Parenting Catch-all

I'd like to go lower since our daughter has the desire to pump massive sound into her head, i have to control her volume or she pumps it up as far asbit goes and holds it against her head (she's not hard of hearing, we've checked with the doctor).
85 is supposedly safe for about an hour or two, i want something she can use as much as she'd like safely. Also, Db ratings are usually +/- 10 so 85s can still sometimes go up to 95.

Maybe this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084RG47PQ...

Pricey though.

You might also want to pick up something with active noise cancelling, so that your child doesn't feel a need to turn it on so high maybe?

Also, what device are the headphones being used on? I believe Android (and likely iPad) devices have apps that let you set volume limits.

A mix of devices, mostly droids. Yeah i am also looking into volume limiter apps. Kinda on the fence about noise canceling, she already ignores me enoigh, im a bit hesitant to give her an excuse...

astralplaydoh wrote:

Maybe this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084RG47PQ...

Pricey though.

The built in audio splitter is a nice touch. If my kids weren't constantly breaking headphones lately, I would probably throw in for those.

Feels like the appropriate thread.

Got a new Subaru Ascent this week. After driving home for mother's day with 2 kids finally, our first long road trip since the baby in Sept, we decided our Mazda CX-5 wasn't big enough. Also I've been WFH for 17 months, so my wife suggested we trade both and go back to one car payment.

We thought it'd be easy. Went back to Mazda dealer in June while my parents were here to watch the kids, test drove CX-9. Wasn't as much cargo space as we thought. But with the bench seat version it would be similar seating to what we had before with double the space with the 3rd row down. Except they didn't have any bench seats available... anywhere.

We checked back a couple times but no sign of stock. So finally started looking around at other things in mid July. Subaru had great reviews, great safety ratings, etc. Went by to test drive... no new models on the lot! And no take home test drives because of low stock.

Figured we were screwed until next year models at that point. But we tried to call back again a week or so later, and happened to get the store manager. She said they had one coming the next day and they were doing overnight take home test drives again. So they brought us one and we loved it. More cargo space with seats up or down. More leg room. Really amazing how spacious it was.

And as asked them to reserve one in the trim we wanted with the bench seats, and they found one incoming to another dealer they could trade with. Put down $500 reservation/deposit and then waited. Finally got here Monday and we got it on Tues.

Oh yeah, during the test drive delivery we just went out to sit and took our toddler. But that car was gray and both of ours were red. Our 2 year old absolutely freaked out and wanted out of the car immediately. Total meltdown. So thankfully we were able to get a red Subaru. And we talked it up the whole week once we had a delivery date. Made a big deal about going to the park for one last ride the night before. And went back to the park the next night in the new one. She loved it and keeps talking about going to the park and going to see her grandparents. Whew.

I'd like to describe a situation and get input from any successful parents of teenaged girls. Long story incoming:

My sister and brother-in-law are staying with me while their house is remodeled, bringing with them my niece and two nephews, all 11 and under.

Then, my bro-in-law's two older kids from a previous marriage run away from their mom's, who had previously had near-total custody. (Never met the mom, but if half of what I hear about her from multiple reliable sources is any indication, is batsh*t crazy and proof that the child custody system is disgustingly biased against men.) They couch-surfed with friends for a week before bro-in-law heard about it. Now they're staying with us, twins, high-school-aged, a boy and a girl, while my bro-in-law sorts out custody issues. They're old enough by now that adding their voices to his should be enough with the courts to get them out of their mother's house if they don't want to be there.

This is all fine. These two aren't blood, but they are family, and being with my sister and brother-in-law is clearly the best thing for them. I'm happy to have them all in my home for as long as they need it.

Anyway, Young Female Houseguest told me a story today about some boy in school who kept hitting on her and wouldn't take the escalating hints that she's not interested, and it wound up becoming a whole thing where she mentioned it to her brother and her brother took the kid aside and threatened him, and the whole thing wound up in the principal's office with a bunch of he-said-she-said.

And I'm listening to this story thinking, "why is she telling me all this? is she asking for advice? She doesn't seem to be asking for advice. She already got advice from her dad, which is good, because his is the opinion that matters."

And it sounds like she handled it fine. Not perfectly, but fine.

And it occurs to me that it's possible that the sequence of events didn't actually play out the way she's describing it to me. When people tell stories, they tend to spin events to make themselves look good. So what she's describing to me might be less about how she ACTUALLY handled it, and more how she WISHED she had handled it.

And that's fine, too, because the way she WISHED she handled it is fine, and having someone to verbalize it to will help solidify it in her mind so that next time she's in a situation like that, she'll handle it better.
And she said it like "this is no big deal, I can handle this," but of course she's in high school and it IS a big deal to her because she DOESN'T have a lot of practice handling it. She's in the process of learning to be an adult woman, and she's trying on the role of the kind of adult woman she'd like to be.

And it's probably helpful to her to have an adult male figure to talk about stuff like this with who's NOT her father and doesn't bring the same amount of baggage to the situation.

It occurs to me that telling me about what happened could also be partly sounding out a lot of people to see who's safe to confide something like that in. So far the authority figures in her life have been a mixed bag.

Principal advised her to try to let boys down more gently and told her that "boys will be boys." At least to hear her tell it. And then told her to come to a teacher or admin if something happens again. Directly after showing her that if she comes to a teacher or admin with a problem like this, she'll be blamed for it and the boy will be excused. So that's no good.

Her Dad's (my brother-in-law's) input (which is the same whether it's coming from his mouth or hers) is, "nobody actually got violent, right? So what's the problem?"

AFAIK step-grandma doesn't know anything about the situation. Pretty sure Step-Mom (my sister) heard about it for the first time when I was talking about it with her dad.

My response was to listen, nod appropriately, and then tell her Dad privately, "I heard your daughter's having a problem with a boy getting handsy. I know a real good Krav Maga instructor I can introduce her to. Young woman in her mid-twenties, lot of big sister energy. Good person for a girl your daughter's age to know."

Her Dad's response was, "well, I don't want her getting violent."

My response to that remained unspoken, because I've learned that unsolicited advice gets resented and less likely to be followed after a point, especially when it comes to touchy subjects like the raising of one's kids.

But my response would have been, "Dude, it only takes one person to make a situation violent, and she needs to know what to do if that's the other person."

Reactions of all kinds welcome.

Yeah the entire school system is girls have a dress code because the poor boys can't be held responsible for anything. And many other patriarchal problems like that.

I don't know what to do in all that complicated family dynamic. But I certainly intend to get my daughters some martial arts training.

That's very tough. There are a lot of issues there, but Dad's idea that it didn't get violent so there's no problem seems dangerously naive. After the weak 'discipline' meted out there's every chance of serious escalation.

My daughter is only 7 but I'm already considering options to prepare her for the inevitable challenges she's going to face, while making sure she doesn't feel responsible for things she's a victim of.

And honestly, Krav Maga is what I'm leaning towards myself.

I think in this case the school needs to be warned that if they don't button up the situation and there's any further events or an escalation due to their 'boys will be boys' attitude they will be held responsible. Maybe along with some links to resources about educating teens about consent and rape culture so that they can take positive and proactive action.

First you could explain that Krav is very specifically about avoiding or ending conflict as quickly as possible. Step one is always "run away if you can, stop the attacker if you can't." It is not violence for violence sake. Krav is like a seat belt, you hope you never need it, but it might save your life if you do. Especially against someone bigger and stronger than you. You don't play fair in a fight with a would-be rapist.

Second, you could plant the idea of self-defense in the girl's head, rather than the father's. It's subversive, obviously, but probably necessary if Dad won't budge. She shouldn't be left unprotected.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I think in this case the school needs to be warned that if they don't button up the situation and there's any further events or an escalation due to their 'boys will be boys' attitude they will be held responsible. Maybe along with some links to resources about educating teens about consent and rape culture so that they can take positive and proactive action.

While that would be the best thing in a perfect world, I'm not in a position to apply any leverage to get the school to take this more seriously than they already are or "hold them responsible" for the consequences if they don't. Her Dad is, and I'll continue to encourage him to do so.

My young houseguest is learning an unfortunate but necessary lesson which is all the more necessary for its unfortunateness and all the more unfortunate for its necessity: authority figures cannot always be trusted to do right by her. This school principal isn't the last authority figure who will let her down in her life, and her father isn't the last person that will be naïve because he's never been in a situation like hers. That's the world she needs to learn to navigate. It f*cking sucks.

A while ago she was asking me to recommend places to apply for volunteer opportunities, the sort of thing that would look good on college applications. I recommended the local library that I worked at when I was fresh out of school. A lot of very young women worked and volunteered there when I was there, and I would occasionally hear things about patrons getting inappropriate. I never asked around for details, because privacy, but I noticed that every time I heard things like that, the inappropriate patron would stop coming around, and the young employee or volunteer would still be there. Putting the pieces together, it seems like the management there took the concerns of their young female employees and volunteers seriously enough to do something about them.

I hope she takes my advice and volunteers there. It will be good for her to learn that not all authority figures are like her high school principal, and learn ways to suss out the difference between a good environment and a bad one.

Mixolyde wrote:

plant the idea of self-defense in the girl's head, rather than the father's. It's subversive

Relationship risky, but if she is at all receptive to watch an early UFC before there were weight classes, there’s not just bonding over watching and talking about something together (“this was stupid” counts), there’s also the opportunity to pointing out during a viewing: “this guy weighs half of that guy, and didn’t even get punched”. Maybe consider a tough women’s fight (article explaining several) if that would pique her interest more.

Tough situation, overall, hbi. Good luck with considering all your options which also may just mean it’s best to do almost nothing. Your depth of analysis of the different stakeholders and positions is impressive already.

A little late to the party but I echo everyone else’s sentiment that all kids - girls and boys alike - should learn some basic self defense moves. I’ve also seen the whole “big brother” defense go terribly wrong, especially when a girl’s family instructs her brother(s) to go beat up her ex-boyfriend due to a bad breakup vs that guy actually being a creep. It can quickly spiral into honor culture territory which serves nobody.

hbi2k wrote:

... proof that the child custody system is disgustingly biased against men...
...it wound up becoming a whole thing where she mentioned it to her brother and her brother took the kid aside and threatened him, and the whole thing wound up in the principal's office with a bunch of he-said-she-said.
...
And it sounds like she handled it fine. Not perfectly, but fine.
...people tell stories, they tend to spin events to make themselves look good. So what she's describing to me might be less about how she ACTUALLY handled it, and more how she WISHED she had handled it...
...
Principal advised her to try to let boys down more gently and told her that "boys will be boys." At least to hear her tell it.
...

If you want, you know, an actual woman's opinion, your story throws up all kinds of red flags and doesn't sit right. Putting aside the whole MRA propaganda of "system is biased against men and favors the mothers", when we say "Believe Women", we don't mean "believe them, but think that women are maybe putting a spin on stories to make themselves look good. This young woman or girl (you don't say the age, but girl if she's a minor) is telling you she was repeatedly harassed, and already you're thinking "maybe she's actually telling me how she wished she handled it." Just stop. Please stop. Between her father and brother going around and threatening the boy (instead of actually sitting him down and explaining to him why consent is important and what he did is Not Okay), and putting all the onus on her to defend herself, well... ugh. I wish her well, because it's not exactly going to be a picnic judging by all of her male relatives' and the principal's reaction.

When it comes to the facts of what happened-- that this boy continued hitting on her, that she rejected him at first gently and then with increasing firmness, and that he, frustrated, put his hand on her shoulder and "whispered something nasty in her ear"-- I absolutely believe her.

(I didn't ask what specifically "something nasty" was; she seemed uncomfortable repeating whatever it was verbatim.)

When I talk about "how she wished she handled it," I may have expressed myself poorly, and because she was relaying all this to me in no particular order, I may have understood her poorly.

Apparently, part of the advice she got from the principal was that she should have involved an adult / authority figure earlier, before the situation escalated so much. Her response to that, as expressed to me, was, "I can handle this. If he'd really tried anything, I would have kicked his ass. I'm not going to run to a teacher every time I get catcalled."

This is the bit that I suspect may have been at least partially aspirational. She aspires to be the kind of person who can physically defend herself without having to rely on adult and/or male help, and that's what had me thinking about introducing her to my Krav Maga instructor friend, who actually IS that sort of person. In my experience, when a high school aged kid, whether male or female, says something like "if anyone messes with me I'll just kick their ass," it's nearly always at least partially aspirational. If that's "not believing women" to you, then I don't know what to tell you.

I did not get a good sense for whether she knew in advance that her brother was going to threaten the boy or whether she only found out about that after the fact. I agree that that wasn't a good way for him to handle that.

I agree that the way the principal handled it was sh*tty, but I'm not in a position to do much about that. I'm not her parent or legal guardian, I'm just a family friend she chose to confide in. Nor am I in a position to be the one to sit the boy down and explain consent and healthy ways to process rejection to him. That was the principal's job, and it sounds like he probably failed to do it.

My part in this has mostly been to listen and lend a sympathetic ear, and then to come here and try to get perspectives from folks who have more experience with this kind of thing. I know what it's like to be a teenaged boy who's overprotective of his sister, or who doesn't know how to handle rejection. I don't know what it's like to be a teenaged girl who has to try to navigate boys who act sh*tty toward her after being rejected. I've never been there. I welcome perspectives from those who have.

As for "all the onus on her to defend herself," I don't think there's anything mutually exclusive about believing that the authority figures in her life should be doing a better job of creating a safe environment for her, AND believing that she should have the basic ability to defend herself if and when those authority figures fail her. Because they will. If it wasn't this particular principal at this particular school, there'll be a boss, or a teacher in college, or a club leader. I'm not in a position to make sure that every authority figure in her life from here on out acts right. I MIGHT be in a position to introduce her to a female role model who has navigated some of the situations she's currently facing. If that's inadequate, so be it. It's better than nothing.

The toddler (2.9) stealing toys from the baby (11mo.) is getting frustrating for me. We've tried explaining that if you take something you have to give her something else to play with. But watching lately the toddler doesn't even care until the baby is playing with it. Then she starts grabbing.

A lot of tears and screaming from both this week. Any winning strategies for sharing?

What need is the toddler trying to fill with this behavior? It's not the toy-- like you say, they don't care about the toy until the baby has it.

Are they getting attention from you with this behavior?

Identify the need they're trying to fill, and teach them a better way to fill it.

For the most part we only gave new or forgotten toys to the baby and explained repeatedly that they were baby's toys and others were her toys. This alleviated most of those issues, now she brings toys to the baby to cheer her up when she is crying.

hbi2k wrote:

But my response would have been, "Dude, it only takes one person to make a situation violent, and she needs to know what to do if that's the other person."

Reactions of all kinds welcome.

Seems kind of "same situation, different people." I thank god on my knees I didn't sent my oldest daughter on krav maga or whatsoever. Even now, without any fighting experience, she literally k.o.-ed a guy who was too deaf and handsy at the same time (she did it twice, actually. Untrained, for the love of God I do not want to know what would have happened if she was trained.. I have no worries for her).

My second daughter has her way of getting out of trouble, sees much sharper what's coming than my oldest daughter (or me, she is clever).

So one has balls, one is clever to stay out of things. My third one, I would love to put her onto some self-defence, but she doesn't.

For your case: her dad probably knows what's right for her - he's been with her most of her life.

I dunno, good training is not really about "here's how you hurt someone" a good teacher is going to stress minimum necessary force then teach how to use it, so your kids would probably do LESS damage with training then without. Unfortunately one always has to consider what happens in the aftermath and you never know which sh*thead is a litigious one so being able to hurt them enough to make them go away without leaving any legally actionable damage has alot of value

Any tips for handling a 3.5 yr old girl who is either letting her poop come halfway out before saying anything, or just pooping in her underwear and lies about there being more poop left when we ask.

Our son was also content to poop his pants at that age because he didn't want to interrupt whatever he was doing.

We tried a lot of things, but what seems to have ended up working is having him take a 10-minute bathroom break every night between dinner and bed. No books, no toys, no entertainment options other than his own mind. If he takes care of business, he's done early.

Caused a lot of complaining for several months, but now he often goes on his own accord and is much better at checking in with his body at least once each day so he doesn't constipate himself over several days until it all bursts out.

Mixolyde wrote:

Any tips for handling a 3.5 yr old girl who is either letting her poop come halfway out before saying anything, or just pooping in her underwear and lies about there being more poop left when we ask.

Right there with you. 4 1/2 yo and exactly this. Don’t have any solutions, just solidarity.

I recommend the Oh Crap potty training book.

https://www.amazon.com/Crap-Potty-Tr...

Are they not noticing or are they trying to avoid popping? Dealt with both and the solutions we came up with were fairly different.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I recommend the Oh Crap potty training book.

https://www.amazon.com/Crap-Potty-Tr...

We have that book, but I need to reread the troubleshooting section at the end, I think.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

Are they not noticing or are they trying to avoid popping? Dealt with both and the solutions we came up with were fairly different.

A little of both, I think.

Good luck all, potty issues are hard and frustrating. We are just out of the woods with our two.

For not noticing , we had good luck with trying the potty every hour or 2 during the day, every time talking about how our body feels when we poop and how good it is for us.
For avoidance, i recommend praise and rewards (small ones) for trying coupled with prizes for going X amount of time without an accident, start with days, then move up as they get better at it.

Also, talk with them about it when it's not time to try, share your experiences or maybe even get a grandparent you do so. Let them know you understand that it's hard but you believe in them and are gonna try every day to support them.

It's a long haul but, keep on trying and you'll find the exact method you need.

Yeah our not quite 3 year old clearly knows every time when she is pooping. She has a spot in her room and a spot in the living room she goes to stand in to poop, usually with a book to read. So obvious. But trying to get her to do it in the potty is a struggle right now. Good luck.