Author Topic: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?  (Read 19653 times)

shelivesthedream

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #100 on: October 01, 2019, 02:32:43 PM »
I loved that post, thank you. I count myself lucky that ToddlerSLTD is not my friend's toddler. Not because my friend has an awful toddler (she's super cute and perky!) But because the luck of the draw meant that I got a child who cried today because some strangers looked at him, rather than the child who has to be physically dragged away from making friends with everyone on the planet.

You don't get to pick which kind of child you get, you just pray you get one you know how to handle. I can handle cripplingly shy. Boundless energy would kill me. But I'm pretty sure my friend feels the same way!

Hula Hoop

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #101 on: October 01, 2019, 02:44:52 PM »
You don't get to pick which kind of child you get, you just pray you get one you know how to handle. I can handle cripplingly shy. Boundless energy would kill me. But I'm pretty sure my friend feels the same way!

As luck would have it - I got one of each. Cripplingly shy older kid and energizer bunny extrovert younger kid. 

shelivesthedream

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #102 on: October 02, 2019, 04:35:40 AM »
You don't get to pick which kind of child you get, you just pray you get one you know how to handle. I can handle cripplingly shy. Boundless energy would kill me. But I'm pretty sure my friend feels the same way!

As luck would have it - I got one of each. Cripplingly shy older kid and energizer bunny extrovert younger kid.

Don't! I'm pregnant with #2 right now! :)

Frugal Lizard

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #103 on: October 02, 2019, 05:51:56 AM »
You don't get to pick which kind of child you get, you just pray you get one you know how to handle. I can handle cripplingly shy. Boundless energy would kill me. But I'm pretty sure my friend feels the same way!

As luck would have it - I got one of each. Cripplingly shy older kid and energizer bunny extrovert younger kid.

Don't! I'm pregnant with #2 right now! :)
  You will handle the child you get.  You learn as you go. 

tyrannostache

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #104 on: October 02, 2019, 09:48:38 AM »
I wanted to circle back to this topic with some final observations now that our friends are back home and have resumed parenting duties.

I solidly believe now that some of the struggles I see them going through are entirely self-inflicted. While they were away we had to watch a 13-month old for 8 days and we were much more hands off than they were. We didn't pick the baby up every time he wanted to be held, we didn't redirect him every time he couldn't do something, etc. And it was all fine. We were still attentive but you could see just in that week that he was learning to fuss at us less and become a little more independent. Now that they are home and hovering he is back to fussing all the time about something because their reaction to that fussing has reinforced the idea that if he fusses someone else will do the thing he wants for him.

It has been great to see this change directly because it does a lot to allay my fears that this is just they way having a 1 year old is.

I very much appreciated all the input from my fellow Mustachians!

Reaching back a few weeks to opine on this comment. I wouldn't read overly much into parenting style based on the the toddler's behavior with you. Toddlers are especially prone to fussing more at their parents than at non-parents. Parent the way that works for you, but don't judge your friends' parenting style based on a one-week sample alone.

Around 9-18 months, this happened a number of times with my older kid: she would be happy as a clam at daycare UNTIL I showed up. The moment she saw me, she would lose her shit. It didn't seem to be because she was sad to leave or had trouble with transitions--she wasn't trying to cling to anyone else there. I finally figured out it was because she had just been holding some things in all day. Her dad and I were the people with whom she could just let loose.

jpdx

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #105 on: October 07, 2019, 12:50:04 AM »
As a parent of a toddler, I consider it a small personal victory if I get to take a shower every other day.

trashtalk

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #106 on: October 14, 2019, 07:18:00 PM »
Every child and every parent-child dyad is a totally original and distinct thing.

Don't worry about having a baby until you have a *specific* baby.

StarBright

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #107 on: October 14, 2019, 08:01:24 PM »
As a parent of a toddler, I consider it a small personal victory if I get to take a shower every other day.

I don't know if you ever watched Parks and Rec - but every time I say I'm going to shower my husband still says "Treat Yo Self!". We haven't had a toddler for several years :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59lVs4dD4eM

readerokie

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #108 on: November 25, 2019, 03:10:04 PM »

I may not be wording the question correctly. I was having a hard time with the specificity. I definitely understand that you can't leave a 1 year old unsupervised in an unsafe environment. I guess what I'm more thinking of is whether people have solutions where a one year old can be left while you pee and there's nothing there they can hurt themselves with vs. peeing means you feel compelled to hand the child off to another adult. And with respect to struggling I was thinking along the lines of the baby is trying unsuccessfully to pull himself up or open a drawer and can't and instead of allowing him to struggle with it there is constant redirection or he'll fuss and our friends I guess don't want him to fuss? But then that means one of them is physically within 2 feet of him every waking second. I guess that's the granularity I was trying to understand better if that's typical.

I guess in my brain Im imagining that a 1 year old should be able to have an area where it can play for a couple minutes at a time (with appropriate safety measures) without an adult hovering overhead. Is that unrealistic?

It depends on the area, and the stage the kid is at. At 1 year old some kids may be walking, even climbing, which increases the risk of falling. And they'll definitely be putting everything in their mouths, including choking hazards you're not aware are there (like that button that popped off your shirt a few months back, a random paperclip tracked from the den on somebody's shoe, etc). They also have developmental stages where there's GOOD REASON for them to want a trusted adult around all the time. Clinginess is a survival skill when they're too young to identify/run from/fight off a predator. You can't rewire hundreds of thousands of years of evolution by 'encouraging independence.'

charis

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Re: Can parents opine on the neediness of their 1-2 year olds?
« Reply #109 on: November 25, 2019, 09:42:55 PM »

I may not be wording the question correctly. I was having a hard time with the specificity. I definitely understand that you can't leave a 1 year old unsupervised in an unsafe environment. I guess what I'm more thinking of is whether people have solutions where a one year old can be left while you pee and there's nothing there they can hurt themselves with vs. peeing means you feel compelled to hand the child off to another adult. And with respect to struggling I was thinking along the lines of the baby is trying unsuccessfully to pull himself up or open a drawer and can't and instead of allowing him to struggle with it there is constant redirection or he'll fuss and our friends I guess don't want him to fuss? But then that means one of them is physically within 2 feet of him every waking second. I guess that's the granularity I was trying to understand better if that's typical.

I guess in my brain Im imagining that a 1 year old should be able to have an area where it can play for a couple minutes at a time (with appropriate safety measures) without an adult hovering overhead. Is that unrealistic?

It depends on the area, and the stage the kid is at. At 1 year old some kids may be walking, even climbing, which increases the risk of falling. And they'll definitely be putting everything in their mouths, including choking hazards you're not aware are there (like that button that popped off your shirt a few months back, a random paperclip tracked from the den on somebody's shoe, etc). They also have developmental stages where there's GOOD REASON for them to want a trusted adult around all the time. Clinginess is a survival skill when they're too young to identify/run from/fight off a predator. You can't rewire hundreds of thousands of years of evolution by 'encouraging independence.'

Yeah, agreed. Bottom line, you can parent anyway you want but others may do it differently for very good reasons that really aren't anyone else's business.