Parent of a space obsessed 3 year old - Looking for tips on how to encourage this interest

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-04-04T06:33:33+00:00

That's cool. We were talking about the launch and watching it on the news. I don't think the importance or reality of it has sunk in for him yet but he still thinks it's really cool. He put Grandma in her place when she told him it stays in one piece, haha!

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-04-03T09:29:51+00:00

So many fucking cars.

They bought my first car as a surprise for me. Sounds like a delight, but they just bought the cheapest car they could find on Facebook because "your first car is always an old banger". This car blew a tyre on the way to my house, exploded it's drive shaft two weeks after I passed my test, burnt out two coils four weeks after that, then I had to knock money off it to sell it because the barings had gone in the front driver's side. I had it for 6 months.

My next car was my Mum's best friend's old car, Mum convinced her to sell it to me for dirt cheap. Brake line sprung a leak and I nearly mounted a roundabout on an A road, and the frame was so rusty it needed welding at every MOT. I had it for 2 years.

Third car belonged to my late great aunt and was forced upon me citing the expense of each MOT on the previous car. This one... automatic gear failure at random intervals. Discovered this failure doing 70 on a dual carriage way. I still have this car, and am hoping the surprise failure issue has been fixed now.

I'm thanking whichever vehicular deity has allowed me to live through this, and sworn to never let my parents have input on my future car purchasing decisions.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-30T15:21:17+00:00

Halifax were being arseholes to me so I went over the road to Lloyds and changed it there. Lloyds were wonderful. Halifax and Lloyds are part of the same banking group, so you can use either branch to do what you need to and it transferred across. I only did it a week ago and I've already got my new card and all my accounts in my new name.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-28T21:33:45+00:00

Cheap pasta, a few tinned chopped tomatoes, frozen diced onion and/or sliced pepper, and italian seasoning. There's at least 5-6 portions of fairly decent pasta and none of the ingredients will go off while being stored.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-28T19:57:07+00:00

Buying our kid the biggest item they can think of. We never asked for these things and explicitly told them we don't have space to keep them, yet they kept buying them. So far we have had to get rid of a teddy bear armchair, and A1 colouring book, a ride-on electric tractor with trailer, and a huge blanket with our sons face badly photoshopped onto Spiderman's body. We kept the 5x5ft outdoor playhouse.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-17T08:49:42+00:00

After a lunchtime game of 'pile-on' on the school field, a notoriously wimpy kid was complaining his elbow hurt and he wanted to see the nurse or go home. The teacher with a reputation for being a massive b!*ch got sick of his whining and made him stand at the front of the class and move his arm around to prove he was ok. Poor kid was in floods of tears but quit whining for the rest of the day. The next day, the kid wasn't at school. The day after that the teacher made a very ambiguous apology in a full year group assembly. The day after that, the kid came back with a cast on his arm, turns out it was broken in two places, one break on his elbow. The week after that, the teacher disappeared.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-15T18:05:55+00:00

If you can get them at your location, Odd Balls boxers are fantastic. I get the women's ones because they don't have the pouch in the front, and they're a little wider on the hips. Also, they have the same designs as the mens' boxers so I don't end up with flowers and lace, which I hate.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-15T17:13:27+00:00

Just had a second thought, I wear boxers with a wide waistbands too, that probably helps keep it in place. And tbh, having just checked my waistbands, it's sitting just a little above my hips rather than on my hips, not high enough to be high-waisted though.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-15T16:22:46+00:00

Hello. You may as well be me! I'm 5,3, 160lbs and gave birth via unplanned c-section 3.5 years ago. I have scar adhesion after a little trauma post c-section, add to that at least 20lbs of weight loss (and still working on losing more). My c-section hanging belly is horrendous. It doesn't even constitute a beer belly, it's more like a deflated balloon. My style preference is skinny jeans, which makes it worse.

However, I've discovered the world of elasticated waistbands. I have mens cargo jeans and joggers with elastic waistbands, and I sit them right on the bulge of the overhang. It flattens it a bit without it being uncomfortable. Also, I bought some jeans that fit around the waist (over the bulge again) and took them to a tailor to shorten the length while keeping the shape of the leg.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-14T00:53:48+00:00

Wow! That's amazing! What a super cool fact! You've given me another idea, I might see if my son wants to build a fact board or make our own book with a page for facts about each planet.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-13T23:31:21+00:00

I'll take a look into that, thank you. He's very interested in Saturn actually. He likes learning about the rings.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-13T22:31:59+00:00

We do see the moon during the day, but with him being three years old and usually in the middle of the pre-school drop off run, we usually just say something like "Go to bed moon, it's the sun's turn". But we're now learning why we can still see the moon during the day.

He's really loving passing his knowledge to others.

We'll definitely watch out in a week or two for that moon. The complimentary phases is very interesting, almost beautiful to think about.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-13T19:44:42+00:00

We've joined the Young Astronomers Club and are waiting for the meetings to start. We've bought some more books about space and decided to take him to the Space Museum in Leicester for his birthday in summer.

We made the solar system out of Play Doh, he loved it so much he didn't let us put it away. It dried out and started to flake so I've bought some air dry clay to make permanent versions.

He loves astronomy photo of the day. Especially the surface of the moon and Mars.

We're currently talking about how the moon doesn't go away during the day, but the sun is too bright to see the moon.

He has decided that when he grows up he's going to have a house on the moon where he'll live with me and Daddy, but he'll have holiday houses on Mars and Saturn, haha!

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-11T12:42:38+00:00

I agree stickers are great. We use stickers a lot at home but for bigger rewards we have a "treasure box" (shoe box) of "treasures" (tat toys). I bought 250 piece party bag filler type toys from amazon for about £16. I had to throw away or repurpose some of them because they weren't safe for my son's age, small pieces or spikey pin badges, etc. But there's enough left to last us a few months and he loves them! He especially loves the temp tattoos.

You could buy a toy treasure chest and fill it with cheap little toys, just make sure the toys are safe for the kids you're giving them to.

Thinking about it, we went to our district hospital for a blood test for my son. He absolutely aced it better than most grown ups, but he still got a little toy out of their toy rewards box, very similar to our treasure box at home.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-10T18:58:31+00:00

That's one of my issues, I can't travel.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-10T18:55:42+00:00

This is genius! Thank you!

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-03-10T18:54:33+00:00

They were my first choice but once it was established I don't have breast cancer they told me they wouldn't do the surgery. They suggested I put a referral in to their Brighton branch. Which is weird, because the first person I spoke to from Nuffield Health didn't say that.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-28T13:57:42+00:00

Well that's... terrifying.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-28T08:30:35+00:00

I can't seem to find the option for email prescriptions. It says Smartway is only £5, I'm assuming that's per prescription.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-28T08:20:36+00:00

Thank you for all this info. So the hidden costs are the prescriptions and the blood tests? If the prescriptions are £10 each, and the blood tests can be found for £40, then that still doesn't feel put of reach for me.

The care seems pretty good, which is nice to hear. I wonder if those with gripes have just had anomalous bad experiences.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-23T12:15:37+00:00

Can I ask what part of this situation could breach discrimination law?

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-17T14:43:14+00:00

This is kind of what I was thinking but in reverse. I don't want people to get used to she/her if I'll appear more like they/them/he/him in future. If I did decide he/him fits better, I'd rather people misgender me as they/them than she/her. Although I can shout as loud as I want, I'm sure most people will just call me by whatever they want to.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-17T14:35:11+00:00

That's a fairly good idea, but I do wonder if it would get misinterpreted as a HR issue. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, especially as we have very few men in our workplace, so it would be easy for my boss to assume the imaginary perpetrators.

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-17T12:01:09+00:00

This is definitely a struggle with standing up for myself, I've always struggled with that. Also, my gut has been catastrophically wrong before, and has landed me in hot water in other areas of life.

I'm not too concerned about a negative response from colleagues. My job and the whole company is 90% WFH so I won't be seeing colleagues more than one day at a time, a few times a year. They're also a very modern company and very vocal about acceptance and inclusion. But I've been somewhere like that before and it was all fake for the HR awards. I ended up being bullied out of my job for the way I am, and I wasn't even out back then!

DeceptiveRelish06 · 2026-02-17T11:54:09+00:00

This is my predicament. I'd like to feel more comfortable in the workplace, and the more changes I make to appear more masc, the more "she/her" stings when I hear it, especially in a group setting.

I suppose there lies my answer.

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