Random Questions, Parenting Edition

Sometimes at home I will find D1 naked and ask where her clothes are and she will tell me she had an accident. She will take off the wet stuff but forgets to put on new. More often though, I discover her is soaking wet freezing cold clothes and have to help her change herself and then find any needed from wherever she was when the accident happened, if I can get her to tell me where.

This is also a thing at school. She never tells the teachers when she has an accident. They just discover that she is wet and then even if they ask her she often says no. One of her IEP goals is advocating for herself when she needs help (needs to change clothes, needs to use the bathroom, is injured and needs help). This is across the board with her and not pee specific - she also will fall down annd actually be bleeding all over and not tell the teachers.

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You can’t really make anyone do anything, at least once you can’t pick that person up. I think it saves a lot of parenting angst once you realize that.

You can make it worth their while to do what you want. You can decline to do something they want if they aren’t willing to reciprocate. And you can make it easier for them to stay out of trouble - we didn’t have a coffee table for a decade because I didn’t want to deal with small kids standing on it. It’s not like we could set coffee and decorative objects on it anyway.

And a ton of it is just innate personality.

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I don’t know if your little tiger would be influenced by this, but here’s a video from a Daniel Tiger game that is specifically about stopping play to go potty, even though you really don’t want to stop playing. It includes a little “song” that you could copy and repeat throughout the day as a reminder maybe. “If you have to go potty, stop and go right away.” Because if it comes from Daniel Tiger or Katerina maybe it’s more acceptable than just your mom saying “go potty”? It also includes baby Margaret needing a diaper change at the end, so everyone is included. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJI-51C8N4Q

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There is also a toy set with Danial Tiger and a potty to flush. Lol

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Is it forgetting or a more willful/ recalcitrant accident? Our daycare issued the kids (once parents said they were potty training) a little watch shaped like a potty that beeped every 30 minutes. It was like the slap bracelet of daycare. All the kids were obsessed and it seemed to help a lot as they were practicing! Reminders from inanimate objects can work better than reminders from parents, in my house.

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@noodle here!

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Thank you! I looked for seriously an hour. Now I have forgotten my question.

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Does anyone give gifts to their daycare teachers/nannys?

I was thinking a $50 gift card for everyone (3 teachers and the director). Is that too much? Too little?

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We give gift cards to daycare teachers and school teachers. Not quite so much money, but I’d say on average they’re underpaid and if you’re willing and able to give them that much, they’d appreciate it.

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I do. I do $100 for all of the 4 year old’s teachers (there’s 3), $100 for baby’s lead teacher, and $50 for baby’s other teacher (there’s 4). I went back and forth on amounts but the smaller amount for the aides was mostly that I had no idea how many there were when I was buying gift cards.

Note that we live in VHCOL, and we’re fortunate that a few hundred at the end of the year is no big deal. I wish they were better paid in general but then we probably couldn’t afford daycare.

I don’t gift to the director/owner but maybe I’ll give her a card.

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I am only giving to her because she is not an owner, just the director!

Thanks for sharing amounts, that is helpful too. @chaskavitch I am glad that it is normal to give gift cards, thanks for sharing.

I did $25 to Amazon to each kid’s teacher (4 teachers total) with a nice note, and I will do another $25 at year end. We are in a MCOL city, and there is also a parent teacher association that gives them gifts which I contribute to, so this is on top of that in order to be a bit more personal. If they didn’t do gifts at all, I would probably do $50 each time instead for a yearly total of $100 per person.

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D2 has 6 teachers but it is public school, not a daycare. I gave each of them a $15 starbucks gift card.

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Private Preschool (outdoor) program. I gave a card and $20 target GC to each of her 2 teachers.

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Disorganised Australian over here. I gave nothing. So you can consider me the low bar to sail over.

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When there was more than one (lead and assistants) I did $20-25 each on local gift cards. Now that we’re at a home daycare, I pooled my $50 with 3 other families for a joint higher value gift for things she’s talking about enjoying or wanting to do.

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How often do you clean your bathtub for “always comfortable bathing child in it” cleanliness?

Sincerely someone who historically cleans her tub with embarrassing infrequency but has learned scrubbing bubbles is magic.

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Bathtubs get scrubbed once/week on my schedule.

Bathtubs and showers have soap and hot water dumped on them daily, so they are “clean” - scrubbing them is an aesthetic preference IMO.

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We have a separate bath/shower for the kids. We have a cleaner now so once every 2 weeks. For my personal ick factor, I’d be looking at once a month for DIY if I was good at cleaning toys washcloth etc out and not having stagnant curtains stuck inside or any of those variables. Less pickup means more frequent scrubbing.

I think if we shared a bath and tub combo with the kids I’d want to at least give a minor scrub down weekly cuz, eew grownup feet.

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Errr not enough?

The kids each have their own bathtubs (like, baby/portable bathtubs) which get scrubbed with bleach every time they poop in it, which has been roughly monthly? But irregular. Adult bathtub gets cursory cleaning by cleaner every 3 weeks.

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