Parent Thread

meStevo_sl said:

Man, I just have no patience lately. I already have a bad temper that I've done better with, but I don't know if it's because my son is finally getting assessed this week or the steroid I'm on for some congested lungs that's got me so on edge and ready to just outright beat my children at the smallest infraction (note: I haven't). Both just sound like excuses to me.

I grew up fearing my ass being beat or getting slapped when appropriate. It's more and more difficult to not fall into that line of parenting for my 4 y/o son, when he does things like try and bite his mother or hitting or saying what seems to be like one word for the whole weekend - no.

We are just so done with this. The defiance, the jumps off a cliff into irrationality our son so quickly slips into at even the hint of something not going his way. So sick of the weekly calls to pick him up from school because he won't listen and is running out of his class, or throwing things, or hit a teacher... and the monthly reminder that he nearly hurt someone and if that happens we have to find a new daycare. He kicked an older teacher square in the side of the knee, with shoes on... closest call we've had.

My wife's latest thing to try and get through to him is just restraining him. He starts to hit anything and she holds him (arms, legs). Sets a timer for 2 minutes, lets him go. He hits again, repeat. This is usually a 6-8 minute exercise, the longest being tonight when he started trying to bite her, which she made into a 5 minute penalty.

If I did that to my dad I'd have problems sitting down for the next 20-30 minutes.

The alternative is usually taking him to his room, and we sit on the floor in front of the door (since he won't stay in it, and timeout downstairs is ineffective, won't stay even if we put him back 20 times) while he completely loses his shit - and often has to be restrained or he'll continue to hit/kick/throw everything in his room.

Not sure what I'm looking to accomplish by posting this, not really asking a question, just getting my frustration out. I guess my biggest fear is we'll do the assessment, he's not a slam dunk for any particular 'thing' they can classify him under and we're told 'learn to parent'. I keep telling myself that can't possibly happen, we're seemingly the only parents dealing with this kind of thing at his daycare. My only hope for this week is progress towards being able to help him better. Don't care who's fault or what we need to do to make that happen.

This sucks.

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I was exactly here in September. Like you I was dreading what would happen, it got to the point where I was thinking "holy fuck what if they don't diagnose her with anything what will I do..." Since the diagnosis and the subsequent medication, things have really turned around. I talked to her teacher today and she was so positive, she was talking about how much they love having her and how much fun she has and how good she is doing. I never thought we would be here so quickly but it has happened. It has been a lot of work on our part and on hers. But we're getting there. #itgetsbetter

chaos_sl said:

I was exactly here in September. Like you I was dreading what would happen, it got to the point where I was thinking "holy fuck what if they don't diagnose her with anything what will I do..." Since the diagnosis and the subsequent medication, things have really turned around. I talked to her teacher today and she was so positive, she was talking about how much they love having her and how much fun she has and how good she is doing. I never thought we would be here so quickly but it has happened. It has been a lot of work on our part and on hers. But we're getting there. #itgetsbetter

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Glad to hear things are better for you Chaos, I've been reading this thread for a while and your stories were slightly worrying to say the least. Me and the missus have finally settled after moving countries 3 times in the last 10 years so are now trying for a kid, with any luck mine will be boring and normal. That's assuming I'm not firing blanks

edit to add: just realised I said boring and normal but then was stood making a coffee and had a guilt trip about using the N word, the PC brigade have ruined everything! Didn't mean to imply anything bad about your kid Chaos but jeez, could you imagine if the being put through the wringer like Chaos WAS normal? I'd have my balls tied off immediately.

Noodlemod_sl said:

I'd also like to add the other night was the first time I bathed him by myself. Of course he shit the tub, full on log. He'd never done that before.

So now I've gotten newborn diarrhea tar shit on my arm and also a log in the tub on my arm.

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Shoulda picked it up, looked him straight in the eye, and eaten it.

Display dominance.

Kalaar Kururuc_sl said:

Glad to hear things are better for you Chaos, I've been reading this thread for a while and your stories were slightly worrying to say the least. Me and the missus have finally settled after moving countries 3 times in the last 10 years so are now trying for a kid, with any luck mine will be boring and normal. That's assuming I'm not firing blanks

edit to add: just realised I said boring and normal but then was stood making a coffee and had a guilt trip about using the N word, the PC brigade have ruined everything! Didn't mean to imply anything bad about your kid Chaos but jeez, could you imagine if the being put through the wringer like Chaos WAS normal? I'd have my balls tied off immediately.

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No I know what you mean, her behavior definitely was not normal. Even now she's very different from her sisters. It's not over, two days ago she bit her mom and last night she had multiple meltdowns, but at least she was able to come out of it where before it just would have been all night.

Kalaar Kururuc_sl said:

Glad to hear things are better for you Chaos, I've been reading this thread for a while and your stories were slightly worrying to say the least. Me and the missus have finally settled after moving countries 3 times in the last 10 years so are now trying for a kid, with any luck mine will be boring and normal. That's assuming I'm not firing blanks

edit to add: just realised I said boring and normal but then was stood making a coffee and had a guilt trip about using the N word, the PC brigade have ruined everything! Didn't mean to imply anything bad about your kid Chaos but jeez, could you imagine if the being put through the wringer like Chaos WAS normal? I'd have my balls tied off immediately.

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Thing to keep in mind is that everyone has a screw loose in some way. Some people are just better at hiding it when they get older.

And for meStevo, I would get a child psychologist and evaluation done sooner rather than later. Our son didn't lash out physically but he would shut down hard if things didn't go his way. Once we got him the help he needed, things turned around and have steadily gotten better ever since. He'll never be "normal". His emotional and social age is a couple of years behind his physical age, but we're doing everything we can to help him get close.

Yeah we ran into that problem as well, they wanted to schedule us an appointment + months out and we're like "motherfuckers we can't wait". Eventually we found a place that had another office in a different town that had openings. But it still took a couple of weeks.

Kid finally mostly slept through the night.

Fell asleep at 7:00. Woke up at 9:00 so I held him for 15s and put him down, fell asleep on his own. Woke up at 11:00, same deal. Woke up at 1:00 again, this time screaming. Held him for 1 minute, put him down awake, gave him a teether and went to bed. I could hear him in there for like 15 minutes playing with it and sometimes whining, but eventually fell asleep.

We're having a bad tendency of rocking him to sleep then putting him down for the night. Feel like we should've started sleep training way earlier. The problem was as a newborn he wouldn't sleep at all unless someone held him - in fact, he would cry nonstop unless someone held him - I tried to see how long he would cry and it lasted 1.5 hours before I picked him up.

meStevo_sl said:

Assessment was tonight, felt like a bit of a cattle call w/ several families there and their kids being tested too but it was pretty well run. Still got that 'well, yeah, toddlers throw tantrums' vibe but everything initially went very well. Our followup is in a couple of weeks w/ a couple of special ed teachers a psychologist and a counselor or something to talk about results and eligibility.

Baby steps.

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A full assessment takes about 30 days, or at least it did when we had it done. They talked to us, his teachers, him, and did a lot of observation. As parents our observations tend to be biased and you have a tendency to get used to certain behavior and dealing with it. It was pretty eye opening to see the gulf in between what we saw and experienced versus what others saw and experienced. Granted, our son isn't "60 minutes special" autistic so we missed a lot of the little signs for a long time.

FAIL PARENT MOMENT

Our son turned 10 last Saturday and he's been good so we got him a cheapo computer for him to play minecraft and a few other games on. On Tuesday I went and set a password on it so he couldn't sneak time when he wasn't supposed to. I, uhh, forgot to tell him. So he thought he was in trouble. Yeah...

Noodlemod_sl said:

Last few weeks have been hell. Kid has 5 teeth coming in and just not going to sleep until like 330 to 500 am. I am miserable.

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Drug that kid up man. Get the baby fever stuff.

For sleeping, we put a kid gate on our daughters door. She can't leave the room until we take it down. She's not potty trained yet so there isn't a need for bathroom trips in the middle of the night. Also we live in a Bi-level home so it's not like we gate the stairs and she only has access to bedroom/bathroom/hallway of an upstairs or something.

meStevo_sl said:

Assessment was tonight, felt like a bit of a cattle call w/ several families there and their kids being tested too but it was pretty well run. Still got that 'well, yeah, toddlers throw tantrums' vibe but everything initially went very well. Our followup is in a couple of weeks w/ a couple of special ed teachers a psychologist and a counselor or something to talk about results and eligibility.

Baby steps.

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Our assessment only took about 2 weeks, but we were really begging them to speed it up otherwise I think it would have been a month or more like moontayle said.

Believe me, I get that toddlers throw tantrums, but if possible don't accept that as an answer. They have actually legit empirical tests that can show if there is an issue without relying on some old broad going "well he's a kid, kids act out sometimes" and between that and the interviews with you and the childcare workers they can put it together. I know you said you have limited options in your area, which really sucks. I didn't realize how lucky we are in Northern VA, my dad was just up here and he said the testing and school programs they have here for my daughter just wouldn't exist back there, and I can't imagine where we'd be without it.

It seems my son has learned to put his foot in his mouth early in life. He is or was still breastfeeding in the mornings and nights at 22 months. Tonight before bed he called my wifes boob, "boob meat" and that was the end of breatfeeding for him. I had a chuckle.

Draegan_sl said:

Drug that kid up man. Get the baby fever stuff.

For sleeping, we put a kid gate on our daughters door. She can't leave the room until we take it down. She's not potty trained yet so there isn't a need for bathroom trips in the middle of the night. Also we live in a Bi-level home so it's not like we gate the stairs and she only has access to bedroom/bathroom/hallway of an upstairs or something.

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Yeah we drug him with Ibuprofen which worked fairly well for the first few teeth. He had 5 coming in at once and I guess it was too much for the dude - that plus the sleep regression. He's sleeping again, so we have a break right now. Not sure if he'll have as much trouble with the next set of teeth but I appreciate the calm.

Took our daughter like 3 months before she got out of her bed on her own. Before that she'd just sit and call for us to come get her.

Eyashusa_sl said:

Before that she'd just sit and call for us to come get her.

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I wish my kid would do that. He gets up every night(at least once, sometimes 2 or 3 times) and wanders around the house looking for us, in the dark.

Last night it was about midnight, my wife was in bed and I was in the basement on the PC. I hear a slow creaking on the stairs coming down to the basement. I about shit myself until I see a toddler come around the corner. Had to carry him back upstairs and put him in bed.

The worst was New Years eve, my wife and I had a hotel room and grandma stayed with him to babysit at our house. Only she slept in the guest bedroom. Kiddo woke up in the middle of the night, and I assumed he checked both our bedroom(empty) and the basement(empty) and then just started SCREAMING in the middle of the living room at like 1am, thinking he was all alone in the house. About gave grandma a heart attack, woke her up out of a deep sleep to what sounded like a toddler being murdered.

Both my girls had biting issues when first into preschool- mostly because there where more older kids than them and they could not communicate well enough to get whatever it is they wanted to explain/need out- that fact still didn't save them from punishment while explaining they need to use words and communicate properly. They also when younger had hysterical fits and bitching but where met with proper (and legal mind you) corporal punishment, especially when younger as they didn't get "oh sit in time out" because they don't give a flip about that kind of punishment- now they do, they understand it and that is what they get now because its effective.

As for them sleeping, the first one we could not "let self sooth" she screamed for 3+ hours straight - she was not self soothing... just wasn't how she rolled- the youngest one capped out at a few nights of her crying for 45min-1hr then she stopped and she was fine from there on out sleeping on her own. They both respond to threats (and proper follow-through) of corporal and non corporal punishment because it was established early that it exists and is meaningful so now we rarely have to actually do any punishment, a threat, look or command is enough- sometimes they test limits and get punishments for doing so thinking they will just get by with getting yelled at or whatever, nope. Also the variant forms and methods of punishment helps when you are teaching them not to lie or pass the buck - they know they should get a spanking for X, but if they admit it they only get time out, or no outside play or whatever - its hard to do similar when you only have what is essentially one form of punishment- time out... 5min time out vs 10min time out is the same to kids using that as a variable is useless- and also it does not allow escalation, oh you didn't stay in time out 5 min! now its 10! again they don't really "get" time... but if they know a step up is another differing and less wanted form of punishment then that works better.

I want a 3rd, but we have been out of diapers for like a year and about 2 years of sleeping through the night- so it would be rough to go back to a infant lol. The youngest kept for a long time and sometimes can tap into that "infant" scream that pierces your soul and can wake you from the deepest of sleep, usually infants have it for 6-8 months and then if you pay attention you notice it kinda changes- its like natures way to make sure the infants can wake up their tired as hell care takers... but my youngest she could do it until almost recently, so about 2.5 years... it was terribad lol.

double post >_<

joeboo_sl said:

I wish my kid would do that. He gets up every night(at least once, sometimes 2 or 3 times) and wanders around the house looking for us, in the dark.

Last night it was about midnight, my wife was in bed and I was in the basement on the PC. I hear a slow creaking on the stairs coming down to the basement. I about shit myself until I see a toddler come around the corner. Had to carry him back upstairs and put him in bed.

The worst was New Years eve, my wife and I had a hotel room and grandma stayed with him to babysit at our house. Only she slept in the guest bedroom. Kiddo woke up in the middle of the night, and I assumed he checked both our bedroom(empty) and the basement(empty) and then just started SCREAMING in the middle of the living room at like 1am, thinking he was all alone in the house. About gave grandma a heart attack, woke her up out of a deep sleep to what sounded like a toddler being murdered.

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Put them in a sleep sack it pretty much immobilizes them. I would not recommend it for kids past two though.