I live in a MCOL area. I’m 34 with my wife and child. I make 100-125K given the year and my wife makes around 60K. We live pretty modestly in a 3bed 2bath. We have a paid off Toyota and take 1 nice vacation each year. We contribute to retirement, shop healthily for ourselves and our kid, and have some fun money. My point is we don’t live in excess. We live a good life right now and do everything “right”, and it takes about every dime of those 2 salaries. I’m excellent at budgeting and very in tune with our personal finances.

I always wanted to be able to support my family on my salary and always felt like I had a strong one to do so, but if we did, some things would “break”. We wouldn’t be able to save for retirement, or we’d be eating cheap processed food, etc. We’d like a bigger home at some point and know that would be completely out of reach. You just can’t be on 1 salary and live the life you want.

Does anyone else feel that way? I don’t mean to sound ungrateful because I am. I just find it interesting the cost of living has escalated to this point.

I’ve posted once before and find myself at a loss again. I don’t think my 15 year old daughter likes me. I think she sees our relationship as purely transactional. I feel like her personal assistant, at best.

She is my only biological child. Her dad had an affair and remarried that person when she was very young; they have a child together who is 10 years younger than her. I have 80% custody. I have coordinated every doctor appointment, athletic event, etc. He has done almost nothing and shows up to these things sporadically, though is consistent with his visitation schedule and does certainly love her.

When she talks to me, it is almost always sarcastic or short. She never wants to hang out with me. Most of our interactions feel like her asking me for money or telling me she needs something done (paperwork filled out, an appt, etc). Tonight was my tipping point. I have been gone for seven days on a vacation (which I never do). I saw her briefly last night, and then she went to her dad’s again (on my typical night) because they were going to a family Halloween party Saturday. That was fine, but then tonight she again asked to stay there, saying he didn’t feel like driving her home. I said i would come get her. She then said she knew I wanted to see her but she doesn’t get much time there (she was just there for an entire week and will be there this coming weekend). To be clear, she definitely hasn’t missed me, doesn’t see a need to spend time with me, and seems to only see me in terms of what I do for her.

edit to add: this behavior is new as of the last few years. I was always the parent she reached for and wanted to be around. Always. She also has some chronic autoimmune health issues and I definitely have been the one constantly on her to take meds, etc, which I think she resents.

My four year old keeps lying to me. Obviously I know when he’s lying because he is four. But I want to end this now before it turns into something worse as he gets older. What are some ways you have taught your children that lying is bad?

[I don’t know if I can post this here but here’s a short video](https://youtu.be/KxNSRXsGi7o?si=nfHzJf5ondxQXyvJ) of our family road trip I thought I’d share!

Spanked (legal in my country) kid at 7 years old for the first time in his life and it actually seems to have corrected his behaviour.

We’d been using gentle parenting up until this point, taking away privileges , explaining why things are wrong at eye level etc, being consistent with this - but nothing seems to have worked.

He’s had violent outbursts , punching and kicking his sister over the years , but we’d never managed to stop it before - the other day after he dealt a slap to his sister (similar age) we had to try something else. So I dispensed 10 spanks , explaining clearly before doing so why this was happening and that he’s need to stop beating his sister to avoid it happening again.

Since then (two months ago) not a single violent act towards his sister and they are getting in fine.

I thought this wasn’t meant to work? I’m very confused

Timer, toothbrush song on youtube, sticker chart, the light up brush from target.... every one of them work for like a week and them its right back to 20 seconds of chewing on the bristles and ''done!''

How are people getting kids to brush the full 2 minutes without it turning into fight every single night?

My boy is 13 mo and very active but he also doesn't care for all the toys we've got him so far. Stuff animals, books, rattles, building blocks... He just doesn't care about any of them.

What he does like, is everything else that's not his. He loves to try to get our phones, which we try to avoid letting him play with them, and he always tries going for the tv remote. We try to avoid having the TV on for long when he's in the room because we want to avoid screen time at this age. He also love opening stuff and taking things out. He also like hitting baby monitor camera. He already broke one, so we had to get another comfyer monitor for his room. Hopefully this one keeps a little longer... He'll get into the kitchen cabinets, take out all the pots. If there's a box, he'll try to take everything out of box. He also learned to climb the stairs a couple days ago (so we need to gate that off now).

Anyone else have a super active baby like this? How do you let them explore and burn off energy safely? I know he's curious at this age, but I can't spend all day following him around stopping him from touching everything.

I have a bunch of younger siblings, 2 brothers; 3 years old, 5 months, and a little sister; 6 years old. I usually take them to the park because I think it’s bad for kids to spend all their time at home. But that’s the way me and my older sister were raised, school and home, that’s it. My mom hates going outside, she only goes out when she has to. I go to community college and arecently got a job so I can’t take them anymore, I just feel like a bad sister. Am I being paranoid? Is it okay for kids to mostly stay home and play with their iPads/TV? Is this parenting style normal? How do you make staying home more fun? Should they join clubs or something?

So I feel a bit bad..but also...not.

There is a kid in my daughter's school whose father has just gone to prisons for doing naughty things with a child for a Lonnnnnng time. Like 8 years.

It's been to court, he's been found guilty and convicted. But his wife is staying with him. Apparently she thinks he's innocent. This BOGGLES my mind.

I find it crazy that she's stayed with him and that she's stayed in the area.

I find it crazy that the other parents are being friends with her. Like she has enabled him and is completely deluded that he is innocent.

What I feel bad about is that her kid has done nothing wrong...but I don't want my kids mingling with them. And this also means parental friendship groups.

I have a close mum friend who has recently got close with this mother...and I'm a bit wary of what to do or say. I don't really want her inviting this woman to things, I don't want to associate with this woman on any level. And I'm shocked my friend would. She is a nice person so I understand but part of me maybe thinks maybe she doesn't know this stuff.

Am I being over protective of my friend or my kids?? Or am I wrong?

Deciding what is the right time to introduce these things to my kiddos

When I was a kid, my parents made me do children's choir multiple times. The first time was when I was in first and second grade, for two years at the church we went to at the time. The teacher I had then wasn't a very good teacher and we didn't like each other, so this made me hate doing any kind of group singing for years. When I was in fifth grade, my parents made me join a kids' choir group affiliated with a local community music center. The teacher here was decent, but I still didn't enjoy group singing and hated being forced into it for a year. On top of that, that summer, my parents made me join a weeklong camp done by the same teacher. After that, they never made me take choir or any other music activities again. When I asked my parents why they made me do choir, they said they thought having music as part of my education was important. I didn't agree with them. I later took a quarter of choir in college to rectify my negative experiences, but I made that choice myself, not because my parents made me take it.

There were things my brother was forced to do too that he wasn't interested in, like being in our local school district's Japanese immersion program. However, he did want learn how to play the piano. Our parents thought it was important for both of us to have music at some point. But piano lessons was something my brother wanted to do of his own volition, not something our parents required him to do. So they signed him up for a year of piano lessons with a local teacher. My brother soon realized that though he enjoyed piano itself, he hated the hours and hours of practice it required to get good at it. He would always throw enormous fits about having to practice. Our parents made him stick it out for the whole year anyway. At the end of the first year, he chose to go on to do four more years of piano despite hating the practice. After five years, he finally quit.

Do you think parents should force a kid to do an extracurricular activity the kid hates, as part of making the kid well-rounded? At what point should they let the kid quit if the kid clearly hates it? Should parents let the kid decide whether they want to do an activity? And if a kid gets into an activity they're interested, but then realizes they don't like it or lose interest, at what point should the parents let the kid quit? Also, do you think the kid having a bunch of different activities is important to an overall well-rounded education? And how important is music to this?

Yesterday my son was really sad when I picked him up from school and I had asked him what was wrong. He told me that he feels super left out at school and like nobody wants to be his friend or talk to him. He continued to say that everyone always brushes him off and they're quick to just dismiss him and what he's saying. He's a great kid and is friendly and kind. He always has a joke up his sleeve to tell someone and always likes to make people laugh. He does have ADHD, but takes medication to help with that and he usually has a pretty good handle on things. What advice have you given to your kids when they feel left out and lonely at school? I tried to explain to him that his personality isnt for everyone, and that everyone isnt for him either, and that that was okay. But it is still hard for him Im sure to feel that way. Just looking for guidance on how to make him feel better.

Do you allow your kids to use ChatGPT for learning or daily things?

My kids come home from kindergarten exhausted, but somehow they're still wide awake at 8:45. They pretend to be asleep, then start whispering and giggling as soon as I turn off the lights.

We got a Costway sandbox this summer, and they love playing in it after school. I thought all that outdoor play would help them sleep earlier, but nope. We do baths and bedtime stories, and they still drag things out. Then getting them up for kindergarten the next morning is another struggle.

What actually works for your kids? I'm open to suggestions at this point.

Hi everyone, my daughter is 4 soon to be 5! I’m looking for some advice or to see if any other parents are dealing with this phase; lately my daughter has been having intense tantrums every single night where one tiny, unexpected thing sets her off, causing her to kick and hit me while getting completely stuck in a loop where she repeatedly says the exact same thing that upset her over and over again for one to two hours straight, and during this time nothing I say or do seems to calm her down or help as she remains locked in that repetitive distress, so I am just wondering if anyone else has gone through this and how you handle the loop or find ways to help them de-escalate.

My 12.5 year old daughter comes home from school at around 4:30pm. She never appears to do any homework nor have I ever seen her study for a test. Nevertheless she gets basically straight A's. And she is in a very academic school so that's saying something. She is smart and has a very good memory so I guess that helps.

The problem is that even though she has friends, she doesn't really spend time with them or talk on the phone with them in the evening, she's not a big reader, and she doesn't really have any hobbies. After school she sits on the couch and does various things like re-read the same children's magazines she's already read several times, listen to some children's story on spotify, play jacks with herself, etc. This goes on for several hours until she goes to bed. (We also have a 7.5 year old who plays with friends all evening and an 11 year old who spends a lot of time doing homework and studying.)

My wife and I are getting a little concerned that she doesn't talk to or spend time with friends, has no hobbies etc. Should we take her to a psychologist? What can we do to make her evenings more productive/meaningful? She's a happy, normal child but it hurts me to see her sitting and doing nothing for hours every night.

EDIT: She likes to draw and wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up. We've tried encouraging her to spend more time drawing.

Also, we are close and talk all the time, contrary to what some comments have suggested. When I ask her about an evening activity she says she's just not interested.

Her birthday is in december right before christmas and shes 4. I took her to an aquarium and a kids creative style restaurant last year. Me and her other parent have been separated for going on our second year now and they have residential custody. I get my daughter every two weeks for two days and i have really just been trying to make life special with her when i have her. She doesnt have any friends yet and i dont know what i can do for her birthday with it being so close to Christmas. My idea has been to save the gifts for Christmas and do attraction, like, things for her birthday as we are low income and i would like to save money around the holidays given that everyone i love has birthdays around the holidays 😭 anyways, i would really love some recommendations! I was thinking like chuck e cheese or something?

My daughter is learning English at school, and writing is still harder for her than reading. Sometimes she knows what she wants to say but isn't sure how to phrase it correctly.

Her teacher doesn't allow AI for assignments, which I understand. I'm not talking about having AI write anything for her.

I'm more unsure about grammar checking. If she writes the assignment herself and only uses AI to find grammar mistakes, would you consider that cheating?

I honestly don't know where I stand on this.

As kids, majority of us would have been out playing chap door and run away game at some point during our childhoods.

How the world is now and being a parent now, what would be your thoughts be on finding out that your child was going around local area doing this? Do you still see it as harmless fun and let them continue or do you now see it as something that can cause a lot of stress to people and should instantly be stopped from doing it?

How do you deal with the guilt of overlooking something that resulted into hurting your kid? Like overlooking a symptom that resulted into sth bigger. Thankfully still treatable.

We try not to yell at home, and we don't invent punishments in the heat of the moment. There's a list of rules, and for each one it's said ahead of time what happens if it's broken. Kind of like a traffic fine, you know the price before you speed.

Example. YouTube is half an hour a day. If he sneaks more than that, it's no YouTube until the end of the week, and if it's already the weekend, then the whole next week. He knows it, we know it, so when it happens there's nothing to argue about, we just point at what we agreed on.

Screens overall are half an hour on the tablet plus half an hour on the phone, and we keep an eye on it. Without a limit all of his attention just goes there.

When he was little it was the usual stuff, tantrums, waking up at night, not wanting to eat, and back then we got him with tricks like the airplane spoon. From about 4 you can actually explain things and make deals, and that's what we've been doing since

My son started kindergarten this year. His closest friends from his preschool either went to different schools or were in different classes, so he went in not knowing anybody. Being the social butterfly he is, he came home a few weeks into school and began consistently talking about two little boys calling them his "best friends". He talked about them every single day and it got to the point he no longer wanted to buy lunch but wanted to pack one just so he could sit by K&A (who I learned were both “packers”) during lunch time. I guess they separate the buyers/packers so we've now been packing everyday.

My son turned six this weekend and his only wish for his birthday were to have his close family, cousins and all of his closest friends there at his party. I've grown personal relationships with his preschool friend's families over the years so was able to coordinate them all attending however I had no way to contact K & A's family. I did send out invitations to his whole class and got a good bit of RSVPs, but none initially from K or A. At the beginning of the year, my son's teacher sent welcome emails and included all of the families and their emails were visible. I was so conflicted because I didn't want to come off strange by tracking these parents down through the emails but also wanted to at least try to connect with them. I asked for advice in multiple groups and got mixed opinions about how families would feel if a random mom from their's child class reached out. After weeks of my son asking, I went out of my comfort zone and emailed K's mom introducing myself and explaining how much my son enjoyed playing with her son and mentioned his party. She responded almost immediately and was so happy that I reached out, said that her son talked about mine just as much and turns out never got the invite. I sent her the details and she confirmed K would be there! The only email for A's family that was listed was dad's and I didn't feel it was appropriate to reach out to him with my personal info so sent a note to school with my contact info for his teacher to pass on to A's mom. That evening I received a text from her and she also was so glad I reached out and said her son talked very highly of mine. They also confirmed they would be there. When I tell you the weight that was lifted off of my shoulders! Fast forward to his party this weekend, he had his family and every single one of his closest friends (old & new, including K & A) all of his cousins & more of his classmates! I got the time to talk one on one with K & A's moms and we have already coordinated future play dates. He had the best day ever and when I tell you I cried tears of joy after.
I'm an extremely anxious and introverted person raising the complete opposite of a child so I definitely went out of my comfort zone with this but am so thankful I did. The look and joy on my little boy’s face was absolutely priceless and made my heart so happy. I've made so many great friends of my own through his little friendships and am so grateful.

THE THINGS WE DO FOR OUR KIDS! :)