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1500 questions
36
votes
10 answers
How to persuade my father to stop physically abusing my mother?
In summary: I am the daughter. My mother is being domestically abused by my father. What can I do to make him stop without hurting my mother in any way? - she still loves him!
Details: My father is a very abusive character. When I was a child, he…
gone-tomorrow
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35
votes
6 answers
How do you handle unsupervised, poorly behaved children in public play areas?
This is closely related to this question. However, that primarily deals with interactions at relatively controlled, private functions. This question is more focused on the feeding-frenzy style chaos we've encountered in more public venues.
We've…
user420
35
votes
9 answers
How quickly do I need to change my newborn with a dirty diaper?
How quickly do I need to jump on changing a dirty diaper? What are the downsides of waiting vs getting right to it?
I have two specific scenarios in mind:
I'm holding my son during the day time, and he lets one fly. Should I interrupt what I'm…
yossarian
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35
votes
11 answers
What's an appropriate age to involve kids in life changing decisions?
My wife and myself have very different views on bringing up our kids. Our differences and different ways of handling problems is tearing the family apart. My kids are about 6 years old (girl) and 10 years old (boy). Although we have not separated,…
davidgo
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35
votes
8 answers
Is there an alternative to Boy/Girl Scouts in the US?
My son desperately wants to join the Boy Scouts, but I've had to say no due to the local troop's religious agenda.
I've been helping my friend try to come up with ideas for her daughter's new Girl Scout troop, as the activities have been incredibly…
HedgeMage
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35
votes
14 answers
How to address my son’s fear of mostly passive objects, namely smoke detectors
My almost three-year-old son’s room, as well as our sleeping room, is equipped with a smoke detector.
A few weeks ago, the one in our sleeping room went off and was beeping very loudly for ten seconds while he was in the room.
There was no apparent…
Wrzlprmft
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35
votes
17 answers
Why does my 16-year-old hate me?
My 16-year-old son says the most awful things to me. I feel he is deliberately trying to upset/provoke me constantly. For example, last night at the dinner table he said,
"I am not going to try to get into a good college because if I got into a good…
Julie4435637
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35
votes
11 answers
Where should boys aim their urine?
We have been potty training our son. We got him comfortable going sitting down first, and now he is learning to urinate while standing.
What should I teach him to aim for when peeing while standing up, at the water, or at the side of the bowl?
I…
nothingisnecessary
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35
votes
22 answers
Should I expect my 20 year old son to get a job while at University?
My son is now 20 years old, still living with us at home and goes to University three days a week. He has never had a job. Since he was a child I have tried to encourage him to do tasks for pocket money but he just wasn't interested and he hasn't…
Hedgehog
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35
votes
11 answers
How do you handle bilingual education in a country where you do not speak the language natively?
Our 2 year old son is growing up in a different country (New Zealand) than we did (Brazil).
We try to speak to him in portuguese all times, and we noticed that he is learning english reasonably well at the daycare.
Obviously he does not understand…
Pablo
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35
votes
16 answers
My son wants to bring a present to a birthday party where "no presents" was specified on the invitation
My son (3) likes to give presents. Sometimes he asks to go shopping for presents for his friends (holidays, upcoming birthdays, etc.) using money from his allowance (we designate a small portion of his allowance for things he wants to buy for…
user420
35
votes
14 answers
How do I address a teacher humiliating my son by calling him a "tattletale"?
My friend recently shared this experience, and I thought it would be a good question for our site:
So, [my son] got in trouble in school today.
It seems that the kids were lined up in the hallway, listening to an announcement. Some of the kids were…
user420
34
votes
15 answers
How do my wife and I stop our son from learning to swear from us?
My wife and I both tend to have... colorful language (for me it tends to be far worse when driving). Our son just turned one, and is starting to become more verbal. He's not quite at the point where he's repeating whatever we say, but it is just…
user420
34
votes
9 answers
Should I tell my 10-year old son, how screwed-up Cinderella is?
My 10-year old boy recently told me that he likes the Cinderella fairy tale.
Some fairy tales including this one, have several layers of meaning and sometimes they guide people's life decisions.
Let's look at Cinderella from a realistic point of…
user14348
34
votes
5 answers
When your child says something embarrassing in public... how do you deal with it?
So our 3 year old son is both talkative and imaginative, but hasn't necessarily learned all the social decorum that comes with age/experience and social development. There's been a number of embarrassing situations/social faux-pas that we've just…
JBRWilkinson
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