Your daughter’s gonna be just fine. Maybe she’s like some of the posters here and really does want some time to herself to decompress before having to engage socially with the rest of the family, so you’re giving her just what she needs. Feeling like you’re the worst parent on Earth is #1 on the list of ways to tell…

They grow out of it. If you let them live that long.

I ruined my favorite sneakers by wearing them when I was pregnant with my first kid. Stretched the hell out of them and even buying new insoles didn’t help. I was so bummed.

It was informally Midland-Odessa when we lived there, so it was just a matter of time before they grew together. Before the kids and I got there, my husband told me about being late for work one morning because a tumbleweed had shut down the highway. It was 2001, the economy there was tanking, and that may have been…

Wouldn’t everyone? Including you? Make shit up, he’s 3. :-D

Something I found with my son, his father, was that if you asked too open-ended a question, the multitude of responses caused mental gridlock. So, “How was your day?” had too much data to choose from. So the response was likely to be a rote, “Okay.” or “Bad.” But asking, “Learn anything cool today?” meant that…

The conversation will be more conversational and less transactional

IKR? I have kids and grandkids, they even live with me, and my eyes just rolled right out of my head.

I’ve heard about schools doing that, but with all the families I’ve known (I’m on my second generation of them) I’ve never seen it happen. Not even to my daughter, who was an opinionated gifted girl. And I’ve lived in Texas a long time, the originator of “teach to the test”.

Don’t forget to tell him about your day, too. I think I may have learned that from Mister Rogers.

Absolutely. That’s how we roll at my house already, so I’m hoping he’ll just see that as normal. My husband and I are both in school now, so he was really looking forward to starting school just like Nana and Grandpa.

I’m sorry, that must really suck. Is he frustrated or actually bored? I was a little of both (because I was gifted but also have ADHD) and that was the one thing I didn’t like about school, which I otherwise loved. I hope your school has good supports for kids so he can find it valuable instead of something to hate.

The “water stores” was the important clue. Man, I do not miss living in Midland!

I hope. I have college loans to pay off and those folks are gonna help me do it once I get my family therapist license.

It actually has mostly with my kids, too. We always treated them as smaller, less-experienced people and so as they grew they shared their interests with us. Which really helped when my grandson and son got into Pokemon Go last year. Grandson thought I was magic since I knew all about the Pokemon. I couldn’t believe I…

That’s the nice thing about grandkids. You think, “Oh, wait. I remember this part.” And, hopefully, you do it better the second time around. Or at least you fuck them up in a different way than you did their parents.

It’s a 4-pack, so $5 apiece.

It’s a 4-pack, so $5 apiece.

Happens all the time. Now you can chuckle fondly when somebody else does it. Probably tomorrow.

Happens all the time. Now you can chuckle fondly when somebody else does it. Probably tomorrow.

“How to stop spanking your child?”

When my grandson comes home from school, I usually greet him with, “Hey, buddy. How you doing? Did you learn anything interesting today?” But he’s 5 and so everything at school is still interesting to him, and he’s glad somebody wants to know. I know it’ll pass but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.