Parenting
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@taniwharugby that is awesome bro, of course you've got to make sure the 2nd phone and the back up 2nd are located and confiscated too 😂😂
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My eldest cooked dinner, and the youngest thanked him for it.
Who are these kids?
We're currently playing darts
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@mariner4life said in Parenting:
My eldest cooked dinner, and the youngest thanked him for it.
Who are these kids?
We're currently playing darts
I'm gonna need a transcript of that smack down you laid on them the other day...
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@mariner4life said in Parenting:
My eldest cooked dinner, and the youngest thanked him for it.
Who are these kids?
We're currently playing darts
I'm gonna need a transcript of that smack down you laid on them the other day...
Like everything in my life I made it up as I went along so fucked if I know what I said.
It was fucking stern, and i spoke to them like they were adults.
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@Paekakboyz ha no other phones, TR jnr wastes his money on stupid shit, Miss 11 dont buy anything with hers...plus I can check what devices on Wifi 😀
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@mariner4life one of the things I find especially tough is the wife and I are often at odds with how to handle this stuff. She wants to engage and solve problems, I basically say "fuck 'em - they'll learn the hard way".
It is especially galling with the boy who, being a male, doesn't appreciate having a ton of words / advice thrown at him.
And here we go - she got home from work and goes in to sit next to him on the coach in the rumpus room while he's on the PS4. He gives her nothing. Just plays his game.
I walk into the office after a phone call, and there she is, typing an email to the year coordinator
I go back to him and explain what is happening, and about sorting out what he needs to in his head, because his Mum is writing an email to his year coordinator right now.
He's frustrated, says he's being quiet because he feels like lashing out at everyone. "That's fine and I don't want to give you an end date, but you need to think about how to sort through this and get back to something like normal.".
I'm betting he made a move on this girl he fancies and got the arse, maybe in front of others. That's going to be a hard blow to take first time around.
Dude. If he did that the boys has guts. I'm impressed.
If he got knocked back it's hell of a humiliating, but fuck good on him for having the guts to try.
It probably took me another mumble years on him to have that courage.
Buy that man a beer.
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He has been seeing a psych for some issues around anxiety and depression. Admitted to us a while ago that he tried self-harm - not a huge thing, just a small cut. But it is a slippery slope. She was teaching him some coping skills so hopefully he starts using that.
Replying to 2x NTA posts.
A while back I did a "help me parent" post when Ms Boo Jr confided that a friend of hers was self harming.
Got really good advice from all here (thanks) (but particularly from our dear departed toad ... which was bang on point ... credit where it is due).
Upshot of that and a little bit of googling was that self harm was basically trying to manifest the pain of what you're feeling emotionally as a physical pain, so you can feel it.
Helped me understand it. In Ms Boo Jr's fiend's case I could see what the emotional pain was (parental split), but hell growing up can be painful in itself.
Will possibly share about MBJ shortly.
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So parenting ...
I've been reluctant to add anything in case I give the impression I have aaaaannny idea what I'm talking about.
I've (we've) got through to 16 and three quarters still alive and in one piece, with MBJ still the most dedicated hard working student you could imsgine. I could not be more proud of her for that.
We've not however taught her to be self confident in her dealings with other people. I won't say introverted, as if presented she'll interact but she really hates it.
And my god she gets stressed. Year 11 mid year exams are doing her head in at the moment.
Mid teen hormones don't help. Complicated by physical complications girls sometimes develop (fuck being a girl, seriously).
The fact is we're all msking it up as we go along.
I read somewhere once that if we instill them with the right ethics from the earliest possible age they'll become the person you want them to be.
I am hoping (confident) MBJ will be the awesome young lady she can be, because her parents are awesome.
And I'm confident all your junior Ferners will turn out on the good side too.
But then again I'm only guessing ...
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@booboo I think that's right mate. Instill good values and trust that those will shape their decisions as they grow.
I try to be quite tough, I expect my kids to always try their best, be respectful, tidy, be all round good people. Not always easy but I try to strive for the best
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@booboo I think that's right mate. Instill good values and trust that those will shape their decisions as they grow
And understand you can inform them of your experience with making stupid decisions, but that they'll learn for themselves through making stupid decisions.
The facts I've gleaned about women are important to pass on. Both of them.
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My kids are pretty good - not without their issues and I have to fire up at them quite often to keep them in line. But they reward me for it every single day.
Mr 8 loves mountain biking with me and I can tell he has that fizz in his stomach when we do it and it just warms my heart. Ms 6 is much more trouble but most evenings she leans on me on the couch and asks me to carry her to bed - it’s daily heart melting stuff.
I hate saying no to them and never will on a fair request. This does have its own issues when I do say no as the shit can hit the fan. Have never hit them but I charged my son ( didn’t touch him, stopped a foot away)once in anger - he was petrified and pissed himself a bit. You don’t know what feeling bad is til you’ve done that.
These days when they get shitty I threaten to put them into state school. They pipe down fast as. There’s movements against people like me I think ....
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@mariner4life said in Parenting:
And guys i know we all go through much the same thing, and in all reality it's easy to think your kids are just the worst, when in all reality they are the same as anyone's, but it's so easy to slip in to a mindset that you are the only one dealing with this shit, and you are the only one who doesn't have their shit together.
We're all just making this up as we go along.
Agree with @Kirwan don’t be too hard on yourself bro. It’s the toughest gig in the world because of the emotional roller coaster that is parenting. As demonstrated on this very thread!!
We have five ACT Jnr’s between the ages of 17yo-6yo. Do I have regrets, sure, but I’ve since learned (and it’s cliche) to take each day as it comes. There’s plenty of stuff they do that I could blow up about, go hard on them for etc, but when I reflect on my own upbringing and all my friends and cousins thought my parents were the strictest, but any time I got disciplined and the odd wooden spoon, they would always take time afterwards when the emotion was gone to talk to me and give me a hug.
There are only certain things - safety, talking back to their mother, that I get upset at. It’s damn hard, but I think back to me being an imperfect kid and how I used to test my parents.
In my view kids need to be challenged. They need opportunities to build resilience. They need hard lessons. But they also need to learn love and trust. More often than not it’s the little things done consistently that make the biggest difference. What those little things are different for each kid. One likes me sitting watching a show with them. One likes going to the shops with me. One likes it when we shoot hoops together in the backyard.
We all have demands on our time and we get tired from work and other stuff we have going on (Fern time) and it’s sometimes hard to give our best selves to our kids. It’s not easy, but the quality of that time is where I’ve tried to focus on. Some days it‘s great and some days it’s painful! But nonetheless I just keep trying and live in hope they remember it!
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I have a 7 year old and a 9 month old I really forgot how hard the sleepless nights are, also the 7 year now has a habit of talking back all the time but he really shoots him self in the foot as we take away technology which usually sorts him out
Tech access is definitely the currency at this age. The threat is often enough but sometime the ipad has to be impounded for a week or so to straighten CF jnr out. The sentence can be reduced with good behaviour especially good homework habits
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Family at my kids' school has 7. First one just finishing High School from the mother's first marriage. She's pakeha as fuck, husband is a Philippino and they just seem to dig it.
And, being the Catholic Education system, the 4th kid onward is free, so...