Other People’s Kids.

Everybody knows that other people’s kids aren’t as quite as amazing as your kids. The main problem is that you are “other people” to everybody else. Realising that your kids are “other people’s kids” to everybody else is the first step to managing other people, and their kids. 

Comparing kids

Comparisons can start very young. Most new parents

Support Networks

People say that it takes a village to raise a child. You don’t live in a village, so according to people you’re screwed. Lucky for you people don’t always know what they’re talking about and sometimes they just say things that they’ve heard other people say. Parents have been successfully (and not so successfully) raising children without villages since the industrial revolution (about 250 years ago in case you were wondering). You don’t need a village with a butcher, baker and electric torch maker – but you do need other adults to help you raise your kids. You can’t do it alone and you probably can’t do it with just one other person either. You need help. 

Kids TV

The thing about kids TV is that it can deliver the greatest of what TV can be and it can also be the single most mind numbing experience parenting can throw at you. Bad kids TV sucks! Luckily, there’s some great stuff out there and you can enjoy it too. But before we think too much about which TV is best, lets go back a step. 

Should your kid watch TV?

Many parents worry about their kids watching TV. Just like everything else that you can worry about as a parent, there are good reasons to be a little bit worried but some people take it way too far. Your child will grow up in a world full of screens

Plan Scam

I’m Vicki. I am a planner. It’s my work and my life, and without planning I would never get done all the things that I get done. I planned to write this blog post between feeding two ice cubes of pureed pumpkin to my little man and his nap time, knowing now (after much practice and observation) that he will play happily for the approximately thirty minutes I need for a first draft.

I plan a lot, but I did not make a birth plan. It came as a shock to me too. When the time came – I had finished work and had planned a five week stretch of ‘nothing planned’ until my due date – I sat down to think about this. Of course, I had planned this planning time in my first week of maternity leave, in addition to packing my hospital bag and reading all the books people had given me.

Different & Bad

So we all live in an open and tolerant society where we respect peoples’ differences and we know that nobody is, or should be, exactly the same as us. Except that we don’t really. We actually live in a society where most people think that most of the time – but just you wait until a parent runs a game where every child is the winner. Or a 4 year old boy turns up to a birthday party in a dress. Or a parent wants to say a prayer before a birthday cake. Or there is one game for boys and another for girls. Somebody will have a problem with it.

Father’s Day

What would I like for Fathers’ Day? I’d like to be treated like a real parent all the time, by everybody. Certainly, it’s not a social problem as big as racism or as urgent as domestic violence, but today seems like a good day to talk about it.

Most dads have had the experience: “Oh, you’re babysitting your kids,” says the lady at work. “Aww, it’s nice to see a dad taking the children out,” says a stranger in line at the bakery.

Sharing

Sharing is when other kids have to let you play with their toys. Sharing is not when other kids play with your toys, that’s stealing.

Ha ha ha, adults laugh. Now let’s replace some words.

The Olden Days

The worst thing about the olden days is that you were alive when they happened. You weren’t just alive, you were driving and going out at night. The olden days are any time before the birth of whichever kid is talking. For kids born today, the olden days aren’t before computers or the internet. They aren’t even before home ADSL and WiFi that let you watch YouTube in bed. Nope, the olden days are before smartphones with quad-core processors were given away with a 12 month phone plan. John Howard is a historical figure now, so are Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh and Jeff the Purple Wiggle.

Advice About Advice

Yep, that’s right, we’re about to give you some advice about getting parenting advice. Somebody with an arts degree would probably call this meta-advice, but we don’t need to use fancy words here. Our advice is:

Listen to the advice you get.

Go with the advice that works.

You get a lot of advice when people learn that you’re a parent. It seems like everybody has an opinion about children. It seems that way because it’s true. No matter if people have raised 11 children singlehandedly on a farm in outback WA or

First Kid-Free Night

The first night out without kids is a HUGE deal for new parent couples. Not all new parents are couples. This article is about people who are.

One of the greatest ways other people can help new parents is to look after the kid while the baby-shocked parents go out and do something that isn’t kid related. The first time this happens can be a bit like the first time you did the special dance that made the kid: scary but amazing! VERY often the parents will feel really uncomfortable about leaving the baby with another person – even their own parents.

“What if he needs a….. I dunno biscuit?”