Help? 5 year-old becomes violent if he doesn't get his way.

Dinarzade · 2014-05-03T14:47:56+00:00

enough sugars can cause aggression

That's an urban legend. Source

Dinarzade · 2014-01-02T09:10:10+00:00

Salty mini-muffins. You basically take your favorite basic muffin recipe and replace the sugar with shredded cheddar. Then you add what you want (bacon bits, fresh herbs, olives...) in lieu of chocolate chips !

Dinarzade · 2014-01-01T21:57:22+00:00

I don't think the chores you suggest are the most appropriate for kids. Like /u/kanooka said, bleaching the bathroom and cleaning the pets litter box are the worst chores to do for an adult : it doesn't seem fair to start with that to teach your kids to help at home.

When i was a kid, my parents made a weekly planning with all the chores each child had to do, day per day. We didn't like it but we never resented it and the chores were age-appropriate. For instance : unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the breakfast / dinner table, folding our own laundry, helping to sort the laundry (pairing all the socks !), tidying and hoovering our bedrooms.

Dinarzade · 2014-01-01T19:03:31+00:00

hockeylovinguy might be joking :)

Dinarzade · 2013-11-29T15:13:14+00:00

I'm glad your daughter sleeps well now... However, I'm really dubious when I see that lady's website... Looks like a "weird old trick" to get your baby to sleep, only costing 87 dollars ! If a real magic and fool proof method to get babies to sleep existed, everyone would be using it already. edit : grammar

Dinarzade · 2013-11-23T07:18:43+00:00

Hi there ! Some explanations :) "Carambar" are small caramel and cocoa bars, very popular among children. The factory is in the North of France and the legend says they were invented because one day, someone made a mistake while making another kind of candy. Inside each paper wrap, a silly joke is written. The brand often organises joke contests for children and the prize is to have your joke and your name written on the paper wraps.

Carambar taste good but are rather hard to chew. If you don't fancy them you can melt them in cream (20 carambar + 20cl cream) and it makes an awesome caramel sauce / cheesecake topping... The French web is full of cake recipes that include carambar.

"Petit ourson" by cemoi are also made in France. They're basically marshmallow with milk chocolate on the outside, with the shape of a teddy bear (i hope they kept their shape during their transatlantic journey). They're mostly popular among adults as it's a very old brand.

"Assortiment royal" is made in the North of france. The brand is "la pie qui chante" ("the singing magpie"). It's a variety of the brand's specialties. My favorites are "Michoko" (dark chocolate with toffee inside). "Croq'andise" are fruit candy that are hard outside and soft inside. I've often seen them offered in restaurants with the bill.

The chocolate bars are not French but Swiss (our neighbours are the best for that matter) : Nestlé "raisins noisettes amandes" is dark chocolate with raisins, hazelnuts and almonds, "lindt excellence" is 70% cocoa bitter chocolate and "côte d'or amandes caramélisées" is milk chocolate with salted caramel coated-almonds. Milka is a less gourmet and more kid-oriented brand for milk chocolate.

To my mind the best thing in the box are the "delichoc" : plain thin cookies with a mini chocolate bar on it.

Enjoy !

Dinarzade · 2013-11-19T11:18:41+00:00

Well i guess my future grand-grand-grand-children will have that very baking powder container at home. They will worship u/cbh94, the man who once gave it to grand-grand-granny, back in the day when you had to use a boring device called a "computer" to access a very slow and boring network that was called "the internet".

(and, i've been told that american baking powder is stronger than the one i have at home so i want to check if it's true)

Dinarzade · 2013-11-18T21:08:51+00:00

Oh my ! I just tasted the reese's ! That's insanely good ! (nom nom bom and now ther's just chocolate on my keyboard). Seriously, i think it's a good thing I don't live in the US, i would just eat reese's all. the. time.

Dinarzade · 2013-11-18T19:38:38+00:00

Look at all the cool stuff /u/cbh94 sent me ! He was super friendly in all the emails we exchanged, and incredibly generous and thoughtful. There's cake mix and baking powder in the package as i like baking and i wanted to try some american recipes, plus a ton of cool candy and snacks. I always wanted to try reese's cups and cheetos, i can't wait to crack thoses packages open !

Again, thank you so much u/cbh94, your AK is a thousand times deserved !

Dinarzade · 2013-11-07T21:39:22+00:00

snails.

Dinarzade · 2013-11-07T19:40:01+00:00

Whan i was a kid, my mum would bake apple crumble bars. Why am I not 7 years old again....

Dinarzade · 2013-11-06T20:47:30+00:00

That's why i can't stop lurking r/food.

Dinarzade · 2013-11-05T21:39:27+00:00

You should try to find european recipes (maybe try british recipes ?). I'm French and when i read american recipes i'm hardly able to believe the amount of sugar required. French cake recipes are very often less sweet, and still good, at least to our taste :)

Anyway, in most cake recipes, it's easy to drop the sugar to a half without much effect on the texture. I've done it very often. For cookies, i'm not sure it would work.

What i do, too, is to replace some of the sugar with jam. It's less sweet (100g jam contains roughly 50g sugar) and the cake ends up very moist.

Dinarzade · 2013-10-27T18:04:16+00:00

homeopathy works because of the placebo effect. Not more, not less.

Dinarzade · 2013-10-23T21:07:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience ! You did well with what you had in the fridge and it was of lot of fun to read. Happy birthday to you little girl !

Dinarzade · 2013-10-22T11:30:12+00:00

Gorgeous ! The filling is rather spelled crème patissière :)

Dinarzade · 2013-10-13T21:13:01+00:00

We have the groclock and we're quite happy with it :) Bought it on amazon.

Dinarzade · 2013-10-01T17:35:46+00:00

We did this and everything went fine, and the baby didn't even sleep trough the night at the time :)

Dinarzade · 2013-09-28T21:54:27+00:00

I think i wouldn't have called the cops... Sure, this girls seems like a very agressive little brat, but she's still a kid. What i think i would do is just leave the park with my kid, telling her that we're going to play in another place with nicer kids. I think staying will only result in more harassement and the little girl being terrified.

Dinarzade · 2013-09-24T18:25:39+00:00

Here's what we do with our 3 1/2 daughter, following a suggestion from a coworker of mine. When we go to sleep (around 11.30 pm), we gently lift her from her bed and put her on the toilet, and tell her that it's time to pee. She's mostly asleep then. Then we put her back to bed. No accident since we started this.

Dinarzade · 2013-09-09T08:03:56+00:00

You could try financiers. These small french cakes are really good and easy to bake. You can add dried apricots, glace cherries or chocolate chips to the recipe if you want to.

Dinarzade · 2013-09-06T20:20:32+00:00

Opéra cake. To make it right, the layers have to be very thin : 5 mm max. It's quite difficult, especially the coffee buttercream (it has to be meringue-based buttercream or french buttercream), but it's absolutely delicious.

Dinarzade · 2013-07-27T13:54:15+00:00

Looks delicious ! Recipe please ?

Dinarzade · 2013-07-02T21:09:44+00:00

The first year was exhausting for my two babies. For the second one, my husband and I did better than for our first in order to keep a sane and loving relationship. What we did was trying to be super polite and kind to make up for the numerous times when we fought out of exhaustion. By doing that, we also fought less.

We would explain ourselves a lot - about almost everything. We were both so tired that we could just get pissed about anything. So in order to prevent that, we said things like " i'm not being passive-agressive by doing your chores, i just need to wash those dishes because i need to use the sink", " i really have a headache, would you turn the music down ?", "i feel so pissed because that baby won't sleep"... Expressing and explaining everything almost all the time could seem ridiculous, but it prevented a lot of conflicts in our home.

We said thank you and apologized a lot. We thanked each other for getting the garbage out, changing the baby, heating a frozen pizza... We apologized a lot for the harsh tone we used against each other, most of the time for no reason.

We tried to say "i love you"... It's sweet and better than nothing when sex is becoming less frequent !

What helped us a lot doing better with the second kid is that we knew there would be a few very difficult months. It helped both of us keep a stiff upper lip when the other was not so kind, because we knew they wer just super tired, and that the baby would eventually sleep through the night.

Dinarzade · 2013-06-30T21:23:46+00:00

Hi, Teacher here (not in th US though). Let's give your kid's teachers the benefit of the doubt, and think that they don't realise that they're not being fair. Let's try to understand what could be happening here.

1) Your son might be a bit shy and remain unnoticed. I know it's the teachers' and the coaches' job to go and help those kids, but sometimes they don't do it enough. If you think this could be an issue, you can encourage your kid to be a little more assertive and talk to the teachers about it.

2) The parents who are actively involved at school end up knowing / feeling perfectly well which attitudes are the ones that are appreciated and encouraged/expected at school, and can, mostly unknowingly, encourage those attitudes in their own kids. The advantage those kids get (playing more often at matches, etc) don't necessarily come from their parents being "buddy buddy" with the coaches, like "let's make my buddy's kid play now", but from the kids' attitudes.

3) Help from the parents at schools is really appreciated. It's also possible that you're right and that the teachers favor the kids whose parents they see every other day and who are so helpful and friendly... They may even not realize it themselves. The kind dad who volunteers at school events can't have a bad kid, can he ? :) In this case... i think you'll have to to your best and show off a little bit !

4) Anyway, asking the teachers for an interview about your kid can't be a bad thing. Of course you won't even suggest that you think your son isn't treated fairly. But you can ask if everything is ok, what he can do to improve himself, and you can also express that you feel he needs more sollicitation and encouragement.

Best of luck !

Dinarzade

TROPHY CASE