u/0beach0

Hi everyone,

I realize this may be partly a parenting question, but I feel like as curly haired people maybe you're the right ones to ask.

My daughter is 8 years old and has 3a curls, just like me. She tends to get a lot of frizz around her hairline, but otherwise has pretty waves and curls. Up until about 6 months ago, she left her hair routine solely to me (shampoo + conditioner + detangling spray 3x a week, silk pillowcase). I felt like I was able to make it look great most days, often with a style that braided or clipped away the frizzy bits from her hairline and then just gently finger combed the rest of the curls. I would also sometimes do a French braid.

6 months ago, my daughter began insisting that the hairstyles I was doing for her weren't nice, and she was going to handle her own hair. Some days, she brushes it out into an enormous frizzy mess. She has alternatively tried slathering on hair creams and gels, and then it looks super greasy. Sometimes she just wears it down and doesn't bother to touch it after she gets up in the morning - it's usually very knotty and matted. Other times she grabs random sections and puts them into a partial ponytail. I love my daughter and she's beautiful. But what she is doing to her hair just looks awful every single day.

That being said - my daughter is confident and popular, and has many friends. However, her friends (including one with curly hair) all show up with nicely styled hair every day at school. We live in the US South and she goes to private school. I feel somewhat mortified with how her hair looks, and I'm trying to tell myself it has nothing to do with me and if she's happy with it, I guess I can be happy too?

But I'm also wondering if I should be providing more input or control here. My own mother (typical southern mom) would never let me walk out of the house with unkempt hair, but we also fought tons and don't have a good relationship. I don't want to make my daughter feel badly about herself, but I also wonder if it's my job to be providing more forceful guidance about how to style her hair. Or if I should just take a backseat and trust that she'll figure it out eventually.

My parents are mostly MIA from mine and my kids lives. We live 10 minutes away, but see them maybe 4-5x a year only when and where convenient for them. They might be willing to watch our kids in an emergency, and they might not (ie they wouldn't watch our older kid while I was giving birth to our younger one. I had surgery recently and I didn't even bother to tell them or ask for any help.). My parents are wealthy retirees who spend every single day golfing at their country club and then most evenings at some sort of wealthy, bored boomer social event.

That being said, my parents do text us 1-2x a week. Asking how we are doing, asking us to send pics of the kids etc. I generally deprioritize responding because (1) I'm busy (it's hard to be a parent with zero extended family support) and (2) I'm never sure how quickly or how much to respond, because my relationship with my parents seems so superficial. If I don't answer them within a few days, they usually follow up and ask if everything is okay. They do seem genuinely interested in hearing what's going on and seeing some pics of the kids, but I can't quite reconcile that with the fact that they would prefer to play golf than actually spend time with us.

Anyone else in this situation?

I'm curious how you handle other kids behaving badly in a public space when their behavior is affecting your kids.

Case in point: I took my kids to a large children's play center today. The center has numerous areas, including an outdoor area that features a garden and sand pit with toys. In the center of the garden and sand pit, there's a water dispenser to fill up toys or watering cans for the garden.

There were 2 boys (I would guess around ages 6-8) who were hogging the water dispenser. They were holding toys right up to the nozzle so the water was spraying everywhere. Anytime another kid came close to try and get some water, the boys would ignore the kid and continue dispensing water for themselves and spraying it everywhere.

My kids wanted to water the plants. I told them to approach the boys and ask if they could have a turn (worth a try?). When my kids did that, the boys told my kids no and then proceeded to try and spray them with the water. I approached the boys then and said it was time to let someone else have a turn and that they needed to back away from the water dispenser. At that, the boys also told me no, and proceeded to spray me. I then raised my voice and told me to back away from the water dispenser right now and not spray me again. The older boy laughed and said "you're not my mom" and sprayed me again. I asked where his mom was, and he shrugged and said he was here with his grandmother. He followed up and told me I was "'mean" and an "idiot". I was aghast.

At that point, I started to consider my options. I felt like I was really giving my kids a bad lesson here - that someone aggressive and poorly behaved can monopolize a toy and everyone else needs to back off.

I tried to look for their grandmother, who was nowhere to be found.

I considered warning the boys that either they were going to back off or I was going to physically pick them up and remove them from the water dispenser, but I wasn't sure if it made sense to actually put my hands on another kid and follow through (this is what I would have done to my own kids - physically remove them from the situation - although alas, obviously my kids would never be this poorly behaved).

I wondered if I should simply respond back to their insults with some of my own (both boys were very overweight) and that would shock them enough into compliance, but maybe that's childish and unproductive.

I found an employee and explained the situation and she also tried to talk the boys into moving away from the water dispenser, but they refused. She said she was going to call for a manager.

At that point, I decided to just give up, and my kids and I went on to another part of the play space. My kids both had a lot of questions about why the boys were behaving that way and why nothing was being done to fix the situation.

I've had a few of these types of situations before (very poorly behaved kids who don't listen to an unknown adult trying to correct their behavior and their behavior affects other kids' right to use a public space) and I'm never sure what to do. What's the right move here?

My oldest is in private school (elementary) at an expensive school (~$40k tuition). She has 2 teachers in her classroom, and then 6 specials teachers (gym, garden, foreign language, etc).

I always give Amazon gift cards as our gift for the holidays and end of year. I donate to the parents association request for teacher appreciation (they do a catered lunch and give each teacher a Target gift card).

I'm curious what amounts teachers in this situation generally receive from individual parents for the holidays and end of year? Thank you!

Hello! Parent here :)

My 7 year old has a frontal lisp. She began speech therapy 6 months ago (45 mins once a week). Her speech therapist seems very good, and my daughter enjoys the sessions.

At this point, my daughter pronounces "s" and "z" words correctly nearly 100% of the time in sessions with her speech therapist and when practicing with me at home. However, in spontaneous speech, she's pronouncing "s" and "z" correctly around 20% of the time.

I practice with her every day for ~30 minutes, divided into 2 sessions.

I guess I am wondering how long to continue the speech therapy. Clearly we are making progress, but slow progress, and I'm wondering if my daughter (who is very self aware and able to produce the correct sounds when focusing on it) needs the weekly speech therapy session, or if her spontaneous speech will continue to improve just practicing daily with me.

The only reason I am curious about an end time frame for the therapy is that it is expensive for us ($120/session, completely out of pocket). The only in network places near us had no after school times, and my husband and I cannot take off work every week to get our daughter at school at like 10am, drive her to speech therapy, wait at the therapy place, and then drive her back to school. So, an out of network therapist with after school availability was our only choice. She does not qualify for speech therapy at school as I was told the lisp doesn't affect her education (she's still easy to understand and speaks well).

When I ask our SLP about when to stop sessions, she is somewhat vague and said we should continue until her speech is around 80% accurate spontaneously. That feels like it could be a while.

Hello! My oldest is in 3rd grade, at a secular private school in the South (USA).

She wants to have an end of year party for her classmates at our home, which I've agreed sounds like a nice idea. The plan is an outdoor pool party + lawn games + food for her classmates and their parents. Her class has ~15 kids and 2 teachers. She told me she wants to invite her teachers too. I instantly said no, just thinking there was no way the teachers would actually want to come (in the same vein that I'd never invite the teachers to her birthday party, as I assume the teachers don't want to spend every other weekend at a pupil's bday party). But my daughter insisted that one of the teachers came to another kid's party. That party was for a religious celebration hosted by the kid's parents. The teacher and the kid both practice that religion.

So... my inclination is still to not invite the teachers, as I don't want them to feel awkward declining an invite they don't want. I personally don't enjoy going to parties hosted by my workplace and coworkers, so I can't imagine her teachers want to come to this. My daughter suggested that she'd just ask the teachers if they wanted to come, but I imagine that puts them in an awkward position too of either saying no to an 8 year old or agreeing to something they don't want to attend. So.. I'm curious.. would teachers actually want to come to this party? Should we invite them and just let them decide on their own? Is it rude or weird to even invite them?

I'm the adult child here, and this is something I've been thinking about for at least the past decade.

My parents were decent parents growing up to me and my sister. While I don't look back on my childhood as super warm and loving, I know my parents really loved us, and that parenting is hard and they tried.

Flash forward many years, and my sister and I are now adults (me-40 and her-36) with our own families. My sister and I are still very close. We still live in the same mid-Atlantic state we grew up in, both about 15 minutes away from my parents. My parents are in their late 60s, and retired about a decade ago. My father ended up doing incredibly well in his last working decade, culminating in him selling the business he built for a huge sum. My parents have subsequently bought 2 additional homes (1 in Florida and 1 in a ski town), and split their time between their 3 homes. They spend their days golfing, playing tennis, skiing, socializing at their country clubs, and watching tv and reading. Their life looks pretty idyllic.

They barely help with our kids, but they are very kind to them when they do. About once a month, they offer to take my sister and my kids' for a set period of time (typically 2-3 hours). My kids have a blast during this time and love their grandparents. My parents send my kids cards for Valentine's Day, and thoughtful gifts for their birthdays and Christmas. When they are at their other homes or traveling, they will sometimes FaceTime my kids. They seem to like my kids, but they've been very clear that they already did their time parenting and aren't interested in any greater role in my kids' lives. To put this fully in perspective, they wouldn't agree to watch my older child while I was giving birth to my younger child as they had a pre-planned trip to Europe around the due date and they didn't want to move it.

I guess I just look at friends, coworkers, even my sister who has amazing in-laws and see grandparents who range from watching the kids every day (which I think is excessive and not right) to at least providing some regular source of childcare, and my parents seem to think that's absurd. My sister's in-laws pick up her child every day from preschool and watch him for 3 hours until my sister finishes working. My own parents have commented on how crazy this is and how the in-laws must have such sad lives if this is what they want to do every day.

I don't think my parents should be watching my kids daily (or even multiple days a week), but I can't imagine being a rich grandparent one day and needing 7 days a week to play golf and socialize while almost never wanting to watch my grandkids (and thereby help my own kids out).

Financially, my parents have not provided me nor my sister any support since college (they paid for our colleges), and have let us know that while we will inherit all their money at their passing, we will not receive any money before that. We will apparently each inherit $15m+. My sister and I have each asked for money a few times (for help with buying a home, for help with paying for camp for the kids, and for help with buying a car) and my parents have said no. We haven't asked in a while as we accept my parents decision at this point. I guess I just find this so perplexing. My sister and I are both solidly middle class - we own modest homes, don't live paycheck to paycheck etc - but we don't have a lot of wiggle room in our budgets for any paid for joy. We never eat out, we drive old cars, we carefully budget, we do most home maintenance ourselves, our vacations are all road trips etc. One of my kids has a pricey medical condition. We worry about money enough that it's annoying.

My parents have told us that they are doing the right thing - that we need to learn to live on our own and support ourselves, and it is a gift to us that they aren't helping financially. Here's the thing - I have my own 2 kids, and I literally cannot fathom doing this to them. I want to help them buy a beautiful home, be able to take interesting vacations, drive newer and safer cars, hire out some chores so they can have more time to spend on enjoyable activities and with their kids etc. I don't want them to be constantly stressed about money like I am. By the time I do inherit my parents money, I likely will have gone through all of the financially challenging points of being an adult (having minor children, paying for a house, paying for college etc) and my kids will be grown so the money won't have that much of an impact on me - which is exactly how my parents want it to be. My plan has been to just give most of my parents' money to my own kids at that point, so they can have a softer age 20-50 than I had.

Meanwhile, I feel like many of my middle class friends' parents scraped and saved to have some money to help them buy homes, and then my rich friends' parents just outright bought them homes.

I feel like as time goes on, I'm becoming more resentful of my parents. I'm posting here because I'm curious to hear my parents' peers thoughts on this. My own parents have commented a couple times how all of their friends feel the same as they do - they don't financially help their adult children and they don't watch their grandkids. Of course, I seem to see the opposite thing when I look around at my peers.

I'm okay with being told I'm a jerk and focused on the wrong things (but then I'd also like to be told how to shift my mindset here and not be bothered by my parents' choices). Or that I'm right to be upset (in which case, I'm also curious about how to move past my justified frustration).