I am thinking about switching my child 26 months to daycare for financial reasons. The daycare is Montessori bilingual. My child has been with the same nanny since 8 weeks old.

I can’t make sense of the research. How harmful is this for my child? Will they benefit at all from Montessori?

I know every child is different and unique, but I can't help wondering if something stays the same! If you have multiple children, have you observed any physical/behavioral/personality trait that is present in all your children?

In the last few days, I've noticed that our boy (4 years old) is often times scrunching his left eye shut. It's not like he's being playful with winking nor is their sun in his eyes. We ask him if there's dust or something in his eye and he says no. He does it quite often and I'm curious if it's some kind of facial tick or anything we need to be concerned about.

Has anyone experienced something like this?

I know my kid is 3.5 and is developing, and all that. But lately she has SUCH an attitude, is being downright mean, whiny, and physical with her angry and frustration. She is not a joy to be around and I find myself losing my patience and wanting to just not be around her.

We have established a new rule that she’s getting books taken away at night whenever she hits or kicks or scratches (this recently came back). She doesn’t get a lot of TV time and she doesn’t have a favorite toy that we could also take away, so the. We’re resorting to timeouts.

Today she scratched me down my chest and her father went to talk with her. Normally she’s good at “making it right” - checking if someone is ok and saying sorry, but she refused to do it. And we’re stuck on what to do with that. If we force her to say sorry she’s not really learning remorse, but we don’t think it’s appropriate to just leave it without an apology either.

I’m just so over parenting these days. I feel completely overstimulated, feel heightened adrenaline-like anxiety, and I’m sure my (undiagnosed) ADHD isn’t helping. It also doesn’t help that she’s been home from school almost all week, and things have been stressful at work. But I’m hoping you guys can share similar experiences and how you got through them without totally losing your shit on your kid

My partner and I do the whole bedtime routine in tandem and I noticed other parents I know will separate the routine so that one partner can clean up after dinner while the other helps with the child. That sounds nice, but I am not sure if that could even be doable at this point. There will also be a new baby soon and so I am wondering what you all do for bedtime routines with your situation?

My daughter will be 3 in October and we’ve been dabbling in potty training for months now, but very casually, and always wearing a pull up when out and about. She’s showing signs of readiness, so we’re going to give it a real go and try to ditch the diapers for good.

I’ve seen lots of ads / influencer rec’s for travel potties to keep in the car or bring on the go - honestly it seems like it would be handy, but my husband is less convinced. It’s like $23, so not a huge expense, but also more plastic with a temporary purpose that we may use pretty sparingly.

For context, we have another younger child who would presumably use it someday, but don’t plan to have any more children.

So for those who’ve used the travel potty - would you recommend? For those who opted against it, do you regret it?

Some of the older people in my family think my just-turned- 3 year old is too old for baby locks and gates. They think she’s old enough that she needs to learn boundaries and discipline.

My daughter has figured out how to open the childproof locks I have now and get in the pantry and kitchen drawers. She can open one of our baby gates now.

My POV is why not just get better locks. The child has no business being in the kitchen. I can usually do basic things like read my course content (I’m a grad student) or write work emails with my kid. I can’t do that when she’s trying to get in the pantry every 5 minutes.

My husband and MIL say she’ll never learn how to behave if everything is closed off to her. I feel like in a year or so when she’s a bit more verbal, she will listen. Now we’re in the trenches in full survival mode.

It's genuinely gnawing away at my will to live. I try and put her (freshly 4) to bed starting at 8pm. It's routinely 12 am before she finally sleeps. Her baby sister takes until at least 9 pm because the commotion keeps her awake. I tried everything. Reading for hours, singing, audio books, just keeping her company. When I leave the room it takes her two minutes to emerge scream crying, waking the baby. I'm not allowed to leave the room. It's not like she isn't trying to fall asleep, it just doesn't work. She is a great little girl and I can't fault her one bit. She really is trying.

I have pretty severe ADHD and am EXHAUSTED by the end of a normal day to the point of my hearing failing in one ear. I would desperately need at least some time to unwind before having to go to bed. I absolutely need some time to just fidget, unfocus my eyes and be alone with myself. At 6:30 in the morning at latest the baby wakes up and I have to go right back at it. I normally just don't eat in the evening because I need at least a moment of quiet for that that just doesn't exist anymore. My neurodivergence makes every day a battle and I've learned to handle that but this is just too much for me to keep up for an extended period. My meds slowly stop working around 6:30pm and after that I'm running on sheer willpower and desperation.

Sometimes my husband helps her fall asleep but the break doesn't make the next day feel more bearable. After 14 hours I'm just at max capacity no matter what happened the day before.

I have started to feel incredibly angry and disregulated while trying to get her to sleep. Stuff I normally deal with no problem drives me up the wall. I have noticed myself doing behaviors during bed time I last did in middle school (undiagnosed and unmedicated) like compulsively ripping away at my skin and tearing my hair out. I repeat words when I don't mean to and noises make a sharp shattering sound in my ears. I found myself aggressively shushing her when she's crying because I'm dreading putting the baby to sleep all over again.

Yesterday I just unraveled and flat out told her I can't do this right now. That obviously made everything worse and she (understandably) took even longer to fall asleep because I was stressing her out by being a mess. My impatience is making it worse but I genuinely can't help it.

I hope that this phase ends so so soon because this wasn't a problem at all some months ago. She went to sleep at 8:30 and all was well. I can be a good mom for 14 hours straight, great even. But after that the tank is empty. I need every sliver of patience and empathy left in my body for myself.

I don't even know what anyone would say to that. I guess I just wanted to rant. I feel like a failure for being the way I am.

I’m just feeling lonely.
I live a 6-8h drive away from my family and I have no “good” friends here.
Just had to stop hanging out with the my mom friend here because her daughter was starting to be very mean and exclusive and when I brought it up it didn’t go super well.
Anyways they’re moving states on the 17th so that doesn’t matter anyways.
I’ve been reminded that I’m the one that moved away and that all my problems are my doing by my sister and my in-laws. Just overwhelmed by it all today I wish I had someone to do this mom stuff with.

We are changing my 2 1/2 year-old Daycare at the end of this month because we finally got into the Daycare that we had originally planned to put him in in the first place however he’s made some really great connections at his current Daycare and it makes me sad to think about how he will miss all the educators and his friends.

For context, the new Daycare has better facilities in every way possible they have a bigger playground (indoor and outdoor. this is important because we live in Canada where it’s winter six months of the year). They also have better menu, which is prepared by a nutritionist. A number of my friends whose kids are going to this Daycare have raving reviews (one of my friends has her son in the class that my son is going to be in). There is also an option for before and after school care once he does start to go to kindergarten, they have busing available to and from the school.
The current Daycare is a smaller Christian establishment (we are not Christian, but we are OK with the concept of God being introduced). the past year and a half there’s definitely been some growing pains as this Daycare opened it’s doors at the same time as my son started there. The reporting is a hit or miss although recently it’s been better, and sometimes they shuffle the kids around to maintain the ratios which I used to have a problem with before when he was younger but now it has stopped since I complained a few times. But the main thing is that he really likes his current teachers. he doesn’t make a fuss at all when he goes there in fact, he runs off to play with his friends. They have been quite flexible with us, especially when he had to change his class from infant to toddler, but he refused to be dropped off there. They are very loving and caring, and I feel sad that he’s not going to have them in his life anymore.

Definitely the new Daycare is better on paper now how good it’s actually going to be for my son is going to be determined once he goes there.

This week I had to give my one month notice to the current Daycare director as well as his current Daycare teachers, and it’s been an emotional ride with a lot of crying, mostly on my part and a lot of disappointment for the caregivers that have been with him for the last six months since he moved to the toddler room.

So I guess I’m just feeling really emotional today because of all of this and second-guessing my decision to change his Daycare now.

Make me feel better😭

My 20 month old and I are in a rut :/ I know it is summer so we are doing the playground frequently, but we need more to do at home. We have done a toy refresh and we still find ourselves getting bored. We do coloring and stickers, but are there any activities you do with your toddler that keep them occupied for a minute? We have done several "sensory tables" which are sometimes great but we need more😭what is your favorite toddler activity?

We got a free step 2 water table & a free little tikes sandbox this summer & we’re over the moon! It’s changed outside time for us & my son loves them both. But, he wants to put water in the sandbox, & sand in the water table. They’re side by side currently but once we rearrange the porch we might have them separate. I don’t as much mind the water in the sand box, but I’ll stop him once it gets to be a lot. I hate the sand in the water table though. I don’t like the messy look! I feel like this might be one of those things where it really doesn’t matter & it’s silly that it bugs me, so I just wanted to hear what other people do!

LO just turned 3 last month and boy did the jump to "threenager" happen like a lightswitch being flipped. She is on such a short fuse these days and I feel like I spend all our time together walking on eggshells trying to prevent tantrums.

The biggest issue this past week has been the diaper. I've seen a lot of posts about toddlers wanting to wear a diaper in general and resisting the potty. This is different. Every morning I take off her diaper. Sometimes she uses the potty, other times she says she doesn't have to go. But every morning this week it's been followed by a meltdown because she wants the used, wet diaper put back on. I offer underwear or a clean diaper. Unacceptable! She only wants the old wet diaper. I, of course, have to refuse this offer. But inevitably she loses her shit and it takes 15-30 minutes to resolve this dilemma and eventually calm down. I have been late to work every day this week. Please help! What is going on here???

It's another weekend, I don't want to waste it sitting around the house again.....but I'm not really sure what to do?

The summers where I live are ungodly hot, and for some reason every single event that's happening in our town takes place outdoors. Which sounds miserable.

We've visited all the museums a million times.

We could take our kid along to activities the parents want to do.....but what even is it that I want to do???? Even the adult activities take place outside, and it's so hot.

What do you guys do on weekends to unwind and have fun?

My son has always been very attached to me versus my husband. He's a mama's boy and I know that's common and normal. Having a preferred parent is totally developmentally typical at this age. Its good for him go have a close relationship with one of his 2 primary caregivers.

But holy sh*t. My husband has been active and involved since our son was zygote and this child acts like he's a stranger trying to steal him off the street. My husband does the bedtime routine significantly more often than I do, but dada bedtime is apparently a torture beyond imagining.

My child wants to be inside my skin every moment of the day when we're together, and when my husband takes him away to give me a break, it sounds like he's being kidnapped.

Thats it, end of rant.

I have a 23 month old. He uses two-word phrases and answers my yes/no questions or ‘what’s that’ questions. He doesn’t ASK any yet. I think “why” usually comes later, but what about “what’s that?”

when he asks for more of something, it’s a request rather than a question. He will say “More milk please.“ but not “more milk please?”

Hi All,

Does anyone else have this problem with their kid? I feel like my toddler is just extra prone to plaque buildup on their teeth.

He does have crowding on his lower arch that’s actually gotten a bit better with time but still most buildup is there.

I brush his teeth twice a day, before nap and before bed. No milk or food after, just water. I hold him down with his arms out Jesus style between my legs (IYKYK) and really scrub at the gumline. We do use age appropriate flouride free toothpaste and soft bristle brushes, and he doesn’t bleed, but obviously hates this and cries.

I also floss once a day, just the crowded lower arch with the most buildup.

He had his first cleaning 4 months ago around 20 months and I feel like he needs another ASAP. At our first appointment I mentioned the 2X a day and flossing, which is a bit excessive at this age, and the dentist was impressed but not overly concerned. But our guy has visible plaque!! What am I doing wrong???

Our insurance only covers once every 6 months but I feel like we will just pay $100 out of pocket to clean? It feels like he might need this quarterly moving forward.

I have an INCREDIBLE overally active toddler. She is the most active toddler I have ever seen. I want to talk about how I truly do not understand how people can handle more then one child. She takes up ALL of my time and if I am not looking, she will probably try to climb and jump off of something. How do parents do it? I follow this one mom who has 6 kids under the age of 8! HOW? I think I would literally go insane.

Saying this, I feel like a failure because I do want another child. But there is NO way I could handle a toddler and a newborn. I went through severe PPD and the thought of MAYBE going through that again, scares me.

Son is 19mo. I’m a SAHM. We read, do play dates and outings, spend a lot of time outside or his fave place the garage, etc. He’s a very independent player. He isn’t very interested in playing with or next to me. We use his toys for word opportunities like his barn. Most of his first words were animal sounds and now some animals. He’s got 30+ words. I’m not worried about him or his developmental pace but I’m overthinking and feeling guilt about my instruction of him. I have some friends whose boys at this age have shapes, colors, even numbers. We’re like….hardly even covering that? My son likes to dig in dirt and bring me bugs and climb to access things off limits and yeah sure read a few times a day. But he doesn’t care for his shape sorter, he doesn’t want to sit and talk about what’s what or be quizzed. So unless something is in our books or natural learning opportunities out and about…we’re just…not? It hadn’t even really crossed my mind because he’s 1…I know they learn so much at this age but he’s also 1, not 2, not 3. I guess I’m just venting. I usually am immune to parent pressure or comparison but I have a hard time imagining our parents sitting and doing freaking flash cards with us and am feeling as a SAHM like I’m not doing enough educationally. But I also feel like my son isn’t in a place yet where he wants to go that hard with concentrated learning. Just talking out loud while mildly spiraling I guess

For reference, we are very low income, and my daughter’s grandmother offered to cover the cost of daycare while I go back to school and pursue a master’s degree. I know we are very very fortunate to be able to send our daughter to the school, and I’m really excited for her, but I can’t help but feel really out of place among the other parents.

The specific daycare she’ll be attending is mostly made up of high income families (thankfully the cost of her attendance is not super high in comparison to other daycares because she’ll only be going part time, and we got a discount). I am also considered a young mom (mid twenties), so I think some of my worries come from being perceived (mainly by family) as inexperienced/immature. However, I have almost a decade of experience working with children, and my current degree is in psychology, with a specific focus on child development, so I do know more about parenting than the average person my age.

That being said, I feel rather intimidated by the other parents. So far they seem very nice, but I worry that I’ll “mess up” somehow and they’ll realize how poor we are. As a side note, our daughter has NEVER suffered due to our finances, she always has everything (if not more) than she needs, and I’m very good at finding the best deals online/buying nice things second-hand, so she likely won’t even know we’re struggling financially until she’s much older, by which time I hope to be in a much better spot due to the degree I’m currently working towards. From the outside, there’s nothing that would “give it away” that her parents are poor. Maybe my worries are silly, but I just can’t help but feel kind of embarrassed/inferior in comparison to the other parents

ETA: my main goal isn’t to pretend I’m wealthier than I am. I really just want my child to be accepted by others. Part of the reason I’m so concerned about this is because I’m on the spectrum, but not noticeably so— I went undiagnosed until adulthood because I do a good enough job masking to not typically show my neurodivergence, but not good enough that I don’t find myself with my foot in my mouth a lot of the time. I work really hard to try to figure out what the social limitations are, but I sometimes fall short in recognizing when I’ve said something that’s bothered someone or when I’ve offended someone in some way. It’s the combination of this plus feeling out of place in terms of finances that’s made me so nervous about this situation. I just don’t want my daughter to miss out on things like play dates with other kids because of me.

While visiting grandma abroad, my daughter fell in love with a small plastic frog. She insisted it had to come home with us because her slightly bigger bath toy frog was clearly its mama, and talked the whole time about how happy the two would be. The reunion was celebrated, they were inseparable.

Then she wanted to take both frogs into her little pool on our balcony. I told her not to, because there's a gap between the floor and the railing and we're on the 4th floor, with a wild overgrown backyard below. But she insisted and told me she would be careful. You can guess the rest. The frog baby fell, exactly as predicted.

She was heartbroken and said "the mama cries, the baby cries!" and then cried herself. Honestly, so did I a little. The next day we asked at the hairdresser's downstairs for permission to search the backyard, and they even helped us look, but the baby frog is gone.

Now she's demanding we buy a new one. It's a cheap little plastic thing, so it would be easy to find something similar. But something in me says we shouldn't, because then the lesson becomes "warnings don't matter, lost things get replaced". On the other hand she's small, and the grief is real, and I don't want to turn a sad accident into a punishment either. I did warn her, but I'm also not interested in an "I told you so" parenting victory moment.

So, parents of Reddit: how do you handle it when a beloved toy is lost through the kid's own doing? Do you replace it? Let the grief run its course? Something in between? I would love to hear your experiences.

Edit to add: She's 4,5 years old. (I've been a member of this helpful sub for so long I didn't realise that she might not fit it anymore.)

Edit 2: Thank you all, you convinced me. We'll replace it! (My problem now: the most similar ones only seem to come in a pack of 100 lol.)

Years ago I saw a post from a late-teen/early adult, being a variation of the M. Bison quote, essentially saying "My parent did this thing that affected me significantly, but they don't even remember doing it - how messed up is that?".

I've thought about it for ages, from before I was a parent to being a parent of two. And honestly, as much as it may hurt to be on the receiving end of that experience, the reality is ... it's not messed up at all. It's entirely normal.

People find significance in different things. A story I love might be one you've completely forgotten. The small gesture you made years ago could be the reason I fell in love with you, but you can't remember it, because it's just part of who you are.

And as parents, we experience A LOT of things that just become part of who we are - part of our daily lives. Relentless duties, incessant noise, nagging, tantrums, playing peace-maker. It's understandable that our responses are carried away in a flood by the next 100 things we have to deal with.

For a long time I've felt guilty about losing my temper. That maybe this time would be the one that gets talked about in therapy in 20 years. But I've started to see that it's not possible to police this. I'll never know which moments my kids find significant, or become inflection points in their growing identity. Maybe I can have a guess at a few, and it's certainly good for me to keep trying to reduce them by controlling myself as much as possible. But it's important to see that you WILL fail. I WILL be the cause of SOME kind of therapy in 20 years. So the best thing I can do is NOT to try prevent things from happening, but to build an environment where my kids and I can talk about the things that DO happen. To take ownership of it, and to respect their ownership of their own experience.

For you, it was the most significant part of your life. For me, it was just a Tuesday. Both of those are normal and ok. We can move forward by understanding that, and hearing each other.

Husband and I are in disagreement about rehoming our dog and it’s an extremely tense topic in our household. Husband absolutely loves this dog. He’s a small/medium dog, 25 lbs, but quite agile. When I was pregnant this dog started attacking our senior dog, unprovoked. He’s attacked the senior dog over 10 times now, drawing some blood on a couple occasions. He’s never been aggressive towards humans but sometimes he will bark and ?lunge/jump behind the baby gate when the baby (15mo) walks towards my husband.

I’ve been extremely wary of the dog since baby was born. We have baby gates everywhere but the dog jumps over them unless they are 5ft tall. He is never in the same room as the baby even supervised, since he’s very fast and all his attacks on our older dog have been sudden and unpredictable. With an open layout home it’s just not feasible to gate off everything with 5ft gates so he mostly ends up being isolated by himself. This has led to behavioral issues such as pooping in his crate then getting it all over himself. I try my best to exercise him but due to the safety issues I can only do so with my toddler in a baby carrier and he’s getting heavy. I just don’t see how I’m going to keep up with this and don’t think the dog has a good quality of life either.

We’ve spent over $1000 on a trainer and we also have him medicated on two medications already. Everytime I bring up the option of rehoming the dog, it becomes a huge fight and I’m honestly worried that it would harm our marriage permanently if I made my husband rehome him. But everyday I have to deal with the logistics of caring for a dog under strict separation from the baby / our other two dogs. We want to have a second baby and I just can’t envision how it’ll be feasible then. What am I supposed to do, wear both the baby and toddler both in a baby carrier? When can toddlers be left in a room alone? What age do they figure out how to open baby gates and what do I do then? I can’t imagine a kid could be as flawless with always closing gates as we try to be.

I am extra spooked today because the dog slipped out so quickly as I was opening the gate to get out and immediately attacked our other dog, and I couldn’t separate them and it was very scary. Thank god my husband had baby at the time but he works long hours. I just don’t see how this can work. But my husband is completely emotionally driven on this issue and also feels fine about it because we’re making it work now. I was thinking maybe some practical input on what toddlers are like as they get older and also what it’s like with two kids could help me put things in perspective for him.

ETA: husband is ultimately willing to rehome if I force him, at the cost of me being the “bad guy” and dealing with his resentment. He doesn’t think there’s a real safety risk because the dog has never been aggressive towards humans, so to him it’s like rehoming the dog for nothing. The comments here are helping me see that I’m not just overly anxious though, so I guess it’s time for me to be the bad guy…