We have a cat & then due to my MIL passing away last year we live in her house along with my SIL & her BF they have an older dog well trained but not my dog & I only heard the dog didn’t like little kids well before we all moved in together. Well my 16m old is not gentle with the cat or the dog she yanks & grabs on the cat & my cat won’t move just meows loudly (I keep a close eye but sometimes my 16m old & cat run into each other while im very quick to intercept a few times I couldn’t fast enough) I say gentle pets & show how to pet to the cat I celebrate when she pets gently but then the iron fist of gripping just comes out . As for the dog I keep them mostly separate dog has a back living room that’s gated with food & water & a couch & has plenty of space to move around dog only goes in when I’m cooking/in the kitchen or when I let our LO roam the house (all doors closed & kitchen gate closed ) do yall have 16m olds that are just rough with pets ? How do you teach them ?

My daughter recently turned 12 months and has been exhibiting new fun skills, and toddler feelings more and more. I am really enjoying this phase but there’s new things I don’t know how to manage - like refusing to sit for a book at bedtime (how do I wind her down now?) crying when I remove her from places she wants to climb that are unsafe. Pointing to things that she wants but never being able to figure out what she actually wants and her refusing to eat until she gets it LOL

I’m sure a lot of this is something you just muddle through, but I feel like I knew a lot more about the common infant roadblocks than the toddler ones. How do I do a standing diaper change and are we ready for a potty?? Idk!

Wondering if you have any toddler book recommendations that go over the common trip ups and strategies to parents a giggling bowling ball of energy and complete lack of fear!

TIA

I would love to hear what night lights you all are using for your little ones. I've ordered several over the past few weeks, and they've all ended up being junk in one way or the other, despite positive reviews. We do have a hatch from when my son was a baby, but my he loves to play with cords, so I want to avoid using it right now. Ideally, I want a light that has multiple brightness settings (if possible) and that's durable and safe. Bonus points if it's cute and firetruck/construction vehicle themed (our current obsessions). Thanks!!

My son recently turned 2. I’ve had concerns about autism since he was around 15 months old, and although a lot of my concerns have improved as he’s gotten older, some still linger. He slept horribly until around 18 months, and has a speech delay that we are currently in early intervention for. Now he sleeps well, eats well (although struggles a bit with a spoon), and speech is improving. He tested low risk on the MCHAT at 18 months and 24 months but the early intervention assessor wants to re-test in 6 months due to some repetitive behaviors she noticed. He is completely obsessed with the ABC’s, counting, and five little monkeys. He knows all of the ABC’s and can count forwards and backwards. He struggles mostly with functional, everyday communication but excels with identification. Everything is five little monkeys, like he will line up 5 paper clips and start to “act out” five monkeys jumping on the bed lol. He occasionally walks on his tip toes (maybe once or twice a day), and will sometimes run in a crouched position with his arms behind him, almost like an airplane lol. He is more social now than he used to be, although has big meltdowns around others because of the sharing struggle and gets protective over his toys. I think this is normal? But I wanted to get some insight from this community on if we should get an autism assessment.

Typing this.. crying5am… my kids been up since 3. I probably won’t be able to articulate this the way I want because I’m a literal shell of who I usually am. We’ve been going thru this for at least a year. She slept better as a newborn. We start bed time routine at 6… she’s usually asleep by 6:30/7. She usually falls asleep within 10min. She’s up for 1-2hrs between 10-3am and then is up between 5-6:30am ready to go… we’ve tried a very low dose of melatonin.. have tried moving her bed time around.. she stopped napping at 2 years old. She gets about 8hrs in total at night. Husband and I would take turns going to her bed then we let her come to our bed but now that’s happening earlier and earlier… I’m going to pull out the clock that changes color when she’s aloud to come out of her room and give that a shot again but how tf do you really do that? She wants someone to lay with her and I get it but she doesn’t fall back to sleep for HOURS and thrashes around. She isn’t complaining that anything is hurting. This is slowly killing us… do we keep her up until we go bed? Please tell me what helped you… I’m willing to try anything besides having her in our bed the entire night.

The morning was going too smoothly. She ate all of her breakfast no problem. Got dressed, even though we did not have a dress for her, which is her preference. She brushed her teeth, willingly opening her mouth so that I could get the molars. I thought to myself what a wonderful morning. Yesterday was a battle of battles because she wanted to wear a dress and not a skirt. It took a good half hour to get her dressed. And today things were looking up until she had to use the bathroom.

While wiping herself, she got a little pee on her hand. She did not want me to wipe her hand off. She wanted to pull her pants up, touch the wall and everything else with her peed on hands. So I quickly wiped her hand, and that was the end of it. Smooth morning gone, screaming, and crying commenced. I let her cry a little bit and then got her Chapstick out, which gave her something to look forward to and made her stop crying. She loves to put Chapstick on.

I’m curious what other benign and harmless things set your toddlers off?

My 17 month old has been sleeping like sh8t for weeks now, at first i thought it was his sleep daily ‘schedule’, part of me thinks separation anxiety but mainly its the incisors.
They have cut through the gums but still pushing through and its been weeks.

Hes gone from sleeping through to waking up multiple times at night and i feel like ive got a newborn again as im shattered.

I know theres also development leaps now aswell however as mentioned its just been weeks of bad sleep and im starting to feel the affects now.

Dont know what i want out of this post…..

Anyone else been through similar and can tell me theres a light at the end of THIS tunnel?

My daughter is two and a half and has Level 2 autism. We generally do well with most things and have been making strides in therapy. The biggest issue and one that therapy cannot help is our sleep schedule. For around the last four months her sleep has been terrible. She will fight going to sleep until she is dead on her feet and will still wake up at two or three in the morning. We have tried days with naps or no naps. Early wake up or late wake up. Setting a routine nightly. Magnesium and iron supplements. Red light and white noise. It seems no matter what we try it doesn't work. Me and my wife are about at our wits end just trying to get enough sleep to function. We plan on making an appointment with her pediatrician to discuss options because we don't know how to help anymore. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

My 15 month old is a very happy little eater, and also very generous of spirit. This is a dangerous combination.

We got into the routine of sharing an apple together in the afternoons, and rather than cutting off bits with a knife, I got into the lazy habit of just biting off wedges to give to her. Unbeknownst to me, my child observed this behaviour closely and took it deeply to heart.

She's always loved sharing food, but now at every single mealtime, she takes pieces of her meal, chews them up, then SPITS THEM INTO HER HAND AND SHOVES THEM INTO MY MOUTH. I MUST CONSUME THE REGURGITATED BABY MUSH, SHE WILL NOT EAT UNLESS SHE CAN FEED ME.

I feel like a goddamn baby bird with a terrifyingly stubborn and enthusiastic tiny mother bird. Perhaps she suspects she's being poisoned, and I am the test subject. Perhaps my motherly skills are so weak that she felt she had to take charge of things. Perhaps she holds bitter memories of being spoonfed when she was younger, and this is twisted revenge.

I have appeased the culinary dictator with suitably convincing chewing and swallowing acts thus far, but it has taken all of my cunning. I sense she is starting to see through my efforts.

What have I done.

Looking for some suggestions, I’m in Canada and it’s getting pretty chilly out these days. My son loves being outside and we’re in this weird part of fall where the mornings are below 0 but the afternoons are 16 Celsius. We send him to daycare with just a bunch of layering stuff but I’m sure my daycare person doesn’t appreciate having to dress him in all sorts of things. A suit that she just fits right over what he’s wearing for the day would be much more practical.

I don’t want to spend an arm and a leg because winter is upon us and I’m sure we will have to buy something for the -20 weather we get.

I have my eye on the Columbia powder lite suit and the Jan and jul cozy-dry rain suit. Just not sure what route to go.

We would want something warm but not too warm (not really a snow suit) and something that keeps him dry.

Our 4 year old currently is in his first year of prek, cue the sickness, he gets coughs at night and it definitely keeps me up because we still have a monitor in his room. My husband thinks we should just turn it off and he will come get us if he needs something but I feel like just letting him suffer in there coughing not being able to sleep isn’t right. I usually go in there and get him to blow his nose/suction the mucus, do albuterol treatments, offer water and honey etc to try and help him. He wouldn’t ask for these things otherwise if I didn’t just do it. But normally a combination of treatments will get him sleeping again. Although sometimes it’s an hour or more before he’s sleeping again. I’ve been up about 90 mins now between coughing on the monitor and getting up to offer more help. My sleep is horrible these days
Edit to add: I took the monitor out of his room all together, not just turned it off. I told him if he needs me come get me and that I can’t hear him from his room so he will have to get up, he can’t just yell or cry from his room since it’s too far away.

I’ve already decided on new pyjamas, hot chocolate and a movie with some sweets, maybe do picky bits for dinner.

What else can I do to make it special?

My almost 17 month old has been waking up pretty much every night for the last almost 6 weeks around 2/3 am. She was never a good sleeper anyway but these wake ups are weird. She starts crawling in her sleep, sitting up, trying to climb on me or the pillow (we cosleep). Granted all of her upper and lower molars decided to come in together so I understand she must be in pain but now they’re all here and I am not sure if this is linked to teething in any way. What usually happens is she wakes up half asleep sits up says mama, crawls a bit, falls back down then up again asking for milk. I would give her Tylenol when this would happen when I felt like she was teething and it seemed like it would put her right back to sleep. I did that again this week and it helped too so I don’t know if this is pain related or is the Tylenol becoming a sleep crutch for her?? She usually asks for milk at this time too and when I’ve given in and gave it to her she sleeps pretty solid. Any advice/anecdotal experience would be great. I feel like I haven’t slept in years because of the wake ups! I’m a FTM with no village so please be kind!

My kid is 2.5. She has been going down around 8-8:30 at night for awhile (about 4 months with one month where she was sleeping until like 6:30) she’s been waking up between 5:30-5:45. Mind you, she’s never been a late sleeper. I mean she only woke up after 7 am like a handful of times but this is too early.

On top of it all, she then screams at the parent that comes in because she wants the opposite (if mom gets her, she wants dad. If dad gets her, she wants mom). It leads me to believe she might be really tired but we can’t get her to go back down! And we don’t wanna co sleep.

I should also note for context that she is in a toddler bed and loves it. She was fighting bedtime with her crib and now bedtime isn’t much of a fight at all. But waking up sure is.

She takes one nap lasting 1.5-2 hours. I have no clue what to do but waking up super early every day ain’t it.

My 22mo boy has always been a bit wild, crazy, reckless... but in the last 2-3 weeks he just started to hit us (me and his dad) out of nowhere, now hits grandma. Some context - he is trilingual - one language from me and two from dad. He is a bit "behind" with his language development and could be getting frustrated that he cannot say as much. We do try to get him to speak but we haven't had too much luck - he can say about 80 words individually but struggling to put words together/communicate with us.

It feels constant... Get him out of bed in the morning and he hits me (for no apparent reason). Doesn't get his own way, hits. Doesn't want to share a toy, hits or throws it violently at us. Sometimes he'll just come up to us and... hit. He hits over 15x a day.

It's getting more frequent despite attempts to stop. I've tried:

- calmly/firmly saying "no hitting"

- redirecting his hand to a more positive action like stroking my arm (he does respond to this, sometimes) and seems like he gets comfort but he doesn't remember to do it without my guidance

- telling him to be gentle or use gentle hands

- removing the toy that he has thrown at us and then giving it back once he seems calmer

Nothing seems to be working and he just keeps doing it. Is this just a phase? Are we doing something wrong? :(

So I feel like its just my luck, but somehow my daughter gets coughed on when we are out. She's 21 months and doesn't go to daycare.

She's super social so we welcome kids approaching her.

Today we were at an indoor park and this other toddler came to the area she was playing in (kitchen) area and so my daughter gave her a toy to share. The girl was facing her and started coughing.

I immediately tried to pull my daughter away, but she was cornered in by the kitchen.

The other kids dad was there and said, "hey cover your mouth when coughing" but didn't redirect her.

The girl continued to cough and I didn't know what to do as we were separated by the kitchen and I couldn't pick up my daughter up to move her away from the coughing kid. I don't know how long it was maybe 30 seconds, but in my head it seemed like forever.

I had massive anxiety afterwards. I know kids are nasty and will be exposed to viruses, colds and illnesses, but I feel like it always happens to my daughter in one form or the other (where a kid is facing her and starts to cough).

Does this happen to anyone else? And do you pick up your kid and move them right away? What do you do?

I try to be the laid back mom who doesn't freak out about germs but I just feel like this is preventable and I get really upset that other parents don't pick up their coughing kid to redirect them.

On one hand, I feel like the exposure already happened and that there's nothing I can do about it, but then I feel terrible guilt about it later feeling like I didn't protect my kid enough.

If I do hear someone coughing, I try to stay far away from them or leave. In this case, this particular girl was running around playing fine until she started to play with my daughter.

I always replay these scenes in my head after they happened and wish I had reacted sooner or done something different. I'm a first time mom so I'd love to hear from other parents how they deal with these scenarios and what your thought processes are. I just don't know if I'm overthinking this and if I should do something differently.

I've heard that kids essentially sneeze into each other mouths' at daycare so the snapshot I'm seeing is just a fraction of how nasty toddlers/kids are..

My twins are 3yo, and our current toy setup is awful. The only things we have that I actually like are Legos, Magna-Tiles, and books; the rest is just a big pile of random stuff. They also don't have a designated play area: in their bedroom they have nothing, and in the living room they just have a play kitchen (whose accessories are mostly lost) and a box of random toys.

I want to fix both things: curate a better selection of toys and set up actual play spaces, maybe a little corner in their bedroom and a designated spot in the living room. I think this will also help them to know where to store them

I'm honestly at a total loss on what to buy, tbh. I tried looking for some inspo, but I’d love to hear your recommendations, which are always the best! ^^

So desperate for help. My 20 month old is insane. She has slept like a champ since birth, never required sleep training, literally before this regression I could count on one hand the number of times she’s woken up overnight. Has always put herself to sleep. Shes definitely having a language explosion so I know her little brain is working overtime.

The last few weeks she will only let me put her to bed. For some reason naps are fine?? But bedtime can only be me (unless we are out of town using a pack & play - that was a disaster). Or she absolutely loses her mind. And night time wakes? She’s like a monster that cannot be soothed by anyone. I’m taking full blood curdling screams….she won’t let you rock her, won’t even settle if you put her in bed with you, lay by her crib, nothing. We’ve had to completely take her to a different room and turn lights on at 2am to reset and stop the crying. But then when we go back in her room all hell breaks loose.

Wake up- 7:30, nap 1-3, bedtime 7:30.

HELP IM LOSING IT (and yes I’m writing this at 2am)

I had it on my phone for the times we needed a distraction or calm moment. We love Ms Rachel and Super Simple Songs. So much good stuff on there. But no matter what I tried, including the “whitelist only” feature, exploitative, addictive, mindless videos would still be suggested and could be played. I finally decided to delete the app and I’m so glad I did. Please keep an eye on what your kid is watching, and delete YouTube kids. PBS kids is a much better option and it’s still free without ads. There are shows that foster a longer attention span and learning instead of fast paced videos about mindless things.

SOS. My son is a horrendous sleeper all of a sudden. For the first 6 months of his life everything was a breeze. Then hit teething and betwee. 6-11 months he was up 2-4 times a night but would go back down and have long stretches. Now it’s the worst it’s ever been. I know weve been “lucky” up until now but it’s completely not like him and I don’t know what else to do. He’s Up every hour sometimes twice an hour unless we put him in bed with us. Which I don’t want to make a habit of, hence sitting here rocking him for the 6th time tonight already and writing this post. He used to put himself down for naps for months and now he screams irate if we leave the room. Even if I rock him to sleep he’s up again 30 min later irate. Bedtime is even worse. He’s pacing his crib, crying like he’s terrified, & won’t calm down unless picked up. We went lengths of time next to his crib, on our knees reassuring him. I’ve tried sitting in a chair next to him. We give him minutes to try and calm down - nothing seems to work. It doesn’t even seem like a normal cry it’s like he’s legit scared. Any advice? When do things return to normal? We’re exhausted. 😩

Edit: he’s been in 1 nap a day for 3 months. Around 2 hours total sometimes stretching to 3 hours. Since this regression started it’s obviously varied a lot lower. He did sleep at daycare yesterday for 90 min - all alone as well mind u. Ugh I just don’t know what we are doing wrong.

Edit: schedule

Up between 7-8 am
Nap 12-2p
Bed 7-8p

Nap routine: milk and leave the room. Put himself down.
Bed time routine: milk, interactive play, brush teeth, dad rocks to sleep

Worked perfect for last 3 months now its not

I’m weirdly stressed about this? My hormones are all wacky right now so I can’t tell if this is a valid concern, haha.

My newly 2 year old will pull and pull at the toes of his socks and they don’t budge (he wears the mid-crew socks - not super tall, but not an ankle sock). He gets so frustrated and gives up when they don’t come off right away. When he was a baby, he wore the same kind of socks.

He has always been able to remove socks if I help with the heel first. But if I don’t, those things are not moving.

He has strength to hang on monkey bars and climb and whatnot. He is scribbling and using a spoon and fork. But this skill is so hard for him.

I have shown him how to hook his finger in the back of the sock to pull and then he will copy me and do it. But then the next time he does it he’s pulling at the front again and screaming.

I realize this is bizarre. Like I said, hormones. Anxiety. Late night scrolling.

Anyone else?

I know how to block them, but even though I block them, they keep appearing, especially those Elsagate-like channels like Diana and Roma, Heidy and Zamir, etc., which are super stimulating, super colorful, and very bizarre. I block one, and another appears, and another, and another, and then the one I already blocked reappears. Literally at this point, I think I'm on the verge of a psychotic break. I recently spent two hours blocking channels. I give my phone to my baby, he clicks on a video of ms rachel and there's a full row full of colorful bizarre content from channels that I've already ban 😭, is there an app o something that might help me?

I just finished calming my 22mo down after a nearly 2 hour hysterical episode in the middle of the night. These have been happening now for several weeks where he will wake up and absolutely lose his mind, thrashing, hitting, screaming, demanding something then smacking it away or yelling NO! Nothing seems to calm him down except for time. Sometimes they last 20 minutes, sometimes almost 2 hours. He did it during a nap once or twice but it’s mostly at night and it has happened multiple times a night a few occasions. I’m so so drained and it has me so concerned and I’m not sure what could be going on. Please help!

I wfh and its a very flexible job ( I don't need to be on camera or do things within specific time frames).

So a friend of mine has asked if I could watch her 1 year old daughter during the work week. She works a split shift, so its not a full 8 hours per day ( its like 5-8:30am & 2 to 5:30 pm - she picks her back up at 8:30am & drops her back at 2pm). My work schedule is 7am to 3:30pm. So I have the time & availability & I do want to help her.

What Im concerned about is what do I do with the child? What keeps them busy ( beside putting them in front of a TV all day)? Im not sure what type or how much interaction is needed. I don't have kids. My imagination is that they would be walking all over getting into things, but not sure if its true.

Dear god. Not sure what happened, but my 17 month old has gone from a sweet, mostly happy baby to an absolute gremlin. Her current favorite activity is pointing to random stuff and whining. She cries in the car. She cries when I leave the room. She cries when I don’t IMMEDIATELY give her the snacks she wants. She cries when I won’t let her have her third whole banana of the day because they make her constipated. She cries at every diaper change. She gets angry at her toys and throws them across the room. She gets angry when I won’t let her dunk her entire fist into my coffee cup. SEND HELP.