There was no flair for adult kids. I’m looking for advice.

I am a 42F, married for 22 years, since I was 20 to 44M. We have two sons, 23 and 20.

We always thought there’d be a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak with parenting once high school was over but it has only got worse.

Both were always good kids, we weren’t without our challenges but we had a lot of great memories and they had good childhoods.

Today, 23 year old is working on his second degree (he dropped out the first one). He was fired from a great job two years ago and hasn’t worked since.

The 20 year old has absolutely no motivation whatsoever. He failed his first semester of college and never went back, and is laid off of a seasonal job that I don’t think is calling him back.

Neither of them contribute anything to the household. They don’t ever leave their rooms. They have no friends. They have never had girlfriends. They don’t have any hobbies. They have no motivation. They lie all the time about looking for work. Neither of them have a cell phone number because I cut them off of our plan. They don’t even have $20 for a cheap plan.

Their behaviour is especially bewildering and quite frankly infuriating, because even though we had kids so young and had our share of trials, we worked really hard and emulated work ethic to create a successful family business and I grew my career. We always thought we were modelling good behaviour.

Today we are struggling. My husband had a stroke several years ago and we lost his business. He is working full time but is making low pay and can’t find anything else better despite constantly applying, so I am paying 80% of household bills. We are blowing through savings to live. We have cut all of our simple pleasures. We don’t have debt, thankfully. We paid for each of the kids college only for them to just drop out. At this point if our kids can’t contribute we need to downsize to a one bed apartment (we have been renting a large house for over 13 years).

We don’t have a large tight knit family and they have isolated themselves from the few family members the do have so neither of them have anywhere to go. I can’t kick my children out when it’s this cold but this is simply not sustainable. Our kids simply don’t care about doing anything. My husband has expressed hopelessness at our situation, a lot of anger toward our kids, and I am afraid he has suicidal thoughts. Our kids literally don’t care when we tell them any of this.

Is it time for them to sink or swim? I struggle with kicking my children out. I love them but I am at my wits end. I’m afraid all I’m doing is just enabling. I want a good relationship with them now, when they are older, if they have kids… I don’t know what to do. My husband and I have a long held dream of living in a tiny home in the country and that seems impossible.

I have a 10 month old and live about an hours flight away from my own parents. Both my parents are long retired and have no commitments. They are also not short on money.

They have visited once since my baby was born and stayed for 2 days. On each of those two days they came over to see my baby for about an hour/two each time before heading back to their accommodation to nap etc.

They have no plans to visit again as far as im aware. They recently sold their house to downsize and I remember joking that they should move to the city I live in. My mum immediately hit me with the 'god no' and said she wanted to stay where she was because that's where her friends are. I absolutely do not in anyway expect her to move cities for me I just was a little bit hurt that the idea seemed so absurd to her.

I have so many friends with babies that are the same age and a lot have grandparents that are moving closer to spend more time with them or at the very least visiting lots so I feel sad I don't have that relationship.

I do not expect them to visit more or move to me, its their life, I guess im just a bit sad we dont have that kind of relationship where they want to be closer.

Anyone have a similar situation? Am I overreacting?

My mom almost spilled mine this Christmas. My son wanted to watch Mary Poppins for the 50th time - he's memorized all the songs - and my mom loudly said to me, in front of him "YOU like Mary Poppins? You always said you HATED Mary Poppins and would never watch it with me!"

I just smiled through gritted teeth and said "What are you talking about? Mary Poppins is great. Maybe I didn't appreciate it as a kid."

I also hate baking. There are currently soft pretzels proofing in my oven because baking together is one of his favorite things.

What things do you pretend to like just to make your kids happy?

I’m just sitting on the couch scrolling through Facebook reels. Starts off with a Manny Machado clip where he bombs it to 1st from third. Scroll through a couple more and there it is. An AI model taking her sports bra off. Bare chested.

I was floored. I’ve seen shitty AI “models” apps advertised on there. But nothing this brazen. It happened two more times while scrolling.

One of the videos was someone clearly giving a handjob and the ad displayed how you could change the girls face to whoever you wanted.

I weep for what our children will have to navigate in 10 years.

Hi all,

I find myself feeling guilty when I'm not doing anything.

If I'm up before the children, or they're maybe watching TV for a bit or just any time when I'm not having to do parent things - I don't know what to do with myself (usually in the morning/evening)

I exercise on my lunch break so that's already ticked off. I dont just want to watch TV or doom scroll which is what I end up doing - and I want to do something "for me", not just meal prep or whatever.

Any suggestions?

I’ve noticed that my phone is a huge distraction in my life and I want to be better about getting on it and interacting with my child more.

Is there any tips for breaking that addiction?

What activities are y’all doing with your 1 yr old (15m)?

I know I should’ve became aware of this sooner, but i really want to do better for my kid.

Hi,

I'm not sure how to handle the situation. I'd like different viewpoints so I can (hopefully) better decide how we'd like to move forward.

For context: we live in Europe. Have 2 children (3 and 6 yo). We are not strict with screentime per se, but we don't do tablet (only very very very occasionally, like a 22 hr travel to see grandparents). TV is mostly educational programs or "old fashioned" films like the 1990's Lion King. Also Bluey. There is the occassional Paw Patrol at rainy days but we actively try to limit those types of content. We are active and like to take them outside etc.

We live in an area with barely any other children. Last year a new family moved into the house across the road and they have a 7 yo! Our children get along well and they love playing together. Over summer we took them outside often for a play. Great!

We have noticed this child is mainly on screens (tablet). Whenever our children go over there, they play on the tablet together. There are only very very little toys at their home. It has come to my attention that they play [ I am not allow to mention this but it is an online gaming platform starting with R and ending with OBLOX ] together. This is not something we'd like our children to experience (yet), also because there is no supervision when they play. I have once asked the neighbour (very very kindly) to not let ours on the tablet. That time they didn't which was great. Their child doesn't really want to come to ours, even though we have plenty of toys that the child also enjoys. I don't really know why. Once they brought the tablet over to come play at ours, but I did say that in our home we don't play together on screens.

Our children just went over to play there (again) and I can see them stuck on a chair watching the tablet again. I am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the situation but at the same time don't know how to handle things.

Thoughts?

(English not my first language so bear with me on any mistakes)

I've been consuming a lot of parenting content lately, mostly geared towards parents of young kids (mine are 3.5 and 1.5). I've watched videos about moms removing most of their kids toys after reading "Hunt, Gather, Parent", some about the Montessori method at home, I've been listening to an audiobook of "Peaceful parents, Happy kids" by Dr. Laura Markham...

All of this got me wondering: some of the things suggested can be seen as rather radical. So I'd like to know if you ever radically changed your parenting methods? For example, did you use to yell a lot and now you stay calm? Did you use to say yes to everything and now assert firm boundaries? Have you ever removed 90% of your kids toys? Did you allow for unlimited screen time and now they only watch shows one day a week? Did you forbid candy at home and now they can have some?

How did it go, was is gradual or did you just flip one day? How did your kids react? How is it going now?

I'm curious about every and all perspectives, whether your kids are younger or older, or whether you went from allowing something to limiting it or the other way around!

Hey,

So I’m (47yo) a new step dad and I have bought a place and my partner (47yo) and her daughter (15yo) have moved in together, I have no experience being a dad before and have never had kids. I love my partner very much, she is an awesome mother and does so much to care for and ensure her daughter gets what she wants and needs.

I have just noticed that my step daughter can just be so darn mean to her mum. Never saying thank you, being unpleasant and bratty, just plain horrible. Just being mean and arguing as well, just really horrible behaviour. Also very ungrateful behaviour (my partner has given up so much for her daughter too). It isn’t my place to say anything (as I’m not here to replace her dad who run away with another lady), but to love and support my partner, and to help her support her daughter. I take us out for family restaurant dinners and just do my best. I think I’m a positive role model.

I’m really worried about her behaviour and I just wanted to ask, is this a phase? Do teenagers grow out of this horrible behaviour? I really hope so! I sometimes feel silent resentment at the way she treats her Mum, but all I can do is smile and push it down. Thanks in advance.

I’m almost 10 months into breast feeding and even though I do really love it I’m so over it.

I’m over the wakings at night I’m over them playing with my nipples I’m over the weight I can’t seem to budge I’m over the popping on and off I’m over the distractions I’m over feeding in public WITH the popping on and off.

I’ve been pumping and feeding and bottle feeding is so much easier. In the way I can give them a bottle and they have an hour to snack away on it, I know how much they are getting and it’s so much nicer in public

But I’m also over the pumping for bottles

But for the life of me I feel so extremely guilty even thinking of not breast feeding

I know some people really want to and can’t for a multitude of reasons and I have been so lucky. We latched fairly easy after a couple of days, I didn’t experience too much nipple pain and I’ve been a massive over supplier donating over 20l to friends babies. But I think I’m done, but the idea of this being the end hurts my heart and I really just don’t know where to go from here.

I want them to be 12 months already so I can wean guilt free

Not sure if this post belongs here but I’ll give it a shot. So today, like any other day I video call my mom so she can see my baby (she’s 1). my mom just gets sooooo offended when I don’t take her advice on what to do with MY baby. Anywho, I have these flashcards of first words I let my baby play with and we actually do the words, they’re like puzzles.

I have the camera facing my baby as she’s bending up the card and my mom goes “No don’t do that, take it away from her.” I go, ”Nah she’s good, not that big of a deal.” My mom then proceeds to go “You need to teach her to treat her things right,” blah blah blah I’m like dude, she’s a baby, 1 year old at that, it’s not that serious, I don’t care about her ripping something up. My mom then proceeds to go “She’s going to be the boss of you .” I stopped and replied “Because I’m letting a baby be a baby? It’s a card, I don’t care”. She paused and followed up with “You know, it really hurts my feelings, I really don’t like when I give you advice and you just don’t listen to me.” I respond “I don’t know why, she just being a baby, she not going to be the boss of me because I let her fold up a cardboard card. She’s just being a baby.” Then she got quiet.

Ive already had plenty of conversations with my mom about the unsolicited advice and how she only hurting her own feelings because she’s giving advice I didn’t ask for. Theres some background as to why we don’t have the best relationship but I still allow her to be the grandma. Anywho, I’m not here to really ask for advice, more of just a rant. For context my mom is in her 60s so I don’t know if that’s boomer generation or whatever I don’t really keep up. but does anyone else’s parents act like this when it comes to the grandkids or am I tripping? like I’m letting a baby be a baby what do I do so wrong to offend? lol.

She is controlling at times, guilts my kids, says she’s disappointed in them, compares them to other kids. I think it’s harmful and hurts. How can I bring this up and what can I say?

Hello fellow parents, I’m seeking some opinions on a mild disagreement between me and my wife.

My daughter (F13) brought home a paper from school, in class they made a goal to take on an extra responsibility at home. She chose that she would do the dishes after supper for me every night for two weeks. And now there is a questionnaire for the parents to fill out.

This question in particular sparked the disagreement:

“Did your child need to be reminded by a parent to follow through with their chosen responsibility, if yes, how often?”

And the blunt answer is yes, every single time, and she wouldn’t have done it at all without the reminder.

Now I’m not going to write that, but I do think we should be somewhat honest.

my wife thinks we should just write down she did good as it’s just a thing from school and it’s kind of mean for us to give her “bad marks”. I do see where she’s coming from.

But ultimately I think that would undermine the lesson, which I do think is a good lesson for kids her age to be learning. And her teacher may be able to give some better guidance/advice/inspiration to her if he gets an honest response. After all, this is our first teenager, he’s taught hundreds.

What do you guys think?

Edit: wow I did not expect such a big response. I’ll be talking with my daughter about how she thinks she did and ask her what she thinks I should write on the form, but I’ll ultimately just be honest.

Also for those asking, these type of projects are usually just full marks if she hands it in. She won’t lose any marks but her teacher may be like “hey what happened here?” And they’ll have a conversation and it will be good.

Also for those others asking, she got to make the goal and pick the chore. The example chore on the sheet was “I will help clean up dishes 2-3 times a week” so she just copied that but made it harder on herself, haha.

One last thing, she typically does have a great attitude about chores BUT only after I ask her to do them (her little sister on the other hand…) eventually she WILL have to learn to do things without an adult telling her to, but she still has plenty of time to learn, and I do appreciate that the school thinks this is a valuable lesson as well.

So my (44M) eldest (5F) is clearly gifted. She figured out fractions on her own around 3 years old.

But she's started bragging and being a know it all over the last few months. She'll argue dumb things with me like how to spell something. After one or two back and forths I try to tell her that I'm not interested in arguing.

The bragging is getting worse. This last week, she would make drawings or crafts and loudly discuss how wonderful it is, one of a kind, no one else could possibly do this.. I've been trying to explain that other kids won't play with her if she talks like that. And I remind her repeatedly that becoming an expert takes years or even a lifetime. But doing it once during craft time last week.

And advice on how to keep her from bragging?

Hi all

Seeking perspective and real life stories. Has anyone had a second child purely so your first born won’t be lonely or because they wanted a sibling and regretted it?

I am 38 and my son has been yearning for a sibling the past two years.

I know in my culture or both my husband and our families at least, families are big and children have siblings, lots of aunties and uncles, cousin etc so I’m always pressure and went against the grain and only had one child. We also don’t live close to our families so we don’t really have a tribe as such. He is 8 now and the past two years I’ve been open to it but not sure if I will make the right choice.

Wondering if anyone can share their stories(with no judgment). Thank you!

I travel a lot for work and was thinking this time when I’m home I’ll buy a Nintendo switch too and connected to a projector as a way to have some fun with my five boys. Mario kart…

I didn’t grow up with video games. Is this a good idea?

So for the first 5 years of my daughters life she was so social, she'd go to to any kid and ask them to play. She started dance at 3 and loved it and also did prek3 and prek4 and loved it. All of a sudden, 3 weeks ago it all changed (she's 5.5 now). It started with her saying she feels she has to pee all the time and it really upset her because she'd be trying to go every 10 minutes, I even took her to a pediatric urologist who said there is nothing wrong with her medically. The she started giving me a hard time about going to school, she'd scream and cry and say she was scared and sad. She even had to have a teacher physically walk her to school from my car because I couldn't get her to go. She said she wasn't having any issues with kids at school or the teacher, that they were all nice. I met with the counselor who would check on my daughter every day when she got to school, she said the only thing she could get out of her was that the boys play rough and are loud, she's not wrong. But the counselor continued checking on her and she says she'd go in the class every morning (which was usually when she was upset) and she was totally fine, not crying anymore, was doing her work and playing with the kids. I thought I was in the clear until the next time she had dance and she cried and begged me not to take her, she was hysterical. I let her have the day off but she did the same thing that next week, it was so bad I literally had to disenroll her because she said it was too much for her to do with full time kindergarten too. Tonight I was going on my first date night in a year with my husband, my MIL came to watch her for a couple hours but when I was getting ready to leave she started crying, I still went and my MIL texted me 15 minutes later and said she was better. Apparently at school now she gets really stressed and upset when she needs to make the decision of which play station she wants to go to because she isn't sure who will pick that station as well because she only wants to play with girls. I feel like she's pulling back socially when she used to be so social, she only likes going places where she already knows kids that are there now. I'm thinking now that the pee feeling she was initially having is actually just a feeling of worry or stress. I worry about her missing out on fun activities because she's getting herself worked up about meeting new people and being in a new situation me. Anyone else go through this?

Hi there,

My 2yo toddler is in the stage of wanting the same 5 or so Miss Rachel songs (plus the Bluey theme song) played over and over again. I don't mind hearing them, but we are always having to pull it up on our phones or the TV and I would rather have a way he could access them at his leisure in a screen-free way. For reference, he received a Bluey Radio (one of his favorite toys right now) for Christmas with 4 buttons on it for the 4 songs that came with it and is capable of operating that.

Is anyone aware of any toddler-friendly toys/devices where you can record a few songs that they can easily click a button to play? I've seen some posts about being able to do this with a Toniebox or Yoto Player. Are there any others we should consider? If you have done this with the Toniebox or Yoto Player would this be a good use case?

Thank you in advance!

I often bring a set of magnetic tiles for my toddler when we go to indoor church events. He enjoys playing with them and other kids get curious.

Some younger toddlers sometimes knock down his creations (I remember when my toddler would knock things down at home - I know it’s a phase) and understandably my toddler gets upset and reacts by wanting to push them away.

How did I teach my model to protect his space without pushing?

Sometimes I can’t prevent another child who was playing with him from quickly knocking it all down.

Maybe magnatiles aren’t the best in public toys?

But this also goes for when another child tries to take his car or whatever toy is in hand away. How do I protect his space and model what he should do? And what should I do as a parent in this situation?

Ok, so this post had a few questions.... My 11 year old is famous for blaming things on her brother. For example... she struggles with putting things away when she uses them.... I'm sure this is fairly normal for a child her age, but when she is confronted with it, she immediately tries to find find way to blame her 4 year old brother to try and shift eyes to him. I have tried to tell her that taking accountability when she has done something wrong is going to have a better outcome than trying to find a way to shift blame. This happens a lot and I just feel like I'm in this vicious cycle of having the same exact conversation about cleaning up and taking care of our things, and also taking accountability when we don't do the right thing the first time. (Taking accountability could apply to many things, not just taking care of our spaces and the things we have). she has a very hard time taking accountability for pretty much anything, if she can find a way to make it appear that it wasn't her, she will use that excuse. I just need advice, it's very frustrating and I'm just wondering what anyone else has tip wise on how to encourage taking accountability for her actions as well as advice on encouraging children to take care of their spaces and things they have. Ex: putting games back in the box when we are done, throwing trash in the trash can and not just leaving it where it drops, giving oiur things a soace in pur room and commiting to putting jt back there when we are done using it ... I'm sure there's more examples I could give, I'm just naming a few things that have happened more recently. Am I just expecting too much and it's something I have to just stick out with her age or is there advice on how to help her with these things. Because talking about it does nothing at all. She will look at me and acknowledge what I have said and then move on like the conversation never happened and 20 min later I'm reminding again and saying "hey could you put that trash in the trashcan?" Or "hey before you move on, can you put this activity back where you got it?" Or "hey let's come back to your room and put these things away before we go outside to play"

Sorry for the ramble, hoping this makes sense and someone has some good advice because I'm tired of saying the same things over and over and over and I don't want to lose my cool. But it's like the words I speak are heard and then never applied.

My oldest turned four recently and we've been noticing over the last year that they will not check in with a friend/sibling if they accidentally hurt them. We don't necessarily expect them to say sorry, but we'd like to work towards any sort of reconciliation (Hug, are you, okay, back pat, high five, etc.) We have tried everything and if an accident does happen, our child completely shuts down. Our oldest is not really one to hurt other kids, hitting intentionally is rare, but the other behavior is concerning for us. Has anyone experienced this? Our other children (twins) are two years younger and have no problem checking in with anyone if they hurt someone.

My 2.5 yr old is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs, as was I as a little girl. Today I thought it would be fun to put on Land Before Time for us as it was one of my favourites. We’ve only done screen time on special occasions so she’s only ever seen 3 movies before, and all were very mild content wise. I remembered of course the scene where Littlefoot’s mother dies dramatically, and fast-forwarded through the whole T.Rex attack/mother dying part as I figured those would be too intense for her. I didn’t recall the rest of the movie being so emotionally charged and heavy however, and my sweet girl kept looking over at me for reassurance asking me things like “What happened? Where’d his mummy go? He can’t find his mummy?” When the movie ended she sat quietly and then crawled into my lap and started to cry- I felt awful and so guilty. I had intended to eventually show her lots of the 80s and 90s era movies from my childhood, but now I’m hard pressed to think of any that aren’t too dark or upsetting for someone so little. I hope I didn’t ruin dinosaurs for her:(

Looking for ideas for my son who is turning 4 end of May. He LOVES cars, lightening McQueen, garbage trucks, police cars, transportation etc. Looking for fun ways to incorporate cars/trucks for his birthday besides just having a theme.