Jenny sporting her first cloth diaper.
Tim and I have been parents for just shy of 12 (!) years. We love our kids dearly. They are great fun, and parenting them is truly a joy.
For the most part.
But parenting is also complicated and confusing. There are soooo many decisions to be made, and we are pretty much left to our own devices to figure things out. (What on earth did parents do before the internet?)
Breastfeeding or formula?
Circumcise or non-circumcised
Co-sleeping?
Cloth or disposable?
Pacifier?
How many kids to have/how far apart to space them
Vaccinate or not?
Babywearing or strollers?
Home school or traditional school? (Or something in between?)
When to start kindergarten for kids w/almost late birthdays
Make child stick with activity they claim to hate, or let them quit?
Stay-at-home parent, or both working full-time?
Tim and I have made all of these decisions, and more. (OK, I admit that I don’t think we ever considered home-schooling.) Some choices we made without even really needing to discuss them (following AAP recommendations for vaccinations). Some choices we made after much, much discussion or debate (whether to send Allie to kindergarten or “Young Fives” since she was not yet 5 when school started). Most were somewhere in between.
So far, I think I’m happy with all of the big decisions that we’ve made. Has everything gone perfectly so far? No, of course not. But the kids are happy, healthy, smart, and doing well in school. There are a few things I wish I could change (I wish I hadn’t given up on nursing Adam at six weeks, wish I had known how easy cloth diapering was with my first instead of my last, wish we had instituted “lights out at bedtime” with all three kids LOL) but overall, I think we’re doing a good job.
Of course, since Jenny is only three, we’ve still got to make some of those decisions for her. (No idea when we’re going to send her to school, but that’s a blog post in itself.) And with the teen years still ahead of us, I’m sure there will be many new things for Tim and me to discuss and decide.
But I think we’re up to the challenge.
I think it’s just terrific that you two parent as a team. That approach is a decision you made together very early on and it’s probably already had a big impact on your kids. They probably give up trying to “divide and conquer” pretty early because it won’t be successful, and you’re also setting a good example of a man/woman relationship. As a spinster I’m able to observe objectively from a distance and I’ve seen situations where one parent completely dominates the other. The kids suffer. I don’t suspect that happens in your household.
BTW, she looks like quite the style maven in her neon pink!
I totally agree with you on the challenges of modern day parenting!
Did you choose Young 5s for Allie? I think you did? Were you happy with that?
And correct me if I am wrong but isn’t your state moving back the Kindergarten cut off date starting this year? Will that alleviate a quandry with Jenny?
Amazing how we muddle through and still our kids turn out ok
Book, you know what I always said…..”if it works….do it!” Seemed to work for you kids. Well, more or less!!
Me again…and I completely agree with The Gal. It’s not completely one-sided in my family, but most of the time, I mull over the options, present what I think we should do, and have tacit approval from the other. That’s way better than public disagreement, but not as helpful as talking it through together. If the kiddos need something or want to register a complaint, I seem to be the CSR for The Parental Authority and they meet me at the door when I get home from work, no matter how many hours they’ve been ten feet away from their other parent!
I don’t know how to fix it, but I try to avoid making it more lopsided.
Upcoming issue…drivers’ ed!
Katy – We did end up sending Allie to Young Fives, and she absolutely thrived. You’re right that our state is shifting the kindergarten deadline earlier. The year that Jenny starts, it will be October 1 – a few weeks before she turns 5. We will actually have the opposite conundrum that we had with Allie. Allie hadn’t been in preschool from 3.35-5 years, Jenny, on the other hand, will have been in preschool since age 2.5 and will be ready to start school. I believe that the stay will offer the option to send kids to school if they would have met the old deadline, but I’m not sure we’ll want to send her straight to kindergarten, either. I anticipate some conversations in the next 18 months.
vlnvla – We have plenty of what you describe in my family, too. I think about the options, we (maybe) discuss them, and I get the OK. Tim and I are on the same page for most things, so it’s not often that we really debate an issue. And my kids are happy to go to Dad with their problems just as often as they come to me.
(Drivers’ ed?! How did they get so big?)
We’ve definitely had (and are still having) these discussions, although I admit we never actually had the conversation on schooling (we both just somehow knew we’d homeschool) and we didn’t discuss how many kids/spacing until after we’d had them all.
How about what age to send a girl to overnight/weeklong camps?
Which sleepovers to let her go to & which do we skip (lack of faith in the parental oversight)?
Sometimes, our biggest problem is finding the time to discuss things with how busy we are with the day-to-day kid stuff!