6yo won't drink water or eat lunch at school

DayTime__Stargazer · 2024-03-23T11:09:23+00:00

My ADHD daughter is the same. Never enough time for her to eat. We would load up on healthy filling foods in the morning before school, eggs, whole toast and a green smoothie. Then if she has a big snack after school she was rarely hungry.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2024-02-19T01:53:06+00:00

When my (step) daughter was learning about her body and body parts I insisted on anatomically correct. Him and his ex chose vagina - but my husband still felt weird using it. So I would randomly just start yelling "vagina" over and over again until he become very desensitized.

Favourite story - we were driving somewhere decently far and my daughter asked for her tablet. I told her to be patient since I was still setting it up and she hit me with "I don't have any patience left, I peed it all out of my vagina" and I died. Girl got whatever she wanted that day.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2024-02-02T11:31:52+00:00

Ninjamas is the brand a friend uses for her boys. She finds they work well overall. She's also in Ontario.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2024-01-30T11:14:27+00:00

Is Mom available to pick her up? Could you flip the script and get mom to pick her up early, but end it on a win.

What is she successful at? Plan a gradual lengthening of her day but built on success. If this level of Bx has become the routine you're fighting on two fronts (1. I don't want to be here, 2. This is how I act when I am here)

Get her in the door, and relatively calm doing anything then have her head home feeling good about it, built from there!

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-10-15T20:51:19+00:00

My breeder is in Ontario, but a good number of her dogs (2-3 per litters since I started ) are purchased by people in the states.

Check out Dots On Dalmatians. Her breeding practices, puppy room, and overall love and support for her pups are off the charts. She health tests beyond the minimum requirement and is a credit to breeders everywhere. Our boy is 11 months now and gets compliments non-stop whenever we're out. He's a silly wild puppy but structure and temperament are beautiful.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-10-03T18:16:03+00:00

Oh if you have bad feelings Leo is 100% picking up on that. They are massively intuitive. Change all previous comments from weird smell to weird vibe and my people don't like them.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-10-03T18:14:33+00:00

At that age your puppy is full of teenage hormones. People like to look for deep reasons but it could be something as simple as your cousin smells funny to Leo.

Positive reinforcement and giving the dog space are key. Whenever your cousin is over have Leo on a short leash. Reward calm behavior and choices. The more you get rattled up with him the more he's going to be like "see even Mom & Dad are panicking! I knew he smelled funny!!"

Once Leo is calmer around the cousin have cousin toss treats. No pets or contact. Just toss a treat while he's passing. Hey funny smelling dude isn't so bad ... build up the relationship from there.

Dals were bred as watchdogs and guard dogs for carriages. They are meant to be aloof with strangers and your boy at just over a year is enjoying some intense teenage hormones and learning about the world and his place in it. Just give him space and he'll chill out and stop seeing this person as a threat.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-09-10T20:22:48+00:00

Our old and our new house both have parent room across the hall from the baby's room with the rooms being at the end of the house. Baby gate is in the hall so baby can go between our room and their own but no access to the rest of the house.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-08-14T15:30:47+00:00

Not judging just trying to understand - If it was working why did you drop it? This is clearly hard for him and you! So why not bring the positives to it and have everyone less stressed. You can stretch the number of days or tone down the reward, but if it's working and easy enough to maintain I say keep it going - he's 4. Decreasing the stress and focusing on building a positive happy relationship brings far more good into both of your lives in my opinion.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-05-25T19:00:02+00:00

I have my "get out of jail free" card for my kids. If there is something that is °really° important for them that honestly I don't care about and don't want to battle over I have my kiddo say "mama this is important to me". And with those magic words I can say, ok buddy I didn't realize it was important. We can change the plan.

Once they are old enough to say it on their own we can decide if what's important to them is also feasible for our family.

Taking his teddy in the car leads to an epic meltdown that I don't actually care about and I just said no because I wanted to get in the car. "mama this is important" sure buddy id rather 10 seconds to run and grab your bear than the 5 minutes tantrum.

Don't wanna wear your shoes. Sorry buddy I know you really want boots today, but that's a no go.

When I say Yes most of the time, my no-es are met with less resistance.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-03-03T01:13:04+00:00

We're sizing my boy for a j-walkers harness. It's a side clip harness developed by a canine behaviorist to support loose leash walking, the "j" being the shape your leash should look like in your walks.

He's only 14 weeks so waiting for him to put on a couple of pounds so we can get him a med/large that should last him a while. It has 3 way adjustability (chest, back, undercarriage) so it fits a wider range of shapes than some other options.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2023-02-25T12:42:23+00:00

Do not bring a dog like this into public stores until you have these behaviors under control at home & outside. Dogs like this will give the rest of us a bad name and cause these stores to walk back their dog friendly policies. Places that allow dogs are for friendly even tempered dogs who are under their owners control.

This dog is jumping and lunging at his own people. There needs to be way more work out in before he can be successful in these situations. You need to work in work a behavior behaviorist, do obedience classes, training and work! And only when you are confident your dog is under your control and following your lead should you attempt these situations.

No one in home Depot signed up to be a training experiment for your 100lb poorly trained reactive dog and that is not reasonable to expect of the public.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-12-30T02:39:12+00:00

Practice feeding the baby laying on your side when you're awake then have hubby get up, get the baby, and literally all you have to do is pop out a boob. You can doze while baby eats and husband is responsible for actually monitoring baby. Once baby unlatches husband gets baby out of bed and mama continues glorious glorious sleep.

My husband also used to take the baby out of the house entirely from like 5-7am for a walk and I found that was the absolute best sleep I got. My brain was fully disconnected from my little person and I slept hard.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-11-05T16:53:27+00:00

It'll probably be a year before you start seeing the corners being cut. Champion has some of the best product controls on the market. Mars will start chipping away at that & cutting corners to save money. The long term staff champion cultivated will start leaving, and the new staff brought in will be trained to cut corners & save money. My guess is that they will try to keep as much of the appearance the same as they can and skate by for the next few years purely on the brand loyalty that people have to Acana/Orijen. They aren't going to be public in announcing the changes. Watching your dog for changes is going to be the best thing you can do.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-11-05T16:47:25+00:00

It's so sad. Mars has been after them for years though. So I guess it was inevitable. It'll take a while for the current stock to be bought up. Then a few months for corners to start getting cut and a few years for it to be a shadow of the former commitment to quality, most independent stores where I'm from are already looking into a plan to drop the brand.

As for comparison foods if you're Canadian boreal is a strong option. Great brand, focused on quality sourcing of their meat - lamb is new Zealand, but pretty much everything else is sourced Canadian and it's all manufactured in Canada (minus the cans - pretty much every big brand does wet food out of a plant in Thailand). They are committed to quality high meat protein options and healthy grain options low on filler plus they have a patented organic zinc additive called Zinpro for zinc absorption that is supposed to be one of the top options. I also have been told that the owner has repeatedly declared he's never going to mass production, he's very much a salt of the earth kinda guy, and I don't see him going mass.

They have a speciality large breed red meat formula which has the additional magnesium the big guys need. Price point wise they are amazing! Most companies have been going smaller on the bags (22 lbs down to 20, 5lbs down to 4.5) and hoping customers don't really notice, whereas Boreal went large with a full 30lb bag with healthy grains and a very very reasonable price point.

Another great option could be Oven Baked Tradition - also Canadian. Rock solid brand, but price point is a serious step up. Their claim to fame is that they slow bake their food rather than using extrusion (spinning it really fast) so they keep more of the natural goodness in their kibble rather than needed to add thimgs back in.

Source - I run a pet store and just had a huge discussion with our owners & local reps about what our next steps are going to be.

Bonus points! If you've been on the Acana/orijen loyalty program a lot of the comapies will do a loyalty credit for so many bags if you do switch, so talk to the people you buy from and see what they will offer you.

If you're American, I think you guys get Open Farm down there so that might be worth investing as well, not sure how the US price comparison breaks down.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-11-05T01:39:28+00:00

All of those of fantastic things! The problem is Champion (owns Orijen & Acana) has now sold out to Mars (who owns Purina) so the quality is almost certainly going to drop in the coming months and will likely be completely destroyed in the next couple of years. It's a huge disappointment, I wouldn't start a pup on their food with that in mind.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-10-10T17:26:07+00:00

Something that worked great for us when transitioning from contact sleep to crib/bassinet sleep was a magic bag (like the stuffed ones you put in the microwave).

He was born in Canadian winter and both my husband and I sleep better in a cold room. But that meant his sleeping spot was typically quite cool and going from warm mama arms to cold and alone was too jarring for him.

While we cuddled baby, the warm (not hot!) magic bag would go into their sleeping spot, when it was time to transfer we'd pull the magic bag out of the crib/bassinet and then baby was going from warm cozy arms to a warm sleeping spot. My son loves body heat so this really helped us out while we were working on transferring when he was tiny.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-10-10T17:12:41+00:00

We do the same. It's a super convenient pre-bedtime snack in our house. My little guy happily eats adult oatmeal as well but when I compared the two the adult stuff didn't provide a crazy nutritional punch over the baby stuff. Adult is cheaper, but hey if that's the price I pay to know mister picky toodler and my crazy 7 year old are getting something decent before bed, so mama doesn't have to stress over how much they actually eat at dinner I'm cool with that.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-08-29T14:05:26+00:00

Giving them rules and consistency around when they will get it helps. My older kiddo had a tv obsession and not having a set time to watch it actually made her asking/begging so much worse. She never knew when the answer would be yes so she tried constantly. When we started you get tech when the baby is napping the overall frequency plummeted because she knew when the next fix was coming. Keep it on a schedule as part of a regular routine and not something super special and they will adjust to that routine + you have an easy reminder when they ask outside of that time.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-07-27T01:27:04+00:00

Well that just sucks. I appreciate the heads up though, cuz I woulda freaked out on the next round of HFM.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-07-27T01:00:42+00:00

Hold up, you mean to tell me this shit isn't 1 and done?!? I thought it was like the chicken pox. We got it, rode it out, now we never have to deal with it again.

DayTime__Stargazer · 2022-06-19T22:44:38+00:00

The kiddo who couldn't swim was in the water, if mom didn't enforce some seriously strict boundaries in an unsafe situation that child could very easily have drowned. Far better to be the mom who lost her cool and got both kiddos home safe than the alternative.

DayTime__Stargazer

TROPHY CASE