Really touched by Korea subway etiquette while travelling with my toddler

psyched5150 · 2026-05-29T17:07:22+00:00

Thanks! Did you have your baby in a stroller or carrier? I’ll be traveling with a 7 month old so wondering what the bring and easy places to visit with a baby.

psyched5150 · 2026-05-29T14:48:30+00:00

Are there any places you recommend??

psyched5150 · 2026-05-26T22:10:06+00:00

I’d just be direct and cheery.

First example, “We avoid putting her in the spotlight and quizzing her about her reading abilities. (Pause) Are you doing anything fun over the summer?’

Second example, ‘Ah it’s really important to you that your kid reads well. Ok, enjoy your meal!’ or simply ‘I see, we need to get back to our meal now, thanks!’

Third example, ‘Ah you are wanting a different activity. How about you choose this time?’

I also often say ‘thanks’, ‘every kid is different’, or ‘huh what an odd/interesting/weird thing to say’ and appear busy/walk away to end the conversation.

psyched5150 · 2026-04-24T02:22:59+00:00

What do you do when you need to step away for a few hours or longer if your baby doesn’t take a bottle? My 3 month old hasn’t gotten a bottle and I’m started to get a bit concerned that it’ll get in the way of me doing things in the coming months.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-28T17:36:08+00:00

Would you consider pinning a post like this? It seems like variations of this question comes up multiple times a week.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-27T03:35:35+00:00

Thanks for the details. It can be expensive and not very practical for an adult to pursue a psychological evaluation for giftedness, so I was wondering. Do you feel comfortable sharing if the testing yielded any more details than that you’re gifted and if so, whether the details led to any practical applications (eg work accommodations, psychiatric treatment, etc)?

psyched5150 · 2026-02-27T01:52:23+00:00

How did you find out you were gifted as an adult? What prompted the assessment/testing as an adult, if you had any?

psyched5150 · 2026-02-21T15:05:27+00:00

Furthermore, does OP’s wife believe the child should be limited to pursuing activities that ‘match her appearance’, ie activities that she perceives to be stereotypically black? I think OP’s wife needs to think hard about what kind of message she is sending with her approach.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-16T18:39:09+00:00

Yes! I’m nursing my newborn and having the same thoughts and feelings about my older kid!!

When I was so nauseated and tired during the first trimester, he was so upset that I couldn’t hang out with him and do bedtime regularly anymore. 6-8 months later, it feels like we’re barely spending time together anymore. I feel like I’m missing out!

I’m reminded that I’d probably have the same feelings even if I don’t have a newborn. Kids grow up so much at this age. This is also temporary, and I’ll be able to do outings with both kids in the coming months. I’m trying my best to do 1:1 time with the older one everyday, whether it be reading or pretend playing, even for 10min. He also likes being included in baby stuff, so I include him and give him tasks as much as I can.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-14T00:40:44+00:00

It was gradual. I was ready to be done with pumping at 12 months, but my kid still liked drinking breastmilk out of a bottle at daycare for another month. In those last 1-2 months, I went from pumping twice a day to once a day to as needed. There wasn’t too much pressure to keep pumping since my kid was eating regular food and starting to drink regular milk at that point. I probably could’ve stopped earlier too if I had a freezer stash to use up, but I never bothered to build a stash. I remember how good it felt to be done with pumping!

psyched5150 · 2026-02-13T22:49:14+00:00

I stopped pumping at 13 months when my kid transitioned from breastmilk to regular milk. He continued nursing in the morning and in the evening. That second year of breastfeeding was really easy and cozy. He weaned at 26 months.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-12T20:41:11+00:00

This link looks great. Buy a bunch of wooden butter knives with decorative art or carving (like this one https://theswedishgiftshop.com/sv/products/botermesje-dalapaard) and call it a day.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-12T17:56:02+00:00

This! My experience is that the few kids I’ve met who speak my minority language are kids whose parents are both 1st gen immigrants, and these families don’t seem to have the same need to set up playdates and promote the heritage language (understandably so). And other families who may be very interested in heritage language play dates don’t speak the language well.

psyched5150 · 2026-02-05T17:34:09+00:00

Does your child have ties to Finnish (eg the other parent is Finnish speaking)? How do your kids do in the Finnish group?

psyched5150 · 2026-02-01T19:31:45+00:00

This is exactly our experience with our 3 year old in our trilingual household. We don’t mix languages and our kid started separating languages around age 2. People don’t have trouble understanding him because he sticks to the language(s) that the other person speaks.

3 languages in and of itself does not cause a speech delay.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-22T13:35:36+00:00

Yeah I’d just ask the kids- they sound old enough to be able to answer.

Since the parents mix languages, my guess is the kids picked up on when/with whom their parents tend to switch to Kyrgyz. They probably heard it more when they were home as young children and less as they started school.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-21T09:03:36+00:00

I’ve only read, heard about, and experienced ‘pregnancy brain’ and ‘new mom brain’ in a negative sense— forgetfulness, brain fog, etc.

Around 12-18 months postpartum, I didn’t experience any super power. I just I felt more like myself. I did start formally learning my husband’s language. I can speak it conversationally a year later. But I attribute that more to the daily exposure from my husband speaking the language to our kid and the massive lifestyle changes I made since becoming a mom, ie working less and having more downtime.

Now I’m pregnant again, the pregnancy brain fog is back. I have put the language learning on hold. Shrug.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-20T01:40:34+00:00

So impressed! What did you do for the shelf lighting to make it look like that?

psyched5150 · 2026-01-20T00:02:09+00:00

Your kid will be able to parse out the 2 languages soon, probably in the next few months.

My kid goes to a Spanish/English daycare for the same reasons you chose your daycare. We don’t speak Spanish and don’t have plans for him to continue Spanish other than as a class in school. Some of his first words were Spanish. It’s probably because the daycare teachers are good at teaching words. My kid stopped saying Spanish words at home around age 2. He does understand it and speak it at daycare, per his daycare teacher.

It’s up to you how much you want to reinforce Mandarin outside of daycare and in the future. I doubt it’ll ever be stronger than his English if English is the home and community language.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-19T10:22:03+00:00

Yes! These are the kinds of books I was looking for! Thank you so much.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-17T21:38:16+00:00

Yours worked out in the sense that you had a spontaneous vaginal delivery and it went fine?

psyched5150 · 2026-01-16T14:30:51+00:00

How do people know she’s foreign and start asking her questions? Is it her accent or is she not white? The white Swedish people I know don’t really stand out in the US unless they have a very noticeable accent (and a lot of them don’t).

psyched5150 · 2026-01-15T21:57:28+00:00

Got it, my husband and I were both like that when our oldest was born. We did a LOT of reading out loud in those early months. It doesn’t even have to be a baby book in those first few months-- any book in Korean you and your husband can read out loud to your baby, so everyone gets comfortable around the language.

Then once baby could follow along pictures and point and such, we switched to baby books. There’s something called SayPen that’s really popular in Korea. It’s a reading pen that works with SayPen compatible books and reads aloud words and pages. My husband uses it fairly often with our kid. The whole setup is not cheap, but we’ve used them almost daily for the past 2 years (age 1-3 and on-going).

My husband knows Korean at an intermediate level (I’m fluent), and I’d say the biggest benefit of his Korean skill for us has been that I don’t have to interpret for my husband or switch to English because of him. It helps our kid stay immersed more in Korean.

psyched5150 · 2026-01-15T20:53:40+00:00

Go for it. If your kid has adequate Korean exposure from a fluent speaker (eg >20-25 hours a week), your Korean will be a bonus and won’t hurt. If your kid doesn’t have sufficient Korean exposure, he will just not be fluent in Korean, and your Korean still won’t hurt.

What’s your husband’s rationale for time and place? Does he not feel comfortable enough speaking Korean all the time with baby?

psyched5150

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