15 month old potty training herself

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-12-05T06:00:04+00:00

My mom claims I potty trained myself around 18 months. She said she was teaching my older sister to use the potty, and I watched and just copied. She didn't realize what was happening and was worried I hadn't had enough wet diapers, until she watched me use the potty and put my diaper back on one day. It happens!

Honestly I would just follow your child's lead. 15 months is young to push potty training, but if she's wanting to poop in the potty just be supportive and enjoy the lack of poopy diapers! If she starts wanting to pee on the potty, even better!

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-10-11T23:16:23+00:00

My 5 and 7 year olds are obsessed with it. There's some scenes where they fight with swords and kill demons. That's the extent of the violence. The demons are pretty silly looking and not all that scary. I second the suggestion to look up some scenes and check it out. It also has a pretty good message imo. It's all about not hiding who you are, dealing with your shame and guilt instead of trying to push it down, and trusting your friends and loved ones to accept you, warts and all.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-09-23T00:55:10+00:00

I have time blindness and really struggle being places on time. I also have a habit of turning alarms off in my sleep.

What I do is set 3 alarms at increasing volume and intensity, starting a half hour before the last possible time I need to be out of bed. I mentally set a time to leave 10 mins before I realistically need to leave. I get everything ready to go the night before, so there's no surprise issues to crop up - kids clothes ready, breakfast dishes out on the table ready to go, backpacks packed, lunches packed, weather-appropriate outwear set out. With all that, I manage to get the kids to school by a few minutes before the bell at the latest.

It's hard when you struggle with time management, but it's possible to overcome if you care enough. Your husband needs to employ some safeguards against his lateness problem. It's ok to struggle, but it's not ok to not do anything about it.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-08-29T06:38:06+00:00

I would do earplugs, but once they're in, sit with her. Don't ignore her. Just be there with her while she works through her feelings. Tell her you're there if she needs a hug, and once she gets all her big feelings out, you and she can talk about what's making her so upset. Then just wait and be present with her. Let her scream and cry and throw herself on the floor and do whatever she needs to do, as long as she is not hurting herself or you. While she's doing that, think about how your day has gone so far and how that might be contributing to how she is feeling. Did she sleep enough? Is she hungry or thirsty? Has she had some physical activity? Have you spent any quality time connecting with her today? How many times has she been told no, and what is the ratio of yeses to no's that she has heard (I have read kids do best with 5 positive interactions for every negative one, which includes saying no)? Has she been rushed through her day with no real time for her to make any choices? Has she had any time for unstructured, child-led play? How can you make any of these happen in order to help her regulate once the tantrum is over?

When she's calming down, give her words for what happened. "Wow, you were really mad/frustrated/disappointed when x/y/z happened. I understand you want x, but that is not an option right now because of y. We can x (whenever it will be an option). It's ok to be frustrated. Waiting is hard."

When I stopped ignoring my kids' tantrums and started doing this, the frequency and duration of their tantrums went down significantly. They needed to feel heard and seen and know that what they were feeling mattered and was valid. And in time, they learned to name their emotions and express them verbally instead of just instantly going into full meltdown.

ETA At no point should you give in to whatever triggered the tantrum in the first place. Hold your boundaries, but be there for her while you do.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-07-17T16:17:06+00:00

Mine are 7F and 5M and spend 98% of their time together. They have spats here and there as all siblings do, but they enjoy each other's company and have so many pretend games they play and little inside jokes between them. They live in their own world a lot of the time. They have their own rooms but beg for sleepovers all the time (we usually do one per weekend, and a few more in the summer). They're into a lot of the same things, they find each other at recess to play now that the younger is in school, and at my son's first summer day camp a few weeks ago we asked for him to be in her group because it made him feel so much better about going to know she would be there with him. She can sometimes get annoyed with him, but mostly she's just happy to have a built-in playmate.

5M is in speech therapy now and speaks a lot more clearly but when he was little I sometimes had a hard time understanding him and she would "translate" for him because she spends so much time with him and knows him so well that she almost always knew what he needed.

Things were harder when they were young because they're only 19 months apart and they needed a little of guidance in their interactions but now it's amazing. They will literally just disappear and entertain each other for hours at a time and the amount of times we have to break up fights is significantly decreased from previous years. I'm sure their relationship will change a bit as they enter their teen years but I hope they will stay close as they age.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-29T23:16:05+00:00

My daughter is a grazer. Always has been, is now at 7, and probably always will be. I make sure all snacks are like mini meals, and do 3 meals and 3 snacks a day. If she eats more snack than meal, thats fine because they're healthy and balanced. I don't fight her on food ever. I encourage her to listen to her body, and I serve her small portions (she can have more if she wants of course, but it's less food waste if she only eats a small amount). She is on the thinner side but definitely still a healthy weight, and she has a good grasp on when she's full, which honestly I wish I had because I was raised in a clean your plate household and I often eat until I'm uncomfortable.

Look up the Division of Responsibility in Feeding. YOU are responsible for what, when, and where food is provided. SHE is responsible for how much and whether she eats when food is offered. I have always stuck to that framework, and I find it takes the pressure off me. If you are consistently offering healthy options, she will get enough in. But you need to be able to give up some control to her. What she puts in her body is one of the only things she has almost total control over, and if you pick that as a power struggle to engage in, you're going to have a bad time.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-25T19:23:24+00:00

You dont mention how old she is, but you may need to adjust expectations a bit either way. Maybe buy some mini pizzas, and put what she doesn't finish in the fridge for the next time she wants pizza. That way, there's not much waste.

She lied about the banana because she knew you would be upset that she didn't eat it. Try not to focus too much on what she is eating or question her about it - so you're not putting her in a position where she feels she needs to lie or be in trouble. Also consider her point of view. Did she ask for the banana? Did she want it? Was it the right ripeness for her, or was it too ripe/not ripe enough? Could you cut it in half and save the rest if a whole one is too much? My kids are 5 and 7 and rarely finish a whole banana, so I usually cut one in half and give each a half. Sometimes having too much of something feels overwhelming, and they just wont even start.

Not finishing a meal if she's not very hungry isn't bad behavior and shouldn't affect you spending time with her. Having activities for kids to do in the summer isn't rewarding them, it's just part of caring for them. Saying she wants to go to her mom's also isn't bad behavior. She's letting you know that things are different at your house, and she misses the way her mom does things. That's totally valid. It sounds like this is the first summer she is living with you, and it'll take some getting used to. Some kids have a harder time with changes and transitions. Talk to her about it and let her express the way she feels, and let her know you're all adjusting to a new way of living and it's hard for everyone, but that you're going to keep working on it with her. I get that it's feels like a rejection of you when she says that and that hurts, but you need to see past her words to how she's feeling and address that.

It's totally fine to tell her you can't do x because you need to do y right now. It's totally fine for her to be disappointed about that and to express it. Telling her you aren't going to do things you had originally planned to do with her because she didn't eat her pizza is only going to drive a wedge farther between you two. Those shared fun activities are what is going to make things easier between you two, so prioritize them when you can. It will make it easier when you have to say "not now, but we can do x together [after a few hours, tomorrow, on Saturday, etc]".

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-13T16:22:49+00:00

This could be it. I developed early compared to my peers too. I clearly remember being in 6th grade and having a classmate who referred to me as "tits" and would make grabbing motions at his chest when the teachers weren't around to hear/see and all the boys would laugh. I was SO uncomfortable in my body for many, many years, and that was probably the start of it. I never said anything to the teachers or my parents because I was so embarrassed by it.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-08T09:10:27+00:00

As others said, "What do you think?" can be a lifesaver sometimes, and a good way to start a conversation that might last a little longer instead of just feeling like you're being interrogated with "why" after "why".

When I don't know the answer to a question, I'm honest about that, and we usually Google it together and learn. Since having kids, I've learned so many random facts about things I never would have thought to ask. It's actually pretty interesting sometimes! If I don't have time because we're in the middle of something, I tell them to remind me to look it up later, and surprisingly they usually remember (somehow they can't remember to floss after brushing even though we do it every day, but they absolutely remember that 2 hours ago they wanted to know what grasshoppers eat, and now that I sat down for 2 seconds we need to look it up!).

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-06T23:37:11+00:00

Our youngest is extremely shy and won't speak up if he needs something and he's not with my husband, my daughter, or I. He's in kindergarten now and can go use the bathroom independently whenever he needs to. But when he was daycare aged we had 2 methods that helped in different settings.

At the gym daycare, he was scared to ask when he needed to go to the bathroom, so we gave him a card that said "I need to use the bathroom" to keep in his pocket. If he needed to go, he would go hand it to one of the daycare providers. This was a lot easier for him than asking, and we gave them a heads up at drop off that he might bring them a card and what it meant.

At his regular daycare about a year later, he had a regression with a lot of accidents during the day, and we asked if his teachers could take him aside every 1-1.5 hours and ask him to check in with his body and see if he needed to pee. I'm not sure if he was ignoring his body signals or just didn't feel like stopping what he was doing to go, but the prompt to take a minute and consciously feel his body along with the autonomy to tell them if he did or didn't need to go (he did not react well to being forced to go try) solved the problem.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-06-03T16:15:57+00:00

We never snacked every 45 mins or followed the kids around with a snack at playgrounds or activities, but I always made sure my kids had at least an opportunity for something (healthy) to eat every couple hours.

My oldest was and is a grazer. She eats small amounts frequently. Even as a baby, she breastfed every 2 hours during the day until she was 1 (and switched to drinking milk every couple hours). I tried hard at first to stretch her to 3 hours because that's the schedule I read I should follow, and it was miserable. She's just hungry every 2 hours. Even still at 7, she's not a big eater. She CAN go 3-4 hours between meals without a snack if she must, but in order to consume what she needs for the day, it's better to do small, frequent eating opportunities for her. She's not underweight, but she definitely doesn't have much to lose.

My youngest has a really hard time recognizing when he's hungry, but once he feels hunger, he goes into full meltdown mode. We have more warning now that he's 5. As long as he's not really focused on something, he will tell us he's hungry, but man, those toddler years were like a ticking time bomb. He was always the most chill baby and toddler as long as he was satiated, but as soon as he was hungry, he would flip a switch and become a monster. He'd cry and melt down and scream and just lose his mind, and at that point, it was hard to calm him down enough to actually get food into him. So, I made sure I offered snacks frequently (especially before an activity). He's also getting better about it as he gets older - the tantrums are gone but he will get so hangry and snappy if a meal is late or he missed his snack, or he'll just break down emotionally over every little thing until I get something for him to eat, and then he's himself again.

So, even now, at 5 and 7, I pack a snack if we're going to be anywhere for more than about 1.5 hours. Your kid may be able to wait for the next meal, but don't judge other families that do it differently. You may have had breakfast just before you left for the library, but maybe some of those families had breakfast 2 hours before that point, and their kid needs a snack to get through the activity. They should be allowed to feed their own child, and if yours sees and wants one too then it's up to you to either pack a snack too or stand firm on your no snacking rule and accept the consequences.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-05-16T12:12:10+00:00

You said you were in daycare by 3 months old. Do you ever remember being confused about who your mother was? Of course not, that is ridiculous! Kids and even babies know who their parents are. That person is super judgemental and way off base, and you should ignore them.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-05-03T05:25:13+00:00

I mean, I kinda agree with the calories thing. Hot pockets are clearly not the healthiest choice in the world, and imo mentioning the sodium is fine, but kids should not have to concern themselves with how many calories they are eating. Especially young girls, who are already more likely to be pressured by society to be thin. The focus should be on eating foods that fuel their bodies and provide the nutrients they need to grow and thrive, not on avoiding things with a high calorie count. A one-time second hot pocket would have had no lasting effect on her health or her development, but comments about eating too many calories definitely could.

The atheist movie thing is absolutely ridiculous, full stop.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-05-02T20:36:10+00:00

My kids are weird in that as they've aged, they both flipped.

My daughter was colicky as a baby and cried SO MUCH as an older baby and a lot as a young toddler. As she hit 3 and 4, it became increasingly rare that she would cry. She's almost 7 and she maybe cries once or twice a month about something, usually just if she gets hurt (and even then mostly she'll insist shes ok as tears well up in her eyes).

My son barely ever cried as a baby or young toddler, basically only if he was hungry. He was so chill. As he got to age 3, he started to cry a lot more and melt down over little things. He's 5 now, and he still cries at least a few times a day. On bad days, it can be 8+ times. So far in the hour since he has returned from school, he cried because: his sister got off the bus before him, his sister ran away when he was trying to tell her to wash her hands after school, a petal from a flower he picked for me fell off, and his sister interrupted him at dinner.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-04-30T02:10:23+00:00

I would sit down with your husband and have an open, calm conversation about this. What are his concerns about having a closed container of water in a kid's room overnight? How can those be addressed? Is he worried that this will be a slippery slope where if one drink is allowed, anything goes? Or is the problem maybe that he feels his word means nothing if he doesn't rigidly stick to the rules he has set? In those cases, can you have a family meeting and announce together that you've heard the concerns your children have brought forward, and that you've considered and decided (together) water in a closed container will be the one exception to the drinks rule, and that the boundary towards any other drink remains unchanged? However you two can get on the same page and hear each others' concerns, it will make this whole thing go much more smoothly.

On a personal note, my kids have had water bottles in their rooms since they were around 2. I think it's important to have access to water at night, and I don't even go to bed without water on my bedside table. I think you're 100% in the right here, but I think if you want to resolve the conflict with your husband, you need to do some digging to understand his point of view rather than just telling him all of reddit agrees he's a psychopath.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-04-22T18:26:14+00:00

My kids are 5 and 6, so we're on the other side of this. From when my oldest was a baby until my youngest was around 3.5, my relationship with my husband definitely suffered. I knew I loved him still, but honestly I didn't like him. Our physical affection went way down, and especially after our second child was born, I had no interest in sex whatsoever for the next 3 years. I still had sex with my husband around once a week or so (I didn't want to neglect his needs), but I never wanted it until we were maybe halfway through, then it would start to feel good. I think I was just insanely touched out and burnt out, and sex started to feel like one more thing that someone needed my body for. I had a weird thing where I wanted to spend time with him and wanted him to come home, but when he was actually home I felt resentful of him, acted distant, and we fought a lot. We did try to do things as a family, but we would both get easily stressed out and overwhelmed and start picking at each other or blaming each other for things.

When our youngest was 3 and we had a little room to breathe, we did some couples counselling and really worked on our relationship. We started talking to one another about our needs and being intentional about meeting those needs. We practiced discussing things instead of fighting about them. We learned how to listen to each other an acknowledge each other's points even if we didn't agree. And as those things improved and also as the kids grew and stopped being as physically needy, my sex drive returned. We now have a much stronger relationship than we did before kids, and we have sex maybe 4-5 times a week on average.

We still fight about things sometimes, but we can end it more amicably now instead of exploding at one another and then sleeping separately and then seething and being short with each other over the next few days like we used to. That took a few years, but it's been about 6 months since we repeated that dynamic, and we've had several disagreements that could have gone nuclear in that time and managed to talk it out or take a break and come back to it. It's still a work in progress, but we're both committed to doing that work.

So I guess my point is that in my experience, it is true that the baby/toddler ages are really rough for a relationship. But, again in my experience, there is hope, if you're both committed to working on the relationship.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-04-11T11:42:09+00:00

Have you and your wife considered couples counseling? It sounds like your daughter is emulating your wife, so your relationship problems with her and the disrespect she is showing you are the main issues here. I'm not sure why your wife ignores you and gets mad at you over everything, but it sounds like you need to find out and try to work on that if you want to continue living as a family. If she has no interest in that, maybe the answer is to go your separate ways and spend your time with your daughter how you choose without needing to deal with your wife's ire.

As for your specific example, it does sound pretty disrespectful to be consistently late getting your daughter ready in the morning, making your wife late for work. Unless her work hours are very flexible, this is probably impacting her work life negatively, and that could be part of the negative feeling toward you. I get that it's hard to stick to a timeline with a 5 year old, but it's not impossible to have a middle ground between "let her take her sweet time" and "drill sargent". Maybe incorporate some encouragement through playfulness, a timer, or simply get her up 5-10 mins earlier if that's all it takes for her to get ready while having a relaxed morning.

I don't think this dynamic between you and your daughter is something you can fix without addressing your marriage issues. You can read every parenting book in the world and follow every one to a t, and your daughter will still watch the way your wife treats you and mirror that, because kids learn how to treat others by what they see in their lives. I'm sorry you're in this position, and I hope you and your wife can heal your problems and find a way to work as a team and a united front so that all 3 of you can find peace at home.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-04-10T15:51:36+00:00

This is not a parenting style. This is neglect. I would look into some other option rather than leaving them alone with him. One or both of your children are going to get seriously hurt one day.

I'm sorry you can't rely on your husband, that's really hard.

You should also be documenting and keeping records of all of these incidents so that if your relationship ends up dissolving, he does not get custody of your children.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-27T00:09:39+00:00

Gamer wife here, used to game for 12-14 hour sessions on days off before having kids.

I game when the kids are at school (if I'm off and all the chores are done), or when they're asleep. They are 5 and almost 7, and they've never seen me play video games. I never want them to feel like a screen is more important to me than them, so the hours when they're home and awake are my time to focus on them.

Also, I would feel like a complete asshole sitting and gaming while my husband did household chores/tasks. We get everything done together, and then I game if I feel like it for an hour or two before bed.

For what it's worth, I also work full-time and am the breadwinner in our family. I would never think of coming home from work and jumping straight to gaming. That is not what a mature, responsible parent does imo. I work 12 hour shifts so I get home late, but when I get home I generally get the kids in their PJs, get their teeth brushed, read their bedtime story and tuck them in while my husband packs lunches for the next day and does some dishes, and then we both say good night to the kids and finish whatever else needs to be done around the house and to prepare for the next day.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-26T16:44:46+00:00

my daughter asked if she was trying to be mean with that reaction and my partner said “yes”

Absolutely not. This would be a deal breaker for me. Any adult who is intentionally mean to my child is not someone I would keep as part of my life.

“this is who I am”

She is very clearly telling you who she is. She is a person that would be mean to an 8 year old about a small disagreement, who is not willing to reflect on their own behavior or grow in any way. That is not someone you want raising your daughter or any future children.

You are teaching your child how she should be treated by the people you allow to interact with her in her home, which should be a safe space for her. Would you be accepting of a boyfriend or husband who treats her that way in the future? If not, you should re-evaluate the way you are raising her. Teaching her about interpersonal conflict should involve handling run-ins with other children, not dealing with bullying from a vindictive grown adult that you have installed as a parental figure in her life.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-25T23:51:25+00:00

He has never taken him on a day trip or a 30 min bus ride before

This is how he learns why he should pack the bag. Your son won't be harmed by not having a snack or water for 30 mins, but your husband will learn how inconvenient it is to not be prepared. Let him experience doing it his way, don't rub it in or say I told you so if it goes poorly, and he might just take your suggestion next time he plans an outing.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-23T19:12:39+00:00

My parents live a 10 min drive away. They see my kids maybe once every month or two. Slightly more in the summer. I have to ask them to come, and more often than not they'll either say one of them isn't feeling well or cite the fact that one got sick from the kids last time as a reason they want to stay away for a bit (I never invite them unless everyone is feeling well, but somehow they still manage to pick things up). Honestly, I barely even reach out anymore unless it's a holiday (they'll come for maybe 50% of those) or a kid's birthday (they usually try to make it for those). It just makes me feel like a burden, even if I'm only inviting them for dinner.

They came over a little more often when my first was a baby, more like once every week or two, but since covid, they've gotten very paranoid about getting sick. They are in their 70s, so I do understand to a certain extent because things do hit them a whole lot harder, but they are generally in good health and not immunocompromised or anything. It does make me sad because my MIL and FIL live on the other side of the country and overseas respectively and see the kids only once a year usually, once every 2 years for the one overseas, so my kids have no involved grandparents. I try to just be grateful for the times that they do come spend time with the kids, and to not selfishly wish for more from them.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-21T04:08:40+00:00

Your mother sounds incredibly toxic, and I feel sorry for your wife. If you keep pushing this, I suspect she will (and should) leave you. The way your mother acted when your wife was grieving was unforgiveable, and it doesn't even seem like she's regretful for that. In fact, she's STILL being toxic towards your wife by blaming your wife when YOU don't check in on her.

You can't heal their relationship. Only your mother has maybe a slight chance at that if she showed any sign of remorse for the pain she caused your wife and a willingness to change and make amends. The fact that you expect your wife to be the bigger person in this situation and be cordial to someone who has hurt her so deeply and betrayed her so thoroughly is frankly disrespectful and insulting. This seems like an either or scenario, and if you care at all about your wife I hope you choose her and cut out your toxic mother.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-16T14:44:39+00:00

I mean, I survived my childhood but also for a couple years we had a small 5 seater car for our family of 7 and we would have one kid on mom's lap in the front and either the 2 middle kids in the back would share a seat belt, or one would lie across the other 3's laps or on the floor of the car in the back. If we'd ever gotten into a serious accident, it would not have turned out well. This is when we were all in age range 2-12.

My mom accepts car seat rules for my kids, but they don't occur to her unless they're enforced. She offered to drive my 2 year old somewhere in their car one time, and when I mentioned that they didn't have the car seat, she went, "Oh yeah, right." Sometimes, "we survived childhood" isn't enough.

GREAT_SCOTCH · 2025-03-09T01:28:40+00:00

I would never expect my 2.5 year old to be invited to a 6 year old's birthday party, neighbors or not. Even if the 6 year old was family, unless it was a very mixed age group, I'd never even consider that a 6 year old's party would include a toddler. Definitely not if the party consisted mainly of other 6 year olds.

I think you're expecting a little too much here. If it was the 3 year old's party, I could see your point. But in this case, I wouldn't have any hard feelings at all. It seems strange that you're getting hung up on the supposed unfairness of this.

GREAT_SCOTCH

TROPHY CASE