u/parentingthrowawayyy

I grew up being moderately outdoorsy (lots of bike rides, but no hiking or camping) and always wished I’d had more outdoor experience. It’s hard to learn as an adult!

I’m raising my kids in my hometown and struggling to make the outdoors seem fun. Because of climate change it’s hotter and more humid than ever, June through August is pretty much indoor-only at this point. My kids hate going outside because they get eaten alive by mosquitos. Even when the weather’s nice, there is little to no outdoor infrastructure like bike trails or even sidewalks.

I was on a work call yesterday with people in the Mountain West who talked about summers being this glorious time of kids riding bikes, kayaking, etc and I was so jealous. I can’t help but imagine my kids going to college with those kids and being years behind in their level of confidence and excitement about the outdoors.

I feel like I may be overly anxious about this? In an ideal world, we’d live in a place with a thriving and accessible outdoors culture, but money and family are keeping us here for the foreseeable future so moving is not an option.

My youngest (5th grade) has a best friend who brags all the time. It’s all harmless - “oh, you got to level 4? I got to level 8 at that game! or “I’m in Ms X class because I’m smart and they put me with the other smart kids” or “my socks cost $50 which I bet you don’t even have, brooooke” or whatever. It’s not clear to me whether the stuff he’s saying is even true or not but that’s beside the point.

The issue is that my kid has started picking up this bragging and name calling too. He will even mimic the tone of voice. It’s wild. It annoys the shit out of me and I discipline him with consequences (time out, etc) every time but the more they hang out together the more it happens. This summer was obviously challenging.

I don’t want to raise a kid who thinks this behavior is OK or kind. But I also don’t want to demonize this friend because in every other way, he’s a good friend to my kid. And I don’t think he’s an inherently bad person at all! He just has a habit I find deeply annoying.

Do I just hope this gets better as my kid matures and finds other friends? Do I need to start directly addressing it when I interact with the friend? Say something to the parents? Try to coach my kid to address it with the friend? So far, just disciplining my kid when he does it hasn’t helped.

My middle child is going into eighth grade this fall, meaning in a few months he will need to decide whether to apply for the magnet program at the local high school.

This high school has two tracks: a magnet track and a non-magnet track. Kids in the two different tracks have some classes together during the day, but kids in the magnet track have access to more advanced courses and rigorous coursework. They also are more likely to stay together all four years, as opposed to kids in the regular track whose classes are constantly re-mixing each year.

My child is intensely introverted and very academically driven; their middle school experience has not been good. They have been unchallenged in easy classes and annoyed by kids who don’t want to be there and are disrupting learning. In my view participating in the magnet program solves both of these issues. My kid would be in a smaller program with other motivated kids who want to learn.

For some reason, my kid is refusing to apply to the magnet program and just wants to do the regular track. This makes no sense to me, but I’m genuinely trying to understand. I think part of it may be anxiety about being challenged academically or taking more rigorous classes that actually require effort. I also think they like being anonymous in their large middle school and are uncomfortable with having more people perceive them in a smaller magnet program.

They are really starting to demand control over their life and I want to empower that, within reason. But I think it’s crazy to allow a kid to be bored and unchallenged - not to mention purposely choose a program with objectively weaker academic outcomes - just to preserve their autonomy.

Should I insist they apply to the magnet? Or do something else? Please be kind, I’m doing my best to raise a happy and thoughtful kid.

I recently hosted an event for about 40 people, including 10 small kids. My house hasn’t been childproofed in years because my kids are all school age. We live in an expensive area with old housing stock, so we have a living room that’s the only common space in the house. Other than that, we have a dining room and then of course the bedrooms upstairs, none of which are big enough for the kids to really play in.

I found myself feeling really embarrassed at this event because the young kids had nowhere to play. We put out some toys in the living room, but the kids got bored and just wanted to run around outside. A lot of families in our social circle live in the suburbs and have giant basements with toys, beautifully, landscaped, backyards, or even a whole family room that’s just for toys. We have a tiny living room and a front yard that isn’t fenced and has random tree stumps in it.

Can someone talk me down here? The kids all seem to have a good time and no one got hurt, but I was surprised by how much shame I felt about not having a house that was really fun for the kids inside. Is there something I should do differently next time to give the little kids I’m hosting more of a fun play experience? I

I live in the city and my kids are older, but I wanted to provide some advice for my friend who’s moving to the county with young kids.

She values school above basically everything else when buying a house. Last year, RFES was about 5 points above Stoneleigh on MCAP proficiency but of course both were very high.

My friend is coming from Texas suburb where everyone has three car garages and lots of space. I don’t think she’d be happy with a townhouse or lack of parking for visitors. So in my opinion Stoneleigh makes the most sense for her. But of course she wants to make sure her kids (no learning disabilities or differences as of right now) will still get a good educational experience at Stoneleigh.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Edited to clarify: her husband will be working at Saint Joe’s so they have narrowed it down to these two elementary school zones. They really want to minimize his commute.

My youngest is going into fourth grade next year and the school has three classes per grade level. Kids stay with their class group of kids for the full day (even if they physically move to a different space in the building). The only time all kids in a grade are together is at lunch.

Since kindergarten my daughter has been in the same class as her three close friends. This has been tremendously beneficial for her social skills and confidence - she’s an introvert who has come of her shell more and more the longer she’s had this group of friends.

Class lists for this coming school year just came out and all three friends are in one class, while my daughter is in a different one. She is devastated. She’s convinced she’s going to lose these friendships and that she’ll be lonely in her own class, and has started crying randomly throughout the day whenever she thinks about starting school again.

My instinct here is to validate that this is tough, support her through the first few weeks of school, and if she’s truly miserable, then perhaps ask if she can switch to the class with the other friends. Another part of me thinks she should tough it out and build new friendships. But seeing how anxious she is about this really breaks my heart. Even if just one of the other friends was in her class I think my daughter would feel so much better.

What should I do? How big of a problem is this? This isn’t a kid who is naturally outgoing or socially confident so my top priority is supporting her in building these skills before she gets to middle school.

My youngest is 7 years old. Over the past two years of playdates, I’ve noticed that at least 50% of the time, her friends will come to our house for a playdate and then…get very upset when adults aren’t actively engaging with the kids who are playing? I’m so confused.

A few examples I remember:

1. Kid comes over and immediately asks if I can play house with them. I engage for a few minutes politely, since I don’t really know this kid yet, then make an excuse to leave the kid and my daughter to play by themselves. Kid gets extremely upset and is inconsolable about the idea of playing without an adult.

2. Somewhat closer friend comes over and the kids want to draw together. I direct them to the markers and butcher paper. Friend asks me what she should draw, when I don’t give her an idea, she gets increasingly distraught over not having any ideas and doesn’t want to draw anymore.

3. Third friend is scared to walk by herself to the bathroom (our house is not large or dark) and begs us walk her down the hall.

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What’s going on? Am I doing something wrong here, or are my expectations inappropriate? With my older kids, and even when I was a kid having playdates, having time without adults was so fun. The adults were never expected to be actively engaging with the kids, except for a very specific moments like serving lunch, etc.

I feel pretty strongly that kids should not depend on adults for constant entertainment/input, but also don’t want to overstep by addressing this behavior with kids who are not my own.

We live in a mixed income area with significant economic segregation when it comes to sports. Middle class kids do soccer, baseball, etc. The wealthiest kids here all do one very specific fancy sport (not squash or rowing, but something very similar).

It’s well known in our community that the culture around this fancy sport is bad. The parents are catty and overinvolved, there’s significant pressure to spend even more for private lessons, the kids who do this sport and get college scholarships for it all come from a private school known for prescription drug abuse and lots of sexual assault, you get the idea.

I had never known anyone who did the sport or even knew much about the sport itself when we moved to the area. As soon as we moved and I saw the culture around it, I swore that we would never let our kids do this. We didn’t want them around kids who didn’t share our values, nor did we want to spend time around the parents of those kids.

Then my kid tried the sport in his public school’s PE class and absolutely loved it. We agreed to a weeklong day camp to see how things went and… They love it even more now. They’re begging me to let them join the team in the fall and I just can’t get excited about it. I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to be a part of the whole culture around the sport in our community.

Is that a good enough reason to tell my kid they can do the sport for fun or during the summer, but cannot join the team? I don’t want to dash a middle schoolers hopes and dreams, but I just don’t want to be a part of this culture and based on what I’ve heard from other parents, I’m actually not sure my kid would be happy in that culture either.

I had a really happy childhood and have fond memories of family traditions for holidays. We would do the same thing every year for Fourth of July and those types of celebrations. I distinctly remember how comforting and familiar these traditions felt, especially once I became a teenager and everything around me was changing so quickly.

Now that I’m raising my own kids, we’ve had a lot of trouble sticking to any sort of routine year after year. Take this Fourth of July for example. We went to our city’s fireworks show last year and it didn’t go well. This year, we are just staying home and having hamburgers. I don’t want to sit in 100° heat for two hours waiting for a firework show where as soon as the sun goes down, I don’t feel safe and there is a level of chaos and disorderly behavior that I would be too anxious having my kids around to really enjoy.

If we do something different for holidays every year, is that as bad as I think it is? Or is the more important thing that kids are just having a good time, regardless of whether it’s giving them a sense of tradition?

I have two daughters, one is 6 and one is 8. The oldest has a vicious/explosive temper and it’s been like that her whole life. We used to think it was just the terrible twos, but she never really grew out of it.

My two daughters have also always had a lot of conflict. I’m starting to worry it goes beyond sibling rivalry. They have to share a lot because we live in a small house, and the oldest is constantly insisting she get to go first - using the shared bathroom, using the family desktop, or even wearing a specific color and insisting that my youngest cannot wear that color too. Sometimes my oldest will not even want to wear that color until she sees her younger sister wearing it and then decides to claim it for herself.

Beyond that, my oldest is constantly criticizing her little sister. She makes fun of her sister’s friends, interests, and personality quirks. The younger one mostly just seems to ignore it and is generally a chill, easy-going kid.

I would say about 60% of the time, the two sisters get along well and show genuine affection for each other. But 40% of the time, my oldest is angry, explosive, or treating her younger sister unkindly. I don’t see the same level of disrespect going in the opposite direction. It’s pretty one-sided.

I’m concerned that this one-sided nature means my oldest is actually bullying my youngest and it’s not just regular sibling rivalry. My youngest has mentioned a few times that her older sister is mean to her and always causing problems for the family. I think she’s referring to the explosive temper tantrums which, to be fair, are extremely frustrating and seemed to come out of nowhere. How do I tell the difference between sibling rivalry and bullying? We are obviously working on behavior support for my oldest, but in the meantime, I’m worried about how this is impacting my youngest.

My 14 year-old is pretty shy and holds her feelings close to the chest. We have never discussed anything even remotely related to romance.

I found an envelope sticking out of her backpack the other day and recognized it as one that had come from my collection upstairs. Written on the front was the name of another student at her school who isn’t in her friend group.

I truly have no idea what came over me, but I unsealed the envelope and read the letter. It was basically a confession of romantic feelings toward this person. I have never interacted with this person before and have no particular feelings toward them, but was mostly just shocked at the fact that my daughter had written that kind of letter. There was nothing wrong with it! It was just so surprising to read something so vulnerable from a kid who I feel like I barely know, despite all my efforts.

I tried to seal the envelope up, but it was really obvious I had opened it. My daughter called me out on it that night. I was honest with her and told her I had opened it, I read the note and obviously shouldn’t have, and that I was deeply sorry. She pretty much just shut down.

How do I fix this? I know it will take time to regain her trust, and I am fully in the wrong here. I feel ill about it and wish I could go back and not be so dang nosy.

My oldest has been refusing to get her learners’ permit for the past nine months. Her lack of driving is causing some serious challenges for the family. As she participates in more extracurricular activities and wants to hang out with her friends on the weekends, she is constantly requiring one of us to drive her. It has made me feel like a chauffeur, and I hate it.

When she turned 15, I was excited that she could make some progress toward getting her license and ultimately being able to drive herself and her younger siblings. But she just hasn’t shown any interest? I’m confused because when I was growing up, we got our permits the literal day we turned 15. To us, a permit meant a big step toward independence.

My husband and I are really split on this. He thinks that we only have a few more years to drive her around so we should just suck it up, and also he has concerns about the safety of drivers in our city, so he’s not mad to keep her off the roads.

I strongly disagree. Setting aside the very real logistical benefits that having another driver would create for our family, I don’t want my kid to be delaying one of these very important steps toward independence indefinitely. She’s definitely on the more immature side for her age (in terms of general interests & behaviors) and has required some big pushes from us in order to demonstrate the maturity her peers are demonstrating.

Should we push her to get a permit and eventually a license if she really doesn’t want to? Have any of you parented kids who got their licenses later in life? How did it impact them socially and maturationalIy? I don’t want to send a kid off to college who can’t drive, and I don’t think college is a good time to be learning how to drive in the first place.

My eight year-old spent a lot of of her formative years during Covid, where she was around me basically all the time. In the same time period, I also started following a lot of parenting advice I got on social media about giving kids explanations whenever you ask them to do something (for example: instead of “please take the dog out” I would say “please take the dog out before you watch TV, otherwise it will have an accident in the house and we will have to clean it up.”)

I think I accidentally trained my kid to only follow rules when someone takes the time to explain to her why the rule exists and why she should follow it. It has caused her some problems at school and on her sports team. I have since deleted most other social media and stopped following this advice, but the problem remains. At school, if she doesn’t think a rule should apply to her or doesn’t agree with it, she will argue with the teacher. She’s not doing it to be disruptive, she’s just confused about why the teacher won’t explain things to her the same way I will.

In sports, she is always talking back to the coach. He has flagged this for us as an issue we need to work on with her. Because she doesn’t really understand the game yet, if she doesn’t understand why she’s being given a specific direction, she will ask a lot of questions rather than just follow the direction or coaching. She doesn’t know how to just follow the direction and then ask questions later at a more appropriate time. Her coach interprets this as disrespect which she doesn’t mean to do obviously but I can see how it comes off that way. The other kids also get annoyed because these back-and-forths take up a lot of time.

I never wanted to raise a kid to blindly follow authority. But I fear I have over corrected. I don’t mind explaining everything to her, but other adults in her life do mind, and I don’t know how to make her more OK with not getting a full explanation every time. I also worry that the impact this is having on her relationships with other kids and adults will hurt her ability to have deep relationships.

Please be kind to me, I know I caused a lot of of this. What can I do at this point to fix it?

My 12-year-old just finished her first year on our local gym’s climbing team. I got an email about signing her up for next school year and I’m having some serious second thoughts.

Overall, she had a positive experience. She made a few friends, got physically active, and even got to participate in a few competitions, which she really enjoyed.

I have two big concerns though, and I’d appreciate a reality check on whether these two things are normal on a kids climbing team.

1. A chaotic and unstructured practice environment: because we live far away from the gym, about 50% of the time, I’d stay at the gym and just read a book near the main entrance. I noticed the majority of the kids practices were chaotic and unstructured. There were a ton of adults climbing after work, with too many people to be safe in fall zones (I’m a climber so I have a sense of this). The coaches would give the kids some problems to work on, and then the kids would independently work for about an hour. Coaches would roam around and give pointers, but a lot of the kids just spent most of the time lying on the mats or goofing off. Even the time spent on the wall seemed unfocused, and like kids just sort of trying random stuff to see what worked, with no learning or reflection.

2. Coaching: there is one head coach who is about 25, and the other coaches are all older teens. They don’t have any sort of certifications or teaching experience. They are nice to my kid, but informal in a way that makes me uncomfortable, if that makes sense? Like they’re trying to be the kids’ cool older friends rather than authority figures. I see this in the way they ignore misbehavior and team issues.

…..

I started climbing as an adult and have no frame of reference for what a well run kids team is. I’m comparing it to other sports teams which were much more structured, organized, and focused. I know part of climbing is meant to be countercultural, but the team is very expensive and I can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars per year for my kid to lie on the mats and get a few pointers from an 18-year-old from time to time.

Thoughts?

My younger two kids are five and seven. Because their toddler and preschool years were during the pandemic, they got used to an extremely rigid routine for basically every part of their day with them being home so much. The part that’s most rigid is bedtime, mostly because that was the only way I could stay sane.

Now, I’m worried this is not actually beneficial. We’ve had a number of incidents over the past few months where I’ve realized my kids have zero flexibility for a change in routine. My oldest wanted to spend the night at my mom‘s but was so anxious about it that we had to cancel. Then she was upset about not going.

On a different occasion, we were at a beach weekend with my sister and her kids who are similar in age to mine. The cousins were chill and easy-going about being in a new place and sleeping in a different bed. My kids were basically inconsolable and it kind of ruined the trip for everyone.

Is this just something kids grow out of, or should I be doing more? Is there something specific I can do to teach my kids how to just roll with the punches and greet a change in routine as an opportunity to be flexible? Even a tiny change like eating lunch a little bit later than usual or having a different kind of toast for breakfast is a huge issue for my kids, and I’m starting to feel like this sense of routine is really trapping them rather than offering them comfort.

Last year, my then 12-year-old daughter attended a summer sleepaway camp held at a college campus. The kids had to apply to get in and it was kind of a “nerd camp” situation. The camp doesn’t allow phone use so we received a few letters throughout the summer and it seemed like things were going well. When we picked her up, she was genuinely sad to be leaving and had clearly grown leaps and bounds in her level of independence and poise.

Until now, she had been counting down the days until camp. But then she offhandedly shared a story with me about something that happened last summer, I freaked out, and now I don’t want to send her back but am not sure if I’m overreacting.

What happened: some girls in her dorm were breaking rules about bringing back food from the dining hall into the dorm building. There was concern about bugs. It also seems that some of the girls had not completed their assigned bathroom clean up chores. The counselor, who was a student at the college where this camp was held, decided to do a whole group punishment. She spoke to the whole dorm very harshly, and then required all of them to sit in their room for an hour and stare at the wall. They were not allowed to talk to each other. My daughter tried to take out a book to read and was scolded again for not just sitting there.

As I type this, it sounds insane to be so upset about it, but this feels very off to me. Any whole group punishment, raises my eyebrows, much less one that just feels… Punitive? As opposed to restorative, ie the whole dorm goes together to clean the bathrooms. I am also confused about why the dining hall wasn’t managing expectations around taking food out of the building.

I think my biggest concern is that I heard nothing about this from the camp, so it seems like a 20-year-old was randomly doling out punishments without any sort of oversight or follow up from her supervisor. My daughter said she was really upset about it when it happened but had kind of forgotten until now.

Should I send her back this year? It’s highly unlikely she will have the same counselor, but my bigger concerns about the way the camp is run obviously remain.