Parent Thread

Woefully Inept said:

Well looks like the pregnancy didn't take this time. Her levels are going down. Having it happen unplanned/unexpectedly takes the sting off but still sucks. I already told her I wouldn't mind if we actually kept trying. Time to limber up and get to work!

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Sorry to hear that

Thanks guys I appreciate it. It does suck but on the flip side being able to plan for it now is a bit more appeal than ohhh shit we're pregnant out of nowhere.

So, yeah, as of yesterday I am now firmly in the camp of homeschool or private school your kids. I have been adamant that they go to public school to learn the pitfalls of navigating this society, but I am throwing in the towel. My son is 100% alpha and is a handful, not going to lie, and he does get into trouble quite regularly. Most of it is just him being obnoxious and taking jokes and play too far. We have made it through to the 5th grade, and as things have happened, we took steps to correct him and I've always had the school's back 100%. Two years ago, the old principal retired. He was just on cruise control at that point, and as long as no blood was drawn, dude pretty much didn't do shit. Now we have Stalin running the show, and if the kids step out side of the second tile from the wall, they get in trouble. So as you would guess, my son's trips to the Principal's office have gone up significantly. Last year, he got in pretty major trouble like three times, and all of them, he was clearly in the wrong. He had to serve his punishment (one ended in a 3 hour detention), and then he had to face even more shit at home.

However, this year, he's already had 3 major instances. One of which was clearly him. The other two... not so much. Stalin has set up a true nanny state and encourages kids to "report suspicious activity" of their peers. So my son was passing notes to a little girl he had gotten close with at summer camp, another little girl saw this, and reported them. Teacher did the teacher thing, and read the note. My son was so embarrassed he lost his shit at the snitch in front of the teacher (like a moron). That landed him in 3 hour detention. I was on board that my kid screwed up, and I was adamant with him to keep his cool. However, I wasn't cool with him serving a crazy long detention (again he's 11) for it, but whatever, I just went with the flow.

Yesterday was instance number 3. He was with a group of kids playing a game on the playground. One boy won, and when he did, he began to twerk provocatively towards my son. It freaked him out. He knows what being gay is, and also knows that it's not something he is to mock or belittle. He also knows 100% that he is NOT gay, so he did not know what to do with this. So he did, what most other boys did, he goes to his bros to sort it all out. His conversation gets overheard and he is turned in to the teachers. Upon which they state that he was calling out the kid for being gay, and he is now sentenced to Saturday School (again 11/5th grade here). This means he has to be at the alternative school where all the problem kids go, for 8 hours on Saturday, dressed in all gray sweats and plain tshirt. So they want to play this is harsh because he was sexually harassing another child, and yet the child who sexually harassed my kid walks away from this completely unharmed because reasons. I'm not ok with this, and I am going to be going in at 8:30 to tell the principal (who is my co worker to add even more to the fire) that he is not serving this sentence, and I am fully prepared to yank my child and home school him at this point (along with his sister as well). I graduated High School in 1994, and it blows my mind how much things have changed in just 23 years.

Dude o had a friend that was home schooled and he's fuckin weird

He now lives in a retired bread van and does those massive long US hikes every year (AT, Pacific Crest, cdt). I always tell people if I hear of a serial rapist on the trails I already know who it is.

My wife is a kindergarten teacher in a public school and we're sending our kids to a private school. She just doesn't want to put him through all the bullshit that the public schools do.

Noodleface said:

Dude o had a friend that was home schooled and he's fuckin weird

He now lives in a retired bread van and does those massive long US hikes every year (AT, Pacific Crest, cdt). I always tell people if I hear of a serial rapist on the trails I already know who it is.

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This is exactly why I never wanted to do it, and still don't. Meeting is over, we will never know what really happened as son gave principal one story (she's still Stalin, but not a liar) and gave us another last night, so my feeling is the truth is somewhere in the middle. We are making him serve his time just to drive home being honest up front is the way to go, as I totally saw him being in a cop station somewhere and just rushing through a confession so he can go home, not realizing he just sentenced himself to prison in the process. So, not being an idiot in these cases is the main lesson he needs to learn here.

One good thing, I was able to get him moved away from all the snitches in his class. Long story, but the one constant variable in all these instances is this little twerp kid my son has been hanging out with, and I honestly think that is part of the problem. Kind of hard to explain in one sentence without coming across as trying to absolve my child of all guilt, which is not at all the case.

We are sticking with the public school for now. He is getting moved to a different class to split up the gruesome twosome. It's a small town, and I work at the same school system as the IT guy, so yanking our kids is not exactly an easy proposition due to optics of it all. Which, I don't care about optics if I felt it was my only option, but I think him being with different kids has a real chance of helping turn his shit around. If that doesn't work, we will discretely pull him out and look at other options.

My problem is, with the over proliferation of being politically correct, kids are no longer allowed to just be kids. Everything is about bullying now, not them just being little shits to each other, so what was minor 20 years ago, is completely blown out of proportion today. Things that I did, and had happen to me on a daily basis, without even a slight glance from the teacher back then, is damn near front page headlines today.

I mean most of the stuff we've been in meetings over is shit we did on a daily basis. My wife has been unable to handle a lot of it (anything involving sex, for example when he discovered the magic of pornhub) because she grew up in an all female house that were stereo typical females with a VERY straight laced father.

I do also believe there are cultural issues as well, since I'm from Northwestern Indiana and she is from Tennessee, and that's where we live. I know things are much less sugar coated up there, and people are way more blunt and straight forward as well. And that's been a huge hurdle for me, personally, just because I don't know how to play their game down here.

And I think that is translating somewhat poorly in regards to my kid, because I'm constantly trying to figure out what they are truly saying when they say something (it's hard to explain but take nothing at face value from a southerner). It's like now, we had agreed to move him to a different class, and the teacher is insisting we don't. I think it's because he is a good student on the academics front and his teacher doesn't want to lose his good test scores, and her reasons were not completely true (she was stating there are times she's not around, but forgot to mention that each classroom is almost completely separate save recess during the day). Trying not to be totally cynical in all of this... really trying.

Arative said:

My wife is a kindergarten teacher in a public school and we're sending our kids to a private school. She just doesn't want to put him through all the bullshit that the public schools do.

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My wife teaches high school and she does NOT want our son in public school either.

Arative said:

My wife is a kindergarten teacher in a public school and we're sending our kids to a private school. She just doesn't want to put him through all the bullshit that the public schools do.

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My wife got her masters from UF in elementary education + technology, she did her internship and 5 years in public low income and at-risk-students and 80%+ free or reduced lunch schools in 3rd and 4th grade... once we had kids she was like "We cant send our kids into public school..." she took a 2-3k paycut to work at the private school we graduated from and we get free tuition preschool through 12th grade- and she is now teaching kindergarten lol, not her favorite choice but its grown on her these past 5ish years haha.

People say tons of bad shit about devos and trump - but destroying our public school system and letting a private and charter system take over would be so much better.

All my kids go to public school and they have done well. My middle daughter especially has an amazing school, but the school my other two go to is great as well.

Sorry to interrupt you guys and the school talk.

The two year old is hitting the five year old. Both are girls. Both weigh the same (yeah well the 5yo is really fragile even for a girl and the 2yo is more on the sturdy side so they both weigh in at 16 kilos)

Situation yesterday: 5yo is looking at a book, 2yo wants the book, 5yo insists it's her book and she was the first to use it. 2yo won't have any of that and starts hitting her on the back. Then she pinches her really hard (girl has some strength, hurts like fuck), and pulls her hair. The 5yo doesn't know how to handle this as she's always been told that you don't hit others no matter what, and do top it off she'd never hit her little sister.

In the end I have to separate them and try to get the 2yo to not hit her sister, or anyone else fwiw, ever again.

Well that lastet for all of two minutes.

When she started again all I could do was put her in her room and hold the door. Cruel, I know. Heartbreaking for daddy, believe me. But it's also heartbreaking to see your other kid stand there and take the beating because she doesn't know how to defend herself.

They are almost never like this, usually they are all hugs and giggles, but when the shit hits the fan it's always the 2yo going off at the 5yo, never the other way round.

I'm not even sure how/if a two year old grasps the concept of not hitting others, and how she did something wrong and shouldn't do it again. At the moment, all I could do was try to protect the big sissy from her little sister. "Locking" her in her room probably wasn't what a specialist would do, but it was the best thing I could come up with. Only kept her there for a few minutes.

Oh man I'm looking forward to when they hit puberty. Told my wife it's like Alien vs Predator. She didn't get it.

Making a child go to their room and confining them there is not cruel. You need to lose that mentality or what is a sign of healthy, strong personality traits in that 2 yo will balloon out of control and become a monster. As someone with a son with the same traits, I can tell you it's hard, because there is a fine line between making them conform to the rules and breaking them.

Came for reassurance. Got reassurance.

wife said it's cruel to lock her up, I replied I picked between that and a spanking (which we don't do, ever) and I'm open for better ideas. Heh.

At 2, you might now have any other choice. You have to protect your 5 year old, as well. You'll figure out stuff that works for you. Sure, locking the 2 year old away isn't ideal but whatever, as a parent you make decisions in the moment and you have to protect everyone.

My 5 year old had a problem with hitting, she's mostly gone beyond that now. She sees a therapist for stff I've talked about in this thread before, that just started recently, and one of the things they are trying to get us to do with her is have her vocalize her feelings. Instead of hitting her sister for X reason, explain how she is feeling and why she is feeling that way. Another trick they gave us a long time ago, which was very helpful, was teaching her to stomp her feet when she's mad. It's annoying as fuck but it helps her get some of that anger out.

At about 1.5 our son started acting up. Throwing temper tantrums, smashing shit, and worst off - hitting people. Hard, for a kid anyways.

Immediately we designated a timeout area in the house. He has to sit on his little stool we use for washing his hands. He sits in the kitchen by himself. We start at 2 minutes and increment by 2 Everytime he doesn't listen or won't apologize.

Part of me was like "does a kid this young understand", but I realized it's about making that routine early on. It took a few tries but now it works.

We give him.3 chances to stop doing a bad behavior and then we say "ok go to timeout" and he does. Sometimes he's cries bloody murder but he never gets up. We've rarely had to increase the time too. This is a kid that refuses to get out of his bed too though, so he's pretty well behaved anyways.

The funny thing is sometimes if he does something wrong he'll go "Nathan go timeout" and police himself and sit down. Or when someone's over and they do something he yells THEM to go to timeout.

Anyways, we started this to get the habit formed. It hasn't stopped him from acting like a 2 year old, but it's laying the foundation. Also I think the timeout gives him time to forget about whatever he was pissed about.

We do a timeout chair for our son too. He hates it and it stops the behavior right away. We tried spanking but he liked it and would actually spank himself and say "I spank you".