{"id":1009,"date":"2007-09-24T07:11:57","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T12:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/09\/24\/parenting-questions-not-covered-in-the-manual\/"},"modified":"2007-09-24T07:11:57","modified_gmt":"2007-09-24T12:11:57","slug":"parenting-questions-not-covered-in-the-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/09\/24\/parenting-questions-not-covered-in-the-manual\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting questions not covered in the manual"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I was reading through the operating manual that came with my kids last night (what, you don’t have one?) and I realized that there are a few pages that have fallen out over the years. Or been yanked out. Or been used to draw pictures of Luke Skywalker locked in mortal combat with SpongeBob Square Pants.<\/p>\n

And since I don’t have the definitive answer on these questions, and since I’m just making this shit up as I go along, and since you mostly seem to – at least collectively – know what you’re doing, I’m opening these questions up to the bloggy peeps.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How do you respond to a three year old who insists “But I don’t WANT a baby brother!” while glancing balefully at your gestating belly? Somehow, my current response of “Too bad, you’re getting one” doesn’t seem terribly sympathetic.<\/li>\n
  2. At what age do you switch your kids over from the happy, primary-coloured, endlessly durable Ikea plates and bowls to stoneware (read: breakable) plates? And how old is too old for a sippy cup? I’m thinking twelve? <\/li>\n
  3. Is it okay to let them beat the snot out of each other? Part of me wants to quell any act of physical violence, even play wrestling, before it gets out of hand, but another part of me recognizes that they are boys, and boys have this odd need to exert their physicality, and while I don’t want to turn them into wimps I also don’t want to nursing black eyes and running to the ER for stitches any more frequently than I have to, which I already suspect will be rather regularly over the next 15 years or so.<\/li>\n
  4. How do you know when you’ve crossed the line between building self-esteem and creating an egomaniac? Is it bad to occasionally want to bust your five year old down a few pegs when it seems like he’s maybe a little bit too assured of his place at the head of the household and centre of the universe?<\/li>\n
  5. If you had a hypothetical three and a half year old boy who, hypothetically of course, took late to potty training, and then when he finally mastered it developed some really odd quirks about pooping, inasmuch as he would not poop AT ALL, in the potty nor in a diaper, without resistance and crying and hysterics at EVERY SINGLE bowel movement, and say this went on for TWENTY days, but on the 21st day, that child nothing-short-of-miraculously hopped up on the potty and pooped right in front of you, as you were hypothetically just getting out of the shower, no less, and pooped with a complete absence of fanfare as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and you nearly cried with the relief of it, and then at around 2 pm that day the same poor child developed diarrhea, and pooped in his underwear three times in twelve hours to his own complete bewilderment and dismay… would you curl up in a ball on the floor and weep for fear that this poor hypothetical child would NEVER get over his newly developed poop issues?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Clearly, I’m in dire need of an updated version of my parenting manual. Or some therapy. Maybe both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So I was reading through the operating manual that came with my kids last night (what, you don’t have one?) and I realized that there are a few pages that have fallen out over the years. Or been yanked out. Or been used to draw pictures of Luke Skywalker locked in mortal combat with SpongeBob … Continue reading “Parenting questions not covered in the manual”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}