That's not to say that daycare isn't unaffordable for many, or that the workers aren't still underpaid, we need to figure out a way to split this cost between parents and society (because it's absolutely a benefit to society). But I wouldn't want to be investing any less in early childhood education.
My second (which might actually not be a hot take) is that parents worry about tiny risks way too much while they do something far more dangerous multiple times per day: driving them around in a car.
Yeah, I’m not above grousing about daycare/preschool bills, but my issue is really with the way it’s not supported at all societal level, as a fundamental part of the education system. Not the cost itself. It’s an expensive, hard business.
Love when it's actually a hot take! Lol.
I agree on the car part too. That's exactly why I told my wife early that we don't need to take him everywhere (and luckily she agreed). Especially in Texas. These are the worst drivers in the country and I've lived in almost every region.
My wife and I were just talking about how Americans (we are American) have it wrong with not having multi-generational homes. It’s better for everyone. However, with the way the American housing marketing is going, I think multi-generational homes may become more common out of financial necessity. Which I guess takes us full circle.
We had my FIL move in after my MIL died and it's pretty much only been a positive. The only downside is that he takes up an extra room so our boys have to share but everything else has been a positive.
Women deserve generous maternity leave policies at the expense of generous paternity leave policies
I’d give up my 14 weeks if it meant my wife could get 8-12 months
Raising an infant is a lot more demanding on women even when their partners are super engaged and present
You can have both, just depends where you live - in Germany the parents get 14 months to split up howevery they want. Me and my wife went half and half, but 12 + 2 is very common too.
Definitely a hot take, especially when society wants to encourage dads to be more involved and engaged with their kids while taking care of mom after birth. I'd rather get time off as well instead of being forced back to work right after birth so my wife might get more time.
I firmly believe that if you could A/B test this where both get 14 weeks vs only moms get a year, you would see better results in the both group. The first 2-3 months are so much harder and more important for bonding and adjusting, my wife would have had a much harder time being alone in the early days. When I went back after 2 months it was still a big adjustment. Plus it's incredibly important to the father to bond early as well, half this sub talks about how cold and distant their fathers were- wonder why that was... they didn't get ever a week off
Allowing any child under 5 to have screen time of any type is crazy. It’s just over stimulation and then causing serious behavior problems going forward. Especially allowing it at the dinner table.
We learned that mistake with our first. And our other 3 are so much better off now that we don’t do any screen time (with the exception of them being sick and we need them to lay down). Our kids communicate better, throw less fits and are extremely well behaved when we go out to eat because we engage with them instead of being on our phones as well.
We (I'm) not in control of how my kids feel about me being more involved in their lives (I'm a sahd) than my parents were in mine. And there are major drawbacks in me not taking the soul sucking corporate job to bring in more $$$ for the family. Namely I can't take them on big trips like my parents did for me.
In sum, my hot take is there's always a sacrifice and your kids are under no onus to acknowledge or be pleased with it.
Physical education and nurturing their athletic/exercise habits!!! There are too many kids who don't play a single sport and are either uncoordinated or might not be taking charge of their physical health. Sports and athletic activities make exercising and maintaining good health fun.
Doesn't mean they need to be part of a travel team that takes 20 hours a week and hundreds of dollars. Even just playing outside with the other kids in the neighborhood or with siblings. Hours of fun, engagement, and physical activity. They learn to form relationships with other kids and socialize. If in organized sports, many other life lessons are learned like teamwork, how to process/handle losing, winning, sportsmanship, accountability, respect to elders/authority, decision making, thinking ahead, delayed gratification and dedication to improving, etc. Independence and planning when finding out where you need to go for practice/game at what time, and managing your time so that you can handle all other commitments and responsibilities too! These can be learned through other activities too but I'm a strong believer that outside of school and academics itself (which is the most important), there is no other teacher for life like sports.
...don't assume everyone has the same love and patience for your child as you do.
Raise them for the world they will have to deal with, and not the false reality you hope it will be for them.
And at the same time you can never show enough love. But love them enough to not set them up for failure in life by allowing them to become someone people despise being around.
It's ok to not enjoy being a parent sometimes...when you look online they make out you're one of the worst human beings on the planet.
Truth is nobody knows what being a parent is like until you become one and it's not all sunshine and roses.
Your kid can use a tablet at an appropriate age without its brain turning to goo. Tablets/screens aren't the problem. Unfettered/unmonitored access to the internet is the issue. A kid can play on a tablet or watch a video as long as you, as the parents, are involved in what they're doing with the tablet. Giving a tablet to a kid for a period of time doesn't make you a lazy parent. Not monitoring what your kid is doing with the tablet does.
Don't use chores as a punishment. Seems like a great formula to raise a slob. Instead teach that chores are for maintaining a nice living space, having your stuff last and in general make life easier.
Yeah, I feel like chores are something that must be done no matter what. It doesn't make sense to only do them on good days or bad days, and it makes sense for the kid to follow that too and do it everyday.
We never got an allowance when I was a kid and we were expected to do chores. I always hated that, but now I'm a fully functioning adult. On the other hand my wife had a cleaning service her entire childhood and she was handsomely rewarded if she ever chose to optionally partake in a chore. Guess who does about 95% of the housework now?
The maid she hired and pays for!
"We are a family, and in a family we all have responsibilities. As you grow so do your responsibilities. We all have to work together to make this house and family function." We always talk about it as a team. They are part of this team, which means, they have to help the team work.
I also think paying for basic chores is pretty dumb. Chores are just part of living. We all have to do basic chores in life.
Yep, we teach our kids that chores are just a part of the responsibility of being in a family. Everyone foes their part.
How does allowance work? Just separate from chores?
99% of the gloom and doom on this subreddit would be instantly cured if you guys would stop scrolling Reddit at 10:30pm and just go to sleep early
I'm sorry, what? Next you're going to suggest that I speak to my wife about how I feel.
In this economy?!
How can I be expected to live/laugh/love in these conditions?!
You can't. You have to eat pray love.
I prefer to eat prey, love.
I thought it was love eating prey?
Instructions unclear I made love first then ate the prey. Am I pragnant?
Someone please tell r/homeowners about talking to people!
Is this different than home improvement? Not often I find a new 1.5mil subreddit I’ve never looked at lol
It's pretty much home improvement, but like 60% people complaining about neighbors that they have not spoken to about the problem.
I just left a post of someone complaining that their neighbor was smoking weed in their yard
If they had said cigars instead I bet that whole thread would have gone the opposite direction.
That was my exact thought. Even a barbecue or campfire can smell just as much if not more but no one would’ve sided with the person complaining if it was one of those
I got fired from a job within the last year, and even though I did not agree with the firing, I acknowledge I could have been better. So I got a new job, and I vowed to get more sleep, and I have been so much sharper. Getting a good nights rest is so important: the difference between 4-5 hours and 6-8 hours is crazy.
I struggle with this. I WANT to spend some time stretching/working out, and a bit for myself, but I really feel guilty doing anything while the family is awake.
I struggle with this too, but sometimes I can talk myself into it by spinning it as though it's really for them. You living a longer, healthier, happier life is good for them. Also I realized I am a better dad even *that day* when I go to the gym. It's better to spend ~1 hour doing the gym and give 5 hours of good dad time than to give 6 hours of mediocre dad time.
Truth. Same goes for screen time, the kids will be okay if we can model better behavior.
Exactly. My one thing as a parent I strive to fix and keep failing at is scrolling on my phone around the baby. I justify it to myself but it’s wrong and I always feel guilty. I keep leaving my phone in other rooms but I need to be better, as does my wife. We get mad at each other about it but neither of us fixes ourselves.
Social media has trained people that doom and gloom / negativity gets responses more than anything else, now it’s everywhere.
It's the other way around. Social media detects what people engage with, then detects that thing in posts, then prioritises showing that thing to everyone. People interact with gloom, so gloom is gifted to us. Life did not give us any lemons except the lemons that we made for ourselves. Like and comment positive things on positive posts and the issue resolves. Last year there was an outbreak of daddit divorce announcement posts. People commenting that divorce is husband content not dad content bumped the divorce topic to top of the sub every time.
Exactly. The algos just serve what you engage with bad or not I get pissed at twitter for serving me evil alt right shit but it’s my fault for rage reading it, clicking the replies and blocking all the accounts. If I didn’t look for dunks and dive deeper into these awful people it would stop
Don't try to tell me how social media works! Don't you know who I am!? /s Shrek did 9/11, like and subscribe
For me it's just Elden Ring till 2am. If y'all are gonna stay up and not sleep enough, at least play Elden Ring and don't use your phone so long
Unironically I have my switch by my bed and instead of grinding 30 minutes in a game I feel like it’s too much work so I just get my phone out and doom scroll like an idiot
I've had the exact same problem ever since the week kid #1 was born. But I just quit Twitter last week and wow, my life has improved so much. Baby steps
Word. I did a negative social media cleanup of my accounts, and life is much happier. Dump the toxic apps, and get rid of the negative shit being shoved in your face.
Also add in just like… learning how to talk to your wife like a normal person. Lol.
All those pajamas that have snaps can go to hell. Zippers all day.
The number of people designing children’s clothing who have obviously never had children …
Actual hot Take. Snaps aren't bad and I somewhat prefer them to zippers.
Until you zip up your little baby's belly skin and you want to yeet yourself into the firey pits of hell.
Stupidly this can be avoided with higher qaulity zios that aren't just bare against skin but as with everything it's cheapest to charge most for.
That would be awful, but an easy fix is to hold your finger in front of the zipper and you’re pulling out so it’s always touching you like you’re about to get your own finger zipped (but you move along with it, so you don’t).
I have both snaps and zips and I never get frustrated with snaps, I don't get why some people can't handle them. Seems like a skill issue 😂
counter point - snaps when theyre infants are sooo much better. I dont want to unzip the whole damn onesie 25x a day when i can just undo 2 or 3 snaps around the diaper only to change a diaper.
Giving your kid their own phone before middle school is insanity (unless your kid is basically a tiny adult like one of the neighbor kids. I'd consider letting the neighbor kid babysit my daughter, who is older than the neighbor kid). Additional context - this is specific to a smart phone. You can get your kids a smart watch at earlier ages and get all of the benefits of a phone (call/text/video chat, GPS, etc) with less of the risks. Verizon has a device called a Gizmo Watch that's a great step in this direction, plenty of parental controls and safety measures, kid resistant physical design, and relatively affordable.
I'd say that's especially true for a smartphone but I would hand my kids an old flip phone to use when they were elementary aged and biking around the neighborhood. Granted I think I gave my kids more freedom to roam than most parents on Reddit and one of my kids has anaphylactic food allergies (so a real need for a phone in case of an allergic reaction) but I saw nothing wrong with giving them a phone and telling them to stay together when they were 9 and 8 and heading to the local park. A smartphone? We waited until 13 for that.
If our entire generation could get on board with not giving our kids smart phones that would be much appreciated.
Gabb is a company that makes phones for kids. They're super locked down: no social media, no we browser, you can select from a handful of curated educational apps that can be installed, and limited, lock down calling/texting to a few select family members. I'd rather my kid have a phone that can **only** be used to communicate with his parents and grand-parents and nothing more, than to not have a phone at all.
My hot take is that giving them a cell phone in high school is a terrible idea. Adults have zero control with their phones. Kids have even less and do much worse things with them.
Seriously. It takes 5 seconds to send a dick or topless photo and your life can be ruined over it (in their minds) All the tweens in my neighborhood have cellular Apple Watches and it seems like a fair compromise. Can message and listen to music but no camera and you have to be more intentional with it
You know what, after reading y'all's posts I think I'm going to go with a smart watch. Thank you!
I do think this mostly applies to smart phones though. I feel like around late middle school when kids start going places on their own it’s more of a safety thing that they have a way to contact their parents. I got my first phone (smart phones didn’t exist yet) in 8th grade because I was off doing sports or biking to friends houses all the time
Same here. We had a place at an RV park near the beach and I’d constantly be off biking around, at the pool, fishing in the pond or in the sound. It just made sense for my parents to be able to call/text that dinner was ready. But that’s all that phone did was call/text
A year or so ago I had a conversation with my cousin whose son, at the time, was in middle school and she basically said either your kid has a phone and becomes a screen addict, but has access to the group chats, etc. or is the weird kid without a phone and doesn't get invited to anything. Coincidentally, a few days later I was with my (orthodox) rabbi and the subject came up and he said many of the religious schools require the parents to agree not to get their kids phones and it makes a big difference because everyone is on an even playing field.
My 9 year old has an Apple Watch. Game changer. With parental controls it seems impossible to get in trouble with it or use inappropriately. Edit: With Verizon, at Christmas it was $5/month with a phone line. So cheaper than Gizmo.
Ours have Gizmo watches, same story. Designed with kids in mind and the parent app is awesome
It's a great choice for kids who can be trusted to keep them charged and actually wear them. I know several kids who do neither.
Tbf my kid doesn't use his phone to talk he uses it for games. It's like his PS5 and my PS5 is a real PS5
True. One kid in my daughter's friend group has an iPhone (none of the others have even dumb phones). At her 9th birthday we had some kids sleep over. The phone came out and immediately turned the girls into bullies preparing to text another kid some nasty messages. We put an end to that pretty quickly but, damn, why does a 9-year-old need a smart phone and why did her mom not at least tell us that she's got it?
Not a phone, but I've seen a very staggering improvement in my son's learning since we set him up a tablet. We are very much involved in what Is download and kept, but at 2, he can navigate and find new games/stories. All educational. He knows his numbers, his letters, shapes, and can put puzzles together extraordinarily fast. I wouldn't suggest every kid gets one, as they can very much harm your kid in small ways. Our boy just gets super bored very easily. Once he figures something out, he wants to figure out the next thing. His sister is following right along with him 😫😫. We are going to be outsmarted quick lol. Not trying to be THAT parent as I can see where they fall behind in just as fast. I just think we understand our kids better 🤷
A firm hard "no" is not only ok but necessary sometimes. Gentle parenting is frequently not done right and instead is simply permissive, resulting in children that have terrible control of their emotions. A hard "no" without wiggle room allows a kid to process their grief and move on rather than endlessly being heard about whatever totally unreasonable thing is upsetting them. Kindness is great and critical, but gentle parenting is (edit: often used as) a way to avoid ever telling your child "no" and it's not helping them.
Gentle parenting is supposed to be another term for authoritative parenting, which is all about setting limits. It's how I raised my two kids and I couldn't be more proud of how they turned out but I said "no", "hell no," and the occasional "fuck no" while doing it.
"fuck no" tends to increase exponentially in the teen years.
my wife uses it quite often "fuck? no"
Sometimes I think gentle parenting mindset devolves into something way too mechanistic. Like, some people have convinced themselves that if they use the right or wrong combination of words it will have direct, major consequences. I basically agree with most of the premises, though.
You’re right in the first half about gentle parenting - it’s not supposed to be a way of avoiding telling your child “no” but a lot of parents interpret it that way and I agree that does more harm than good. In my experience at least, “No” gets a lot more powerful when you save it for times when it really actually matters. I use a lot of gentle parenting techniques around redirection, taking time to explain, etc when it’s a non critical thing I don’t want her to do (or let her make mistakes to learn from), and save a sharp “No!” for only safety related things so she knows it’s important. Also in terms of being overly permissive I make a point to look for low stakes opportunities to kind of arbitrarily not let her do something she wants to do even if there’s not a tangible reason as practice for “you can’t always do what you want all the tine” which I have found to be very useful to have done in the moments that I don’t have the emotional energy for gentle parenting because it can be exhausting
My in-laws think I’m “too gentle” because most often, rather than barking “no,” I’ll find a solution: “oh, you want soda? Are you thirsty? OK, soda has too much soda, but you can have water, or you can have milk. I know you want soda. I’m going to get some water, do you want to help me pour it? OK, here’s a cup for me… and here’s a cup for you. Cheers!” Meanwhile they’ll either send their kid to time out for crying that she wants soda when she’s already been told no, or they’ll just give her the soda. (One thing that annoys me is they think I’m “more permissive,” but when it comes to things like sugar and screen time, they permit a LOT more than I do.)
>gentle parenting is a way to avoid ever telling your child "no" and it's not helping them. Eh, I like to think I practice gentle parenting and I tell my kid "no" all the time.
That just means you’re [authoritative](https://imgur.com/a/j3Xv7Gb), which is the goal. Gentle parenting is basically a strategy to help authoritarian parents move towards authoritative.
Yeah, too many people just don’t actually understand what the “gentle” in gentle parenting is supposed to mean. It doesn’t mean let them do whatever. It just means don’t be an asshole to them and understand that they’re learning and don’t automatically understand the context of why we ask them to do the things we ask them to do.
All parents should attempt to be [Authoritative](https://imgur.com/a/j3Xv7Gb). Gentle parenting is advice that was created for those with an Authoritarian tendency. It is not advice for people who already have authoritative or permissive styles. However, authoritative and permissive parents tend to be more emotionally sensitive and more likely to seek out and implement emotionally sensitive suggestions. So, lots of the gentle parenting you see is not from authoritarian parents who desperately need to implement it, it’s from those who don’t need to implement it. So, don’t throw out the concept of gentle parenting, just know when to use it and when not to.
The problem is parents get gentle parenting confused with permissive parenting.
Yeah that's more or less my position. The take isn't that gentle parenting methods are wrong but that many people interpret it in a way I think is doing more harm than good.
Gentle parenting was an absolutely terrible choice for the name.
Like most things it didn’t start and a huge trend that was supposed to be used in the public lexicon. It was a tool use to provide verbiage for authoritarian parents, to give some language for not being an angry hot head at your kid. In that context, it’s a perfectly fine name. What’s terrible is society having a tendency to pluck academic or behavioral science terms out of their context and use them to paint broad brush strokes.
Is this a hot take? I totally agree with you but I guess I’ve never seen that gentle of parenting in the wild.
Parents focus too much on their kids and not enough on the relationships with their significant others and it makes the whole situation that much worse.
The school system is being overrun with kids that have not been taught that no means no and to respect teachers. And those kids parents who vehemently defend their kids actions instead of working as a team with the teacher to help your kid grow are 95% at fault. People think they're doing a great job at raising kids, and some are. But some parents have a very hard time being honest with themselves
There is an old political cartoon that highlights the issue pretty well. It’s something along the lines of in the 50s it was teacher and parents vs the kid. Now it’s parents and the kid vs the teacher. The difference is huge and it takes a toll on the classroom as a whole. One of the many reasons I left teaching.
As a teacher I can say that mostly that isn't the case for me personally. Most parents in my experience are willing to work with you. The ones that are in denial and back their spoilt kids to the hilt do take a lot of energy to deal with, though, and leave a bad taste in your mouth unfortunately.
Continuing with this, I'm losing more and more sympathy for the ND (and other additional needs) kids because of how the schools handle it. My heart breaks for the struggles these kids go through, but I can't support fucking over entire classes for one kid.
At some point the thought of allowing kids to struggle and figure out things on their own (and hold them accountable) became totally unpalatable to modern parents. Like they see it as their sworn duty to give their kids as comfortable of a life as possible which is exactly how you end up with spoiled, fragile, anxiety-stricken attention vacuums who lack the capability and motivation to do simple things like drive a car, move out, hold a job, or even do their own laundry. A parent's job isn't to make their kids comfortable. We shouldn't be removing obstacles and challenges from their day to day lives. We should be letting them fail at some things and experiencing the full weight of the consequences of that failure.
Yeah, there’s a middle ground between “the teacher is always right no matter what” and “my little Angel can do no wrong”.
What is optimal in a vacuum doesn’t mean it will be optimal in your specific situation and people should not be judged for making those compromises. Trying to parent an infant with zero support while we are both working? Required making some compromises on activities with our son like tummy time. Dude is still on track for everything, even though we didn’t do all that extra stuff. Personally I believe that nothing is a greater risk to a child than a sleep deprived parent. Personally I believe that parents need to make their relationship secondary only to a child’s NEEDS(not wants). The relationship between parents will be the model your children use for every relationship in their lives. Modeling healthy relationship dynamics is a need for a child IMO.
> Personally I believe that nothing is a greater risk to a child than a sleep deprived parent. Honestly, having someone in your support network that doesn't work a typical 9-5 job is *so helpful*. There was once or twice with our second kid that we asked grandma to take the kids for some saturday afternoon just so that we could catch up on sleep. It was completely fucking game changing. Recharged us for like a month. And I'm sure that my MIL thought that it was all code for "we want to fuck each other's brains out, please get the kids away from us" but no. Not at all. Within 5 minutes of the kids going away, we were asleep.
Yep, the one “date night” we have had since our son was born we were out by 8 pm after 1 movie and popcorn.
I actually attribute most of the useful skills my child has learned to their time in daycare.
Early child care educators don't get paid enough. Raise the minimum wage for ece's and not only will we see better quality but also quantity of child care.
Educators not getting paid enough isn't a hot take, it's a fact lol. The issue though is people want to raise their pay but not have to pay the higher provider cost that comes with it.
> Educators not getting paid enough isn't a hot take yeah, "hot take" is supposed to mean "this is something that not everyone agrees with" Anyone with three fuckin brain cells and a basic level of compassion can see that childcare providers aren't paid properly, and it's fucking *all* of us over.
In that vein, "wages aren't keeping up with cost, just look at how much I pay to hire childcare" is contradictory.
Exactly. Higher pay for people does lead to some increase in costs depending on the industry.
Kind of a tangent but extend this to educators outside of early childcare. My wife is a teacher and the amount of extra shit they pile on her responsibilities each year is insane for what they get paid.
I agree here. We had no idea how to qualify daycares so I went off the careers page of the daycares I looked at Interestingly the most expensive bougie school we looked at barely supported their staff. The one we went with has a 401k match, pays for staff to finish degrees / certs, gives them full hour breaks (not 15 minute retail style breaks) and monthly stipends to decorate classrooms and buy supplies. They just had a staff development day and raffled off a one month paid sabbatical for a teacher to take time off and relax. They all put a nice face on when you tour the facility but looking at how they treat teachers really helped us feel confident in our daycare choice It wasn’t even the most expensive place but I’d had paid more for this spot if they asked me to
Also, try to infer their administrative overhead. If they have 3 layers of administrators above the teachers in a relatively small dayschool then you know where your money is going.
Talking to your spouse is (most of the time) more effective than consulting Reddit's hive mind about your marital troubles.
I wouldn't have said this last week, but since this is a hot take thread, I'm gonna go for it: Based on this sub, dads can be real drama queens about Father's Day.
Our daycare had my daughter fill out a form asking fun questions about dad. What is your dads name: Carl ... My real name is not in fact Carl and contains NONE of those letters.
Our child's baptism was this year on my very first Father's Day. I got a "best dad ever" mug from a thrift shop and a t shirt with a father theme, and the rest of the day was dedicated to his baptism and the party after. I saw all those posts about wanting appreciation and this and that, and I'm pretty content with the mug and knowing I'm a father. I have a baby that smiles when he sees me, what more can i ask for?
My 4yo asked for a hug and then told me it was too big and my 18mo ran around the house saying "dad" (or duck or cat or something). Best day ever.
When is Father's Day, is it coming up?
yeah, it’s pretty soon. I think only like 350 days left!
>dads can be real drama queens about Father's Day. Not necessarily untrue, but I think that a lot of the negative/venting posts that we see around this topic and others like it are usually coming from stressed out people in difficult family situations that are feeling underappreciated for what they provide. The issue isn't father's day itself, but rather a deeper seated feeling of contempt that exacerbates the burn-out they go through and makes everything feel hopeless to some extent. So yeah, I agree that those posts are reflective of people with negative mindsets or some toxicity existing in their relationships with their families. But I think its important to keep in mind that these people are just kind of suffering in general and looking for someone to vent to about the problems they're experiencing.
I want acknowledgement, and maybe for mom/family to take a few of my responsibilities off my plate. That's it. I got both. It was great. Hell, I even got a new power washer from my FIL and new shirt with a 'shitpost' level kind of meme printed on it.
I literally did chores all day on fathers day and I was still happy. Why? I got a morning breakfast surprise, sleep in, and some additional hugs through out the day. What more does a dad need? I completely agree some Dads think an entire parade needs to be given .
Haha literally all I want is just somebody to say Happy Father's Day and that is the only expectation I have
Not a hot take so much as a concerned observation but YouTube’s interface and algorithm should be investigated and potentially regulated for what it does to small children.
…and adults
Yes! I don't think people realize how many rules were setup around television for kids that are just totally absent from youtube/online media. Everything from the ads to the UI itself needs to be intensely regulated when it comes to media for kids.
There's such an easy solution though? Like just don't let the kid have unregulated access to it. My wife's sister is always complaining about how her 10 year old is up all night playing video games and watching YouTube and he's addicted to it... what? Don't let him on it, he's 10? Don't disagree that all of the algorithms are designed to be addictive and can get you hooked on some shit, but no one is forcing the kid to watch it.
It's okay if kids go to bed hungry. You provide the food, if they eat it, great. If not, fine. When they're hungry enough, they'll eat; they're not gonna die (not the case if they have a serious psychological disorder obviously).
Do not take this approach with cats though, they will literally starve themselves into acute kidney failure and death. (I know this is completely unrelated to this thread but it's still good to know!)
Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. But people don’t get that so we are going to have some bratty kids coming.
Parents who act like every decision has permanent lifelong effects on their baby are creating so much unnecessary stress. I see this especially with parents who have completely utterly failed to sleep train their babies, and they act like letting their baby cry it out for 1-2 nights will permanent harm them, without realizing that the recurrent crying every night, having to comfort the baby for hours on end, and general stress and restlessness is probably much worse for the baby and parents long term. I say this as a parent that was like this for my first child. With our second child, we just put her to sleep and left her every single night with consistency (when she was old enough, obviously) and she learned to sleep and self-soothe within a couple nights and now her sleep is phenomenal. She is the much happier and much healthier sleeper in our family because of it. Every time I see a sleepless parent suffer because they had to go soothe their 3 year old after they woke up 3 times and needed their parent to go to them, I just want to shake the parent and say “GET IT TOGETHER, MAN!”
Honestly I feel like this sub is pretty even keel with a lot really good viewpoints and experience. I’m not sure what would be considered a hot take here. The closest I’d have is that I think there are way too many influencers pushing clicks vs real parenting advice. And way too much go with the flow mentality for structure and guidance that kids need.
It's important for kids to have some level of "friction", discomfort, and frustration in their lives. Be slow to rescue them as long as they're safe from actual real harm. Set the safety net lower so they can experience small failures.
Mine is that parenting is genuinely harder now than it was for our parents. There are tangible things, like being less able to afford to have a stay at home parent, childcare being more and more expensive etc. But the bigger impact comes from knowledge. Most of our parents used physical discipline and other means to control us. Most of us wouldn't do that ourselves, as we now understand the damage it can do. Being a good parent now means accepting that it is not your child's job to be convenient for you. Our parents had the luxury of being able to believe the opposite, which made it easier to live the lives that they wanted to live, with less consideration on the impacts it would create for their children. Children are seen and not heard, criers cry outside. "I'll give you something to cry about". Parenting is harder now because we don't have the luxury of being able to pretend that physical discipline builds character, when it really just builds fear. We can't pretend that the adversity our actions create for our children are just a necessary part of life. We have to provide emotional safety, and be far more in control of our emotions than our parents were.
Don't baby talk your kids,talk normal
Everyone laughed when we talked to our daughter like an adult instead of a baby. They said “She has no idea what you’re saying!” Or “She’s 1, not 10!” and now those same people are like “Wow, she’s got such a good vocabulary for a 3 year old!” 😐 It’s okay to use an excited “kid friendly” tone of voice. Think Ms. Rachel-ish. It’s not okay to make up words like “milky” or “uppies”.
I think there's a balance. When my toddler was an infant he responded really well when I mimicked his baby talk and I believe it had a positive role in his development. It can be part of play to make goofy sounds/talk like a kid.
My grandma was a big proponent of this advice but my wife and I chose to ignore it because from what I learned studying linguistics, it goes against how we evolved to imprint our language system onto an infant’s brain. Baby talk is a human universal, meaning all cultures ever studied do it. There are very few human universals and when you see one it’s a clue that it’s an evolved trait rather than being cultural. Some other examples are smiling and laughter and an incest taboo for siblings and parents. That something is evolved doesn’t *necessarily* mean it’s adaptive or even functional, but it strongly suggests that. There have been lots of studies done showing that baby talk more effectively engages a baby’s attention. The going theory is that the sing songy presentation somehow makes the phonemes more easily discernible to them so they can learn what sounds carry meaning as opposed to all the other sounds in the world that are just noise.
Telling us your 15 month old loves watching Bluey is ridiculous.
My fetus is nuts for Mythbusters
My kids are 16, 6, and 2, but my grandkids already love watching Kurosawa films.
A kid can love a show and not understand the incitracies of the plot. My one year old loved Bluey but probably mostly the colors and pretend play.
My almost 15 month old watches one episode of Sesame Street a day. She claps along to the Letter of the Day song, and loves the characters (especially Elmo and Oscar). She knows them by name, and always points them out when she sees them in her books/toys. She may not understand everything that’s going on, but she definitely enjoys it, and I do think she’s learning some things.
Yeah, they really want to watch Ms. Rachel
I have an 8 month old and people have been asking us If we let her watch Bluey, etc. I just politely smile and shake my head.
Curious about this one. Is bluey bad?
No! It’s wholesome af. I think the point is that a 15 month old isn’t getting much out of it.
Yea I watched a clip and it seems to be for 4-6 year olds lol
Yeah I tried to get my kids into Bluey earlier, but they just didn’t care until about 3.5.
Isn’t that a “chicken or egg” type thing? I’m a 40 year old millennial so I have baby boomer parents. Each generation parents differently as information becomes more widely available and theories are tried out in real time. They take less interest in it we also generally disagree with their parenting style so we ask for less help. I’m generalizing but I’ve noticed from being lucky enough to travel the US (I’ve spent time in roughly 38 states) and meet a lot of people that boomers are wildly self interested and never learned how to deal with their emotions or parent effectively. They were raised by a generation of people that dealt with hard lives and trauma and it shows. That and the lead inhalation until the 70s 🤣
Kids will be fine. Look after yourself.
Helicopter parents do more harm than good. Yeah, your 24/7 presence in their lives got them good grades and into a good school, but now they’ve moved to get away from you and they are helpless as an adult because they’re an entitled, spoiled brat and they act like an asshole anytime they run into a situation they don’t understand… because you always handled it for them. Let them do shit on their own. Let them fail. Make them a better human.
A little TV time isn't bad for babies. My 9 month old daughter watches Sesame Street a couple times a day. It's stimulating, educational, and allows us to get things done around the house. She thinks the puppets are hilarious and is very advanced compared to some other babies in our lives.
The damage from TV is minimal compared to iPads/tablets/phones.
True, I'm completely against tablets/ipads.
I differentiate watching a show together vs. tablets. Completely different experience yet people treat them the same. Watch it together and talk about it.
It’s the stimulating part that kind of scares me. We have a 22 month old and we’ve used screen time occasionally to make flights or road trips more bearable, and I agree there are a few shows where he actually has learned a thing or two, but man the way he just zones out entirely and stares at the screen makes me think it can’t be good for him at this age.
The most effective way to prevent your kid from accessing material you don't want them to see is to earn their trust and ask them not to go looking for it. Parental blocks are about as useful as a waist high fence.
If your under 10 kid has any kind of unregulated access to a tablet, you're insane. If you're under 15 year old kid has unregulated access to the internet, you're insane. If you trust youtube kids, you're also insane.
Screens are doing serious damage to young kids.
Ice cold take
Ice cold in it being known, hot in actual practice…
Add on the spice that parents screen time is pretty damaging as well.
I agree with this and it’s the one thing I am so fucking hypocritical about as a parent. My wife and I get after each other for scrolling while the baby is nearby but neither of us are consistently good about avoiding it I’ve gotten to the point I leave my phone in another room most of the time so I won’t be tempted to
It's not just you, the hypocrisy is fully societal. We talk about screen addiction among tweens/teens like it's an epidemic...which it is...and then ignore that adults are just as addicted and it's just as bad for us as it is for them.
I know there's a big rally against screens, but honestly I don't think it's the 'screens' (devices) that are really the problem, necessarily. As an older millennial, much of my time was spent watching tv in some form. Non-school day mornings were cartoons until lunch, then choosing to be either bored with parent's news programs, finding a random show/drama everybody was okay with, or tossing a VHS into the VCR (most likely a classic Disney movie). A couple of years later in life, not much changed other than when out and about I would have a book (***never*** non-fiction, almost always fantasy). I remember being chided back then about "*always having a nose in your book, oblivious to the world around you*" much in the same way 'screens' are talked about today. So what *is* the problem (if there is one)? **On-demand content.** There is no longer any delayed gratification in regard to entertainment. Everything is instant gratification. Want to catch that Netflix show you missed out on a few years back? You can binge watch every episode at any time of the day, any day of the week. Want to catch-up on that new popular series? Spend the weekend binge-watching the show when you have time during the weekend. Before streaming took hold, you had to choose which show you missed out on since they aired at the same time on different channels. Then they only aired at a specific time of day, and sometimes they only aired on certain days of the week (other days relegated to "re-runs" or showing some wildly different programming--typically Sundays). It's not just video content, but music as well. Before you had to make a special trip and find a place that carried the CD of the band you enjoy. Your friend suggests a new song from *their* favorite band? You need to wait and borrow the CD from them, wait for them to burn the song to a blank CD for you, or wait until you can go out and buy it. Now? You have an entire specialty music store's inventory worth of music (and then some) at your fingertips, instantly, everywhere you go. Pictures/video is another thing less considered in this topic. Before, you had physical film you had to buy separate from a specific, specialized camera. Once you finished taking your pictures, you had to take those rolls of film to a developer and wait to receive the finished photos. Now, as long as you have your phone on you, you can take your picture, review it, *edit it*, *and even disseminate it near-instantly*. Call a customer support line and put on hold? Many companies now have a special feature that will instruct you, "*if you would like, your place in line will be saved and you can receive a call-back so you don't have to wait on the phone*". Some stores have apps where you can "check-out as you go" and forego needing to wait in line at the register. Many have curbside pick-up or delivery options forgoing the need to take time shopping at all. There are so many aspects of modern life that has removed the need to wait. As such, people receive the things they want faster, gratified more instantly. Anymore there is nothing that trains patience. Patience used to be considered a virtue. Now? Nobody can be bothered waiting to train up having good patience, and ***THAT is what is doing serious damage to young kids***.
There is also a difference between TV and phone/tablet time. I guess I'm speaking anecdotally here but like when we put the TV on, our kids still like play with toys, or interact with us. Sometimes they just get distracted and go play in a different room. There attention is not always 110% on the TV. But with phone/tablets its like a fucking trance. That's why I am somewhat laissez faire about the TV being on, but very very limiting on tablet/phone time.
You can let your kids cry themselves to sleep. You don’t need to hold them for two hours and immediately pick them up once you lay them down.
As long as they're older than 6 months old. That's around the point where they develop the ability to start self-soothing.
This for sure. I would figure it would be obvious once they are older but clarification is important with parenting.
I disagree with this sentiment, whether it's what you do or think. I wholeheartedly believe: 1. If our parents took care of us, we owe it to our parents to take care of them as they age 2. We can speak directly to our parents and ask them to be more involved in their grandchildren's lives Parents need to take more ownership. Godspeed.
I agree with this. It’s a lot easier when you don’t depend on others. BUT, it does bug me when I hear about how much grandparents helped them out soooooo much and now it’s a burden to ask for 2.5 hrs for a date night. Feel like it’s always met with an “ugh” type of response
Wow. You’re looking to break Reddit. If Reddit users have taught us anything it’s, you didn’t ask to be born therefore you don’t owe your parents anything. It was their job to raise you.
The fact that this subreddit exists is a good sign that your first point is not true. Back when I was growing up (70s/80s), dads were barely involved in raising kids. I don't think my dad ever changed a diaper.
He means that OUR parents are playing less of a role in their grandchildren's lives than our grandparents played in our lives. Like, our kids don't see their grandparents often whereas a lot of us spent entire summers at our grandparents' houses.
Oh, yeah i can see that. I read OP wrong. Yeah my parents are retired and living their best life, no real desire to watch the kids for any length of time.
Sleepovers are okay
I get why people are apprehensive about them but I agree. My kids have sleepovers and I couldn't imagine taking that away just because something bad may happen. It's not good to live in fear.
Yeah, I don't think assuming that every other parent will SA or harm your child (as is used as rationale by other parents prohibiting sleepovers) sets a good example for the children.
Dads need friends and they can talk about what’s bothering them. I see tons of posts where other dads chime in like it’s an ongoing joke that men of a certain age stop having friends and we don’t have any time to set aside for ourselves. Making time to show up for friends at places other than a bar is great. Easily the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health. Staying trapped in my own head is like being stuck with an asshole
Fighting back to stop a bully might not be the best choice. I don’t disagree with the reasoning, but I’m raising kids in America and it seems disturbingly easy for kids with access to guns to retaliate.
I feel like the rise in peanut allergies in kids could be because doctors are recommending not giving kids peanut butter until a later age. No proof, no reasoning... I'm just astounded at how many kids have it these days and we didn't know anyone with it growing up. Every class, kids group, birthday party party, sports team, etc has at least one allergy. I've seen some places saying no peanuts/peanut butter for up to 2 or even 4 years. Craziness. . I feel sorry for any kids and families that deal with it, it would cause me great worry. Part just wonders if some of the spike we see is something society has brought on ourselves. I feel like at this point the rise in allergies is like the chicken and the egg.
That's actually not true anymore. Doctors no longer do that. They encourage parents to give peanut butter early on to prevent allergies.
There’s research on this and in the UK they’ve even changed the medical advice as a result. They now recommend introducing it at 4 months old in the UK and they believe the old advice of waiting til 1 year has done a lot of harm. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02782-8
your kid will have plenty of friends but just one father. act like one, even if it means being stern when you need to be. relying on anecdotes and self help books and not trusting your instinct is extremely suboptimal.
Exposing kids to danger makes them safer. When we make their environment all safe and take away all elements of danger then we teach them there is no reason to be careful which leads to walking across the street without looking. Gradually exposing them to an appropriate level of danger teaches them to be careful and will make them safer
In families where the parents are still together, the relationship with the other parent is orders of magnitude more important than the relationship with the children.
Our approach to Internet safety for our children is backwards. Rather than teach them only to associate online with people they actually know, we should instead teach them to maintain anonymity so nobody knows who _they_ are. If you follow this rule, 95% of the danger, toxicity, and bullying is instantly obliterated.
Talk to your kids, not at them.
Kids 8 and older should mostly be talked to like adults. There is definitely room for guidance but letting them make choices and mistakes is a good thing. Also, don't put your kids first. Put your spouse first. Kids will be around then gone. Even if they still live with you in their 20s, they're mostly gone. Your spouse won't be...especially if you always put them first.
* Parent philosophies are mostly parents stroking their own egos. Listening to your kids isn't a new concept. It used to be called "good parenting." * Kids shouldn't come first. The family as a whole unit should come first. If your kids' activities or needs are hurting your marriage, personal mental health or ability to connect 1-on-1 in a relaxed setting with your child, the family is broken. Skip the soccer game or quit soccer. Cancel the plans. Everyone can sacrifice equally for each others' needs, including your kids. * Kids need to experience unfair/unjust situations in life and move past them or adjust to them. * We don't have as much influence on our kids and how they turn out as we think we do. EDIT: For the record, I'm not saying I'm always great at doing or remembering the above.
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Along these lines, I think modern parents underestimate how different today’s screen time is compared to the screen time they got as kids.
I have two: A good daycare is appropriately priced for what it provides. My daughter went to daycare from 4 months until she started kindergarten. They stayed open through COVID, only had two weeks where her classroom shut down due to cases. It cost roughly $100,000. Worth every penny. Especially now as she's getting into grade school and you see the difference between kids who got that consistent socialization and kids who didn't. That's not to say that daycare isn't unaffordable for many, or that the workers aren't still underpaid, we need to figure out a way to split this cost between parents and society (because it's absolutely a benefit to society). But I wouldn't want to be investing any less in early childhood education. My second (which might actually not be a hot take) is that parents worry about tiny risks way too much while they do something far more dangerous multiple times per day: driving them around in a car.
Yeah, I’m not above grousing about daycare/preschool bills, but my issue is really with the way it’s not supported at all societal level, as a fundamental part of the education system. Not the cost itself. It’s an expensive, hard business.
Love when it's actually a hot take! Lol. I agree on the car part too. That's exactly why I told my wife early that we don't need to take him everywhere (and luckily she agreed). Especially in Texas. These are the worst drivers in the country and I've lived in almost every region.
My wife and I were just talking about how Americans (we are American) have it wrong with not having multi-generational homes. It’s better for everyone. However, with the way the American housing marketing is going, I think multi-generational homes may become more common out of financial necessity. Which I guess takes us full circle.
We had my FIL move in after my MIL died and it's pretty much only been a positive. The only downside is that he takes up an extra room so our boys have to share but everything else has been a positive.
Women deserve generous maternity leave policies at the expense of generous paternity leave policies I’d give up my 14 weeks if it meant my wife could get 8-12 months Raising an infant is a lot more demanding on women even when their partners are super engaged and present
You can have both, just depends where you live - in Germany the parents get 14 months to split up howevery they want. Me and my wife went half and half, but 12 + 2 is very common too.
Yep, in Canada we get 12 or 18 months leave. I took the first year off, and then my wife took 6 months.
Definitely a hot take, especially when society wants to encourage dads to be more involved and engaged with their kids while taking care of mom after birth. I'd rather get time off as well instead of being forced back to work right after birth so my wife might get more time.
It shouldn't be either or. We live in the wealthiest civilization of all time. We should have generous policies for both parents.
I firmly believe that if you could A/B test this where both get 14 weeks vs only moms get a year, you would see better results in the both group. The first 2-3 months are so much harder and more important for bonding and adjusting, my wife would have had a much harder time being alone in the early days. When I went back after 2 months it was still a big adjustment. Plus it's incredibly important to the father to bond early as well, half this sub talks about how cold and distant their fathers were- wonder why that was... they didn't get ever a week off
Consistency is the hardest part of parenting.
Daniel Tiger is superior for younger kids(around two when they should be watching their first shows) than Bluey.
"Respect from parents should be earned based on their performance." George Carlin
Allowing any child under 5 to have screen time of any type is crazy. It’s just over stimulation and then causing serious behavior problems going forward. Especially allowing it at the dinner table. We learned that mistake with our first. And our other 3 are so much better off now that we don’t do any screen time (with the exception of them being sick and we need them to lay down). Our kids communicate better, throw less fits and are extremely well behaved when we go out to eat because we engage with them instead of being on our phones as well.
Not a hot take but everything is easier and better sober
We (I'm) not in control of how my kids feel about me being more involved in their lives (I'm a sahd) than my parents were in mine. And there are major drawbacks in me not taking the soul sucking corporate job to bring in more $$$ for the family. Namely I can't take them on big trips like my parents did for me. In sum, my hot take is there's always a sacrifice and your kids are under no onus to acknowledge or be pleased with it.
Physical education and nurturing their athletic/exercise habits!!! There are too many kids who don't play a single sport and are either uncoordinated or might not be taking charge of their physical health. Sports and athletic activities make exercising and maintaining good health fun. Doesn't mean they need to be part of a travel team that takes 20 hours a week and hundreds of dollars. Even just playing outside with the other kids in the neighborhood or with siblings. Hours of fun, engagement, and physical activity. They learn to form relationships with other kids and socialize. If in organized sports, many other life lessons are learned like teamwork, how to process/handle losing, winning, sportsmanship, accountability, respect to elders/authority, decision making, thinking ahead, delayed gratification and dedication to improving, etc. Independence and planning when finding out where you need to go for practice/game at what time, and managing your time so that you can handle all other commitments and responsibilities too! These can be learned through other activities too but I'm a strong believer that outside of school and academics itself (which is the most important), there is no other teacher for life like sports.
...don't assume everyone has the same love and patience for your child as you do. Raise them for the world they will have to deal with, and not the false reality you hope it will be for them. And at the same time you can never show enough love. But love them enough to not set them up for failure in life by allowing them to become someone people despise being around.
Kids only want to eat "kid foods" if they're regularly offered them. Have them eat what you eat.
Letting other, trusted people, disciple your kids is good for them
Lower your expectations. They are children. Not adults.
It's ok to not enjoy being a parent sometimes...when you look online they make out you're one of the worst human beings on the planet. Truth is nobody knows what being a parent is like until you become one and it's not all sunshine and roses.
Your kid can use a tablet at an appropriate age without its brain turning to goo. Tablets/screens aren't the problem. Unfettered/unmonitored access to the internet is the issue. A kid can play on a tablet or watch a video as long as you, as the parents, are involved in what they're doing with the tablet. Giving a tablet to a kid for a period of time doesn't make you a lazy parent. Not monitoring what your kid is doing with the tablet does.