The Parenting Thread II - Advice, Tips, Etc

[LadySkinsFan]

One thing parents forget is that our children are not our mini mes, but their own person. My daughter never wanted to listen to me, rather she wanted to experience everything herself. Made for some interesting learning sessions including consequences! I learned from early on to give her choices because she wanted to always make her own decisions from about age 1. So I would give her two or three options that she could choose from (so she wouldn't make up her own, didn't want those discussions at an early age). She was happy with this tactic. When she got older, like school age, I let her add one choice of her own to several choices. Sometimes she'd pick one of hers instead of mine and that was okay. 

 

She's 45 now and has been making her own choices since she was 18, except for one time I had to step in because her choices were costing me money. I'm so proud of her!

[Renegade7]

So I'm using a pen on my oldest fingers to help stop her from shocking them.

 

All the sudden tonight she keeps going to potty with lots of false positives and I noticed she's washing her hands after every time, she sits for a while then turns sink on herself.

 

I usually don't push for washing hands when she doesn't use potty as part of distinguishing false positives.

 

Now she has her fingers in her mouth again and I realize she's just trying to wash her hands much as she can to get the pen stuff off.  I'm not shocked she's resorted to washing it off, it's the not being to tell if she's hiding that through impressing me with her bathroom practice like she normally does that gives me pause.

 

Don't forget they are just smaller versions of smartest thing on earth.

[skinsmarydu]

59 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

So I'm using a pen on my oldest fingers to help stop her from shocking them.

 

All the sudden tonight she keeps going to potty with lots of false positives and I noticed she's washing her hands after every time, she sits for a while then turns sink on herself.

 

I usually don't push for washing hands when she doesn't use potty as part of distinguishing false positives.

 

Now she has her fingers in her mouth again and I realize she's just trying to wash her hands much as she can to get the pen stuff off.  I'm not shocked she's resorted to washing it off, it's the not being to tell if she's hiding that through impressing me with her bathroom practice like she normally does that gives me pause.

 

Don't forget they are just smaller versions of smartest thing .

I taught my oldest grand daughter to wash her hands properly when she was just a tiny thing (she graduated HS this year).  It's a thing with her like me...hands gotta stay clean.   

[Thinking Skins]

So my latest sinister plan to teach my 4 year old to read is doing word searches. All the typical stuff has failed because he's lost interest or he just says, no dad you read it to me. It my wife will say stop rushing him and he's age appropriate, which is right. But I like reading with my boys. And I want them to be able read back to me. 

 

So tonight he's doing this word search book I got him. I can't say if it will stick. But hopefully it'll be some word recognition because with the cards we weren't getting past 3 letter words. 

 

[PleaseBlitz]

In news unrelated to teaching a 4 year old to read, I just watched the fight scene from Matrix Reloaded where Neo fight 100 Agent Smiths with my 3 year old who loves punching everything. 
 

 

 

[Renegade7]

Threw my near 3yo daughter 10-15 ft in the air to get to the top of a slide in a moon bounce the other day...

 

She loved it, Wife laughed, other folks jaw dropped...

[Renegade7]

13 hours ago, Thinking Skins said:

So my latest sinister plan to teach my 4 year old to read is doing word searches. All the typical stuff has failed because he's lost interest or he just says, no dad you read it to me. It my wife will say stop rushing him and he's age appropriate, which is right. But I like reading with my boys. And I want them to be able read back to me. 

 

So tonight he's doing this word search book I got him. I can't say if it will stick. But hopefully it'll be some word recognition because with the cards we weren't getting past 3 letter words. 

 

 

It may be a little late (but still recommend you try if you haven't) to turn on subtitles everytime they watch tv no matter what it is.  It's definitely helping my oldest who's almost three.

[Thinking Skins]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

 

It may be a little late (but still recommend you try if you haven't) to turn on subtitles everytime they watch tv no matter what it is.  It's definitely helping my oldest who's almost three.

Yeah we do that but he barely looks at the TV 

[Hersh]

16 hours ago, Thinking Skins said:

So my latest sinister plan to teach my 4 year old to read is doing word searches. All the typical stuff has failed because he's lost interest or he just says, no dad you read it to me. It my wife will say stop rushing him and he's age appropriate, which is right. But I like reading with my boys. And I want them to be able read back to me. 

 

So tonight he's doing this word search book I got him. I can't say if it will stick. But hopefully it'll be some word recognition because with the cards we weren't getting past 3 letter words. 

 

 

I agree with your wife. Pushing doesn't help at all. We read to our kid every night for years until he wanted to start reading on his own. Two things that really helped, graphic novels like captain underpants and letter land in K-2. Letter land is a fantastic phonics tool used at schools. From there he took off. He's 9 and he will wake up and read. He crushed the Percy Jackson series this last summer and is almost done with Hero of Olympus. We were really deliberate in moving up levels to not rush, never forced him to read back to us and we let him pick what interests him. 

 

Almost forgot, I would take him to the comic book store and let him pick some out. Even if they were above his reading level at the time. Went through a transformers, power rangers and my little pony comic book phase. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Hersh

[PleaseBlitz]

We read Harry Potter to our daughter. She, now 8, reads it to her little brother. 
 

I do have to constantly explain to her that English English isn’t really English as she understands the term. 

[Thinking Skins]

Just had my first ever inclination to make rice krispie treats and did do with my boys. They came out great. Wife has been holding that over my head since we were dating. Not any more. 

[Renegade7]

You know you got a Naija baby when she willingly puts down the pediasure to inhale more jollof rice...

[PleaseBlitz]

My daughter walking the red carpet at the Kennedy Center this evening. 

[LadySkinsFan]

It's always great to take children about that age to the Kennedy Center for performances. They can really appreciate it!

[Thinking Skins]

On 11/22/2023 at 9:34 AM, Thinking Skins said:

Yeah we do that but he barely looks at the TV 

So this is another follow up. Younger loves the idea. It hasn't led to him becoming an active reader like I wanted but thats ok. I'm not trying to rush it. He's loving the Word Searches. The main thing is that he can do puzzles like his older brother and not be left out.

 

More on puzzles. So my older son, enjoys riddles and puzzles. I used to make him a puzzle a day in the morning before school but he would take too long to do them and wouldn't finish his breakfast. But sometimes I will still give him one on weekends. Anyway, he still likes riddles on school mornings. So i downloaded a book of about 1000 riddles. He went through that in about a month and I needed something new. 

 

So I saw one riddle and got an idea. its the chicago riddle. 

Chi-ca-go.

3/7 chicken= CHI

2/3 cat = CA

2/4 goat= GO.

 

Basically the fraction tells how many letters out of the word to take. I'm not good with riddles (at all) but I am good with programming so I write a program to generate some random riddles 

 

like this one

 

The clues are germ and (1/4)
vacuum and (3/6)
jour (1/4)
cate (3/4)
What is the original word?

 

And I give them to my son every morning and the dude solves them in like no time.

 

My wife and coworkers were laughing at me for making these riddles thinking they were corny but this makes me smile. I had to ask him how he does it because I had no idea. He told me dad its simple and the told me and really it was simple. 

[dfitzo53]

2 minutes ago, Thinking Skins said:

So this is another follow up. Younger loves the idea. It hasn't led to him becoming an active reader like I wanted but thats ok. I'm not trying to rush it. He's loving the Word Searches. The main thing is that he can do puzzles like his older brother and not be left out.

 

More on puzzles. So my older son, enjoys riddles and puzzles. I used to make him a puzzle a day in the morning before school but he would take too long to do them and wouldn't finish his breakfast. But sometimes I will still give him one on weekends. Anyway, he still likes riddles on school mornings. So i downloaded a book of about 1000 riddles. He went through that in about a month and I needed something new. 

 

So I saw one riddle and got an idea. its the chicago riddle. 

Chi-ca-go.

3/7 chicken= CHI

2/3 cat = CA

2/4 goat= GO.

 

Basically the fraction tells how many letters out of the word to take. I'm not good with riddles (at all) but I am good with programming so I write a program to generate some random riddles 

 

like this one

 

The clues are germ and (1/4)
vacuum and (3/6)
jour (1/4)
cate (3/4)
What is the original word?

 

And I give them to my son every morning and the dude solves them in like no time.

 

My wife and coworkers were laughing at me for making these riddles thinking they were corny but this makes me smile. I had to ask him how he does it because I had no idea. He told me dad its simple and the told me and really it was simple. 

Spoiler

Evacuate

 

[Thinking Skins]

1 minute ago, dfitzo53 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Evacuate

 

I'm glad someone else undestood that. I thought my son and I were on an island here. 

[LadySkinsFan]

Had to read the hidden comment. I don't do puzzles like that. 

 

I am just getting into online picture puzzles because I've always liked doing them. I don't have the room for real life puzzles although I do have a building one that looks interesting.

 

You and your son are smart!

 

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by LadySkinsFan

[Thinking Skins]

7 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Had to read the hidden comment. I don't do puzzles like that. 

 

I am just getting into online picture puzzles because I've always liked doing them. I don't have the room for real life puzzles although I do have a building one that looks interesting.

 

You and your son are smart!

 

 

I've always been into math / number puzzles and when I was younger I told myself that I wanted to learn to program them when I got older. Well, like I said the sudokus and stuff were a bit hard for my boy so I started doing word puzzles. 

 

I used to hate word puzzles. But after some self reflection, I decided to do some programming on crossword generation, word search generation and other word puzzle generation to delve into that line of puzzles. Now I need to learn to solve them. 

[LadySkinsFan]

I used to do The Washington Post Sunday crossword puzzles. 

 

I'm a word person, definitely not a math person. It's why I was a writer/editor and proposal manager (project management). I was excellent at that!

[Thinking Skins]

Here's the puzzle for my kids today

 

The clues are dirk and (2/4)

hall (2/4)

dryer (2/5)

What is the original word?

[PleaseBlitz]

We didn’t have snow last year, so here is my 3 year old’s first sledding run. 

[LadySkinsFan]

His smile at the end! Priceless!

[Renegade7]

Officially in the Question Era...

 

"You need to relax."

 

"What's that!?!?!"

[Thinking Skins]

My kids "invented" a game called chesskers - a combination of chess and checkers but the rules made no sense no I showed them another variant invented in 1984 that's actually fun