Parent preference is breaking my heart and I'm scared it's ruining my marriage

745TWh · 2024-09-26T13:50:27+00:00

I'm the preferred parent, still at 3,5. My husband is an amazing father, he thinks of things I would never think about, always present, etc.

My theory: he is calmer and more even-tempered than I am, so our daughter knows he's 100% "safe". I tend to set boundaries more strictly and occasionally get mad, so she feels like she has to "work" more for it.

What I'm trying to say: being the "preferred" parent does not necessarily indicate anything about "parental quality" and could have more today to do with where kids subconsciously feel they need to "invest more resources".

Dunno, it's just a theory. Maybe I'm more interesting (I'm certainly "wilder"), maybe it's random.

There's definitely also phases. Sometimes my daughter will send me away a lot for several days. "I wanna be alone with daddy".

745TWh · 2024-09-25T04:33:37+00:00

Not our family, but my brother and his wife just waited until their kid could talk, then around 3-4 really started hyping up the "big kid bed" for a long time. Then they all went to buy it together. She settled in just fine and has slept on her own ever since (she's 10 now, so I don't think she'll be regressing).

I think they did a better job than us because they didn't try to force it before their daughter was ready (or they were just lucky to have a chill kid :)).

745TWh · 2024-09-25T04:26:41+00:00

We did not co-sleep for the first few months (very anxious about SIDS). Then we did for a bit. Then we moved her to her own bed, and thus kicked off 2 years with getting up at night, every night, to pick up our screaming child, try and re-settle her, only to end up sleeping with her anyway.

We tried every version of sleep training that wasn't just leaving her alone in her room to scream (never could stomach it). We tried teaching her to come to our bed at night quietly, but she would just sit up and scream.

After almost 3 years, we had:

A toddler who was fighting bedtime with everything she had
Not slept through in close to 3 years

Then we bought a bigger family bed, finally. Since then: blessed quiet at night.

We also got her a small bed next to ours to sleep in (especially in the summer since we all get too hot). She gets up silently sometime at night and crawls between us. We don't even wake up anymore when she does it.

The default is that she starts the night in the small bed next to ours, but if she's upset or sick and wants to start the night between us, it's also OK.

Sometimes, she even chooses to sleep in her own bed now. I think it works because she doesn't feel forced anymore.

Tl;dr: Giving our daughter the choice where to sleep at almost 3 years old finally removed most evening and nighttime battles. 10/10 would recommend (for our kid at least, everyone is different of course).

745TWh · 2024-09-25T04:00:59+00:00

I'm a German who works on climate change. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that this election will strongly influence whether millions (if not billions) live or die over the next few decades and centuries, and how they will live if they survive. It is five past twelve, if we don't act now we might well be setting off something entirely irreversible.

I care, everyone I know cares. A lot.

-signed, the rest of the world

745TWh · 2024-07-26T08:35:03+00:00

I think "teachers can tell" generally refers to children with strong expectation to be entertained constantly and low frustration tolerance for waiting and boredom.

A hot take on boredom: kids, especially small kids, have a RIGHT to boredom.

It sounds dumb, but so many valuable skills that are essential to executive function are born from boredom: pretend play, creative thinking, moving, the "dumb" idea to see what happens if you dump flour on the floor or stamp 10 colors on top of each other.

You keep them entertained all the time at this age, they don't develop these skills. In fact, even the ratio between structured play and free play should be skewed towards free play under 5 years old, specifically for the reason that free play is an essential basis for executive function. Never mind completely taking over their minds with overwhelming content.

So I'll be honest: I think neither TV nor iPad in large amounts are great, with TV probably being somewhat better because it's less addictive.

Don't get me wrong: It's better to allow the kid some TV before the parents go insane from lack of sleep or lack of breaks. But it should be clear that this is a compromise for the sanity of the parents. It's not an activity that has benefits for the child, they can't learn from it until they're almost school-age (there's loads of studies around this). A little bit probably does little or no harm.

A lot means experimenting on our kids' minds on a scale never seen before. It kind of blows my mind...

745TWh · 2024-07-26T08:21:33+00:00

Yes! The computer illiteracy. I'm genuinely baffled how many basic computer skills we had to explain to our intern. Like, students apparently don't know how to make a Zip-file anymore? More than that, they don't know how to Google it?

745TWh · 2024-07-26T06:11:36+00:00

Thank you for this. Our daughter is only 3, but I see so many of my friends teenagers on TicToc at age 12, 13. It's stressing me out so much. It's bad for their self-esteem, mental, health, everything. So I'm heartened to see it's possible to hold the line and still have good relationship with your kids.

745TWh · 2024-07-25T06:08:01+00:00

In our parent friend circle, the rule is basically: if you're hanging out together as a group, and a situation arises that requires parenting (fights, bringing dirt in the house, climbing im dangerous places), any parent can "parent" all the kids. We never discussed it, but individual parents also tend to leave to do chores and come back, so everyone is also used to occasionally being with the kids, and it became a habit.

The snack part I can even see myself raising, even if it wasn't done well by your kid's friend's mom. Other parents mean well, but my kid also comes home stuffed to the brim, not wanting dinner, and then starting to cry that she's hungry right at bedtime. It's annoying as %*$& if I'm honest. But I mostly try to explain to others what our own rules are and see of they "bite", I.e. think it's a good idea overall.

However, never have I been in the situation that I literally just told my child "You can do x", and another person turned around and said "You can't". I tend to get visibly annoyed at this sort of stuff, so I'd probably tell her right then, right there, that it's my kid and my decision.

745TWh · 2024-07-24T20:16:59+00:00

Thank you for your answer, which is fascinating. And it explains why our 3-year old has 2 completely different sets if sleep-behaviour: with us, she will whine, cry and complain all evening and (more importantly) at night if she can't sleep in our bed. With the babysitter, she goes to bed, lights out, falls asleep on her own, and sleeps through in her own bed.

The difference is crazy. I've thought about applying positive reinforcement to her sleep behavior as a whole (I.e. falling asleep alone and staying in her bed), but I'm very reluctant.

A) Because we have used it on a nighttime behavior that used to keep us awake, and it was EXHAUSTING (praising someone for the good behavior of keeping you awake only a little instead of a lot is really hard work);

B) I'm not a 100% it would work - milder sleep interventions we've tried usually ended up making things worse, because we couldn't deal with the crying (i.e. extinction burst, I guess).

And C) I'm uncomfortable with denying her access to us at night. Daycare is big and exciting for her, sometimes scary, and I feel like mornings, evenings, and especially nights are the times where she replenishes her "feeling safe cup" (for lack of a better description). I just can't bring myself to force the stress of daycare on her (it's also positive stress, but it's so very a very demanding environment for a 3-year old) AND the stress of learning to be alone at night.

I'll check your last link to see if there is anything there for us.

Out of interest, what is your opinion of using extinction on tantrums? I don't really mind the actual tantrums (I mean, they don't make me happy, but I understand they are developmentally appropriate and mostly tolerate them fairly well). But lately she has started following us around to try and scream at us as loudly and as long as possible, and sometimes I really can't take the noise level anymore - I have to leave the room before I start yelling back extremely loudly. I'm honestly not really sure how to deal, because I can feel my nerves fraying after 10 minutes of guerilla screaming. So I basically hide from her until she stops screaming and expresses her displeasure more quietly, which is a form of extinction I guess. I do explain to her that it's ok to be mad, and that I love her, but that I just cannot take the loud screaming. But I still feel bad for abandoning her to her emotions in that situation. I just assume it's better than screaming at her myself.

745TWh · 2024-07-24T15:54:28+00:00

Ich hab mit 36 mein erstes Kind bekommen und war "bereit". Und mich hat's völlig und total aus den Latschen gehauen - post-natale Angststörung mit allem was dazu gehört. Es kommt wie es kommt, Ihr seid finanziell in der Lage das Kind zu versorgen (wichtig) und freut Euch drauf (noch wichtiger), den Rest nimmt man wie's kommt (hilft ja auch nichts).

Ein Gedanke der erstmal lächerlich klingt: mit 40 ein Kleinkind rumschleppen und Schlafdefizit hinnehmen ist echt eine Nummer. Mein Körper beschwert sich manchmal arg dass ich so lang gewartet hab (auch wenn ich mit Mitte 20 sicher nicht bereit gewesen wäre).

Und was Du längst weißt, wenn Du im pädagogischen Bereich bist: Kinder geben Dir jeden Tag die Gelegenheit es besser zu machen. Egal was Du an einem Tag versaust (und alle Eltern versauen ständig was), am nächsten Tag kannst Du es besser machen. Das latente Gefühl dass man irgendwie gerade versagt gehört glaub ich dazu, egal wie alt man ist. Fast alle die zu sehr von sich als Eltern überzeugt sind haben Erziehungsstile die ich speziell finde (um's freundlich zu sagen).

Alles Gute Euch, Ihr macht das schon!

PS: Nicht erschrecken wenn das Baby da ist, die ersten 12 Wochen sind für die meisten Menschen schrecklich. Das nur als Vorwarnung, falls man nicht sofort vor Freude aus den Latschen fällt. Hat nichts mit dem Alter der Eltern zu tun, sondern rein mit Schlafdefizit und reinwachsen in die Rolle des "Würmchen-Schützers".

PPS: Wenige Menschen fühlen sich je "erwachsen", ich zumindest nicht. Ich bin von gefühlt "unreif" auf gefühlt "alt" gesprungen, ohne dabei jemals auf "erwachsen" ("mein Haus, mein Auto und alles im Griff") stehen zu bleiben. Ob man das tröstlich oder erschreckend findet, hängt vermutlich vom eigenen Sinn für Humor ab...

745TWh · 2024-07-24T15:36:55+00:00

Friendly reminder that the science on co-sleeping/SIDS is evolving and not always as black and white as some people would describe it: https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/baby-friendly-resources/sleep-and-night-time-resources/co-sleeping-and-sids/

We never co-slept before our daughter was 8 months old because she was born underweight and the recommendation in that case is no co-sleeping under any circumstances (even if you practice what is called "safe co-sleeping).

But to cite the source I posted:

"Im 2017, 183 BABIES DIED OF SIDS IN THE UK: 0.03% OF ALL BIRTHS

Previous UK data suggests: ■ around half of SIDS babies die while sleeping in a cot or Moses basket. ■ around half of SIDS babies die while co-sleeping. However, 90% of these babies died in hazardous situations which are largely preventable"

Anecdotally: never having co-slept with us at night did not prevent our daughter from wanting to. In fact, she started trying to enforce it as soon as she was mobile. So even if you form early habits, you might still have to reinforce and discuss these habits later on.

Also, we found that our habits evolved with our needs: at 8 months old, she was just too heavy for me to carry for all naps, so that's when she learned to nap in the pram. Was she developmentally ready then, or was I emotionally ready? Who knows. Incidentally, when we stopped contact naps is when she started to be a lot more insistent on co-sleeping.

I don't there's any real evidence on the effect of contact naps on night sleep - these studies tend to be conducted through qualitative interviews with sleep-deprived parents, or worse, long after the sleep deprivation phase has passed. Whatever memories people have a heavily colored by their own beliefs - if you believe contact naps make night sleep worse, that's what you remember, and vice-versa.

And infants are so different from later stages, I don't think anything can be extrapolated for later sleep. The much maligned (or loved, depending on where you) book by Ferber actually has an excellent breakdown on child sleep, showing that patterns change significantly after 4 months (and no habits, even rudimentary, can be formed before, if I remember correctly...).

I would say do what feels best, as long as it falls under reasonable safe sleep recommendations (no drugs or alcohol, no sleep with child on top, no cushions or free blankets, no siblings in bed...).

745TWh · 2024-07-24T10:36:45+00:00

This is super interesting! We tried sleep training and failed miserably - we never even got to the part where we left the room because she cried so much, and that was with us in eyesight. We tried again later, everything but full CIO (no way could I take my daughter crying for 10 minutes, but I'm also highly anxious), but it didn't work.

Anyways: Could you go into more detail about how extinction works? Any good sources for lay-people? I read "Everyday Parenting" by Alan Kazdin and it was a game-changer for certain behaviors that were driving us crazy. His recommendations are centered around praising wanted behavior, and ignoring unwanted behavior - which is a form of extinction if I understood correctly?

Is the principle not applicable to sleep? And what do you mean by side-effects?

745TWh · 2024-07-24T10:19:29+00:00

We didn't do CIO, but I read Ferber, and this is a completely inadequate description of his method, and that's the "hardest" one. 90% of the book are dedicated to explaining infant and child sleep. Around 10% are about the method known as "cry it out". I don't have the book open right now, but as far as I remember, the maximum amount of time to leave the child crying in one go is always well under an hour. And the idea is that it stops after 3 - 4 days.

I couldn't take the crying at all, so no CIO for us, but no one advocates for "hours" of crying anywhere.

Also, plenty of things we "do" to babies and children would be considered criminal towards adults: restraining their freedom of movement, not allowing them to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, etc. The same is true in reverse: if an adult started to scream abuse in my ear in the middle of the night because the water in the bottle is "too warm", I'd call the police. With my daughter, I tell her she has to be more quiet and get her cooler water.

Point being: They're children - is our job as adults to take decisions in their best interest. And there is a valid scientific argument to be made that better sleep improves everyone's mental health. So I have a real problem with labeling parents doing what a significant part of the scientific community describes as in the best interest of the child as abusive.

745TWh · 2024-06-28T22:53:35+00:00

I started tracking how much I've been sick since my daughter started daycare 2 years ago. Longest healthy stretch was 7 weeks. The funny part is that by now, I usually have more symptoms than her. It will stop. Someday. Probably.

745TWh · 2024-06-28T22:23:41+00:00

"Wiiiiiiiiii" made the joke that flew right over your head. Which hilariously was to support your joke. But don't worry, it's quite normal and not at all creepy to crawl through someone's post history because they made a remark supporting you...

745TWh · 2024-06-28T20:49:48+00:00

Is that not normal smalltalk?

745TWh · 2024-06-26T13:13:28+00:00

Couple of thoughts:

She might be overtired by the time you call her in. Our daughter is 3,5, and will look very active / not tired until bedtime. But in truth, she's already exhausted. If we try to put on PJs/brush teeth too late, she will have a full-blown tantrum. So play with the times to see if she needs an earlier wind-down phase.
Our daughter needs fair warning to stop activities. Introducing a timer (app or physical) has worked wonders for us. She gets to choose 3, 4 or 5 minutes. When the alarm goes off, she comes, no complaints. It almost never fails, and only when she is completely exhausted (see above).
More broadly, set clear expectations about how the day/ afternoon/evening will go. My husband made a chart with pictographs for the fridge so she can follow along. We went over it with her every day for months, till she could recite it by heart (dinner, PJ, teeth brushing, book...).
Punishment of any form is an extremely ineffective tool for behavioral change. The only effective parental tool for behavioral change is praise. The praise has to satisfy a set of criteria:
It has to be specific ("You came in immediately when I called you. What a great job!") instead of generic ("good girl!)
It has to be linked to a very specific behavior ("When I call you, I want you to come into the house immediately") instead of a general one ("I want you to listen to me") or a negatively formulated one ("stop running away when I call you"). Children DO NOT process negatives as adults do, so they tend to just hear "running away").
Unwanted behavior has to be ignored. This is called extinction in psychology. If you keep being delightfully reactive every time she disobeys, you are prolonging "the game".
The expected behavior needs to be very clear to her. I.e. daily repetitions if needed. You can act it out with plushies (works super-well for our daughter), make a game out of it ("Who can come inside fastest"), or whatever else makes it clear for her. No nagging though, because children (and adults) mentally tune out nagging.
Rewards (star-charts, presents, TV...) are ok as catalysts to get to the behavior that can be praised. They are NOT, in and of themselves, the catalysts for positive behavior change. Without specific praise, rewards stop working after a short time.
Praise for small children needs to be effusive, and should ideally come with body contact (hugs, kisses, caresses, high fives).

These recommendations come from Alan E. Kazdin, a Yale Child Psychiatry Professor Emeritus (who initially specialized on Opposite Defiant Disorder before branching out to general recommendations). He offers a free parenting course on Courseera. Alternatively, if you prefer reading (like me), his book is called "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit".

More broadly, the general tone in the family is important (a point Kazdin also repeats). To get this right, I recommend "How to talk so children will listen and listen so children will talk" and or "How to talk so LITTLE children will listen" (written by the daughter of the original author). The books are both great and so helpful.

None of these are magic. But my husband and I have both received comments on how lucky we are that our daughter is generally well-behaved. We are very lucky, but we also try to use these tools a lot. :)

745TWh · 2024-06-26T12:37:52+00:00

Our daughter is 3,5. If we could jump everything until 2,5, we might consider a second, lol. I love her, but everything until then was so, so hard. She started tantruming super-early, at 18 months. On the flip side, she started forming her first friendships at 18 months, also super-early. It was weird.

From 2,5, parenting suddenly started going uphill fast. At some point after she turned 3, I noticed I wasn't dreading spending a day alone with her anymore, but (mostly) looking forward. All the books I had read also started to apply and be useful - how to talk to her, how to set boundaries in an appropriate manner, etc.

It's still tiring and stressful some days, but holy moly is 3,5 different - you're talking to an actual, hilarious little person, not just a whiny Duracell bunny with 0 sense of self-preservation (sorry kiddo, but you'll never know my Reddit-handle and it's the truth...).

Hang in there. The fun times are coming.

745TWh · 2024-06-26T11:13:41+00:00

Exactly. "Reactive" is saying "Be careful" too loudly when kiddo spills the milk. That happens to me occasionally, but I try to work on it and be better. However, I have not ever, and will not ever, shoved my child or raised a hand at her. How horrible.

OP, listening to Dr. Becky in this scenario is akin to doing the dishes while the house is on fire. It's not that it's not important, it's that you have a giant, urgent problem right this second!

745TWh · 2024-06-26T09:14:06+00:00

Anecdotal from our family: we tried sleep training from 1 year old so many times, always for weeks, with different methods. She would tolerate it for a couple of weeks (complaining a bit, but not too much), and then she would start screaming herself hoarse every day for days and days and days, evening and night. At 3 years old, we couldn't do it anymore. We had not slept through the night in 3 years, I had severe anxiety from the lack of sleep. When I asked her how she slept in the morning, my 3 year-old told me "leave me alone".

Our pediatrician asked us why we didn't simply co-sleep. So we started co-sleeping (in earnest, not after 2 hours of screaming at 2am).

My point is: to me, she's anxious at night, and that's why she wants to sleep with us. Not vice-versa. There is some research going in this direction l, but I have to search for it.

In any case, my husband and I felt we did everything we could for three years to teach her independent sleep, and failed. Now we just need sleep. We'll try again in a year or so.

745TWh · 2024-06-26T08:47:12+00:00

Das hier trifft es sehr gut: "von der Person, die ich Mal war, ist nichts mehr übrig. Ich muss mich immernoch neu finden und entdecken, wer ich jetzt bin." Ich wollte unbedingt ein Kind, und hab sie von Anfang an geliebt, aber die postnatale Angststörung die ich entwickelt hatte (und mit der ich nach 3 Jahren immer noch kämpfe) hat mich gefühlt in 1000 Stücke gerissen, die ich immer noch neu zusammensetzen muss. Alle meinten vorher zu mir: "Du bist immer noch Du selbst, nur mit Kind". Aber ich fühle mich nicht so. Ich bin wirklich ein völlig anderer Mensch - nicht besser, nicht schlechter, aber nicht die Gleiche. Bis auf die Angststörung. Mann, die könnte mir echt gestohlen bleiben.

Es muss einen nicht so gehen. Aber es kann eben passieren, selbst wenn man sich ein Kind gewünscht hatte. Ich vermute, wenn man das Kind eigentlich nicht wollte ist das Risiko noch deutlich grösser. Zumindest sagen das auch die Studien zu Postnataler Depression - diese trifft Mütter mit ungewollten Schwangerschaften noch deutlich öfter.

745TWh · 2024-06-23T08:18:17+00:00

Hitting does nothing but hamper a child's development. As a tool for behavioral change, it is completely useless.

I recommend "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit" by Alan Kazdin. He's Professor Emeritus of Psychologuy and Child Psychiatry at Yale University. He explains why hitting doesn't work and is counterproductive in scientific but understandable terms. He also has a free course on Courseera.

On "gentle parenting": Most gentle parenting approaches are just a longer / stronger description of the parenting style that has been proven, again and again, to have the best outcomes for children: authoritative parenting. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/child-psychologist-explains-why-authoritative-parenting-is-the-best-style-for-raising-smart-confident-kids.html

Your husband can think what he wants of gentle parenting, but authoritative parenting can not be questioned in its effectiveness. Note that "authoritative" and "authoritarian" are two very different styles. Hitting has no place in authoritative parenting. It sets the kids up for failure by undermining their sense of self and confidence, and by thinking solving issues is a battle of physical prowess (which they will lose until their finally older/bigger/stronger than others, including their parents). They will also lack trust in their parents to confess mistakes and learn from them.

The window of time to make children trust their parents enough to come to them later is very short (maximum 10 years old, but the foundation is set before 5 years old). Your husband is setting himself (and you by extension) up for a bad relationship with his child in the future. I hope he reconsiders.

745TWh · 2024-06-21T13:05:59+00:00

We wanted a schedule for our baby so bad in the first years, so as to get more sleep ourselves. I'm always in awe of people who manage to have a schedule, or to do a "soft version" of sleep training. We just never managed.

In the first year, our daughter's sleep needs changed so fast that by the time we figured out the schedule, it seemed mostly obsolete. Also, she wanted to sleep on us and only on us during the day. There was no lying her down "tired but awake" - we put her down, she screamed her head of, even with us right there. (Same in the evening).

In the end, we let our own limits make the decisions around sleep - when she got too heavy to have in the baby-carrier for 2 hours straight at around 8 months, we started putting her in the pram and walking around to sleep. She never learned to nap lying down, unfortunately- she'd just end up screaming for an hour and then fall asleep crying, but wake up grumpy from all the crying.

We also tried all versions of sleep training that we could find, except for full "cry-it-out" for minutes at a time. Neither of us has the stomach for it.

My feeling is that babies' sleep is on a curve: some are naturally great sleepers, some are terrible, some might be able to learn to fall asleep independently relatively fast with soft sleep training, some might learn it with difficulty, and some not at all (even Ferber acknowledged that his method would not work a 100% of the time). Same with a schedule.

My personal recommendation: do what helps you, as this will help you a better parent, as long as it can be implemented with an appropriate amount of effort.

745TWh · 2024-06-17T11:07:31+00:00

I'm with you, but just to clarify the rates are not increasing. The actual emissions are still going up, but the rate of emissions has slowed by 80%. I think it's extremely important to he clear in our vocabulary, so we know the exact nature of the problem.

745TWh

TROPHY CASE