Parenting
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@ACT-Crusader My first thought when I saw you had 5 kids was what car do you drive ....
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Cracking thread team. Amazing how many things I read on this I find myself nodding along to ... Especially around the confidence of kids.
My son wouldn't even put his head under water until he was about 5. Infuriating when you are shelling out thousands in swimming lessons / pool access etc. OF course, he's now 8 and can swim like a fish (although not in the Rancid' son category), so we really had nothing to worry about.
He got some new trainers today. The sheer joy on his face about this new trainers brought me back to being a kid again. Which ultimately is I think, what most of the parenting joys are about.
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The helicopter parenting thing and what it does to a kids self confidence is pretty important I’d say. Mrs Cato and I have very different ideas around how you look after and discipline kids. She is of Mediterranean extraction and her (and her mum and sisters) are like caricature Italian mommas. (Though not Italian themselves ). Cue lots of screaming and shouting followed immediately by guilt laden gifts of sweets etc. Mixed messages is not in it. With Ms Cato No1 she mollycoddled her, feeding her fears and phobias to the extent that she now has mild but continuous hypochondria. As I saw this happening and being powerless to stop it, the rot having been set in, I had to do my best to manage it and then ensure the same thing did not happen with Ms Cato No2. We did suffer some dreadful times with No1, including bad boyfriend choices, drugs and depression, but you find a way of getting through it intact.
However despite all that we now have two really good young adults that we are both proud of and that are decent human beings. One has branched out, one still lives at home. Guess which one.
My message would be that it is the values you instil in your kids that will be the most formative thing you can do for them. Everything else is just part of the journey.
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@ACT-Crusader aren’t the dad jokes why you become a dad
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@ACT-Crusader aren’t the dad jokes why you become a dad
I make mine worse for them by saying the joke
And then saying out loud "hashtag dad joke"
And then making finger guns at them
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@mariner4life 😂 that’s awesome I say hashtag in front of things the just get filthy looks from Mrs Mikey....but it’s soo worth it
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@MajorRage said in Parenting:
@ACT-Crusader My first thought when I saw you had 5 kids was what car do you drive ....
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@ACT-Crusader I knew you were a sleeper Canes supporter! Go the Yellow bus!!
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@ACT-Crusader liar. You drive a Bongo van
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If only I had...
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@ACT-Crusader just missing some pointy white hoods bro.
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@ACT-Crusader said in Parenting:
@No-Quarter said in Parenting:
@ACT-Crusader having 5 kids goes a long way to explaining his repetitive ongoing team selection Dad joke. The dude must be a fucking master at driving his kids insane with the same jokes over and over.
I might not get 5 laughs every time I tell my dad jokes at home but at least I get 5 upvotes for my AB selections.
Shout out to @Chris-B @Canerbry @shark @Chris @Stargazer
😉
Tagging people and blatantly fishing for upvotes.
This is a new fern low
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Without distracting us overly much from this awesome thread - when was the last time you checked your kids search history?
Incognito kiddos, incognito!
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@ACT-Crusader said in Parenting:
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.
Upvote this! But also in a slightly different context.
Little things done consistently will create a framework of boundaries. Letting them know when they have overstepped those boundaries or are close to it and providing consequences when they have busted the boundary is a key. Also be prepared to adjust those boundaries out when trust is gained. Kind of like a dog
I'll refrain from the 'in my day' comments as I feel you guys seem to be dealing with a slightly different world that your kids are growing up in. I'm amazed at how young all of your kids are when you aren't that much younger than me!
We were quite lucky in that our son spent his younger years with his grandparents during the day and on the farm. You don't have much option but to just get on with things and listen to what you are being told in those circumstances.
Certainly can't say he was perfect. As they all do there were phases where you wonder what you have done to create a surly, lazy shit that has to be asked multiple times to do things but looking back it is just a growing up/hormonal thing.All I know is that we ended up with a kid that we couldn't be prouder of. Has his head screwed on (more than us) and has a great partner.
Given you're at least 5 years older than me (somewhere recently you said you were at Uni in 1982 ... ), and I reckon most of these blokes are about 10 years younger than me (based on their taste in music...) I reckon you're kind of a little in denial about your age dude ... just step away from the Grecian 2000 ...
Still think most, if not all, of us here seem to be tending toward being caring concerned parents.
And therefore hopefully our kids are heading in the right direction.
@antipodean 's Jesuit maxim rings true.
BTW MBJ was buzzing on arrival home from school today: exams done.
Makes one feel so much better that they're happy.
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@raznomore said in Parenting:
@mariner4life said in Parenting:
@taniwharugby the fuckers never go to sleep fast enough though!
go to sleep! i wanna watch stuff on TV that's violent and also has tiddies!
I feel that pain but more because I want to give the Mrs one and not have to worry if the punk son is still awake these days.
My daughter is an adult splits her time between home and her bf parents house. She’s never home in the weekend which I like. But soon to be teen son is a fucken night owl and his room is next to ours - with our next house I could give 2 shits about a pool or deck. It’s all about the distance the kids rooms are from mine. I’ve spent far too much money on wd40 this past year.
Jesus mate. WD40? You could at least splash out for KY.
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@barbarian said in Parenting:
@No-Quarter said in Parenting:
@mariner4life said in Parenting:
@No-Quarter said in Parenting:
It's that he's just wayyyy too fucking over cautious. About everything, to the point that it has stopped him from doing fun things - he's still not that confident on his bike and doesn't really enjoy it because "what if I fall off Dad???".
that's my youngest. He's very anxious. It's why he is very slow to start new things. All he can think about is what can go wrong. He absolutely gets that from his mother. I just can't understand it, it's not how i am wired, and my eldest doesn't get it either. And i am sure i react incorrectly.
For instance, up at the lake on the weekend. Kids doing biscuit rides behind the boat. Eldest jumps in, and he's actively trying to throw himself around, despite never having done it before. The youngest? got in, but instantly said he didn't want to do it. I pretty much didn't give him a choice, and he fucking hated it, got off after one lap, and didn't get back in. Apparently just seeing it's safe wasn't enough
Then he told his mother that "dad made me do something i didn't want to do!" oops
It's hard to know what to do. I took the approach of just forcing him to do shit, with the view that once he actually did it he'd realise how fun it was. That has backfired many times.
When he was four we had an incident at Movie World on the Gold Coast. I made him go on the log ride with me as there didn't appear to be any age or height requirements. I figured I'd get him all geared up for the final drop during the initial stages where you float around and he'd end up having a blast.
Little did I know that on this particular log ride half way through it puts you into a dark room, turns you backwards, and shoots you down a significant drop at speed. He was fucking petrified after that (understandably so it was pretty intense), and then didn't trust me when trying to get him to do anything else.
Wow I had a real flashback reading this. I went to Movie World about 20 years ago, and really have no memories of it.
But reading the post I now distinctly remember going on that log ride, and the backwards drop being terrifying. So I totally understand your sons feelings on that one!
Wait, I've been to Movie World lots - probably used to go at least every second year between 2001 and 2014 when visiting my Mum, then for two years I'd go quite often when up on the GC campus (at the film studio so had free access), and yet I have no recollection of the log ride going backwards at the end.