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Ronaan
Molten Core Raider
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Ronaan
Molten Core Raider
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Well thanks for that.
(I wasn't allowed past the green curtain when my wife had the c-section... all I could do was hold her hand and wait for the baby to be shown to us. Couldn't even cut the fucking cord.)
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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The fucked up part is the day you realize they DID grow up. My oldest just kinda snuck up on me. She was always my little girl, and then one day I just kinda looked at her and it was gone. Voice changed, the look changed, everything. She went from knee high and holding one finger while we walked to 10 in an instant.
That's the shit that really starts making you think "Fuck, maybe I shouldn't have worked/gamed/slept so much these last few years."
Feels bad, man.
in my experience
the first kid you don't know WTF you are doing
2nd kid, you do and it is much easier - IF the first kid is not fussy.
ME
my first kid -son now 11- nightmare, he wouldn't goto sleep easy, etc but overall was not fussy etc and is a great kid now, if i could get him to be NEATER!!!
my Second and third kids (twins) in my opinion were MUCH easier, because there were 2 of them, we HAD to have a routine for EVERYTHING, thus bedtime was-and still is easier, feedings easier, etc. plus i have great kids, the Twins(boy and girl) are now 8..
now my house is a little martial arts armory. the kids love martial arts, so we have:
the 11yr old is a brown belt(has red/black and black to go), and the twins are red belts
samarai swords- 2 (twins)
Sai- 3 sets (real sai's) for each
~6 sets of nunchucks
Kama (hand sickle) -plastic blade but my 11yr old is good enough to warrant getting a set with metal blades
tonfa
long staff (bamboo)
when the kids are rambunctious and it is nice out we make them put on sparring gear toss em outside and have them fight.
and don't get my started on the nerf guns, we have 2 of the shotguns with the 30 shot barrel, the disk shooters, the revolver with the motor etc, the battles we have are a blast, the kids play COD with nerf guns.
wife-semi-jokingly said that she wants another girl to even out the kid numbers, i said no way in hell, we cannot afford it
the first kid you don't know WTF you are doing
2nd kid, you do and it is much easier - IF the first kid is not fussy.
ME
my first kid -son now 11- nightmare, he wouldn't goto sleep easy, etc but overall was not fussy etc and is a great kid now, if i could get him to be NEATER!!!
my Second and third kids (twins) in my opinion were MUCH easier, because there were 2 of them, we HAD to have a routine for EVERYTHING, thus bedtime was-and still is easier, feedings easier, etc. plus i have great kids, the Twins(boy and girl) are now 8..
now my house is a little martial arts armory. the kids love martial arts, so we have:
the 11yr old is a brown belt(has red/black and black to go), and the twins are red belts
samarai swords- 2 (twins)
Sai- 3 sets (real sai's) for each
~6 sets of nunchucks
Kama (hand sickle) -plastic blade but my 11yr old is good enough to warrant getting a set with metal blades
tonfa
long staff (bamboo)
when the kids are rambunctious and it is nice out we make them put on sparring gear toss em outside and have them fight.
and don't get my started on the nerf guns, we have 2 of the shotguns with the 30 shot barrel, the disk shooters, the revolver with the motor etc, the battles we have are a blast, the kids play COD with nerf guns.
wife-semi-jokingly said that she wants another girl to even out the kid numbers, i said no way in hell, we cannot afford it
Vandyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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For the first 3 months we had the crib in our bedroom. Then we moved into a bigger place and she moved into her own bedroom and we used the baby monitor to hear for her. We hardly ever kept her in bed with us though. Even has she grew a little older and was starting to have nightmares/night terrors, she would lay with us for about an hour and than I'd walk her back to her room and put her lullaby music on.
Kid getting sick story, how bout at 8 months, the kid gets a stomach virus the day before Thanksgiving (nothing worse smelling than formula coming back up), which in turn gets me sick later that night and then my wife the next (thanksgiving) day. So basically there was a period of time on Thanksgiving that all three of us were sick and could barely move. Had to call a friend to help us out.
Kid getting sick story, how bout at 8 months, the kid gets a stomach virus the day before Thanksgiving (nothing worse smelling than formula coming back up), which in turn gets me sick later that night and then my wife the next (thanksgiving) day. So basically there was a period of time on Thanksgiving that all three of us were sick and could barely move. Had to call a friend to help us out.
Celebrindal
Golden Squire
- 516
- 11
Speaking of lullaby music, I'd wholeheartedly recommend stuff fromRockabyebabyinstead of standard lullaby stuff. These discs (specifically the Queens of the Stone Age one) saved my sanity back when my son still used lullaby music to go to sleep.
My son, at 6 months. I couldn't imagine a better baby. He is so easy going, sleeps all night, etc. The wife is currently pregnant with our second boy, due a week before this little guy turns one. Hooray for "Irish twins" I guess. We assume the second kid will be the spawn of Satan, to balance things out.
Haha awesome. No paternity test needed there, mate17 months old, couldn't be happier.
I have a 6 yr old (autism / dyspraxia - lots of fun), 3 yr old and almost 2 yr old (accident, but awesome) boys. Bad thing about it all is that due to the fighting and aggression from the 6yr old, we sold the sedan and bought an 8 seat people carrier (minivan to you guys I think) so he could sit right in the back row of seats on his own. I miss having a guy car now...
Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
- 1,887
- 750
I'm frustrated and so is the wife.
We have a 14 year old daughter, her child, mine by marriage. She absolutely does not give a fuck about anything so far as I can tell.
We sent her to a private school that's like the taj ma hal compared to public schools here in New Orleans. Public schools here are for the dregs of society, unfortunately it's true. Private schools cost a fortune but no one that cares about their kids that has money wants to send their kids to public schools here.
We can't get the kid to get up in the morning. My wife yells at her everyday. I work from home right now and I got into an argument with my wife that I'm tired of being woken up in the morning to her yelling at the kid every.... day.... It really gets old.
We can't get her to do chores either. At this point we don't even try because she sits and does homework the entire evening Monday through Thursday. On weekends we try to get her to do her homework on Friday's but even we are so tired from trying to get her to do the stuff that it usually slips to Sunday afternoon/evening. I can do her homework not even being in the classes in an hour or 2 if not less each night myself. I try to help her with stuff and check her work some but her attitude just sucks and like a few minutes ago I end up trying to explain to her that at some point she has to care or she'll be a bum on the street, that we aren't going to provide for her forever. The reason the homework takes forever is because she fucks off so much. We try to stay on her but with half the year up my wife and I are exhausted. They usually stay up until 11 or 12 trying to get her to finish the stuff and I'm in bed long before then.
I've gone through most of my creative repertoire, my wife's and our close friends' ideas of how to get her to achieve the goals we would like her to with her school work. I'll list them out:
We help her do the work and try to teach her as we go, help her study, we lord over her and constantly remind her to stop talking and get back to work...
We set up a rewards/punishment contract at the recommendation of my wife's close friend. In summation it pays her money every report card for making As/Bs, for getting on the honor roll at 3, 3.5 or 4.0 and on the other side it lays out punishments for bad grades, detentions etc etc.
The contract also laid out chores for all 3 of us to make it as fair as possible.
I never yell at her unless I'm in another room and she's trying to scam some sleep in her room instead of doing her homework at the table as we require. I really try to be good to the kid. I had a really shitty step dad and my dad's gf was right there with him. I absolutely refuse to be shitty the way I was treated. The kid isn't my blood but I don't care, she's my opportunity to fix the shitty life that I had and give something back better to the world than I was given in this instance.
I try to encourage her, to help build her self confidence but she has a defeatist attitude and says things like, "I'm stupid, I don't know it, I can't learn it... I don't get it..." I try to ignore that stuff and push through to connect with her and sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.
I talked with her the other day and explained to her that we are a family unit. That if her mom or I go off and get fired from our jobs, start drinking and screwing up then it ruins the family. It ruins our home life and then no one is happy. Then I explained to her that her job is school and when she doesn't do her work and try to at least make C's that she's screwing up home life for all 3 of us and all 3 of us will be unhappy because of her. I laid this out very nicely and encouraged her to please do her part and help make our home life happy.
We try to give her things she wants (my wife probably goes too far in this area imo but she's not lacking, we're far from poor and I even told the kid we WANT to give her things and do things with her to make her happy, just make decent grades...)
My wife hasn't spanked her since she was like 4 and at 14 I don't think now's the time to start...
We've restricted her from tv, her phone is taken away, no games, basically nothing but school work and she draws some. After the 6th detention this year we put her on restriction from all those things for 2 months and she was a little more focused on her work at home simply because she wasn't allowed to watch tv, use her phone or a computer. Once she went off restriction it wasn't even 2 weeks until she was back on indefinitely this time.
The kid loves her showers. She'll take hour + showers every night so one punishment has been 20 minutes showers. She hated it at first but now she seems indifferent and unless we're yelling out the time to her she won't get out on time.
My wife bought an air horn to wake her up tomorrow morning. I told my wife that's fine, do it, just warn me before you do it. It'll go like this: Wife goes in there and verbally tells her to get up, if she doesn't start moving within a few seconds the air horn goes off... She has an alarm clock but she sleeps right through it. It will go off for hours and she'll still sleep.
My wife and I have been over this a hundred times, what to do to get her to do better in school, and then it'd be great if we could get her to do some chores. She was like this before I moved in except her and my wife yelled and screamed at each other endlessly. When I came around somehow my presence settled that down. I tell my wife not to ever yell, just calmly find a way to deal with her whether it's throw another punishment down or move on...
About the only things left I know to do are to contact the school to ask them (like the guidance department how to deal with her or at least point us in the right direction) or send her to a shrink.
I can't see spending 10k/year on private school if she's going to fail 1 or 2 classes each semester as things are going now. That's the short term problem. The long term problem is wtf kind of life does she have ahead of her if she doesn't give a fuck about anything?
If she'd make C's at the minimum we'd probably continue to throw away 10k/year so she could at least have a shot at a decent education. She won't even do that though, C's a D and an F right now. The D and F are in math and science, 2 subjects I can easily help with and have but I can only "lead the horse to water, can't make her drink..."
She's not stupid either. She's smart enough to know the key words like, "I'm sorry I'm stupid," or some other crap to try and draw sympathy and get us off her back but she's aced tests here and there while barely studying.
The other side of it is I fucked off all through high school basically, had to go to summer school to graduate, then I went to the Marine Corps. After the Marine Corps I eventually finished my degree in Structural Engineering and that's what I do. So I don't think this is the end of the line for the kid but the major difference between her and I is my mom didn't EVER say anything to me about my grades or homework or anything. I just did whatever I wanted. We actually try everything we know to get her to perform and we really do care, even me as a step parent, but nothing's really working so far.
I dunno... what do you do with a kid like that? I don't want to "hope" she learns life lessons later... We're trying to teach her values and a good work ethic now so she'll be better prepared.
We have a 14 year old daughter, her child, mine by marriage. She absolutely does not give a fuck about anything so far as I can tell.
We sent her to a private school that's like the taj ma hal compared to public schools here in New Orleans. Public schools here are for the dregs of society, unfortunately it's true. Private schools cost a fortune but no one that cares about their kids that has money wants to send their kids to public schools here.
We can't get the kid to get up in the morning. My wife yells at her everyday. I work from home right now and I got into an argument with my wife that I'm tired of being woken up in the morning to her yelling at the kid every.... day.... It really gets old.
We can't get her to do chores either. At this point we don't even try because she sits and does homework the entire evening Monday through Thursday. On weekends we try to get her to do her homework on Friday's but even we are so tired from trying to get her to do the stuff that it usually slips to Sunday afternoon/evening. I can do her homework not even being in the classes in an hour or 2 if not less each night myself. I try to help her with stuff and check her work some but her attitude just sucks and like a few minutes ago I end up trying to explain to her that at some point she has to care or she'll be a bum on the street, that we aren't going to provide for her forever. The reason the homework takes forever is because she fucks off so much. We try to stay on her but with half the year up my wife and I are exhausted. They usually stay up until 11 or 12 trying to get her to finish the stuff and I'm in bed long before then.
I've gone through most of my creative repertoire, my wife's and our close friends' ideas of how to get her to achieve the goals we would like her to with her school work. I'll list them out:
We help her do the work and try to teach her as we go, help her study, we lord over her and constantly remind her to stop talking and get back to work...
We set up a rewards/punishment contract at the recommendation of my wife's close friend. In summation it pays her money every report card for making As/Bs, for getting on the honor roll at 3, 3.5 or 4.0 and on the other side it lays out punishments for bad grades, detentions etc etc.
The contract also laid out chores for all 3 of us to make it as fair as possible.
I never yell at her unless I'm in another room and she's trying to scam some sleep in her room instead of doing her homework at the table as we require. I really try to be good to the kid. I had a really shitty step dad and my dad's gf was right there with him. I absolutely refuse to be shitty the way I was treated. The kid isn't my blood but I don't care, she's my opportunity to fix the shitty life that I had and give something back better to the world than I was given in this instance.
I try to encourage her, to help build her self confidence but she has a defeatist attitude and says things like, "I'm stupid, I don't know it, I can't learn it... I don't get it..." I try to ignore that stuff and push through to connect with her and sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.
I talked with her the other day and explained to her that we are a family unit. That if her mom or I go off and get fired from our jobs, start drinking and screwing up then it ruins the family. It ruins our home life and then no one is happy. Then I explained to her that her job is school and when she doesn't do her work and try to at least make C's that she's screwing up home life for all 3 of us and all 3 of us will be unhappy because of her. I laid this out very nicely and encouraged her to please do her part and help make our home life happy.
We try to give her things she wants (my wife probably goes too far in this area imo but she's not lacking, we're far from poor and I even told the kid we WANT to give her things and do things with her to make her happy, just make decent grades...)
My wife hasn't spanked her since she was like 4 and at 14 I don't think now's the time to start...
We've restricted her from tv, her phone is taken away, no games, basically nothing but school work and she draws some. After the 6th detention this year we put her on restriction from all those things for 2 months and she was a little more focused on her work at home simply because she wasn't allowed to watch tv, use her phone or a computer. Once she went off restriction it wasn't even 2 weeks until she was back on indefinitely this time.
The kid loves her showers. She'll take hour + showers every night so one punishment has been 20 minutes showers. She hated it at first but now she seems indifferent and unless we're yelling out the time to her she won't get out on time.
My wife bought an air horn to wake her up tomorrow morning. I told my wife that's fine, do it, just warn me before you do it. It'll go like this: Wife goes in there and verbally tells her to get up, if she doesn't start moving within a few seconds the air horn goes off... She has an alarm clock but she sleeps right through it. It will go off for hours and she'll still sleep.
My wife and I have been over this a hundred times, what to do to get her to do better in school, and then it'd be great if we could get her to do some chores. She was like this before I moved in except her and my wife yelled and screamed at each other endlessly. When I came around somehow my presence settled that down. I tell my wife not to ever yell, just calmly find a way to deal with her whether it's throw another punishment down or move on...
About the only things left I know to do are to contact the school to ask them (like the guidance department how to deal with her or at least point us in the right direction) or send her to a shrink.
I can't see spending 10k/year on private school if she's going to fail 1 or 2 classes each semester as things are going now. That's the short term problem. The long term problem is wtf kind of life does she have ahead of her if she doesn't give a fuck about anything?
If she'd make C's at the minimum we'd probably continue to throw away 10k/year so she could at least have a shot at a decent education. She won't even do that though, C's a D and an F right now. The D and F are in math and science, 2 subjects I can easily help with and have but I can only "lead the horse to water, can't make her drink..."
She's not stupid either. She's smart enough to know the key words like, "I'm sorry I'm stupid," or some other crap to try and draw sympathy and get us off her back but she's aced tests here and there while barely studying.
The other side of it is I fucked off all through high school basically, had to go to summer school to graduate, then I went to the Marine Corps. After the Marine Corps I eventually finished my degree in Structural Engineering and that's what I do. So I don't think this is the end of the line for the kid but the major difference between her and I is my mom didn't EVER say anything to me about my grades or homework or anything. I just did whatever I wanted. We actually try everything we know to get her to perform and we really do care, even me as a step parent, but nothing's really working so far.
I dunno... what do you do with a kid like that? I don't want to "hope" she learns life lessons later... We're trying to teach her values and a good work ethic now so she'll be better prepared.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
- 5,538
- 790
That's a lot of text. Anyway, I used to be like her. I tested with a high IQ at a young age, and school to me was a joke. I'm the type of person that if you tell me something once, I've got it. I hated that class had to be slowed down for the kids that needed something repeated to them 20 times in a row. I would just go to the test and fill out any oval.
I finally woke up in the 10th grade. My parents forced me to get a job when I was 11. By the 10th grade, I was working alongside of people that were H.S. dropouts and trying to pay their own bills. When I saw people struggling at $5 an hour to eat, I went from C's and D's to A's. It was also at this point that my parents made it clear that when I was 18, I'd be on my own.
Maybe you should have her get a job, and ask her if she want to be making fries at McDonald's for the rest of her life. Because that's where she's headed. That worked for my parents. Everytime I thought I was making good money, my Dad would show me that I would need to work all month just to pay the electric bill in his house, let alone all the other payments there are, and eating. This woke me up fast.
I finally woke up in the 10th grade. My parents forced me to get a job when I was 11. By the 10th grade, I was working alongside of people that were H.S. dropouts and trying to pay their own bills. When I saw people struggling at $5 an hour to eat, I went from C's and D's to A's. It was also at this point that my parents made it clear that when I was 18, I'd be on my own.
Maybe you should have her get a job, and ask her if she want to be making fries at McDonald's for the rest of her life. Because that's where she's headed. That worked for my parents. Everytime I thought I was making good money, my Dad would show me that I would need to work all month just to pay the electric bill in his house, let alone all the other payments there are, and eating. This woke me up fast.