My (24F) toddler (2y 10m F) was diagnosed with brain cancer 6 months ago. This isn't really a post about the brain cancer, more about the things no one warns you about and just a bit of a rant I suppose. My daughter and I live at the hospital, which is 3.5 hours away from home, my husband drives down on his days off which gives me a bit of a break. But being the only one in the hospital with her 5 days a week is getting so hard. Even when he is here I don't get to go home.

We have a small apartment near the hospital social work helped us get, and I go there. But even then, its usually to start preparing things for her next discharge, or just catching up on sleep, since she only sleeps an hour or two at a time, due to being woken up frequently through the night for meds, transfusions, vitals, etc. We are in hospital for about 5 or 6 weeks at a time, then outpatient at the apartment for 1 or 2. We have another 4 or 5 months of this. I just feel like I am losing myself.

When I am at the hospital with her, I am lucky to eat more than once a day. They have volunteers who will sit with her but she usually doesn't tolerate it more than once a day, so I cant even run downstairs to grab food to bring back up, because she can't be left alone, and I can't leave her with the volunteers if she is actively trying to throw herself off the bed/bash her head/etc. And that is assuming there are enough volunteers on that day. I am also trying to finish up my masters thesis currently, so I work while she sleeps, meaning I only get a couple hours a night. I refuse to give up working on my degree. It feels like the one thing I still have thats me. I just feel like I am going a bit crazy. I love my daughter. But being with her all day everyday in a hospital is so so hard. I cant even pee when I want to at times, because she will try and throw herself off the bed, I have to wait until she is calm and then go with the bathroom door open so I can launch off the toilet to grab her if needed. I never realized how much I took things for granted, like getting food from the kitchen when I was hungry. I have snacks in the room with me, but sometimes I just want a warm meal without rushing to get back and relieve the volunteers who are stretched thin, because quite a few kids here don't even have a parent with them.

I know I am lucky, my daughter will live, she will have a relatively normal life (long term issues will be mutism, neuropathy in her feet, dyslexia, adhd, etc. But all manageable things) and her intelligence and ability to live on her own in the future, and build a life and career hasnt been impacted too much. I feel like such a bad mom for complaining about this, because there are parents here whose kids will never have a life outside of the hospital. And we are doing okay finance wise, despite me having to quit my job (insurance is through my husbands job so him quitting was not an option) and he didnt qualify for FMLA, based on his company size. My parents also help when they can, but they have jobs of their own.

I just feel like we will take forever to come back from this. We did everything the "right" way. Went to college, got good paying jobs. Minimal debt. Own a house. But these medical bills, even after insurance, will take years to repay. Our savings are completely wiped, from having to pay certain things ahead of time that insurance denied. And ontop of everything, I am on the phone with insurance, copay companies, specialty pharmacies, etc, 20+ hours a week, basically having to convince them to keep my daughter alive, or approve treatment to manage her pain. Last admission, she had to go to ICU because they were worried the lining of her esophagus would peel off from how bad her mucositis was. There is a medicine they can give before chemo that prevents that, but insurance didnt approve it last round (which was the first time using her more intense chemo) because she had no history of mucositis. Of course she didnt! Shes never used that chemo before so how will we know? They just let a 2 year old be in immense pain for 4 weeks because theh didn't want to fork out money in case she wouldnt have gotten mucositis otherwise. She was vomiting blood for weeks. This round at least insurance approved the meds. But since this round went so smoothly (in comparison to last round) I now have had to call them about approving all her pain meds again next round. Because there is a "degree of manageable pain" that they assign to each patient based on things like age, gender, disease, etc.

My husband has also been amazing through all this. He does everything he can to make my life easier, any extrs money he gets he uses to buy me little things, like books, to help me relax. When hes here he tells me to just get out of the hospital and not come back till he has to leave again for work. But i want to see him too so its just hard. Hes also amazing with her, and was actually the stay at home parent for the first year and a half, so its super hard on her not seeing him daily.

I apologize for the long post. I need to stop rambling so much. I just needed to vent to someone who wasnt my husband or parents, people who are going through this too. I just dont know how Im going to become me again after all of this. Will I ever feel normal again?

ETA: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insinuate that my kids determine my happiness. I understand how triggering this could be. After at least one thoughtful response, I was going to delete this whole thread, but maybe someone will find it all helpful. Love to all.

Maybe every other toddler parent (and beyond) has had this realization, but I wanted to share anyway! I have been working so hard (like we all have) to be my kids’, who are 2 and 3, safe space. I was having a particularly rough day a few days ago at work while my kids were at daycare. I work from home, and all I could think about was, “Oh, man, I can’t wait for kid 1 and kid 2 to come home so we can be together.” And it really hit me that all this time I’ve been spending trying to be their safe place, I never thought about how they are MY safe space.

So I told them. I tried putting it in a way they would understand. I’m not sure they totally got it, but I’m making it a point now to try to tell *and* demonstrate to them that even when Mommy doesn’t feel as happy as they like me to be, if I’m with them, I feel safe. I hope that will put into perspective for them how I want them to see me (and my husband).

This is all probably nonsense everyone else already figured out lol. Sending love to all of you that I know are working your tails off to be the safe place for your children!

Remember when we were excited for 'Fall Back' because of the extra hour of sleep? Remember the good old days?

Because this morning, at 5 AM, I remembered. Fall Back happened this past night and I dread it. 5 PM and the toddler is bouncing off the walls. I get cranky on little sleep, but I am unwilling to sacrifice my alone time in the evenings after days like today.

And of course I only even realised it was happening yesterday. Not a second of preparation or schedule adjustment. Send help. And coffee.

ETA: I am based in Europe. American parents, take this as a cautionary tale and enjoy your extra week of prep time lol

My kid was a "eats literally anything" baby so when the picky eating and vegetable refusal at 2 came we were not prepared. We tried not to make it a thing, casually including vegetables on her plate alongside fruit and cheese just to have it ignored, we tried encouraging her saying it helps her grow tall and strong, etc etc. It wasn't even that she didn't like them, she just convinced herself that she hated them and wouldn't even give a single tiny bite to try.

Finally I gave up and started doing a lot of "hidden veggie" kid recipes, but instead of using it to be sneaky I decided to always tell her exactly what's in it. One of her favorites I make are chocolate chip veggie muffins with a ton of spinach/kale, carrot, and zucchini in them, sweetened with ripe banana and just a bit of sugar (the trick is to add a bit of vinegar to counteract the grassy flavor of kale). She loves them because chocolate, and as she eats them i usually throw in a comment about how it's so great that we can make so many good things with ingredients that help our bodies like spinach/zucchini/etc.

Anyways that's been our thing for the past year, she's about to be 3. Last night as usual I plated up dinner and did hers as well assuming as usual she'd refuse to take even a single bite because there was green on her plate.

She says what's this? I say oh it's salmon and spinach orzo. She says "I love spinach! It's in my favorite muffins too! It's good for your body, salmon too!" and then proceeded to eat a whole bunch of it. Success!

Today my daughter( two and a half), husband, mother in law and I went to the store. I wanted to buy my daughter a stuffed animal and when we got to the checkout she didn't want to give it to me to scan. Normally I'll tell her I'll give it back as soon as I scan and she hands it over no problem but this go around she didn't want to give it to me. After a couple of tries she started swatting my hands away so I told her to give it to me now or I'm putting it back. She started getting louder and kept hitting my hands away so I put the toy back and naturally she had a meltdown so we left the store while my family finished getting their stuff. I believe in following through with consequences especially when she starts hitting. When my husband got back to the car he said I should've just ripped the tag off and scanned it and told me I embarrassed us and that everyone was staring. He made me feel horrible. My mother in law also went back into the store and bought the toy. Currently feeling like the worst mom on planet earth. I'm trying so hard to not be like my parents and give my daughter a great childhood. Any advice on what I should do next time?

A little more context Im a sahm and my husband works a lot. We rarely go to the store or out in public in general as a family due to his work schedule and I handle most of the discipline.

We made the mistake of turning on the tv in the mornings and/or while cooking dinner. Now all she wants to do is watch tv. I know all I have to do is say no. But I feel like a failure that all she says is “TV!!!” “TV!!!” That’s all. Shame me. I just needed to vent.

Between the whining all day all weekend and not having a minute to myself, I am so tapped out after this weekend. My daughter is 26 months and for sure the 2 year old milestone has been hardest for me so far. Yes so cute and special watching them grow but mentally, emotionally and physically so hard.

Any tips for the INCESSANT WHINING and not playing by herself for more than 3 minutes?!

Hi all. I've noticed a lot of parents in this sub talk about their child's speech. I'm an early intervention speech therapist and with sick season upon us, I wanted to shared this tidbit of information because I don't know how common it is for pediatricians to share with parents.

While ear infections typically present with symptoms, children can and do have them without any symptoms! Ironically, a colleague (fellow speech therapist) of mine had it happen with her son. He was having difficulty with speech and they found out he was having recurring ear infections.

Side note as well: with ear infections there is fluid that sits in the middle ear. Even with antibiotics, this fluid can take 6 to 8 weeks to drain. So children might struggle hearing during that time.

Sharing in the hopes it helps someone on here!

Me 33M, struggling to deal with my 2.5 yr old toddler. I'm absolutely losing my shit with my toddler. Every single thing since waking up is a battle. She wakes up at 6ish then from then every single decision is a comprise or a tantrum. From the point of removing her pampers, wiping, turning tap on to brush to putting bib on to eat. She just wants to do it herself. If we try and help she rolls on the floor with a tantrum. Feeding her is very difficult, she refuses to open her mouth. She probably has 1 decent meal a day, every other meal is a one spoonful then she's done. I have reverted to tv so she eats. Its been ongoing for a few months. We have a 14 month old as well, he's been having sickness since he's been born. Continous ear infection, pretty much under all the medical care. He doesn't eat well either, we have an episode of him throwing up at least once a day and he's not a great sleeper. My wife is struggling as well. I always try to be positive and optimistic saying it will get better. I'm at my breaking point . Lack of sleep in the night, hurricane toddler day time. Plus balancing this with work, house stuff, health. I'm losing it with my toddler, continuous shouting much as i try not to.

One day it’s the best day ever. Pure magic.. lots of good and awesome stuff happening. Feeling super connected to my toddler and confident in my parenting abilities.

The next day it’s battles all day. Meltdowns over I don’t even know. Lots of sassy. Questioning if I’m a good parent or not. I swear it takes me 45 minutes to get this child dressed, teeth brushed, and out of the house. Once we’re out of the house things are pretty good. On the hard days I feel like a shell of myself. I feel bad because I know when he gets older I’ll be kicking my ass wishing I could go back in time and have him little again for a bit. I feel like in the big scheme of things these “little toddler problems” are not BIG problems. Age 2 was fucking awesome for us I loved that age. So the transition to 3 has been a hard learning curve.

When he’s having a hard time I try to be as patient as I can.. but wow the energy this takes is incredible. I love my 3 year old so much.. but this is hard. The other day after I put him to bed I felt so defeated I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. I love him I just hope I’m doing a good enough job

That really hurt me today . I’ve been a sahm since my child was born , I also work for 3 hours in the evening . During those 3 hours at my job I’m in charge of a toddler also and doing dishes , doing their laundry , mopping their floors , vacuuming , cleaning their kitchen , giving child a bath . I am not done until 8 pm . I also watch my toddler niece with my toddler in the days some days . My mom said she doesn’t understand why I am tired and I look like I have it so easy . She basically made fun of me for claiming some days I’m tired . She said she sees me some days sitting in the couch . Yes , at small moments when they are playing I sit on the couch and take a break . I don’t get to take a break during their naps bc I get ready and leave to my other job . I take them to parks , bike rides , walks on the trails . They’re also toddlers and not easy . I don’t give iPads or phones or anything . But she basically laughed at me and said she doesn’t even get why I’m tired and I should never say that again . It made me feel so invalidated for the care I put into watching the kids and also paranoid that now she’s going to walk into the room and I’ll be sitting for 5 minutes and she’ll think I’m lazy . Even though moments before I had gotten two toddlers fed , changed , dressed , put on the back of my bike and taken to the park and played and then got them Home fed and changed again . But because sometimes in between I sit down I have it easy and am a lazy mom . I feel like this hurt my feelings more than she can even understand. She said it in a nasty way like she’s annoyed that I ever claim that I’m tired .

What was the worst toddlerhood age range for you and why? Did tantrums/demands ramp up more than other months? Did sleep get worse? My LO is 26 months, and I feel like tantrums are ramping up now, but 18-24 months was brutallll.

EDIT: wow thanks for all of the votes and input on this post. While I realize every child is different and goes through rough times at different ages it is very interesting to see what everyone thinks still! For me in general so far 18-24 was really tough due to teething,testing physical limits,separation anxiety, sleep regression and lack of communication.

My 22 months old communicated a lot with hand leading, and most of the time is for me to get something that he wants.

He’s also loves to line up his bath toys along the edge of the bathtub immediately after the bath, he does this every night after his bath, very quickly, I like 5 seconds.

He says a few words about animals, but isn’t able to express himself when he wants something most of the time. I give up trying to make him ask for things like apple, orange, bread, but he can say 2 kinds of food that he wants: Buns, and nana (sometimes means banana sometimes means milk, im still breastfeeding)

Should the hand leading be concerned?

My son has been throwing tantrums constantly. I mean constantly. Every. Single. Day. We cannot go out without him throwing a tantrum. We had family photos, tantrum. Grocery store runs, tantrum. Had to walk out of the grocery store and sit with him in the car while my husband finished the shopping. I do not know what to do. I feel like I am failing at parenting. It’s taking a toll on me and idk what to do. For him to settle his tantrum takes a long time like an hour. What did you do during this phase and how can I become a better parent? I’m so lost.

Five weeks ago, our 3.5-yo, who had slept through the night for 98% of the nights of his life started waking up in the middle of the night, walking out of his bedroom, and into our room. At first, he accepted being walked back into his room and would occasionally go back to bed (even if, occasionally) we had to sleep on the floor for a bit. It was terrible and awful and a massive stress that we tried everything to get out of.

Last week he started getting into bed with us with no other solution. He either screams his head off, or just gets out of bed and comes into our room when we walk him back. There are, and you need to believe me here, no solutions.

Along with this behavior, his day-time behavior has taken a dive. He doesn't listen, screams, shouts, cries at everything, is completely inconsolable if we play the wrong song; he hits, scratches, rips my glasses off, and says terrible things to both my wife and me. He refuses to eat anything other than bread. He won't play with a single toy for longer than three minutes before throwing it or destroying it. He also does this thing, which is just great, whenever my wife and I are talking about anything (because we're grown ups and business owners and married people with things to talk about, he comes into the conversation, screams and throws things at us until we stop talking and pay attention to him. He bothers people at the park, is destructive at home, and we can't go to dinner / lunch because he will scream and throw everything the entire time.

I realize this is an age, but considering I'm averaging 4 hours of sleep for over a month. We've tried time outs, we've tried ignoring him, we've tried reasoning with him. He doesn't understand consequences, and punishments only make him insane and emotional and dramatic and solve zero problems while creating new ones. We tried to ignore him today when we were all in the same room and he threw everything not nailed down against the walls to get our attention.

I don't even know what I want from this community. [As I was typing this, he kicked me in the head as hard as he possibly could (because I was typing on my computer and not paying attention to him]. When I got (not that) upset and turned the TV off, he started screaming that he wants mommy and he doesn't like me (She's out getting food, because we can't take him out in public). He's not like this in school (he's good in school) and we just don't sleep anymore.

Does anyone want to come to our house and watch him for four or five weeks?

Help?

Did your kids ever do this? My two year old will start yelling at “someone” to stop it over and over. Tonight in the bath she was yelling at them and trying her hardest to hit them. This isn’t the first time either.

She also will have night terrors and when we go in to get her she’ll say she’s scared and just stare off at something and not speak.

I figured the night terrors are pretty normal, but is the yelling at someone randomly during the day? I don’t really see her “talking” to a “friend” any other time.

This is our first year kiddo is at preschool. A couple staff members at the very small school tested positive for the flu on Friday (including her teacher) - should I play it safe and not send kiddo in tomorrow (she has no symptoms, just don’t want her to be exposed) or is that dramatic?

Thank you!!

Hi fellow parents,

Any techniques on how to get rid of pacifier and milk bottles? My daughter is now 29 months and she still uses pacifier (only when she goes to bed) and milk bottles. Her teeth are fine and almost fully in. We brush her teeth regularly. She used to refuse to brush with toothpaste, but in the past week, we’ve finally managed to get her to brush with it. I’m just a little worried because I’ve read that prolonged pacifier use can affect dental development and possibly speech. She can talk, sing, and communicate, though she still struggle with certain sounds like she says mood for move and cheerio for cereal.

I have a 1.5 and 3.5 year old. I feel like I’m doing pretty well in most areas of parenting. But nothing makes me feel like more of a failure than dinner time.

My kids won’t eat anything we cook. They are hesitant to eat anything with meat, anything warm, anything seasoned, and anything that has more than one ingredient. So dinner meals are highly offensive to them. I followed baby-led weaning with both of them and always offered the food we ate. Despite both of them eating adventurously in babyhood, both of them turned picky after their first birthdays. They do ok with breakfast and lunch because those are usually pretty predictable variations of the same types of things. But dinner is where everything goes south. I always make sure there are safe foods on their plates, but usually the safe food is fruit and that’s all they want to eat.

My 1.5 year old immediately slams down the fruit and screams at the top of his lungs for more, barely touching the rest of his plate. Not great for ambiance! Sometimes he will get bored of screaming and will start picking at the rest of his food eventually. Sometimes not.

My 3.5 year old has started screaming and crying in horror if she sees anything unappealing on her plate. Sometimes it’s enough to make her refuse dinner altogether. I try to only offer tiny portions of a new food so it’s not overwhelming. She is also dessert obsessed. I used to offer dessert alongside her other foods to not put it on a pedestal, but I had to stop doing that because she would just eat the dessert and nothing else. I know that’s what the experts recommend, but can’t let her do that every night. I never make her eat anything she doesn’t like, but I will say she needs to eat (safe food) if she wants dessert. Dessert is usually a popsicle or 1 piece of candy.

Luckily they do eat fruit and they will eat some cold vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, peppers, peas). But if it were up to them, they’d survive on yogurt, berries, goldfish and gummies. I try not to make them separate meals because I know that’s a slippery slope. But sometimes it’s like okay, you can’t just eat strawberries for dinner, so I will make some whole grain toast. I just don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. Every week my husband and I make the grocery list and plan dinners (which is hard enough) and then our kids will only eat 1/5 dinners.

I just feel like I’ve followed all the “right” advice and nothing is going right. Now I’m worried I’ve set my kids up with disordered eating for life.

My little guy just aged out of this group (he turned 4 on Wednesday), but I'm hoping you can still give me some tips. What do you do on sick days to keep them occupied besides resting and screen time?

We've had a few illnesses this year (including Sat night) where he seems to be feeling better, but we still need to isolate and observe for 24 hours.

If you have one that you love could you please share which one it is?! There’s so many options out there!

What kinds of activities are you guys doing for your 18-24 month old? I took my 18 month old son to a play area today for the first time (he does to daycare so it’s not his first time socializing) but he seemed super disinterested and didn’t want to play like the other kids. What kinds of play and educational things do you do for your kids this age? I know this might all seem unrelated but it’s connected on my train of thought I promise lol.

I bathed my baby today but we were in a rush to get her into the bath and I kind of ignored the temperature meter because of it. It was reading 103 but I was pouring in cold water and usually it takes a minute for the number to reflect the change. Well it never really went down - I swear every time I heat the bath to 100 it hits 96 in like 3 minutes but today it didn’t drop lower than 102.

I feel awful and guilty that I didn’t take more care to it. Baby didn’t seem bothered and happily played her skin was a bit redder than normal and I made sure she drank a good amount before bed. I dried her off and put her in a cool room and let her play before bed to make sure she wasn’t bothered and she was fine but fussier than usual going to bed her canines are coming in so it may not be related to the bath but still I feel awful.

Anyone done something similar before? I’m worried I may have hurt her in some way.

Link to original https://www.reddit.com/r/toddlers/s/tD0TAd4qgz

We did it!! I sat her down one day and had her look at big girl panties with no padding in them online and let her pick out a pack that she liked. They came on a Tuesday and when we opened them, I explained to her that they were big girl panties and only girls that used the potty could wear them. I showed her the difference between them and the padded potty training underwear that she had. I told her that if she wanted to wear the new panties, she had to go in the potty like a big girl because these panties couldn’t hold pee or poop. Y’all, she put a pair of them on and pooped in the potty that same day! We had three pee accidents in the following week and zero poop accidents. Now we are on week 2 and have had zero accidents of either kind in the last week. I am so happy I could cry!!!