The Parenting Thread

Yup. My sympathies. I mind when mine got worms years ago, happened the same weekend my wife decided to break her ankle.

Ooof, that's tough. We don't get many (certainly not as many as we'd like given the grandparents live 5 mins away..) but usually one or two a year.

Man what a mess. When ours had worms we all took a wormer and I had never felt so ill afterwards.

Back to school for the eldest (13) today after his bout of Covid and the morning hasn't been without incident.

First kicked off as he was told his mum was dropping off. We've had to do that as punishment due to his disrespectful behaviour. He then told his little brother to shut up (he's 3) whilst arguing with us which wound me up like you wouldn't believe and then said stop acting like dickheads about us right in front of him.

We obviously went mad at him and then I told him off for standing on a little mini football which is his brothers, he continued to do it so I tried to take it off him which he resisted. I managed to hit it out of his hand and he turned around and shoved me.

Couldn't believe how things escalated so quickly and it took everything I had not to shove him back.

He ended up storming out after my other half told me to let him go and funnily enough his friends were just walking up past the house. Couldn't help myself and made some passive aggressive comments to his friends saying could you look after him as he's a bit emotional this morning and has just swore at his parents and shoved me.


Got a right earful (rightly) from my other half about how I've made a mistake and I'm the adult so I should act like one. Now the dust has settled, feeling ashamed of my behaviour but at a loss to understand where his lack of respect for us comes from. He's got a comfortable life, he does quite well at school and has no issues with friends.

Sorry for the rant just needed to vent and the other half has gone to work, leaving me to stew!

Just because you're the adult doesn't mean you don't have buttons that can be pushed.
And children are expert button pushers.

I can see where she is coming from, but I assume your other half has also in the past flown off the handle at something? When it happens at ours neither of us appreciate the other giving us into trouble. Like you say, you know it was wrong. Now we try to just get the other to acknowledge it and not give an earful.

Has he maybe just discovered the masturbating and it's playing merry hell with his emotions?

I'm forever getting a row from my wife when I lose the head a bit but as my boy often tells me, she's often worse than I am! Apparently they have blazing arguements when I'm at work sometimes and I think it's her guilt when I do it manifesting, so she gets on at me.

It's all good fun.

Not that I'm above reproach of course. I'm a bad tempered dickhead half the time.

Don't think he was concerned about school he was trying to go school early. Defo think it's a Kevin the teenager moment it's just the worry that we feel we'll never get him back as it has a knock on effect with schoolwork.

We’ve not had any in the 5 years the kids have been around. We’ve had 2 nights away from them in total, a couple when just one of us has gone away.

Only one set of in laws and they live 4 hours away and are not the healthiest. We’re not keen on babysitters and no one we know that could do it lives nearby.

If I'm being honest I'd rather leave it to the other half to resolve as I end up saying something that tends to make matters worse.

It's not fair on his mum though who is absolutely the rock in this house. Not sure what can be said at the moment, any form of punishment is going to result in a similar response to earlier but he's got to know that it's not the right way to behave.

Just been to pick the girl up after her covid jab. Its hard to tell whether shes feeling rough because of the jab or because of the ensuing panic attack or both but they had plenty of them queued for pickup when I got there.

Still, the alternative is actual covid so...

Her symptoms this morning suspiciously mirrored the ones we had the morning after but within minutes of phoning the school she was on the sofa, playing on the playstation and eating wotsits so...... the jury is still very much out on that one.

Im sure it was just a panic attack yesterday and swinging the lead today but, annoyingly, its impossible to tell.

Ergh.... good point.

Eldest (17 yrs) came back from a playing a gig last night and was buzzing so we ended up having a kitchen party (me, wife, 17 and 15 yr olds)! Made some space and had a pretty random playlist of old skool disco, German rap (187?) and balkan house. Fuck knows what Spotify's aggregator will make of it.

Knocked it on the head around 3am. Good time had by all and a nice way to have a laugh and monitor the alcohol intakes.

Would recommend.

Yeah that's awesome to hear. I'm looking forward to similar evenings with my kids- we already play cards and take turns on the music late some evenings but they're not quite on the booze yet!

Mrs hedben is much, much less of a drinker than I am, and she's more against under 18s having a glass or two as well, so there may be some disputes on the horizon for us there... our own upbringings were polar opposites in many ways. I first got stoned with my mum, for example, whereas the wife's upbringing was very much "all drugs bad, just say no". Might get interesting if/when our own kids start pushing the boundaries.