To Re-Title Parenting Blog

Genderqueer 30 yr old trying out this 'parenting' thing

[beardedmrbean]

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.

[cookingwithroxy]

I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.

I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'

[hunter-rodrigez]

Like... come on man, 310 pages isn't even what I would've considered a particularly long book as a kid.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I don't understand why they're freaked out by book length. A kid can read one 300-page book or six 50-page books and it's the same amount of reading. Scholastic's bread and butter has traditionally been long, LONG series of relatively short children's books; it's known that bookworm kids like to read a lot. Nobody blinks an eye at a kid reading all sixty-ish Animorphs books or a bookshelf's worth of Goosebumps or The Babysitter's Club. But if the pages are stuck together into thicker books then suddenly that's difficult for a kid? 300 pages isn't even all that big for children's fantasy.

[inoshirok]

My trick when I get stuck in this conversation is to mention that I went from reading The Hobbit and A Wizard of Earthsea when I was 5-6 to Stephen King’s IT when I was about 8. Never fails to shift the focus away from the length of the books.

[sailermoon]

james baldwin was so right when he said “the children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

[ismenes]

When my son was about to turn two, strangers would offer condolences. There’s a collective cultural dread of toddlers, who get described more like animals than people. Kids in their "terrible twos," I was warned, are illogical, unregulated, and feral. "Good luck," people would say. "He'll grow out of it."

I'm lucky: My son is a very easygoing kid. But I remember the first tantrum he threw for me. He was standing by our front door and asked to go outside. So I opened the door and grabbed his shoes. But as soon as he stepped onto the porch, he pointed back into the house.

"Inside," he said.

"Okay," I said. I picked him up and brought him inside.

But as soon as I shut the front door, he pointed outside.

"Outside!" he said.

You know where this is going. We went back and forth, inside and outside, again and again. He got more frustrated. And I got more frustrated. Eventually he wound up straddling the threshold of our house, sobbing. When I tried to comfort him, he screamed at me. "You go wherever you want!" I said. He just got madder. I felt trapped, convinced he’d concocted the whole episode as a pretext to unleash his rage at me. It was ridiculous. I consoled myself with the thought that he was just being a toddler.

But later I kept thinking about him wailing at our front door, one foot inside, one foot outside. His misery wasn't unreasonable, or trivial, or silly. My son was experiencing the agony of wanting two things that were impossible to have at the same time. What a fundamentally human sorrow! My son wasn't being a toddler; he was being a person. Adults may not walk around howling, but that same pain rages within us. In that moment, as a father, I was powerless to solve my son's problem. I told him he could go wherever he wanted, but of course I was wrong. To be where he wanted was impossible.

Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett

[soundlessdragon]

My kids are still quite young (under school age), and I've been careful to try to make sure they only have kind role models. This has resulted in typical mean language being absent from their vocabulary, such as "you're stupid/ugly/I hate you", but they've started inventing their own ways to be mean lol, such as "you're not my brother anymore, you're a stranger to me now", and hearing that out of a toddler's mouth is so cutting lol

[bethanydelleman]

Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)

[janeeyreofmanderley]

oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.

[obi-troll-kenobi]

I raise you:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Italian Winegrower And His Daughter by Francesco Baratta (1590-1666)

[jellycatstuffies]

The Nine Outfits Of Bartholomew Bear

Ko-fi / Instagram

[iosonomer-blog]

[sashayed]

[redlipstickresurrected]

Julie Curtiss (French, b. 1982, Les Lilas, France, based Brooklyn, NY, USA) - Mary with the Medela, 2024, Paintings: Acrylic, Oil on Canvas

[rhubarbspring]

(source)

[dancing-crow]

thank you yes, I did need this today

[drmajalis]

Too good to stay on twitter

[theweirdwideweb]

“Parachute Day II” by Chelsea Corinne

[conspiracydawg]

sight I saw in san francisco, twice: gaggle of tiny children leashed together being herded along, everyone in hi-vis

[mikkeneko]

[sparecrew]

[rimonoroni2]

i’m always thinking about that news story where a three year old boy who wandered away from his house and ended up in the middle of the woods was found by this local great pyrenees farm dog who herded the kid back to his unrelated owners house. and the guy was like. whose kid is this

[rimonoroni2]

that dog must have been like. hmm. this isn’t a goat. some human must have left their puppy behind by accident. i have to bring this to management. surely my owner will be able to sort out whatever has occurred. that kid was like i’m all alone and scared and omg a big fluffy puppy is here to help. and that fucking farmer looking at his dog like. who’s toddler did you steal???

[common-houseplant]

Missing toddler who walked 7 miles alone through Arizona wilderness led to safety by rancher's dog

The rancher traced the boy’s steps and discovered that Buford, an Anatolian Pyrenees who normally patrols his land and wards off coyotes, ha

[jarchaeology]

parental controls on the internet should go the other way around. my mom should not be spending her screen time this way.

[afieldinengland]

just overheard a mum in the museum ask her seven-year-old child ‘shall we say bye-bye to the skull?’

[unionizecatgirls]

Honestly there's nothing a child can do in public that's as much of a disturbance as an adult yelling at them