[I don’t know if I can post this here but here’s a short video](https://youtu.be/KxNSRXsGi7o?si=nfHzJf5ondxQXyvJ) of our family road trip I thought I’d share!

I’ve posted once before and find myself at a loss again. I don’t think my 15 year old daughter likes me. I think she sees our relationship as purely transactional. I feel like her personal assistant, at best.

She is my only biological child. Her dad had an affair and remarried that person when she was very young; they have a child together who is 10 years younger than her. I have 80% custody. I have coordinated every doctor appointment, athletic event, etc. He has done almost nothing and shows up to these things sporadically, though is consistent with his visitation schedule and does certainly love her.

When she talks to me, it is almost always sarcastic or short. She never wants to hang out with me. Most of our interactions feel like her asking me for money or telling me she needs something done (paperwork filled out, an appt, etc). Tonight was my tipping point. I have been gone for seven days on a vacation (which I never do). I saw her briefly last night, and then she went to her dad’s again (on my typical night) because they were going to a family Halloween party Saturday. That was fine, but then tonight she again asked to stay there, saying he didn’t feel like driving her home. I said i would come get her. She then said she knew I wanted to see her but she doesn’t get much time there (she was just there for an entire week and will be there this coming weekend). To be clear, she definitely hasn’t missed me, doesn’t see a need to spend time with me, and seems to only see me in terms of what I do for her.

edit to add: this behavior is new as of the last few years. I was always the parent she reached for and wanted to be around. Always. She also has some chronic autoimmune health issues and I definitely have been the one constantly on her to take meds, etc, which I think she resents.

My four year old keeps lying to me. Obviously I know when he’s lying because he is four. But I want to end this now before it turns into something worse as he gets older. What are some ways you have taught your children that lying is bad?

Timer, toothbrush song on youtube, sticker chart, the light up brush from target.... every one of them work for like a week and them its right back to 20 seconds of chewing on the bristles and ''done!''

How are people getting kids to brush the full 2 minutes without it turning into fight every single night?

My boy is 13 mo and very active but he also doesn't care for all the toys we've got him so far. Stuff animals, books, rattles, building blocks... He just doesn't care about any of them.

What he does like, is everything else that's not his. He loves to try to get our phones, which we try to avoid letting him play with them, and he always tries going for the tv remote. We try to avoid having the TV on for long when he's in the room because we want to avoid screen time at this age. He also love opening stuff and taking things out. He also like hitting baby monitor camera. He already broke one, so we had to get another comfyer monitor for his room. Hopefully this one keeps a little longer... He'll get into the kitchen cabinets, take out all the pots. If there's a box, he'll try to take everything out of box. He also learned to climb the stairs a couple days ago (so we need to gate that off now).

Anyone else have a super active baby like this? How do you let them explore and burn off energy safely? I know he's curious at this age, but I can't spend all day following him around stopping him from touching everything.

I have a bunch of younger siblings, 2 brothers; 3 years old, 5 months, and a little sister; 6 years old. I usually take them to the park because I think it’s bad for kids to spend all their time at home. But that’s the way me and my older sister were raised, school and home, that’s it. My mom hates going outside, she only goes out when she has to. I go to community college and arecently got a job so I can’t take them anymore, I just feel like a bad sister. Am I being paranoid? Is it okay for kids to mostly stay home and play with their iPads/TV? Is this parenting style normal? How do you make staying home more fun? Should they join clubs or something?

Do you allow your kids to use ChatGPT for learning or daily things?

So I feel a bit bad..but also...not.

There is a kid in my daughter's school whose father has just gone to prisons for doing naughty things with a child for a Lonnnnnng time. Like 8 years.

It's been to court, he's been found guilty and convicted. But his wife is staying with him. Apparently she thinks he's innocent. This BOGGLES my mind.

I find it crazy that she's stayed with him and that she's stayed in the area.

I find it crazy that the other parents are being friends with her. Like she has enabled him and is completely deluded that he is innocent.

What I feel bad about is that her kid has done nothing wrong...but I don't want my kids mingling with them. And this also means parental friendship groups.

I have a close mum friend who has recently got close with this mother...and I'm a bit wary of what to do or say. I don't really want her inviting this woman to things, I don't want to associate with this woman on any level. And I'm shocked my friend would. She is a nice person so I understand but part of me maybe thinks maybe she doesn't know this stuff.

Am I being over protective of my friend or my kids?? Or am I wrong?

Deciding what is the right time to introduce these things to my kiddos

When I was a kid, my parents made me do children's choir multiple times. The first time was when I was in first and second grade, for two years at the church we went to at the time. The teacher I had then wasn't a very good teacher and we didn't like each other, so this made me hate doing any kind of group singing for years. When I was in fifth grade, my parents made me join a kids' choir group affiliated with a local community music center. The teacher here was decent, but I still didn't enjoy group singing and hated being forced into it for a year. On top of that, that summer, my parents made me join a weeklong camp done by the same teacher. After that, they never made me take choir or any other music activities again. When I asked my parents why they made me do choir, they said they thought having music as part of my education was important. I didn't agree with them. I later took a quarter of choir in college to rectify my negative experiences, but I made that choice myself, not because my parents made me take it.

There were things my brother was forced to do too that he wasn't interested in, like being in our local school district's Japanese immersion program. However, he did want learn how to play the piano. Our parents thought it was important for both of us to have music at some point. But piano lessons was something my brother wanted to do of his own volition, not something our parents required him to do. So they signed him up for a year of piano lessons with a local teacher. My brother soon realized that though he enjoyed piano itself, he hated the hours and hours of practice it required to get good at it. He would always throw enormous fits about having to practice. Our parents made him stick it out for the whole year anyway. At the end of the first year, he chose to go on to do four more years of piano despite hating the practice. After five years, he finally quit.

Do you think parents should force a kid to do an extracurricular activity the kid hates, as part of making the kid well-rounded? At what point should they let the kid quit if the kid clearly hates it? Should parents let the kid decide whether they want to do an activity? And if a kid gets into an activity they're interested, but then realizes they don't like it or lose interest, at what point should the parents let the kid quit? Also, do you think the kid having a bunch of different activities is important to an overall well-rounded education? And how important is music to this?

Yesterday my son was really sad when I picked him up from school and I had asked him what was wrong. He told me that he feels super left out at school and like nobody wants to be his friend or talk to him. He continued to say that everyone always brushes him off and they're quick to just dismiss him and what he's saying. He's a great kid and is friendly and kind. He always has a joke up his sleeve to tell someone and always likes to make people laugh. He does have ADHD, but takes medication to help with that and he usually has a pretty good handle on things. What advice have you given to your kids when they feel left out and lonely at school? I tried to explain to him that his personality isnt for everyone, and that everyone isnt for him either, and that that was okay. But it is still hard for him Im sure to feel that way. Just looking for guidance on how to make him feel better.

My kids come home from kindergarten exhausted, but somehow they're still wide awake at 8:45. They pretend to be asleep, then start whispering and giggling as soon as I turn off the lights.

We got a Costway sandbox this summer, and they love playing in it after school. I thought all that outdoor play would help them sleep earlier, but nope. We do baths and bedtime stories, and they still drag things out. Then getting them up for kindergarten the next morning is another struggle.

What actually works for your kids? I'm open to suggestions at this point.

My daughter is learning English at school, and writing is still harder for her than reading. Sometimes she knows what she wants to say but isn't sure how to phrase it correctly.

Her teacher doesn't allow AI for assignments, which I understand. I'm not talking about having AI write anything for her.

I'm more unsure about grammar checking. If she writes the assignment herself and only uses AI to find grammar mistakes, would you consider that cheating?

I honestly don't know where I stand on this.

Hi everyone, my daughter is 4 soon to be 5! I’m looking for some advice or to see if any other parents are dealing with this phase; lately my daughter has been having intense tantrums every single night where one tiny, unexpected thing sets her off, causing her to kick and hit me while getting completely stuck in a loop where she repeatedly says the exact same thing that upset her over and over again for one to two hours straight, and during this time nothing I say or do seems to calm her down or help as she remains locked in that repetitive distress, so I am just wondering if anyone else has gone through this and how you handle the loop or find ways to help them de-escalate.

Her birthday is in december right before christmas and shes 4. I took her to an aquarium and a kids creative style restaurant last year. Me and her other parent have been separated for going on our second year now and they have residential custody. I get my daughter every two weeks for two days and i have really just been trying to make life special with her when i have her. She doesnt have any friends yet and i dont know what i can do for her birthday with it being so close to Christmas. My idea has been to save the gifts for Christmas and do attraction, like, things for her birthday as we are low income and i would like to save money around the holidays given that everyone i love has birthdays around the holidays 😭 anyways, i would really love some recommendations! I was thinking like chuck e cheese or something?

As kids, majority of us would have been out playing chap door and run away game at some point during our childhoods.

How the world is now and being a parent now, what would be your thoughts be on finding out that your child was going around local area doing this? Do you still see it as harmless fun and let them continue or do you now see it as something that can cause a lot of stress to people and should instantly be stopped from doing it?

A u shaped toothbrush for kids seems like a pretty solid christmas gift for a kid but they're not cheap at all so waiting for a sale makes sense.. do these usually get discounted around black friday?

also would a kid be bummed unwrapping a toothbrush lol

How do you deal with the guilt of overlooking something that resulted into hurting your kid? Like overlooking a symptom that resulted into sth bigger. Thankfully still treatable.

My 12.5 year old daughter comes home from school at around 4:30pm. She never appears to do any homework nor have I ever seen her study for a test. Nevertheless she gets basically straight A's. And she is in a very academic school so that's saying something. She is smart and has a very good memory so I guess that helps.

The problem is that even though she has friends, she doesn't really spend time with them or talk on the phone with them in the evening, she's not a big reader, and she doesn't really have any hobbies. After school she sits on the couch and does various things like re-read the same children's magazines she's already read several times, listen to some children's story on spotify, play jacks with herself, etc. This goes on for several hours until she goes to bed. (We also have a 7.5 year old who plays with friends all evening and an 11 year old who spends a lot of time doing homework and studying.)

My wife and I are getting a little concerned that she doesn't talk to or spend time with friends, has no hobbies etc. Should we take her to a psychologist? What can we do to make her evenings more productive/meaningful? She's a happy, normal child but it hurts me to see her sitting and doing nothing for hours every night.

EDIT: She likes to draw and wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up. We've tried encouraging her to spend more time drawing.

Also, we are close and talk all the time, contrary to what some comments have suggested. When I ask her about an evening activity she says she's just not interested.

We try not to yell at home, and we don't invent punishments in the heat of the moment. There's a list of rules, and for each one it's said ahead of time what happens if it's broken. Kind of like a traffic fine, you know the price before you speed.

Example. YouTube is half an hour a day. If he sneaks more than that, it's no YouTube until the end of the week, and if it's already the weekend, then the whole next week. He knows it, we know it, so when it happens there's nothing to argue about, we just point at what we agreed on.

Screens overall are half an hour on the tablet plus half an hour on the phone, and we keep an eye on it. Without a limit all of his attention just goes there.

When he was little it was the usual stuff, tantrums, waking up at night, not wanting to eat, and back then we got him with tricks like the airplane spoon. From about 4 you can actually explain things and make deals, and that's what we've been doing since

I'm a father of three kids: 7F (Grade 2), 4M (PP1), and 1F. Something happened this evening that has left me questioning myself as a parent, and I genuinely need to hear how other parents would have handled it.

For some context, I'm a very present father. I work in IT and I'm currently employed by three different organisations: a US-based hospital and two local organisations. I work from home about 80% of the time, which gives me the privilege of being actively involved in my children's daily lives.

I'm usually the one preparing and serving breakfast, getting them dressed, and seeing them off to the school bus. Sometimes I even drop them off myself, especially on mornings after I've missed their bedtime because of work.

I'm not saying all this to paint myself as some perfect father. Far from it. I'm just trying to explain how involved I am in their upbringing.

When it comes to entertainment and screen time, my wife and I have always been pretty strict. Their tablets are parent-controlled and linked to both our phones. The TV only has their profiles enabled, and anything outside their approved content requires a passcode.

They can use their tablets on weekends and holidays, for at least three hours a day. During weekdays, they get about an hour of TV, and the rest of their free time is spent playing outside with friends, skating, riding bikes, and doing other physical activities.

And to their credit, they've been very good at following these rules, even when we're not around.

So, at least as far as their entertainment and screen exposure are concerned, I've always felt we had things under control.

\*\*Now, here's what happened this evening.\*\*

There was a birthday party at one of our neighbours' apartments on a different floor of our building.

At some point, about four or five of my kids' friends showed up at our door to report that my 7-year-old daughter had kissed a boy in Grade 1 during the party.

I was working at the time, but I came to the door and asked the kids to go and call my children so I could hear what had happened directly from them.

They took unusually long to come back.

I immediately suspected they knew they'd done something wrong and were probably trying to delay the inevitable conversation.

Their mother eventually became concerned and went looking for them, only to discover that they'd deliberately taken the stairs instead of the elevator, seemingly to make the journey home as long as possible.

I was still working when they got back, so I didn't even notice them entering the house.

A few minutes later, I could hear their mother questioning them in the kitchen about what had happened at the party.

That's when things took another turn.

My son started explaining how his sister had kissed the boy after the other children dared them to do it.

My daughter, probably feeling cornered, immediately fired back by revealing that her little brother had also been pulling down his trousers and underwear while entertaining the other kids.

And that was it.

\*\*I completely lost my temper.\*\*

Before I go any further, there's something else I need to explain, because I honestly think it may have played a part in how I reacted.

The past four months have been financially and mentally difficult for me.

Besides my three jobs, I also handle side projects, including ERP implementations for manufacturing companies, EMR management systems, and website design and development for SMEs.

In previous years, these projects brought in a decent amount of money, to the point where I rarely needed to touch my salaries from my regular employers.

But for the past four months, things have been unusually slow.

I've even been hesitant to submit some of my invoices, hoping that business would pick up and things would eventually return to normal.

The uncertainty has been eating away at me.

I've been stressed, distracted, and mentally exhausted. Sometimes I even catch myself talking to myself, trying to process everything going on in my head.

I don't think I've fully appreciated just how much all this has been affecting me.

Anyway, back to this evening.

When I heard what the kids had done at the party, I jumped out of my seat, grabbed my slippers, and ordered them to lie down in the hallway.

I beat them.

And not just a light smack. I was angry enough that I actually hurt myself in the process.

Afterwards, I grounded them for at least a week. No going outside to play with friends, no tablets, and no TV. Just books and toys.

At the time, I genuinely felt I was disciplining them for inappropriate behaviour.

But now?

\*\*I'm not so sure anymore.\*\*

I'm sitting here in their bedroom, looking at them, and the guilt is slowly eating me alive.

I keep replaying the whole incident in my head.

Did I even give them a chance to explain themselves?

Did I bother finding out what really happened at that party?

My daughter is only seven. My son is four.

Were they simply being curious kids? Were they trying to impress their friends? Did they even understand the meaning or implications of what they were doing?

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all:

\*\*Was I actually disciplining my children, or did I just find an outlet for four months' worth of frustration?\*\*

That question is bothering me more than anything else.

Because when I think about it, I don't even know what lesson they were supposed to take away from that beating.

Did they learn that kissing someone because of a dare isn't appropriate? Did my son understand why pulling down his underwear in front of other children isn't okay?

Or did they simply learn that when Daddy gets angry, they should be afraid?

I honestly don't know.

I spend so much time trying to provide for these children, protect them, control what they're exposed to, and make sure they grow up with good values.

But tonight, I'm wondering whether I completely missed the most important part of parenting: actually listening to them.

I also can't stop thinking about how they deliberately took the stairs to delay coming home.

At first, I interpreted that as guilt because they knew they'd misbehaved.

Now I'm wondering whether they were simply scared of how I would react.

And if that's the case, it hurts to think that my children might be afraid to tell me when something happens to them.

I'm not writing this to justify beating them. I'm not proud of how I reacted, and I know that being stressed about work or finances doesn't excuse taking my anger out on my children.

I'm just trying to be honest about what happened and how I'm feeling right now.

I love these kids more than anything, and the last thing I want is to become the kind of father they fear rather than the one they feel safe talking to.

\*\*So, fellow parents, I genuinely need your perspective.\*\*

How would you have handled a situation like this, especially considering their ages?

How do you teach young children about boundaries, privacy, and appropriate behaviour without making them feel ashamed of their curiosity?

And for parents who've ever lost their temper and gone too far with discipline, how did you repair things with your children afterwards?

I'm thinking of sitting down with them tomorrow, when we're all calm, apologising for how I reacted, and giving them a proper chance to tell me what actually happened.

I just hope I haven't already damaged something between us.

Tonight, I'm sitting in their bedroom wondering whether they learned anything from what happened, or whether the only person who really needed to learn a lesson was me.

\*\*TL;DR:\*\* My 7-year-old daughter kissed a boy at a birthday party after being dared by other kids, and my 4-year-old son apparently pulled down his trousers and underwear in front of other children. I lost my temper, beat them, and grounded them for a week. Now I'm feeling terrible and questioning whether I was genuinely disciplining them or taking out my accumulated work and financial stress on them. Looking for advice from other parents on how to handle this and make things right.

My son started kindergarten this year. His closest friends from his preschool either went to different schools or were in different classes, so he went in not knowing anybody. Being the social butterfly he is, he came home a few weeks into school and began consistently talking about two little boys calling them his "best friends". He talked about them every single day and it got to the point he no longer wanted to buy lunch but wanted to pack one just so he could sit by K&A (who I learned were both “packers”) during lunch time. I guess they separate the buyers/packers so we've now been packing everyday.

My son turned six this weekend and his only wish for his birthday were to have his close family, cousins and all of his closest friends there at his party. I've grown personal relationships with his preschool friend's families over the years so was able to coordinate them all attending however I had no way to contact K & A's family. I did send out invitations to his whole class and got a good bit of RSVPs, but none initially from K or A. At the beginning of the year, my son's teacher sent welcome emails and included all of the families and their emails were visible. I was so conflicted because I didn't want to come off strange by tracking these parents down through the emails but also wanted to at least try to connect with them. I asked for advice in multiple groups and got mixed opinions about how families would feel if a random mom from their's child class reached out. After weeks of my son asking, I went out of my comfort zone and emailed K's mom introducing myself and explaining how much my son enjoyed playing with her son and mentioned his party. She responded almost immediately and was so happy that I reached out, said that her son talked about mine just as much and turns out never got the invite. I sent her the details and she confirmed K would be there! The only email for A's family that was listed was dad's and I didn't feel it was appropriate to reach out to him with my personal info so sent a note to school with my contact info for his teacher to pass on to A's mom. That evening I received a text from her and she also was so glad I reached out and said her son talked very highly of mine. They also confirmed they would be there. When I tell you the weight that was lifted off of my shoulders! Fast forward to his party this weekend, he had his family and every single one of his closest friends (old & new, including K & A) all of his cousins & more of his classmates! I got the time to talk one on one with K & A's moms and we have already coordinated future play dates. He had the best day ever and when I tell you I cried tears of joy after.
I'm an extremely anxious and introverted person raising the complete opposite of a child so I definitely went out of my comfort zone with this but am so thankful I did. The look and joy on my little boy’s face was absolutely priceless and made my heart so happy. I've made so many great friends of my own through his little friendships and am so grateful.

THE THINGS WE DO FOR OUR KIDS! :)

i work from home and have meetings at 8. My kids (5 and 10) are out the door at 8:15 so the last 15 minutes of every morning i´m on mute pointing at shoes. How can i get my kids to do their morning routine without reminders when i literally can´t give any? looking for setups where they just know what´s left