southsamurai
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Kinda on the edge of what you’re asking about.
My kid wasn’t an “orphan” in any way. Not that that is some kind of necessity for adoption. But I was originally their stepdad. The biological father was in their life, but that was not a good thing. There was drama.
The drama resolved when he lifted a hand against my kid, in public, and was taught to never do such a thing again. That resulted in a series of negotiations that led to me adopting my kid.
Which means that it wasn’t the kind of adoption you’d be looking at.
That being said, there were definitely some issues because of all that. There’s therapy, and there used to be behaviors related to the traumas, etc. But it’s still been the best thing I ever did. Oh, we fuss sometimes, though not often and never anything stronger than a firm correction with the usual teenage eye rolls in response, followed by a firm correction for that. No family is without the occasional growing pains as a kid pushes boundaries on the road to adulthood.
But I loved this kid from the first day we met. Just this little thing that I’d only talked to online and by phone before. They ran into my arms and hugged me, and it was on. I knew I’d fucking kill for them, or die for them. There was never a doubt in my mind about taking on the drama and the eventual lesson that needed teaching because the kid is worth it. Even the custody bullshit in between was worth it, and interstate custody issues are complicated as hell even when one party isn’t a narcissistic abuser.
My kid is not the first kid I’ve ever had though. I’ve never made a biological kid, but a good friend of mine died unexpectedly many years ago. His youngest son was having trouble adjusting, and his mom asked for help. He ended up living with me for a few years. I can’t say we were really father/son, it was more of an uncle thing, but he sometimes calls me his second dad. Still. One time in school, it came up how I was his guardian, but not related to him, and that’s how he described it that time, “second dad”.
Another time he said “uncle dad”, but that got too many laughs lol.
I mean, he always calls me by my name, or with uncle in front of it. But, when he’d talk about it with others, that’s how he would explain it.
Again, there was never a moment of regret. It was the right thing to do, and despite my fears of fucking up horribly, I managed to only fuck up a little here and there.
Which is still not quite what you’re asking about I don’t think. But it is why I can say that if you go into adoption with your eyes open, it’s an amazing experience. I don’t have the experience of being a bio dad at all, nor any kind from the very beginning. But I’d sure as hell do it again. As it stands, I’m tapped to be the emergency parent/guardian for my niece, and a couple of my little cousins. I hope like hell they don’t need me, but if they do, I know I won’t regret doing it.
Sure, but then you couldn’t mess with a kid, and that’s against dad code.
Joking aside, dad jokes and puns, and silly arguments like this would be actually serve a purpose other than it being hilarious. Just like you presented a perfectly valid argument to counter the one I was using, most kids are going to come up with something just as valid, if not that exact one.
Then, when you reject it on whatever grounds are funniest, they are probably going to come up with another.
This process, depending on the kid, can go on for a few cycles.
As long as you’re paying attention and not making it a thing, they’re stretching their brains a little in the face of absurdities. They’re also going to be figuring out how to frame arguments in a constructive way, since you’re the parent and there’s a barrier to the usual reactionary irritation behaviors they might use with a peer their own age.
Again, you have to watch how you’re doing it and not take it too far, as well as keeping it silly enough that it won’t register as some kind of dick swinging. But it’s a really fun way to build critical thinking, people handling, and do so while having fun and bonding.
My kid sometimes just rolls their eyes and nopes the fuck out, but when they are in the mood, we can go for an hour playing games with words and ideas like that.
Eh, we have a budget program in the house for learning skills, that are then used to help decision making when the kid has funds.
There isn’t an allowance. We buy the stuff based on circumstances. Cash isn’t as ideal as it used to be. Cards, be they gift, prepaid debit, or bank related, come with drawbacks that make them unattractive for the purpose of the kid being able to have their own funds.
They have a real budget and the educational one. The educational one is set up based on their efforts. Originally it was scaled, where it was a set amount every month, they’d have set prices for the basic items of life like rent and utilities but win those amounts representing a percentage rather than actual prices.
Then, as they mastered that, it to realistic numbers, taken straight from our actual bills, with their income factored by their school work and household responsibilities.
The only time the real budget, where they have an amount they can request be spent on their behalf that can roll over and be saved (up to a point, it puts a crimp in other things if it builds up too much) is if they decide to skip obligations, to go into debt, or otherwise do something that would screw their budget if it were real. When that happens, the real budget gets frozen until the educational one gets balanced again.
What they don’t know is that they have an account for when they get older that any of that amount that can’t be held in our accounts gets deposited to. Same when they make bad decisions in budgeting and it gets frozen.
It’s as close as we can get it to simulate adult life without being a horrible grind, or taking agency away, which leads to no learning by making mistakes.
They’ve gotten pretty good at making good decisions. And I mean by the standards of their situation. It isn’t all spent on stuff you might value as an adult. There’s music and crap food, and outings, whatever. But they make the decisions consciously, choosing to spend their budget on self care in those ways, which is a perfectly valid choice even for adults.
Not that that’s the only money that gets spent on such things. We’re fixed income, but they have a say in the tiny household entertainment budget, and have times when they plan the meals, etc. But that’s different from discretionary spending the way allowances were, and the way their personal budget is. Them picking a shitty movie to go to on the rare times we go out to movies, that’s not their allowance equivalent, that’s them taking their turn picking the movie. If they want a different trip out the next week, it would have to come from their discretionary budget instead of the household entertainment/fun budget.
It wouldn’t work for everyone. But it works for us.
Why would it matter?
If the kids are young enough that they’re being dragged along, they aren’t going to care much. And it isn’t like life is perfect and you can always have someone else watch the little buggers. So, if the kids aren’t disruptive, and the parents are okay with the kids hearing the kind of talk you’d hear at an adult panel, that’s a valid choice. Nobody on “stage” needs to worry about censoring themselves. They can, but it isn’t mandatory.
If the kids want to go, nothing the panel is going to say will shock them. Any kid that’s a fan of a show like that is already past the point where a panel is going to say anything worse than that specific show.
If that’s the case, gotta work in a well rounded workout diet. At 10 (or did I misread?), he’s not going to pack on a ton of muscle, but he won’t put any on without the diet being balanced for the amount of work he’s putting in, even at kiddie karate level of output. If the classes are more serious, the workout they give will be too.
If you can’t get advice from a nutritionist, just up the protein a little at a time until he either starts gaining lean weight, or it becomes evident that his body just isn’t ready to gain that kind of mass yet.
Just track what he’s getting, and bump it up as needed, with the goal being (and this is general purpose, without knowing the kid or any medical history, so definitely triple check) in the 35 to 40 grams per day range. That’s just a tiny bit above the typically recommend levels for his age, but should be enough to notice change in a week or two.
You could likely go as high as 50 grams a day, though for sure talk to the doctor again before staying at that range. The increased protein intake shifts how a kid’s body handles calorie management, and I’m simply not up to date on the whole subject. Only reason I have recent enough info to merit commenting is having taught some kids in that age range some martial arts over the last couple of years.
Again, you gotta take internet advice with a grain of salt. No matter how well intended, no matter how well informed, we just don’t have the full medical breakdown, or any direct interaction with the lad to be certain of much of what we can say.
Only other thing I’d throw in is the general advice to not push beyond his appetite often. Sometimes, it’s necessary, but when it’s frequent, kids tend to adapt too well, and get focused on the wrong aspect. That can lead to over eating regularly. When they keep pushing past satiety, they can lose sensitivity to satiety to some degree or another. I tend to err on the side of offering things more often rather than increasing amounts per sitting.
Honestly, an athletic kid, you just make sure their protein intake keeps up with their activity and don’t worry much about weight until and unless the doctor says it’s a problem.
Your post and comments are kinda confusing in that regard, but it seems like the doctor isn’t worried about it, everything relevant has been checked and that this is a more general concern from your side. If that’s not the case, you could consult with a nutritionist and see what kind of dietary changes might better support the kid’s activity levels.
But, usually, it’s only weight loss that’s going to be a problem as long as growth is still ongoing
I did this to my kid once, only with a ball of yarn scraps.
My kid just grabs it, starts meowing, and bats it around the room.
And, no, my kid isn’t actually a cat. My kid is just a weird human lol.
This wasn’t even a toddler. The kid was 13.
And that’s pretty awesome :) keeping a sense of joy and imagination like that is cool
Pretty far in the past now, the kid has gotten a lot more resistant to fear over the years.
But, back when they were about 7, ghosts were the big fear at night.
Solution: ghost incense. One of those things I pulled out of my ass in the moment that worked like magic.
The kid didn’t want to go to bed. Was asked why. The answer was that they didn’t want ghosts to come get them.
In a rare flash of genius, I said “Well, I can fix that. Ghosts can’t go anywhere when you burn a stick of a special incense. I keep a box of it around for emergencies.”
We lit some nice smelling stuff, and said the magic words, and that was that.
Now, the next day, we had a nice conversation about how ghosts aren’t real, and even if they were, they’re ghosts, they can’t hurt anything. The kid asked if we could burn the “ghost sticks” anyway, just in case we were wrong lol. So it became the bedtime thing. When the kid would get tired, they’d show up with a stick of incense and ask me to light it.
By the end of that summer, the kid had said they weren’t scared of ghosts any more, but can we use the incense anyway, it smells nice.
Sometimes, trying to convince someone that their fear isn’t based in reality is not only impossible, but counterproductive. For a kid, it’s all about helping them manage the fear, give them control of it.
Ignoring the mountain of evidence that you can find with a quick search that corporal punishment in general, and “spanking” in specific doesn’t work in the way people think/want it to, there’s a giant flaw in logic here.
If a stranger does a thing to your kid, and you would want them arrested, why would you do the same thing?
Seriously. That’s the glaring flaw in the arguments. If I discipline your kid with a single swat to the rear, I have committed a crime. One which most parents would not only insist come with legal consequences, but a significant amount would feel totally justified in using force to protect their child ( and they’d be right in that use of force, imo).
But then you want to do the exact same thing or worse and don’t expect it to affect the child at least as severely as the trauma from battery by strangers. If someone is going to argue that they need to hit their kid to maintain discipline, then claiming that it only works when a parent does it is just stupid.
Worse, claiming that the affects of the trauma of an assault is magically not going to happen because it’s a parent is outright insane.
That’s why, even for the very limited benefits that can come from using spanking as a tool (that are achieved better by other methods) you end up with more drawbacks than it’s worth.
As I said to my parents and my family regarding my kid: if you attempt to use spanking or other violence to “discipline” or “teach” my kid, that means such methods are effective. If that’s the case, then me beating the fuck out of you and never letting you near my kid again is most definitely going to be effective in teaching you to never hit my fucking kid.
Oh damn.
The story you just told paints a totally different picture than the title.
From the title, I was expecting to hear you were shooting up instead of taking care of them, or trying to stay drunk and dropping them or something.
But what happened was a stressed out human being very human and doing something every parent has done: yelled during times of frustration. Wait until he’s a teenager, and holy shit, you’ll be yelling even more, even if you manage to do it into a pillow so it doesn’t give you a headache.
No bullshit, I have done neonatal care a handful of times, and pediatric a few dozen that included kids under 2.
Preverbal kids that are tired and pissy would drive the pope to smoke a blunt. Their screams are supposedly developed by evolution to rip right through our skulls so we can hear them At a distance, and have a visceral response that drives us to action.
How the fuck would you not reach a point where you scream too? You can’t always step away for an emotional break, and you don’t have the luxury I had when taking care of babies on the job: knowing the shift is going to end.
Even away from work, babysitting family, the knowledge that it has an end point is such a safety valve when a baby is sick or hungry or tired and mad about it.
An actual mom or dad? That’s brutal, and the first few years when sweetening screaming is all they can really do to express their needs, that’s Cannibal Corpse levels of brutality.
You didn’t fail, you climbed the fucking mountain and planted your flag.
I’m not just playing being supportive because it’s what people are supposed to do. Genuinely, you had a hard fucking day and got through it with your baby in bed, sleeping, healthy, and even managed to get the little bugger dressed. And all you did was scream a little? Lady, I don’t know you, but I’d hug your neck and brag about how well you did if I was there.
13 months of one of the most stressful, exhausting things a human can do, and you yelled a little? That’s beast mode. I’d worry if you didn’t have the need to let out stress with a scream, or a good cry, or pacing a hole in the carpet, or something. Babies are hard, even when they’re on the easy side of things. An easy baby is still harder than most things anyone will do in life.
I’ve sat with people, holding their hands when they drew their last breath, and taking care of babies is harder. I’ve had adults shit on my head on purpose, and babies are harder. And every single baby I’ve taken care of, I got to hand off to someone else and could have just refused to go back.
Nah, you aren’t a horrible mother. You’re human, and you handled your shit in an appropriate and efficient manner.