r/raisingkids

Our little one just turned 1 and now that we're buying more stuff Im realizing it never really gets cheaper. Between a new high chair, activity table, booster seat, play furniture, and all the little accessories, it feels like everything costs way more than I expect. Is there a reason baby and toddler gear is so pricey, or am I just looking in the wrong places?

I’m really craving a community of good people that are reasonably organized, interesting, open, and active that includes children.

I have a young daughter and I don’t want weekends to solely focus on entertainment. And she wants to hang out with other kids more and more as she gets older.

I’m not interested in a Christian church, and the Unitarian church skews elderly. What am I missing? What does everyone else do? I’m a single dad and feel like we’re missing out.

I'm a new dad and I've realised most screen-time apps are built around restrictions.

We wondered if there was another way.

Instead of simply limiting YouTube or Roblox, we're testing the idea of children earning screen time through things like reading, educational apps, exercise and chores.

The more positive habits they complete, the more screen time they unlock themselves.

I'd love some honest opinions from parents:
• Would your child respond to this?
• What would stop you using it?
• Have you tried anything that actually reduced the daily arguments?

I'm genuinely looking for feedback before we finish building it.

My kid is 8 years old. She behaves awkward when some one comes home. She behaves too kiddish like 3 years 4 years old. She doesnt answer properly. She always plays imaginary games, speaking with in herself by changing her voice as per game characters. She doesnt wants to play normal games. She keeps crying for small things. She cant focus not even 25 seconds. Is this common in that age group. Can anyone help me in understanding this behaviour. How can we correct her or teach her.

I 29m have a 7-year-old daughter who stays with her mom M-F, and I get her on the weekends. For her birthday last year, her mom purchased her an iPad. The first few months I allowed her to bring her iPad when she came to stay with me. Over time I've noticed she is much too addicted to it, so I've set a clear boundary; no iPad at Dad's house. This has caused tantrums upon tantrums and ultimately, she starts wanting to go home nearly immediately when she's dropped off on Friday. It's stayed this way consistently for a month a half of weekends. I've done my due diligence in attempting to keep her busy with other things on the weekends as well, but she craves her iPad. Do I allow her to bring it again? Do I get her in some type of counseling? Her mom allows her to use the iPad any time she wants without structure or boundaries and the attempted implementation of structure at my house is met with a lot of resistance. How do i approach this situation?

So no, I am not a parent, but am not sure where else to get advice. My boyfriend’s nephew (9) stole from me today. I have a small business selling trinkets and jewelry that I keep inside of boyfriend’s grocery store. Today I was sitting nearby when I saw his nephew put something in his pocket. Later, his dad found a fairly spendy ring he had taken from my display. About two weeks ago, he took $300 from his dad’s wallet to try to win a church donation competition. So I knew to watch him, but never thought he would steal from me.

I am very hurt and angered by this situation and feel the need to have a talk with him. I generally try to avoid disciplining these kids because they are not my own. I know I’ll discuss respect, hurt, feeling unsupported, and letting him know that he made me feel like he thinks I’m dumb because I wouldn’t notice. I was also going to touch on wanting to do things with him, but feeling afraid I couldn’t trust him around my things: in my house, car, near wallet. I also wanted to explain if there were things he really wanted we could work something out. I just really want to impact him enough to make him stop doing stuff like that and realize his actions have consequences.

Just wanted to add: I’m autistic, I have a tough time talking to kids because I struggle to relate/find topics. We haven’t ever gotten super deep, but have spent a lot of time together. I have known him since he was a baby.

Thank you

I have a 4 year old and a 10 month old. My partner works shift work so I'm on my own at bedtime at least half the month. I have had help from my parents who hang out with the baby while I put the older one to bed, which has worked great... but when I've done it on my own it's a disaster.

Oldest goes to bed at 8, usually falls asleep in about 30 mins but CANNOT fall asleep unless I or my partner are in the room with him. Putting on audiobooks or music doesn't work, he just leaves his room to find me.

Baby will not fall asleep unless I'm right next to her and wakes up within 20 mins of me leaving every time. She also doesn't like to go down for the night until about 10pm. Due to her Velcro ways, I also can't put her in a jumper or pack n play to entertain herself while I put the older to bed. She will scream. She will also ONLY sleep with me, no one else.

Please tell me how you do it! I have on occasion been able to keep the baby quiet in the room while the older falls asleep but its rare as she's usually wide awake and ready to party.

They're also technically supposed to share a room but between wake ups and bad sleeping habits, baby sleeps with me, older in his room.

In a jam, and I’m sure this isn’t totally unique if anyone can help me. My wife and I married in 2024, and I officially adopted her daughter over a year later. She is my daughter too, as far as I am concerned, and daughter loves me and accepts that; no issue there. However, her and mom lived with grandparents for the first 5 years of her life. My wife didn’t have many options after the fallout with the biological father. Since moving into my home (2 hours away) my daughter had to acclimate to not only having a new family, but also missing her grands. The first year we let her stay over for Christmas break/some summer days etc. but, grandads alcoholism from these life changes, along with age, began taking the stage. And the more I’ve seen and heard of him, the more I am (mom also) dead set on daughter not staying with them alone. Grandmother is warm and loving to her, but fails to follow our rules, gaslights about her husband’s drinking/safety, and creates anxiety for daughter about not seeing her this past year.
She is welcome to stay in our home, and has a couple of times for a couple of days. And always has a mental breakdown right before leaving because her and grandad are so codependent. They’ve both personally mocked me to my face and behind my back. I can forgive that, but it’s getting out of hand and they refuse to have conversations with conclusions. I feel for my daughter, and she’s confused. We don’t have free time to come see them randomly for a day. And I have my own two boys 9/7 here half the time also.

TL;DR 9yo daughter cannot stay with grandparents that live 2 hours away because of unsafe conditions (alcoholic grandfather). Although she spent her first years of life there. How do we explain to her why it was ok when her and mom lived there (which it really wasn’t) but saf-er with mom there.

I hope this doesn’t come off as a jumbled word salad. She’s currently crying about this and we’re stressed out.

Eleven years old and he is coping in school fairly well, not doing badly but definitely not great, and so a couple of lessons to fill in some holes was all that was planned. The tutor was only about 15 minutes into the lesson when he found that the child's knowledge of fractions had a serious flaw from around 4th grade.

I am not angry, I am in awe and shocked at the same time

I used to think my job as a parent was to correct every mistake.

Lately, I've noticed something different.

The moments when my child opens up the most aren't when I have the perfect advice. They're when I stop trying to fix everything and simply listen.

Sometimes children don't need another lesson. They need to feel safe enough to tell you what's really going on.

I'm still learning this every day, and honestly, it's harder than I expected.

Has anyone else realized this too?

My kid does ok at school. She studies without prompting when she has tests, and does her homework on time without prompting.

However, it seems she's spending all her free time on her phone & seems to have lost interest in reading as a hobby. She hardly reads anymore except it's homework or for a test. I find myself complaining about her phone use & she gets upset easily once it's brought up. I've tried to set a rule that no phone after school till she's done 1hour of reading/ study, but somehow gradually it has been ignored.

Am i being overbearing? Should i trust her to get the job done when it needs to be done? She does fairly well in school (As, Bs & Cs), but i think with some effort she can do better.

All of these are listed for sale on my whatnot. Check it out! I can also bundle a few just reach out to me on there!

The more I learn about parenting, the more I realize that many behaviors we call "bad" are actually just part of childhood. Children get overwhelmed. They get frustrated. They test boundaries. Sometimes they don't need a punishment—they need a calm adult who helps them understand their feelings. I'm still learning every day, but this mindset has changed the way I respond. What do you think?

she doesn’t want to do anything. she barely can play independently for more than 20 mins without coming to show me the littlest thing. it’s always: “look”, “watch this”, “come see what i did”, or “do you like it?” all she plays with is legos and magnet tiles. otherwise, she acts bored. i have her do a reading and math assignment every weekday, about 5-6 hours apart, which takes a total of about 45 mins to an hour. this is mainly to give her something to do since she acts bored all the time, but also to prepare her for 2nd grade.

i also want her to read more, which she doesn’t want to do. again, since she acts bored all the time, i’ll suggest reading. no, she doesn’t want to. we reached the point of bribing her with a $10-$15 lego set every other friday if she can read 30 non-chapter books in 2 weeks. i made her a cool chart she can fill out and everything. i give her 1 hour of ipad time for every 1 book she reads daily. 2 books = 2 hours, but that’s the cap on screen time. to help, a few days ago, i pulled 60 books off her bookshelf that are her current reading level, sorted them, and let her pick what she wants to read when she wants to read it throughout the day. i don’t put pressure on her. she’s read 2 total books from those piles… today, she pulls a book off her shelf she’s read 473 times and says, “i’m going to read this.”

she doesn’t want to go outside, get dirty or sweaty. she still rides a bike with training wheels and rides a scooter incorrectly to the point of having to “take a break” every 2-3 mins bc her “leg hurts” - despite her father and i trying to show her how to correctly ride it. the other evening, we were barbecuing and there were some kids a few houses down who were riding their bikes and scooters around their cul-de-sac and i encouraged my daughter to join them. she was going to at first, then decided against it when i told her to not go into anyone’s house. the next day, she said she’d changed her mind bc, “what if they weren’t nice to me?”

things that require minimal effort she’ll ask either myself or her dad to do for her. the most recent example happened last night: a skirt on her build-a-bear had come completely off and she asked her dad to put it on for her instead of just doing it herself? she’s more than capable of doing it. other things she doesn’t even want to put effort into TRYING to do it herself. it’s always “can you do this?” i’ll show her how to do it several times, walk her through it several times, and watch her get so irritated and make comments like, “idk why it’s not \_\_\_\_\_” or “i’m trying but it’s \_\_\_\_\_”. it’s just so exhausting.

she also does this thing where if her father and i are having a conversation she’ll start singing and get progressively louder or get an instrument from her room and start playing it within 5ft of us. if i’m talking directly to her she’ll start making noises at the dog or completely change the subject to something completely random and irrelevant.

and everything she does is in slow motion. she’s still in a car seat and i kid you not, it takes her a solid 60 seconds to buckle her chest buckle and the ones that cross over her legs. then when she’s reminded to speed it up a little, she does this thing where she starts breathing heavily and moves her hands around wildly but with very little actual speed…

despite all this, she excels in school and makes friends easily. the way she is at school and at home seem to be complete opposites. i just don’t know how to promote independence and confidence in herself here at home.

My son lives and breathes basketball. He's out in the driveway every single day. Rain or shine. The kid is dedicated

But chasing balls after every shot is killing his practice time. He wants a portable shooting machine. I looked at the big name brands and nearly had a heart attack. Some cost as much as a used car. That's just not happening

I found one which is significantly cheaper. Actually, it is within the financial reach of an ordinary family. Of course, it's not the same thing as the $6K machines used in high-end training centers. However, I don't need anything professional

I just want something that works. Something that catches the ball and passes it back so he can get more reps in. Something that holds up to daily use.

Has anyone here actually used them? Does it do the job?