My 14 year old son loves chatting with me before school, usually right when he wakes up. I hear him open his bedroom door, come straight downstairs in his PJs (with messy bedhead and half asleep eyes lol) and he just sits next to me on the couch and starts talking about whatever’s on his mind for the day. It’s really sweet ❤️

But during these times he always has pretty noticeable morning breath! He likes to sit beside me on the couch and faces directly to me, and he tends to talk pretty exuberantly (even though he just woke up 😂). So I can really smell his morning breath as he talks! Overall I would say his oral hygiene is good. And his breath is fine after brushing, which he does religiously before leaving for school. So it’s just first thing in the morning that I notice.

It doesn’t really bother me, but I feel like he has no idea what his breath smells like when he wakes up. Would you mention it so he knows, especially for sleepovers or anytime he might chat with other people first thing in the morning? I don’t want to make him self conscious, but I wonder if he should be aware.

Would you say something or leave it alone?

So my daughter got a squish gel thing and it smelled like STRAIGHT gasoline and I saw about the recall of imposters so threw it away.

Another family member got her a set of Halloween ones from QVC which look more legit - but they honestly still smell. Not as strong, but it’s chemicals.

Am I being overly psycho to not let her have them?

What are your thoughts on these dumpling toys?

I'm 39 with two kids, 6 and 3. My daughter recently lost her front teeth and it's really hit me how quickly she's growing up. I find myself missing her toddler years and feeling sad that I'll never get that time back.

The last six years were pretty stressful between house renovations and work worries, and I feel guilty that I spent so much time stressed instead of enjoying the kids more. I worked from home throughout, so I was around plenty, but I often feel I wasn't mentally present enough.

I can't actually point to specific moments I missed. It's more a general feeling that the years flew by and I didn't appreciate them enough.

I've always been a nostalgic person, but lately looking at old photos makes me more sad than happy.

Does anyone else feel like this? Does it get easier? I know I'll probably look back in another six years and miss the ages they are now, and I don't want to keep repeating the same cycle.

My daughter turns 3 in 3 weeks. She’s always been high energy, unable to sit still, thrives with gross motor skills at parks and outdoor activities, really good at pretend play. She just took to coloring/drawing a few weeks ago, but it’s only 5-10 minutes at a time.

No daycare, with her dad during the day while I work, with me in the evenings while he works.

I have been taking her to the library once a week for the last month or so, for story time and activities. She won’t sit on a carpet, she won’t really listen or interact with anything the teacher is doing, is on the other side of the room trying to climb things and most of the time I need to remove her for being disruptive and not listening (pushing boundaries)

Am I expecting too much? Is there something I can do? She’s the only kid every single time thati can’t sit still for the 30 minute interactive story time (full of dancing, props, songs) but thrives with the 30 minute activity afterwards

Thanks for looking.

I have a 3 year old and a almost 1 year old. All I want to know is what your target bedtime is. I do not want to give any context. I understand everyones situation is different. I just want to see what other people think what bedtime should be for toddlers.

My daughter has thicker hair than me which tangles easily. Every morning she wants a different hair style, but it’s really hard to manage the tiny tangles in her hair. I use detangling spray and separate each tangle by hand, but she still complains it hurts and that I’m pulling her hair. I use the shea moisture detangling spray, and I have the wet brush that I use to run through her hair. I use the OGX coconut hair oil if her hair feels dry to me. When I shampoo, I use she moisture, and then a conditioner. By day 1-2 she develops the tangles. Sometimes I try to comb her hair at night to detangle and make mornings easier, but there are still tangles in the morning. Is there anything else I can be doing to make it not hurt so much?

Hello, I just volunteered in my daughter’s 1st grade class and her teacher brought up an issue with another 1st grade girl. She said they are constantly at each other, like annoying each other and neither will give it up. They are not allowed to sit by each other or be partners but across the room they are still trying to interact. My daughter yells at the girl, look what I’m doing sort of thing.

So this isn’t new. In preschool and in daycare they were in the same class and both teachers said they absolutely can’t be in the same class in kindergarten and noticed the school during kindergarten testing. The preschool teacher said it was mostly the other girl annoying my daughter constantly and she tried to have moved to the morning clsss but the mom refused. My daughter came home daily complaining about this girl.

Fast forward to first grade, my daughter’s teacher seems very annoyed I did not request them to be separated but honestly after not dealing with it for a year I completely forgot about this girl. And it happened in preschool/daycare 🤷‍♀️. Now I don’t know what to do. My daughter only recently started coming home saying she is upset over this girl (but I’m sure my daughter is annoying her back!). The teacher said it’s been since day 1. I don’t know why almost two months into school she’s just telling me now. The teacher said she really needs to make other friends. We only briefly talked but she did say moving classes now is not an option.

Anyone dealt with this at such a young age? I hate that the teacher is having to police them all day long. How do I talk to my daughter about it?

I’ll preface this by saying that I care about courtesy and optics a lot, and I’m probably in my head way too much about this.

We’re having a birthday party for my kid soon and invited their classmates, along with a few kids from another class at the same childcare (we’re friends with the parents). The venue has a cap on how many kids we can invite, and we’ve already hit that limit.

Recently, a mom from childcare invited us to her kid’s birthday party. It’s the same weekend as ours, but on a different day, so we’d be free to go. Our kids are in different classrooms now, but they used to be in the same room when they were younger and still sometimes play together during outside time. When this mom asked her kid who else they wanted to invite from outside their class, my kid’s name came up.

Would it be in poor taste to accept the invitation and go to their party, but not invite them to my kid’s party because we’ve already hit our venue’s guest limit?

Guess I’m just concerned about the optics of it since we’d have some guest list overlap. I don’t think it would be a big deal, especially since my child was invited in the “second tier”, haha. But curious about what might the appropriate thing to do here.

Tell me what I'm doing wrong. My twins are 7 years old and are taking *hours* to fall asleep most nights.

Dinner around 6pm. We generally don't do bedtime snacks. No screen time on weekdays, and its early in the day on weekends.

Most days of the week someone has an extra curricular, but at worst it throws off the following schedule by 15ish minutes:

We start the bedtime routine around 7:45. They get into PJs, brush their teeth, we floss them, then they come downstairs for some family reading. We tuck them in around 8:15, and they get 15 minutes to do a quiet activity in bed under the glow of a red light before lights out.

One has a night light, and often listens to a meditation or story after lights out.

The others' room is pitch black and silent, but they will often sing or talk to themselves.

They're in separate rooms, but can hear each other.

They wake up without alarms around 8am, plus or minus 30 minutes. Their school starts late, so this is okay with our family.

They take forever to fall asleep - some nights they'll lie in bed quietly for over 2 hours. Eventually someone will pipe up and tell me they're having trouble sleeping, and every time I'm shocked to find out they're even awake.

What can I change to better support their sleep?

Edited:

Thanks for the input. I'm hearing that I need to adjust the schedule / my expectations.

My husband and I are real foodies, so we're forever trying out new recipes, testing new flavours, and experimenting in the kitchen. Our kids are... not really into it. I've also considered my kids "picky" for a long time, but lately I've come to realize they're willing to try new things... they just want those new things to be super simple. So here's my question: what are the simplest, yummiest, least-labour-intensive things you're feeding your families for dinner these days?

I have a 3yo and a 3mo and right now bedtime takes forever trying to get them both to sleep one at a time. At some point, i would hope they need the same things to fall asleep - stories, a song, a hug? Bedtime has become a special space where my toddler and I get to bond with no distractions. Just wondering what your bedtime rituals are and how did you handle it with multiple kids. When did you do it all together?

I had never thought of this before but the last party my son went to, a lot of kids couldn't go so more kids got invited and the date got changed to give those kids enough notice.

So if you book a party somewhere for a set number of kids and some decline, is it rude to hand out more invitations? It feels like it could be a bit offensive to the kids who weren't originally invited, but got invited later because someone else couldn't go? On the other hand, my son has a list of 11 kids he wants to invite and we had to narrow it down to 7 to fit the reservation, and if some of the 7 couldn't go there's still 4 more kids who were on his original list and I'm sure he would love to invite them if we had room.

Is it bad etiquette to hand out more invitations later?

My kids love books, and reading is part of our bedtime routine. But they also want to read throughout the day, which is great!

Do you keep certain books just for bedtime, or do you let your kids choose whatever they want, whenever they want?

Curious to hear what other families do!

My five month old son will scream and cry for literal hours if he’s not with me. I don’t leave him frequently, but my husband and I recently went to a rehearsal dinner and a wedding the following day, and both times baby was with my mom and scream cried for 3+ hours straight until I left early to come home. He calmed down immediately when he saw me.

Another example was that I took my daughter to a friend’s house and was gone for about 2.5 hours. Baby was with my husband and also cried nonstop for the entire time I was gone. He (and my mom) both try taking baby outside, a bath, music, bouncing, rocking, wearing one of my shirts, etc etc etc.

Some context, I was laid off two days before my maternity leave ended, so I am currently a stay at home mom, but I am looking for a new job. With the way things are currently going, I have no idea how I would leave him with my mom while I’m at work.

I’ve been taking him over to my parents house almost daily to get little exposures to my mom, but he will lose his mind about 5 minutes after I leave the room and there is no calming him down unless I come back.

I’m at a total loss. I do contact nap and he is with me a lot, but so was my daughter at this age, and so are many babies to stay at home parents. My daughter also dealt with separation anxiety, but it was not this early or this severe. She would struggle with the initial separation and then be fine after a few minutes.

Aside from continuing to try leaving him for short periods of time and just waiting out this phase, does anyone have any advice? Has anyone else been through something like this? I feel like I’m losing my mind some days.

TIA!

I’m just curious to see if there are any other parents in the same boat as me. My lil one is going to be 12 months in 10 days, and there is not a single tooth there. She is a total gummy bear 🙃 the paediatrician said at her 6 month check to not stress it until she’s 18 months but I definitely do find it weird how there’s nothing at all right now. She eats solids and takes formula.

I’m really struggling with my 2yo biting at day care. I know it’s normal , but it’s extremely frustrating. I feel like I have done anything and everything to try and get her to stop and/or not do it any more.

Currently some of the remedies I have tried; sitting down and talking about how bad biting is , chewlery, and other various chewing toys.

Any advice / assistance would be appreciated.

when I’m by myself with her I work to correct it and ask her to say it differently. however sometimes she’ll call out to retired neighbor after running into him and chatting at his mailbox come meet me outside everyday at 3 pm (like when she’s walking home from the bus). would you correct her? or is that just a cute/silly kid thing to say or do?

he just jokingly said I’ll add it to my schedule or I’ll try some of the days and bye sweetie.

then I overthink that I’m rude by not correcting?? just curious would you do anything to correct? she just likes saying hello but then illthink I’m a weirdo/rude for not saying he can’t do that or that’s not neecesssary

Have the opportunity to move closer to family, essentially shorting the trip from 13 hours to 3 hours. The area is very nice, but our kids like the area we live in now and we just moved here 2 years ago. Anyone here have experience with this? I worry that there’s really no difference between 3 hours and 13, and maybe I should only consider opportunities that are under an hour to get the true benefit?

Hi
I love and enjoy my now toodler. But no one warned me about their attitudes at this age?? LOL is it just my son?? I get it, at this stage is hard to communicate for them but he just complains about everything and it’s hard to know what they want? I don’t do screens and try my best to have a clam daily routine but he’s all over complaining and idk, should I be doing something different . Is this normal? Will he be like this for a long time. When does it get a bit better ? Is discipline at thing at this age??

Open to any advice or anything you do at this age to teach them good things?

Halp!!

My 6 month old uses the shnuggle infant tub currently for bath time. Once she outgrows it and can sit up on her own or even crawl, I’m considering whether to buy the shnuggle toddler tub or just put her in the regular bath tub. What did you do?

I have the Regalo Easy Step gate but have a weird issue that I can't seem to find anyone else mentioning online. When the gate is under pressure, the bottom "base lock" rubs against the bottom of the frame. The gate otherwise works but I'm sure this will cause a wear pattern over time and makes the gate less smooth to operate. The lock doesn't rub when the gate isn't under pressure and only goes away when the gate pressure is low enough that it won't latch at the top. Has anyone else run into this or have any ideas? I would link to a picture but that isn't allowed per sub rules.

We're both working parents and 3 days of the week I'm in the office so I leave before our child is up for the morning because my commute is an hour each way. I leave early so I can drive back early to pick her up from daycare. For the last year or so our daughter has a hard time listening to my wife in the mornings. From asking her to use the bathroom, to getting her to eat breakfast, to getting in the car. My wife defaults to raising her voice and threatening to take things away which doesnt work. Then she gets emotional so our kid gets even more emotional and I get a morning call with both of them crying.

This morning was no different and my wife said we need to do something different because she doesnt want to have this happen everyday. I've asked her to come at our daughter more from curiosity and less from authoritarian. When its just me and her and I'm getting her ready for preschool she resists but I dont engage. My wife digs in and escalates the fight. The only alternative I can think of so far is for me to take over morning routine which will make it so I get to work 2-3 hours later than usual and will get home essentially when its time to put her to bed.

My son is 3.5 months ol and my anxiety has gone down a lot so I'm ready to read something about parenting. I'm not looking for books on sleep or milestones and what to expect but more on parenting style specifically

What can I do now, and over the next 9 months to raise a happy, confident baby? I'd love books with good reminders about keeping your cool and being emotionally available something I can come back to whenever I need a refresher

Any recommendations? Thank you!

Hello all! I need help making and sticking to a routine for a 31 month and almost 7 month old. We seem to have trouble sticking to a routine (probably because I have ADHD) and I think it’s affecting my kids negatively.
Do you have kids at this age and/or age gap? Do you have tips? What did your routine look like?

So my baby is 6 months and is starting solids. Are we good to introduce berries? With all the recalls I can’t keep up. I wanted to give her strawberries. Maybe cooking them?

In the USA so many many food recalls