Accessory Tuesday: Cubic Zirconia Tennis Bracelet

Might repost tomorrow for more eyeballs, but I’m having a really hard time with my mom who has been splitting her time between my city and hers, but recently moved here full time. She expects to have near-constant access to my kids, and makes plans with them directly and then gets annoyed when I tell her the plans don’t work for us. Recent example, but not the only incident: she planned to take one of my kids to a museum on Saturday. I told her that wouldn’t work because the kid has a play date on Saturday. She asked when the play date started and told me she’d have the kid home by the start time. I said that wouldn’t work because I wanted the kid to help clean up before the play date, and said kid also has an extracurricular afterwards and museum outing + play date + activity seemed like too much for one day. She acted all injured and offended and like I was being so unreasonable for not letting her see my kids when all I said was she has to find a different day for this outing. It’s irritating and feels really disrespectful to my right as a parent to make decisions for my kids.

But I’m not sure how to draw boundaries. My kids are crazy about her and are delighted to see her every day and spend the better part of every weekend with her, and my husband loves outsourcing all our childcare and doesn’t want me to tell her to back off. I feel like an a-hole because I’m the only one bothered by this level of involvement, but it feels so suffocating to me.

My 10 year old is really testing our patience this week. She has had a few long days at school recently to attend afterschool activities. She behaves differently after these long days with friends, lots of attitude towards us (parents and sibling), not helpful at home, just a bummer/grump who lacks empathy. I’m not sure how to help these situations. We have talked to her about how her words and actions effect us. She is not super outward with loving emotions to begin with and has a younger sibling who is very loving, helpful, and eager to please, which only causes her to bristle more. Here’s an example: she asked for help with homework this morning (doing it late bc of afterschool activity) then got super mad when we tried to walk her through it. She said she just wanted the answer not help because that makes her feel like a baby. Umm, huh? I’m not about to give answers. Help! Commiseration! Strategies! Anything!

Hey hive. I posted yesterday about my almost 3.5 year old in speech. Yesterday was just a hard day – I have two lovely, healthy, happy but very different kids and sometimes it just wears on me. I think I made the mistake of looking at old videos of Kid #1 on my phone at Kid #2’s age and was just like…wow they are so different!

My oldest is generally rule following, has always been highly verbal, etc. My youngest is just a kid that pushes back more, is spicy and also very sparkly/charming, not as verbal, etc. We still deal with the occasional food throwing with Kid #2. They even play differently – Kid #1 loved playing with trucks and dinosaurs, while Kid #2 would rather nest his stacking blocks, or do some type of puzzle.

Kid #2 also just had a harder start to life – he was born on the earlier side (not preemie)/was a smaller baby, had some minor delays that we addressed (e.g. walked at 19 months) or are in the process of addressing (speech), etc. So I also feel like I was on high alert for him for a long time, which recently subsided, but has kind of picked up again for no actual reason. Kid #2 has made such great progress since he started speech therapy ~6 months ago – he pulls 3-5 word sentences together, his articulation has improved SO much in a relatively short time frame.

Anyway, I just want reassurance that Kid #2 will be…OK, I guess? Anyone else have a similar dynamic with their kids? How do you help manage your own emotions around it? (Yes I’m in therapy, thankfully).

if your kids have HW: how old are your kids/grade? where in your house do they do their hw and in your ideal world where would they do their hw?

i know this board skews younger, but i thought i’d try here first before going to the main board. an area high school recently published their yearbook with some problematic content. The published four responses to the question “What has been your favorite trend or event this school year?” and one 9th grader wrote “The Israeli Hamas War because of how it started,” which is obviously problematic on so many levels. Why someone’s favorite event is a war that began with r*pe, murder and kidnapping is extremely disturbing and the fact that it was decided this was appropriate to publish in the school yearbook is also problematic. i’m trying to help a friend gather anecdotal info on yearbook procedures. does anyone have a kid involved in yearbook or have any insight into how yearbook content is reviewed/approved?

My 14 month daughter has bangs that keep getting in her eyes. I am not ready for her first hair cut. She generally doesn’t like things in her head so headbands and the like are out. Any recommendations for barettes or something similar? And any recommendations for good shoes for her as a new walker?