I used to make spaghetti for a two year old and it is the only thing that I have seen him eat willingly. He eats it like a fiend.

The mother wants to introduce more fibre in his diet but I am out of ideas because I suck donkey ass at cooking. I once tried oats-banana-cinnamon pancakes but the child spit it out because it tasted like shit. (I have posted about it before.)

If you have medium or high fibre recipe suggestions please share. It's a bit of an odd request so sorry about that but I don't know where to turn to. The internet is a search engine optimised wasteland.

Our kids are young, 3.5y and 13m. Now things are finally starting to become easier in some ways, and in other ways there are new challenges to deal with. These challenges, like all challenges, wear on you, and recently, my SO and I have lost most of our tolerance for the platitudes we hear so regularly from people asking "How are you, how are the kids?"

My SO, more so than myself, is very direct and honest with these questions. Often, their response is met with the usual platitudes:

• Oh well, you know, you'll look back and miss this time when they're older!
• If you think it's bad now, wait until they are teenagers!
• Well, that's called being a parent, right!?
• You can sleep when they're 18! Har Har har.
• and on and on and on...

I think this is an extension of this American social tendency, where our greetings are empty, but to an outsider signal a desire to "check in". The classic "Hey, how are you?" and the only acceptable answer is "Good, and you?"

The general vibe I'm left with is that, the experience of parenting was always better before whatever age the kids are now, the current experience of parenting is no good, and the future experience of parenting will be worse. Since this is a kind of universal platitude, however, the sentiments ring hollow.

Personally, despite the challenges we're having, I really enjoy parenting at the moment. I don't know how I'll feel when they're older, but I can't imagine I'd feel any different. I've had close friends who are parents tell me they look back on the youngest years of parenting and are happy their kids are older. They tell me they are in a much better place now that their kids are independent, and that they can more easily enjoy shared interests like reading or gaming. I appreciate their honesty because it's so refreshing.

I guess, in summary, this is mostly just a rant. My SO and I are regularly keeping it real with people regarding how we're doing and how the kids are. When people can't seem to show us the same realness, it's frustrating. These sentiments effectively terminate the conversation. Conversations that could otherwise be reassuring, validating, or cathartic. Instead, they're just a series of robotic exchanges.

Hope you are all keeping cool in this heatwave! How's the fam?

Feel free to join us on Matrix: #parenting:genzedong.xyz. Learn more here.

My kid is just about to start school. I’m currently living in California where the state-mandated curriculum is… not terrible in terms of historical and political education. But I’m also in a fairly reactionary part of California.

Given how expensive it is to live here and the relative geographic freedom my job has, I’ve been contemplating if we should stay here. Doing my best to set my kids up to be leftists is pretty much #1 on my list.

So where do you all think is a good place to raise your kids to help them grow up to be leftists - both generally or specifically?

Fwiw this is one area where I do think it’s better to be around “liberals” than reactionaries. At least with liberals you tend to not have history lessons about how slavery was good actually and your kids feel social pressure to go to the evangelical mega church that all their friends go to.

Or maybe literally none of this matters, everywhere in the US is basically the same and I should just be where I feel I can be the best parent?

Edit: I should mention, I’m white and my kid is white so I think being in a diverse place is important too, admittedly California is pretty decent in that regard.

Shout out to all the Daddies! Hope you all have a good day!

Feel free to join us on Matrix: #parenting:genzedong.xyz. Learn more here.

These Tanuki statues give my SO the ick, but I love them. I've teased getting one for the house, but she beat me to it! Ick be damned. We saw them all over Japan when we went years ago. Nice reminder of that trip 😁.

i gave a kid too many bananas, therefore gentle parenting is bad

thank you business insider for your brilliant insights

I’ve read through some of the top posts for r/therian. I have a vague understanding of otherkin in general but hadn’t heard of therians in particular. If my kid said they were a furry, I’d be well within my comfort zone. I fuck with furries. But this seems like people who feel they are trans-species and talk about having species dysphoria. I just don’t know what to make of it but I’m also trying to not overreact or let my snap judgements alienate my kid. I assume they feel like they’ve just had to come out to me, which is something I’ve gone out of my way to not make necessary in terms of gender and sexuality stuff. Just didn’t see this coming.

If the worst thing that happens is they enjoy making animal noises and spend more time out in nature, I’m super down. If they start experiencing alienation from their own identity because of this, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Hey Fam! Hope you're doing well!

Feel free to join us on Matrix: #parenting:genzedong.xyz. Learn more here.

(I've settled for baba instead of papa) (papa is german for dad)

School is almost out (or is out, depending on where you're at) for summer! How is everyone doing with the heat?

Also I created a Matrix channel on the genzedong instance: #parenting:genzedong.xyz (let me know if the URL works. Still learning matrix)

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 am looking for information and anecdotes about children that are about 20 months old and their tendency to throw tantrums.

My nephew has started to become belligerent when it comes to throwing tantrums. For example, he gets a hold of something that we would not like him to hold, then refuse to give it back. Usually we would try to distract him with some other attractive object and sneak the former object while he is not looking. If we even try to gently wrest the object from his grasp, he starts crying really badly. Like really badly. It is a bit terrifying.

Part of me thinks that this behaviour is learnt. He must have noticed this strategy working for him in the past so he has begun to do it more.

On the other hand, children do be throwing tantrums. I also don't want to baselessly entertain the notion of stricter parenting. As a cold, heartless individual I try to be skeptical of approaches like this to counterbalance my biases.

Thoughts and experiences?

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?

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

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