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Denaut

Denaut

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Back to important stuff. We had our first ultrasound today, the baby is actually almost 13 weeks, so a little older than we thought. I was surprised by 2 things;

One was how amazing the equipment is these days. The image was very high resolution and even having never really looked at one before the baby's anatomy was all very clear.

The second was how hard those first moments hit me emotionally. I was totally blind-sided by that expecting it to be a pretty nuts & bolts experience just checking to make sure everything was growing right and the heartbeat was correct. I teared up pretty hard watching it move around and gulp amniotic fluid, it was the first time it all felt that real.

Also, we're having a boy (to my wife's disappointment) :D Everything looked good smack in the middle of normal ranges, the chances of him being healthy were very much on our side but it is still good to know.
 
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Noodleface

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Denaut said:
Back to important stuff. We had our first ultrasound today, the baby is actually almost 13 weeks, so a little older than we thought. I was surprised by 2 things;

One was how amazing the equipment is these days. The image was very high resolution and even having never really looked at one before the baby's anatomy was all very clear.

The second was how hard those first moments hit me emotionally. I was totally blind-sided by that expecting it to be a pretty nuts & bolts experience just checking to make sure everything was growing right and the heartbeat was correct. I teared up pretty hard watching it move around and gulp amniotic fluid, it was the first time it all felt that real.

Also, we're having a boy (to my wife's disappointment) :D
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Hell yeah man, I think the heartbeat hit me the hardest
 
chaos

chaos

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Denaut said:
I am not going to shit up this thread by arguing with everyone, especially since I don't even have kids yet. So this is the last I will say on the subject.

The research says you are wrong.

It clearly shows that our intuitions are incorrect since we don't instinctively account for the genetic contribution we and our partners have on our kid's personalities. We also tend to grow up in somewhat similar social circumstances. Parenting style has somewhere between zero and an unmeasured small amount of direct influence on our kid's behavior and personality. Our influence as parents is determined by our genes and the community we select for them.

Beyond that our power to affect their personality is to damage them (abuse, neglect, letting them die, etc), make their life miserable (albeit not permanently), or improve our children's community in general which benefits the other children in the community as much as our own.

We control for genetics by doing rigorous twin studies. You take 4 cohorts; identical twins reared together, identical twins reared apart, fraternal twins, adopted siblings; and then you measure the differences between them using their genetic relatedness to draw data points. Once you do this the data is pretty clear; between genes, shared environment (household), and unique environment (community outside household) there is a 50/50 split between genes and unique environment. Shared environment might be in there somewhere riding in the measurement error, but if there is an influence it is extremely small.

You don't have to believe me but the literature is there for anyone to read. You can start with The Nurture Assumption or read the relevant chapters in The Blank Slate which summarize it. There is also a Very Bad Wizards Episode that discusses it starting at about 39 minutes.
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It's not intuitive at all, like many things in life. It just seems obvious that of course parents have an outsize effect on a child depending on how they raise the child. It's one of those things that when someone tells you you're wrong, it will take some adjustment. How people interpret it is import as well I guess, it isn't as if suddenly being a good parent/person doesn't matter. There are ethical and moral responsibilities, and someday the kid will be an adult and you'll want to have a relationship there.

Having a kid with some emotional/mental health issues I am noticing more and more that the treatments and recommendations from the doctors aren't really things that help with behavior or whatever in a way that solves problems, it's all just mitigation, get through this situation until the next one, on and on, untilt eh kid is an adult. They talk about teaching self-advocacy etc but there's no indication that really happens. Kind of lines up with what you're saying, and it's both comforting and also horrifying.

Congrats on the boy, didn't end up happening for me, stuck with all these girls.
 
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iannis

iannis

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Lendarios said:
i can bond here all i want and then tell her ok i have to work now i cant be doing xyz.
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I think he meant with the baby, not the wife. And it's not so that you bond with the baby, it's so that the baby bonds with you.

But I also don't think there's an awful lot of effect in that for the first year assuming that the baby's mother is both alive and attentive. That baby is going to IGNORE your ass in favor of the female. Infants aren't that smart. They don't start to notice the father in a more permanent way until they can also walk. Mother bonding is both all they need and about all they're capable of for a while.

Some things are just how it works.

But this is all theory, maybe i'm an idiot. I'm not aware of any science behind this idea but I do think there must be some recognition at a cellular total organism level of selfness between the mother and child. I know there has been observation and research to support that idea, but not about mechanisms involved.
 
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iannis

iannis

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You've got about 11 years to teach your wife how to wash... socks.. washcloths... bedsheets... the walls...

THERES GONNA BE CUM EVERYWHERE.
 
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Kiroy

Kiroy

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ya with 3 boys I'd maybe go with the story that if you rub your penis you go blind, if anything for sanitary reasons
 
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chaos

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You can certainly try, we all know that by the time you try that with them they'll already be like "Yeah so that's a fucking lie".
 
C

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Denaut said:
Here is the last I'll say... the research says
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I've read Harris' book and listened to that VBW episode. I think the caveats and objections raised in the VBW discussion cover my problems with the statements you're making. Harris herself specifically only makes the claim that variations within the space of normal well-intentioned parents doing the best they can don't explain the variations in childrens' personalities (and other gross outcomes). This is importantly not the same as "parenting doesn't matter", never mind hand-waving away such effects as "making the kid miserable in the home" as immaterial because they're temporary.

Any passable parenting requires constant effort.
 
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Lendarios

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Girls get more attached to the father as times moves on. boys also get more attached to the father too, I think.
 
Noodleface

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chaos said:
You can certainly try, we all know that by the time you try that with them they'll already be like "Yeah so that's a fucking lie".
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I never understood that. From the first jerk to my current I've always used a disposable... receiver....
 
Gurgeh

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iannis said:
I think he meant with the baby, not the wife. And it's not so that you bond with the baby, it's so that the baby bonds with you.

But I also don't think there's an awful lot of effect in that for the first year assuming that the baby's mother is both alive and attentive. That baby is going to IGNORE your ass in favor of the female. Infants aren't that smart. They don't start to notice the father in a more permanent way until they can also walk. Mother bonding is both all they need and about all they're capable of for a while.

Some things are just how it works.

But this is all theory, maybe i'm an idiot. I'm not aware of any science behind this idea but I do think there must be some recognition at a cellular total organism level of selfness between the mother and child. I know there has been observation and research to support that idea, but not about mechanisms involved.
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I've pretty much always spent more time with our daughter than my wife, sometimes A LOT more time, I've been working about a total of 600 hours a year since she was born, vs 1600ish for my wife, and I can tell you that our daughter has been glued to me from pretty much day 1. To me it seems it's just a matter of how much time you spend.
At some point when she was 3-6 months old, whenever I would move out of her sight (like going to pick up something in another room), she'd cry, vs no reaction when my wife left the house. And my wife was breastfeeding up to that point... (ok like 50% breast feed, 50% formula)
 
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Ao-

Ao-

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Noodleface said:
We didn't read any books, just winged it. And our first kid was collicky. Let me tell you, that shit made me want to kill myself

You'll be fine
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Oh god the memories of crying for 19 hours a day are flooding back...

chaos said:
I read those parenting books, most of its common sense, some "don't panic your kid is fucking fine" shit, and some nonsense. It's not so bad.
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CTFD
Calm The Fuck Down.
 
lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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Anyone else feel this? Sometimes my kids are like this.

daily-afternoon-randomness-49-photos-25-260.jpg
 
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Arative

Arative

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My son won't try anything new. He has a real anxiety about it. I was making some BBQ once and asked him just to taste the bbq sauce, he shook and nearly cried just touching it to his tongue but once he tried it, he was like this is good. Up until about 2 he was a really good eater. The only grilled cheese he'll eat is Panera grilled cheese. I make one and nope, its not Panera. He won't eat any other fast food.

My daughter on the other hand will eat anything and often wants what we eat, which is nice
 
SDsurfer

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My 3yo son won’t eat any vegetables. I tried to force a carrot in his mouth last night and he gagged and threw up the chicken I had just made him eat. It was frustrating af and I had to put him in the bed as punishment. Meanwhile I eat shit from mom and mother in law about why I did it so I hide in my room and play eq for an hour. I felt bad but this f’ing kid wont try anything new as well.

My 4yo son will try and eat most items.FML!!! Gray hairs come and stay awhile. I feel all your pains guys.
 
Prodigal

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When my kids were younger we basically alternated chicken nuggets and fish sticks as their entree. Green beans and corn were the only vegetables they ate (not counting potatoes).
 
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