23 Comments

I'll never forget the feeling of when we took our (now 9-year-old) son home from the hospital just a few days after he was born. "You mean they're just LETTING US TAKE HIM HOME???!!!!!" I was just astounded. After all the care and precautions you take in the hospital, during the birth and immediately after, the nurses just put him in the car with us and said, "good luck!!" Still blows me away!!! Loved this post.

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author

it's TERRIFYING. it's like "who's going to tell us when we're doing something wrong now???"

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for the first few months, the baby has that covered

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After that, I'm sure the people sitting around you on airplanes be delighted to help out; also, That One Aunt has some thoughts she thinks you should be aware of.

(To be clear, none of these people should be telling you anything about parenting unless asked.)

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I don't have children, but I had similar situations when I was teaching - what was the rule in my classroom wasn't always the rule in other classrooms. I stole a ton of ideas from people in this community about classroom rules/policies - and, for high schoolers, "treat them like adults until they give you reason not to, have the rules be clear, and explain the reasoning behind the rules" really smoothed most of the concerns.

As did occasionally breaking the rules, but requiring they clean up all evidence if they wanted it to ever happen again, which I thought of as, "don't tell your mother! But...." situations.

Anyway, all of this leads to my parenting advice, from somebody who spent many years dealing with the outcomes of other people's parenting - "if you're thinking about how and why for this, you're already better than three-quarters of parents, at minimum, so don't worry!"

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author

That’s a terrific bit of parenting advice.

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Nov 7, 2022Liked by Scott Hines

And then you get to the playground where you have to explain to your kids that your rules and other kids' rules are different sometimes!

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author

Ohhhhh yeah. “Alex gets to do it!” “I’m not Alex’s dad, I’m your dad”

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Nov 7, 2022Liked by Scott Hines

I'm more often on the receiving end of the subtle judgement in "I know those kids aren't wearing shoes, but you still have to" type of comments.

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When my daughter was three and wanted candy as a snack, I told her I had a rule against that.

There is a picture of my second born at 18 months sucking on a lollipop. I redid all my rules once I had another kid.

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author

The second kid is more Mike Tyson’s “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”

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founding

oh no

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Nov 7, 2022Liked by Scott Hines

But the best part is when Mom and Dad don’t realize they have a different rule for the event in question.

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Nov 7, 2022Liked by Scott Hines

Nope. Nope. Nope.

One of the first things Mrs DG and I agreed on was that while our children were going to be raised by a lawyer dad, there would be no appeals court.

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founding

They figure that one out early. My daughter loves to tell on my wife to me, like I'm going to side with her against whatever grave injustice her mother has inflicted. I have yet to do that once, but hope springs eternal.

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Hi Scott, what about implied oral consent?

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author

You’re going to jail.

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You can always get the kid(s) therapy as a graduation gift.

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You laugh, but I find that money spent on counseling by a third party has been money very well spent with my 17 & 20 year old. There are some problems that parents shouldn't be trying to help them solve.

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Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022

As I've been telling everyone ceaselessly: my wife is due in a week. I looked back and saw a CARSEAT BASE next to my hockey bag last night. The countdown clock to birth is just a big red digital clock full of question marks. Every television show seems to be filled with pregnancy/birth storylines (looking at you, HOTD and Big Mouth). And now I have to think about rules?!

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Okay, what the hell are we all doing on screentime? Can we have a consensus? We're absolutely awful at letting our kids veg for far too long each day on their iPads watching YouTube kids or playing Minecraft, and I'd like to set some rules that work at giving the grownups some "the kids are occupied and not annoying us" time while not making them absolute screen zombies/making them want to grow up to be a YouTube/Instagram influencer as a career choice.

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Sometimes I hit a button on the phone and the Wi-Fi to their devices magically cut out. Not sure if the two incidents are related though.

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Given that about 2/3rds of jobs involve staring at a screen all day, I like to think we’re preparing them for adulthood

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