That’s another way of rationalizing your (self-admittedly) lazy behavior.
It might become that… Seriously, I think of the things my daughter excels at (reading, chess, drawing, talking, analyzing, story-telling) and notice that the AIs are growing faster than her on every front.
Not to say that that should top me. But it will be, I don’t know, disappointing.
She’s a better socially-adjusted human than I’ll ever be.
As for school, she was fortunate enough to be in a grade school where the principal, who taught the advanced-math class, promoted her to the advanced²-math class, which was online and self-paced. …and then in high school, MN has a PSEO program where you can enroll in actual college classes for an actual college grade and actual college credit (none of that fake stuff like with AP courses), so she was able to take advantage of that.
As a toddler we had one of those alphabet foam mats “permanently” sprawled across our floor…and I taught her what a pentagon and hexagon and heptagon and octagon were…and she was involved in extra-curricular activities throughout grade school & high school…you don’t need to go nuts doing these things, just do more than nothing.
If you’re not anti-religious check out https://fathers.com/ (they certainly don’t push religion down your throat, but it does influence some of their points of view). The basic premise is that “quantity time with your kids is quality time” so don’t worry about what you’re doing with your kid in so much as that you are involved with parts of their life.
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Cool link, thanks for sharing
Y’all up in here needing a parenting manual, when I got step-kids asking me deadpan to the face if it’s true that I’m a whore with an anger problem.
The three R’s of parenting Respect, Responsibility, and Reason.
The primary means of raising a child is through casual observation of their parents.
Shoot, now I want to know.
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Whore: No, just a serial monogamist. The specific question was something like “Is it true that daddy didn’t know about [insert ex boyfriends name]?” Which was confusing, because she had real material to work with and somehow still screwed up the story.
Anger problem: I’ll ask you what I asked her “Does it seem like that’s true?”
Answering a question with a question?
Now THAT’s good parenting!!
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Oh, and I don’t want you to think that I’m advocating “helicopter parenting”. You don’t need to micromanage their life, and it’s okay if they fail at something.
I’ve been a good role model in that respect. My kids have seen me fail miserably.
I really appreciate all of these thoughts by the way.
I think I share that philosophy, “quantity is quality time” and generally try to look at my kid’s life in terms of time-spent-on-Earth. I try to be present for some % of that, and try to give her something meaningful and engaging for some % of that. The latter is difficult with the pandemic.
I’m sort of the primary parent, in part because my wife works more and in part because my wife just isn’t obsessed with being a “good” parent. What my wife does the most is sit with her rewatching cartoons at night. I don’t think anyone would automatically call that “quality time”, but they talk about what is happening on the screen, which I think instantly turns it from wasted hours to decent time.
I think I pretty much agree with everything I’m reading on this website. I’ll sit down with it some more. Agreeing is one thing, but being reminded of it is still useful.
Today she was desperately hungry for me to play lots of pretends with her, and I was just sick as hell of pretends. Again, if it weren’t pandemic o’clock she’d have friends for that shit.
Anyway, I was thinking of getting her into a D&D game. My wife spends an insane amount of time playing Vampire on Discord, so it seems like it might bring them and me together???
Do you guys have experience playing RPGs with your kids?
We have extensive experience with playing video and board games with the kids, but I don’t think that many are RPG’s specifically,
“I’m Colonel Mustard!!!”
That doesn’t count?
Well, for really little kids, you can do stuff like get giant foam swords and play knight vs. dragon.
that’s more fun than rolling dice
I have a couple foam swords, still wrapped from christmas. Because being the only child of 2 families means getting buried in so many christmas presents that it’s not even worth giving her all of them.
Yeah, I have been discovering old presents that I forgot to actually give the kids… from 5+ years ago. But hey, the toys are still fun! Let’s play with those little kid toys, kiddos!
My kids only play the hard-to-learn strategy games because they got the competitive/bad-sports gene from their father.
I am not kidding either, Oddie has a predictable set of noises, sighs, and phrases that he uses exclusively when losing a game.
…
“Oh come on!” “Are you kidding me right now?!” “Ughhhh.” smashes controller down on the floor
“Damnit Oddie, get it together!” (Me)
I meant role playing with your kid, not your girlfriend.