parenting

Forgot to post this yesterday 😅 busy day with the family. Hope y'all had a good long weekend!

Hope your week is good. How's everyone doing?

Kid 1 got this as a gift when they turned 1. They're 3.5 now and we started reading these before bed recently. They're really fun, and scratches my D&D/Role Playing itch. I tend to fall back on my DMing instincts, so a lot of "what do you do next?" Or "do you look/listen for something?" A lot of fun for sure.

Happy Mother's Day comrades!

I linked to this thread, only because it's what got me thinking about this topic again. Me and my SO talk about phones occasionally, regarding our kids. Neither of them are anywhere close to an age where they might have one. However, as time goes on, we find ourselves so repelled by the idea of the kids having a fully fledged smartphone.

Given the reality that all social media apps are effectively skinner boxes, training you to use them more, the idea of allowing kids on them feels like offering a 10-year-old a cigarette. I have to remind myself that the internet I grew up on is dead and gone. I may have been exposed to some weird ass shit in AOL chat rooms, but there wasn't any kind of algorithmic content feed keeping me itching and scratching.

So far, the only time the oldest uses an iPad is when they use mine, and the only apps they use are Procreate for drawing, and an app that helps kids learn to write letters and words. Watching TV is probably the worst thing we get into at home when it comes to just pure content consumption, but we keep the list of watchable stuff pretty small, and regularly axe shows we feel don't meet our standards when we venture off that list.

I guess this has evolved into a larger discussion about media consumption as I have typed this out, but at the end of the day, that's what's happening on these phones, right?

Some of the books we get from the library can be hit or miss. My SO picked up "Someone Just Like You" by Helen Docherty and David Roberts [ISBN: 1665949589] (among others) this weekend. This is a cool little book. We had only skimmed it before reading it to the kiddo the other night, and it has a nice message. One that got me a little choked up, given current world affairs.

It's about how similar we all are, despite our differences, and is a kind of call-to-action, one that encourages providing aid and care to others in difficult situations. The depiction of that difficult situation near the middle of the book is one of a children's room, with a broken window, and a burning city beyond the window's threshold. The room takes up most of the page, and the window a much smaller portion.

Far from the shallow inclusion story you might find in some kids books. I almost missed the city as I was reading it. A strong image for what is otherwise a book full of charming kids. The art in this book is really great. All the pages are super vibrant and colorful, and every kid is unique, fun, and cute.

What about you? I'm always lost in the stacks, trying to find something new and fun.

Also, I'm interested in knowing if this would be a good reoccurring thread for the sub. Maybe monthly?

Better late then never! Remember, Mothers Day is coming up!

Howdy! Welcome to another week! Hope you all had a good one!

Welcome to the lounge! Hope everyone's week has been good! Can't believe April is almost over...

Bluey S03E50 Surprise! 720p WEB-EN

https://mega.nz/file/AiQ2HboB#BQzkjzESqwVx01hqtYElT6p4v9X9RrLZ4mcDo_OGYDI

https://workupload.com/file/UWtpFdQUXQC

This is it for Season 3. No word of when Season 4 will be, I don't think they've even started it yet, but the producer says it's happening.

Welcome to the lounge!

I'm not crying, you're crying! Be sure to check out last week's episode first!

Bluey S03E49 The Sign 720p WEB-EN

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AY40gFpXxoSIVONQ4-1Y6ZVrftrzmTJl/view?usp=sharing

https://mega.nz/file/pzZwgY7C#qbmHIReirjkUR2Kju1gQBHCrMDBlBXTM_CBuS5E33JA

https://easyupload.io/669ue1

My foster kiddo's birthday is coming up soon, and we got a REALLY good deal on a PS4 for his birthday. I'm buying him used games to go with the console. I asked him to describe what kind of games he wanted and things he liked in games. He wants a split screen co-op FPS where he's able to hunt for rare loot. He wants a looter shooter that he can play with me. Also odd criteria, but he wants games that I'm good at because it's like "watching a ninja". He explained this, and Borderlands is the only game I can think of that has all of it. He didn't mention Borderlands by name, so it's not like I'd be saying no to anything on his list specifically. I'd settle for a co-op split screen FPS we could play, but there aren't very many of those on PS4.

Here is the issue I'm running into though. On one hand, this child is turning 9. He is just too young for Borderlands. However, this child has also witnessed multiple people die of drug overdoses, watched a million rated R movies with his mom, so censoring things feels weird. Like who am I to censor some middle school grade jokes when he's into morbid things as a result of seeing death his entire life? I'm thinking maybe we just make it a game where I have to play it with him if he wants to play? Any split screen game recommendations for us that may be more age appropriate?

How we doing folks? Hope your week went well!

Bluey S03E48 720p WEB-EN

https://mega.nz/file/IwMwkAQZ#jlxfqxhOmNsIydpzGGwUlkUHEbZ_GUQOtp6ToryxxtE

https://easyupload.io/3t120k

I’m white. My daughter is also white. She’s 3 years old, almost 4.

Up to this age, my approach to teaching her about race has been to focus exclusively on skin color. Meaning, we talk about how people can have all different colors and tones to their skin. Talking about skin color on a spectrum. But always emphasizing that people are all the same and that everyone should be treated the same.

In isolation, this all sounds lib. I of course want to get all into structural and institutional racism et al. But… she’s 3. Up until a few months ago she was still pooping and pissing in a diaper. My thinking is that emphasizing this more lib understanding of race is more age-appropriate now, and we can get into the real stuff a little later on when she has the mental and emotional maturity to handle it (that said, I have told her that the cops aren’t very nice to people who don’t look like us. Whatever, the daycare has pigs come over and talk to the kids even at her age, so fuck em I’m gonna counter that shit now).

Is this the right approach? Is there more I should be doing? If you all have any age-appropriate books on this topic you can recommend, definitely let me know.

I know this comm is a slow one, and I think that's just the nature of parenting. I did have this thought though that it could be nice to have a weekly thread for just general chatter and checking in.

We've been circling the sickness drain for what feels like more then a month now. Everyone has had norovirus at this point, this weekend was my turn apparently after dodging it for weeks.

Took today off in hopes to just mentally recover, only to have daycare call to let me know kiddo2 projectile vomited about an hour after drop off.

So now I'm hanging out with him, shelving all the things I wanted to do today for some other rare moment where I have time for myself.

I took my kid to Target the other day. As one of the last 3rd spaces available where capitalism showcases the latest and greatest, I figured I'd treat it as a learning experience for him. He really wanted a very specific skid-steer toy, so I told him he could pick out something else if we couldn't find one.

There is something very unsettling about vaguely understanding the state of the world and being a parent. First I drove him through the clothes section because he's around the age where I'd like him to start expressing his preferences on what he wants to wear. Up until now he's been told what to wear by all the gifts he gets for his birthday, and I didn't really understand that implication until just then.

And that led to the next basic conclusion - his toy preferences were also dictated by all the gifts he's received from friends, grandparents, or what he sees at school. We walked through what was clearly and distinctly the girl toys section. I'm still to shit so I felt awkward walking down the aisle but I put on a brave face and asked him if anything there interested him.

Nope he still wants the skid-steer. We pass by the car brain section and I notice more acutely now that there are 600 variants of the same plastic car with different paint colors. None of them interest him. We see the fascist puppies of paw patrol which thank god he doesn't care for either. In the construction toys section, a skid-steer catches my eye and I point it out to him. He shakes his head, no daddy that's a bulldozer. My toddler knows more about construction equipment than me. I'm proud and terrified in the same instant.

He zeroes in on an excavator. I remind him this will be the 4th variant of excavator that he owns and explain that we should donate some of his older excavators since we don't need all of them. I spend a few minutes in the aisle of target asking if he's sure that he wouldn't enjoy trying out a different toy or exploring his interests a bit, but he's set.

In the parking lot I show him how to return the cart to the cart return. I was reminded of the redditest discourse ever - cart return politics. People in those threads act like returning a cart is some mark of a morally superior person. Like it isn't the most basic bare minimum utterly insignificant expression of social responsibility. It still needs to be fucking taught to a person. Empathy is natural but it still needs to be nurtured or people will just assume whats in front of them is just how things are.

As I'm strapping my excited kid in to his car seat I keep thinking about that. He's holding his cheap plastic excavator that's maybe a third the size of him and he can't wait to get home, and what's in front of him is just how things are. I get in to the driver seat and I feel totally overwhelmed. I start tearing up. I immediately move the rear view mirror so he doesn't see his grown ass dad show a moment of weakness in a paved sea of personal chariots in front of the temple of capitalism. This way of life is built on so much suffering and it's so hollow and fake, and here I am teaching my child the prescribed ways of coping, escaping, avoiding it.

I love my kid, I've already made so many mistakes and I know I'll make more. It makes me really hopeful that he loves construction stuff so much. I feel so much shame for being a stupid lib for so much of my life, but also so much of his life. I also can't help but wonder if my parents felt the same way when I was a toddler, if this is just some repeating cycle that will continue until this decaying empire fails its last failure that finally breaks the whole system.

They could stop it all now if they wanted. They could end things from a position of relative strength. Agree that - haha ok things went a little too far there - let's end the whole exploitation and colonialism thing. Maybe start talking reparations and some prison sentences for the worst offenders. Nothing could possibly make up for all the pain and suffering done so far, but nothing will get better until it stops.

But they don't. My child will grow up immersed in this death cult machine and have to operate in its confines just like me. Me, his father, the guy he looks up to and expects to protect him. We talk about radicalizing people but I can think of nothing more radicalizing than realizing the world you are handing down to your own children is this.

We all know children should read Das Kapital in the original German when they're 12, but apart from that, what books or leftist cartoons should they be learning at different ages.

Age 4-8

Some Zapatista/Subcommandante Marcos books of fables

Age 9-13

???

Age 14-16

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

That's it, that's the post. My partner, her son, and her nephew have been elsewhere for Thanksgiving this weekend. Sure I could rant against Thanksgiving, but I'm just glad that everybody is actually spending time with each other for once.

I got stoned and Bluey came on, it made me really emotional. I had to put this somewhere, sent it to my partner as well. You guys should reach out to the people you love too.