Jul

3

By CinnamonOpus

4 Comments

Categories: Adoption

Learning, Not In Any Book

There are things I am learning and things I still need to know about parenting, and most of it is not to be found in those baby books that everyone reads (and is often terrified by). I get a lot of information from friends, neighbours or experience with kids I know. But some… well, I haven’t got it yet. I just hope it comes soon.

  • I have no idea what to feed my child when I bring her home. I hope somebody tells me.
  • Explosive diarrhea (a.k.a. “bumsplodin”) is going to happen. Don’t kid yourself.
  • Soothers are made for parents, not babies. Because it works like a plug and keeps the baby yelly noises in, thereby helping keep parents calm. (So I bought, like, EIGHT of them.)
  • Embrace the random.
  • Kids will pee on the pool deck at swimming lessons. No amount of rubber pants is going to help.
  • All kids hate all foods — except for, say, 3 completely unrelated things, like cheese and french fries and lettuce — between the ages of 2.5 and 4. Psychological tactics don’t work, bargaining doesn’t work, punishment doesn’t work. However, kids can survive quite happily on those 3 foods, so just stock up and ride it out.
  • Do I really NEED baby laundry detergent?
  • It doesn’t matter how clean you keep your house, babies learning to crawl will find and eat whatever specks and schmutz you have on your floor.
  • If you buy the toys that make the noise, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
  • I need to make a list of medicines and what they are used for, and stock up. I have nothing right now.
  • Talk TO kids, not AT them, and actually LISTEN to what they say. Their language development will be huge, and they actually behave better because they LIKE to be listened to, and they ENJOY participating in conversations.
  • If you’re going to hand out punishments to a misbehaving child, make them things that work for YOU. For example, if you ground a child or take away TV privileges for a week, then you’ve just got a crabby child that YOU have to deal with all week long. But if you make him clean up the dog poop in the yard all week, or pull weeds… then voila! They are punished, and YOU get something done.