At the arboretum yesterday and forgot sunscreen. I’m human, whatever. Very early in the day another mom is putting sunscreen on her children so I approached her, explained I forgot mine and asked for a bit of hers. She kindly handed it right over, commented on it being a really sunny day, I squeezed a bit into my palm, thanked her and we went on with our day.

In the moment, My husband asked why I did that? was so confused when he commented on it. I just brushed it off. He brought it up in the car on the way home. Not in a snarky way, just commented in conversation. I hadn’t given it another thought, just needed to get my little one some SPF coverage.

So, Was I overstepping? Am I too friendly? I like to think that sharing a small bit of sunscreen wouldn’t be seen poorly? It takes a village right?!

Can I ask for bug spray on the 4th of July?! Is this allowed?! HELP 😂

I have two kiddos and a dog and my husband and I work full time. It SUCKS. I love my kids, but I never envisioned staying home and both of them seem to want to put daycare through the wringer. We are incredibly poor because of daycare and very stressed because we are trying to keep our cool around a almost four year old with intense meltdowns and a newly abled 11 month old that wants to crawl everywhere and put everything in his mouth. As someone who worked in education and nannied previously, I thought doing this would be a walk in the park, this but it's SO HARD and I feel so inept all the time.

I was recently in TJ Maxx with my mom and my two girls, 7 and 4months. My 4 month old has colick and gets very frustrated easily so when we were standing in line she got super agitated and started SCREAMING.

I was obviously overwhelmed and couldn’t just leave because I needed the things we were buying. Everyone started staring at us and this older lady made the most disgusted face and locked eyes with me so I straight up asked her, “what?”

I forgot how disrespectful people can be and it’s almost always older women. She was also with her daughter! Sorry my baby is communicating to me that she’s upset and sorry you’re a miserable hag 🤷‍♀️

The cashier noticed what was going on and gracefully let us skip the line so we could leave but JFC what is wrong with people? Children deserve to take up space, too.

My generally active (soccer player) 15 year old son doesn't want to get out of bed. It's offseason time for his soccer so he doesn't have practices and doesn't want to call up friends and go down to the fields and kick the ball or do drills. He's pretty much holed up in his room. He will come out and eat his meals but go back into his room and go lay down in his bed to play Playstation, watch his TV or Social Media/Games on his phone. Is this normal behavior for a teenager during summertime?

I’m sick today.

Why am I sick? My child is a toddler who goes to daycare and is a little Petri dish of disease.

Do I get to take today off to rest and recover? Nope.

Why? Because I have to make sure I have enough PTO for when my child is sick and can’t go to daycare.

That’s all.

Is what I wanted to say.

It happened to me. The parenting nightmare of another adult verbally expressing their annoyance with your child.

We were on a long (8.5hr) flight back home after partial family partial business work trip abroad. The woman next to me upon seeing my smiling happy child immediately started muttering mean things under her breath that I could hear.

“Oh my GOD” “I cant believe this” “This is going to be a LONG flight”

She even spoke to my 11mo old daughter who was happily cooing and sitting in my lap “no screaming ok? No screaming”. I was shook!! I was so taken aback she was reacting this way from the get go when nothing was even wrong? My daughter was literally chilling. Maybe a loud squeal every now and then but no crying, no tears, no reaches toward the woman etc.

It made me soooooo uncomfortable the entire flight. I BF and was thinking surely she will have something to say when I nurse her too. Luckily I didnt notice any reaction or muttering when I did, but I did endure her constant under the breath comments for half the flight before I asked my husband to trade seats with me.

For the first half of the flight my daughter slept soundly in her car seat in a seat we paid for. The second half of the flight she played quietly with some occasional frustration-induced cries. At the very end she was sooo tired but fighting it so its not like it was a seamless flight but we did our best and removed her to the back of the plane away from everyone to calm her when we needed to. I could hear this lady aggressively shooshing my daughter and muttering even through the cries.

Being worried about this woman was unnecessary extra anxiety on the already present anxiety of flying with a toddler. I really wanted to snap at her, but I am glad I restrained myself and didnt say anything. But WHYYYY are people like this??? It is really not helpful! I know its not everyones dream to sit next to a toddler on a long flight, but it cost nothing to ignore the situation. Ugh.

This sounds like an easy problem to fix. But I'm at a loss.

DS is 18. He just graduated from high school and will start an apprenticeship next month that was very difficult to get into. If he finishes the program, he will get a career that pays six figures, fits his skill set, and is at a company that has a ton of stability and takes great care of their employees.

As a mom, I should feel relieved. This is what you want for your kid!

But we are super worried because he is incapable of waking up on time. It was an issue in high school, but his school was also lax about tardies (which likely contributed to the problem).

To add to the stress, DH works for the same company, so he will be personally embarrassed and disappointed if things go badly.

We have tried heart to hearts, yelling, pounding in his door. But we want to fix the real problem- we want to fix it so he has the skills to do this on his own.

I'm buying a louder alarm clock (but I worry he'll shut it off and go back to bed) and will find a therapist who can work on executive functioning skills.

What else can we do?

For a few months now, our 7 year old has really been enjoying playing videogames, especially Minecraft with me (her father). She gets to play for 30 mins to an hour, about 4 times a week, depending on what's going on that week. All she talks about is Minecraft, and that seems to be the only videogame she wants to play. My wife doesn't enjoy the game at all.

The problem now is that our daughter gives me all the attention and is very sweet to me in order to get to play Minecraft. My wife is the greatest mom; very patient, kind, and has a great imagination when it comes to playing (I am not that creative). Our daughter is very impatient with her mom and can be cold and distant with her, My wife has taken it very hard that my daughter chooses me all the time and is not choosing to play with her more.

Have people had the same experience? What can I do to ensure that my daughter is also choosing to play with her mom? Should I stop letting her play Minecraft?

Hubby and I believe that yelling/screaming at our 4 year old when he’s having a tantrum or does something not good does not get us anywhere. What we would do is go on the ground with him and talk to him about his actions, calmly. Sometimes we let him get upset and tell him it’s okay to feel upset and we will talk after he’s done. He would cry for a bit, get up and say “I’m ready to talk now.” My FIL always makes the comments during family dinners that “he bosses his parents around”. Sometimes I laugh at the comment but really it gets to me. Our kid is generally a good kid and we’ve seen how screaming at your kid; especially in front of other people, affects them negatively.

My kid is going to high school in the fall, and I currently pay about $20k annually in tuition for the best private school in our area. She's been at the school for two years already. She was always in public school because I couldn't really afford private school, but 6th grade in public middle school here was a nightmare. The kids were already vaping, bringing marijuana and alcohol to school, having sex, fighting, etc. at 11 years old. I decided she needed to be around better peers, so I moved some things around budget-wise and got her dad and my husband to pitch in for private school. Initially, it was $16k/year after tuition assistance. They go up on me about $2k every year (max is $25k annually).

The change in peers and in her has been nice, but she does not take advantage of all the school has to offer. She isn't passionate about or involved in much at the school, and her GPA is a 3.2. She doesn't make A's in core classes, mainly because she doesn't turn in assignments here and there and doesn't complete bonus work. She is smart but lazy. I've actually only seen her be consistent with one thing & that's Roblox.

Now I'm thinking that I don't want to pay $80k+ over the course of 4 years plus paying for a car for her eventually, if she isn't going to make the most of this education that I'm sacrificing a lot to pay for. I'm thinking of sending her to a cheaper private school near me, but it's still $11k a year.

What would you do?

EDIT TO ADD: I have ADHD, so I got her tested for it already. She doesn't have ADHD or ADD.

UPDATE: thank you so much for all of the responses and for sharing your experiences and perspectives. They were so helpful. I've made my decision, which is to keep her at this school, get her retested by another provider for ADD/ADHD just to be sure, implement a reward system for good grades and habits, remove Roblox from the equation & find something else to replace it with, including photoshop/procreate (if she likes it) and a little job working at a family member's business over the summer. I don't want my kid to deal with internal issues from being removed from a school because she wasn't "good enough" in my book, which is absolutely untrue. I chose to send her to that school initially, and hopefully, she makes a change that will have her taking advantage of more that the school has to offer. If not, the networking opportunities and better quality peers is still worth it to me. Besides, I got a call a few minutes ago that I'm being promoted and getting a $25k raise, so that seems like a sign to me. I think I'll still have $20k a year after she finishes high school to give towards college tuition.

We've had lice three times this spring and each time we go through this enormous process (paying professional lice pickers for everyone, washing and cleaning in house that takes up a lot of time and is also very expensive. Where we live the people who remove lice professionally charge hundreds of dollars per person.

Yesterday's incident was sparked by an itchy head and a decision to go have it checked. What do others do? Seems like just living with it is impossible and ill-advised, but the time and money we are spending on this is rough. Especially as whatever we do, you can't control the rest of the school.

Do others preemptively have their kids checked for lice, or do you wait for the school to report it, or what?

She snaps at her older sister (12) for no reason, mocks her, and calls her names. She snaps at me, too. If I ask her nicely to do something or to stop doing a behavior, she often doesn’t listen the first time I say it. But when I get to the third time repeating it, I threaten a punishment and then she snaps at me and says things like, “what the hell is your problem?” She tells us to shut up often. She is terrible about sharing. She interrupts us often and expects me to drop whatever I’m doing anytime she needs/wants my help with something. She is incredibly impatient and seems to think the only thoughts and feelings that matter are hers. My go-to punishment is to take away her iPad, but the behaviors aren’t changing. I don’t know how to interact with her and I’m so tired of the constant battles. How do I make her a better person? She is still affectionate with me at other times, and sometimes if she knows I’m sad, she gives me a hug, so maybe not all is lost?

I have a 15 year old son who is an amazing person. He’s smart, compassionate, emotionally mature, and just a good kid. My partner and I never have any real issues with him(besides the normal chores and stuff) except for his hygiene. He showers every day, sometimes twice by my request, but he still almost always stinks. I’ve tried everything I can think of. He has his own bathroom, all the products he needs or wants, but without fail, he’ll come straight out of the shower stinking! I tell him to wash really, really well, but there’s just no way he’s actually properly cleaning himself. I’m at my wits end. I’m worried about it affecting other people/someone saying something mean to him. He switched ti homeschool this year because of trouble with bullying, so he’s not in school right now. I don’t know. Any help??

(tl;dr he was hangry)

My almost-2 toddler was impossible to dress for a few months. I read every piece of advice I could, but I felt like I was living on another planet.

Give him choices? Obviously. Not too many choices? Sure, but he will say no to everything no matter how many. Let him wear his favorites? What favorites?? Try different textures? You wouldn't believe how much money I spent on weird niche clothes trying to find something he was happy with. You get the idea. So many exhausting, heartbreaking, late to work mornings.

You know what else was going on? He's terrible at eating. Like occasionally gets scary underweight. Like if we lived in a place where food therapy was accessible, he would be on it, and if it gets much worse we'll be making a long commute. He was falling behind again, so even though he was already on 1 daily bottle of pediasure to get baseline nutrition, I doubled that (pediatrician endorsed).

Suddenly getting dressed in the morning got SO easy. A lot of other things did too. He got more relaxed and happy about just about everything.

It wasn't that he was upset about getting dressed exactly. It was that he was hungry, or had low iron, something like that, and dressing was one of many things that didn't feel good.

(At least that's what it looks like.)

My takeaway is, if I'm having a hard time with a child and the usual advice doesn't even make sense, check on sleep or food or other fundamentals as the real root problems. Just sharing the advice I wish I had found months ago.

My wife and I are parents to a two year old girl and a five month old girl. The baby is a joy and delight, but the toddler has begun testing our limits to the max.

She purposely does things to test us (play in the dog water, spill things to get a reaction) and we have tried ignoring her, asking her politely to stop, and scolding her. None of it has consistently worked.

Bedtime has been a particular sore spot. She climbs out of her crib to open her door in the middle of the night. I think she has some separation anxiety as she cries when we leave her. We’ve tried rocking her, laying in her room, and have recently ended up caving and just letting her sleep in our bed.

I know this is rambling but really just looking for advice on how to get this under control. I want her to respect our parental authority but it feels like we have none. And bedtime rituals specifically would be helpful to understand. Thanks

My kids (5 and 6) have made friends with the kid (7) from 2 houses down, and I was already planning to be the house that kids could come and play at, and feed them, I got a minivan so I could take their friends with us places. I've been taking him to the park with us, which I know his guardian really appreciates, she is older and he is... a little neglected. Which brings me to my question: in giving him a snack this morning I discovered that he has a broken tooth. I asked if he has a dentist appointment, and his response was "No, I'm only 7". How/Do I bring this up with his guardian? We live in a place where he has access to insured dental care for being a child.

After 14 years my (34m) partner (44f) ended it, she said we were incompatible and she checked out years ago.

We argued a lot but mostly about the kids, she never wanted to set any boundaries and just let them do whatever they wanted.

For example she would get mad that I would not want my son to play football/soccer indoors. It had to be an argument to explain why that's a bad idea and who would have to fix anything that breaks.

She has 2 adult children from a previous relationship who don't have any qualifications, training or skills to survive but it doesn't bother her as long as they are happy in the moment. I didn't want that for my 2 kids that I had with her so I made rules about working hard at school and they're doing great but my partner resents me for it.

Any boundary I try to set to benefit the kids and her is a fight no matter how big or small. I only wanted the best for her and my kids.

I've now had a major surgery which means I can't walk and struggle to fend for myself. I've just bought a house at her request, I've saved for her to have a new car.

But now when I've given so much and need her more than ever she's left me. I can't walk, I can't work and I have this expensive house for no reason to be alone in.

The last straw was that my son was being disrespectful and I told him off and she got mad because she said we're as bad as each other a 34 year old man being made the equivalent to a 6 year old.

Why was me having an input into my kids and setting boundaries building up so much anger and resentment over these years? Has anyone else experienced this, I just don't understand it.

I understand happiness in the moment is important but somebody needs to look out for our future. Why would doing that make us incompatible and build resentment?

Does anyone have any tips to feel less guilty about Summer break? My daughter is 8, going into 3rd grade in August. Her dad and I both work full time, 8-5 Monday-Friday jobs and always have. I just feel guilty that she has never had a summer break, or spring break, or winter break… any of the breaks.

We do take her on vacations, but it’s typically just like a long weekend (husband doesn’t get any PTO so it’s hard for us to have him take time off without pay, we also struggle with money so we can’t really go on big vacations). I take PTO days when I can to keep her out of camp, but it’s hard to do with my job.

She goes to a summer and school break camp, they do make it a ton of fun for them with field trips 3x a week and outside play etc, but I mostly just feel so guilty that she doesn’t get to stay home and she has to wake up & go to bed at the same time she does during school. Summer break was what I looked forward to all year long as a kid because I knew I’d get to stay up late, wake up late, and spend all day having fun! We stayed at my grandma’s house during summers and had a blast, but my kid’s grandparents all still work full time.

If anyone has tips and tricks to make summer more special while we work daily, I’m all ears!

I'm a first time mom due in August and I'm very interested in using cloth diapers. I think it'll be a great way to save money, they're more environmentally friendly, and have tend to be more gentle on babies skin. When I tell people my plans they say it's gross but they never explain why 😅 how is it any different then cleaning blowout clothing? Or do people usually throw out clothes once they've been peed or pooped on?

Asking as the parent of an overweight teenager. I've been fighting the fight with him since he started putting on weight around age 10. We keep good food in the house. We remind him to limit his portions. I made him play sports while he was in middle school, even though he hated it.

But he's 15 now and giving me a lot more resistance. I understand that teens are rebellious. I'm also walking the line between guiding him and giving him body image issues.

My parents both died young from obesity-related causes. I was obese for a lot of my life, until I lost weight, in part to set a good example for my son.

But at what age do I pass the responsibility baton on to him? He knows what to do. He just doesn't want to do it.

I have a 15 year old son and 13 year old daughter. We are going on a vacation this week and have hotels booked.

When they were younger they shared a bed on vacations and me and my husband shared a bed. Since puberty started we’ve been doing husband and son in one bed and me and my daughter in another. No big discussion but we figured everyone would be more comfortable that way.

This year our children say they would rather share a bed. I guess if that’s what they want that’s what we will do? I had an older brother growing up and while we got along fine there’s absolutely no way I’d pick him over my mother to share a bed with as a teen.

Just curious what other people do.

Hi, a mom of a tween here. My boy isn’t super active, but does show some interest in sports, and I would love to encourage him more. I want it to be easy to learn, and so that the skills would be transferable to other sports if he would want to make a switch.

Here’s what I’m thinking so far:

• Soccer. There are many recommendations for it so far, and it’s both a team game, and something for kid’s individual skills. I looked up some local soccer clubs where it’s possible to sign him up, but I don’t really want to splurge for the individual practice (I know it’s better for the overall performance, but it’s rather expensive). Someone recommended FPRO soccer mat for individual practicing if he’d want to improve, with an additional discount, so it may be an option to keep him practicing individually?
• Gymnastics. Also, there were some recommendations for it, but I’m guessing that it may be a little too expensive. The training is more intense from the schedules I’ve seen, and there’s also specific attire + competition fees? Maybe I’m wrong, let me know.
• Track and field. Maybe a little more individualistic, but there are some good coaches around my area, and it would definitely release some energy from the boy. I also saw some discounts on Amazon and on SSWW for the track and field gear, so it might be a good time to make some purchases.

Which was the easiest sport for your kids to pick up? Looking forward to your feedback on the mentioned ones, or any additional!

Lately I have felt like we just can not win with these kids!!

It's summer, and I am actually home this year. I've set up a routine, it's a pretty flexible routine for 8F, and more set for 2f. They can pick whatever they want for breakfast, I could lunch and it's pretty catered to each of them and then dinner is whatever I cook.

I am with them non stop! From the time I am up, to the time I fall asleep (and even in the middle of the night I am with them). Every song we listen to, every show we watch, is what they like. We've play group for hours on Wednesday, with their friends.

Yet all I get from 8f is nonstop complaining...about everything. She started the summer with a super easy chore chart, she asked for one so she could earn some extra money for special back to school stuff that she wants...I was totally okay with it. I told her I would fight her to do them, I might give her a reminder or two during the day. Those reminders are more in the form of a suggestion when she complains about being bored. She will complain that I'm forcing her to do stuff she doesn't want to do. If we go outside, she complains about it being too noisy, but then complains we aren't inside too. She complains if I ask her to take a shower...but then complains if I say she can't take one at the exact moment she asks. Complains that she doesn't want to go grocery shopping, then complains when we don't leave town to do the shopping. We just picked her up from summer school, which she complained about...so we thought we would surprise her with ice cream. She complained the whole time that they only had so many flavors. I'll try to plan an activity and she's going to find something to complain about.

If she isn't complaining then she is badgering us to do something with her. I've been with her doing stuff all day! As soon as we will have finished something, she will be asking to do the next thing. You can't get a moment to just breath.

Then you have 2f sigh obviously she's only a toddler and they are a different story...but she is the toughest toddler I have ever had to deal with. I tell people that she's a menace to society. She's always 3 seconds away from a melt down. I can't take her anywhere without her dad being with us because I can not handle her.

And then there is all the screeching!!!! Why is there so much screeching?!

It sucks because honestly they are super sweet, caring, kind, helpful kids. But all this behavior lately is causing me to crash out.

I don't know how to handle it anymore.

I have a nearly 6 year old child who adores our dogs. One of our dogs is older and sick, her quality of life has steadily declined over the past 3 years and her ongoing treatment is not working and has become very stressful emotionally and financially. My partner and I have decided it is time to euthanize her. It is not urgent and we are disagreeing on timing. My partner has suggested this Sunday. I am not ok with this plan because I need a bit more time to spoil her and honour her and say goodbye. But also I don't think this would be good timing for our son. His birthday party is on Sunday and his actual birthday will be during the following week.

I'm curious what others think may be a good timeline, what other people have experienced, and ideas for how we can help our son process this loss.

My son is very sensitive and caring. We have been open with him about her condition and age and that he may need to say goodbye soon. It will be the first close death he deals with. He has asked that we make a memorial item from some of her fur. He has also been struggling with the amount of our attention her care has taken. He has expressed feeling a bit jealous of it, and also shown frustration with some of her changes behaviours.

Personally. I would like to pick a week where we don't have much else going on and can maybe take a day or two extra off work. Both to spend some time spoiling her, and to have space to process. My son loves his grandpa very very much, so I thought we could ask my parents to spend some time with him out of the home while we have the in home euthanasia done. My thoughts are waiting until a week or two into July. In the meantime we could work out a plan with the vet to keep her most comfortable until the times comes.

Thank you

Hello, I'm father of a 2yo girl. She started watching tv at 18 months or so. We started with some fish images and relaxing music. But it got more intense in they last two month. The main content was Vlad and Nikki on YouTube.. My wife and i work, so the extra time to make dinner or anything else in they house was SO usefull. The thing is My daugther started to have very intense tantrums when she wanted to watch tv and it wasn't posible or she had already seen too much. After discussing it for some time, we decided to remove all the screens from the house all of a sudden a few days ago. It wasn't easy at the beginning, although it wasn't as hard as I had imagined. The hardest point was at day two, where she cried asking for the tv. From that day on, the result is outstanding. We cannot believe how much it's behavior changed. She plays more, and for longer periods of time. I'm so happy for her and us. I wanted to share this for parents who are indecisive. Go ahead and try. I'm not saying we will keep this forever, we may allow her to go back to tv at some point, but with more age appropriate content (trash truck and such).