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We sleep trained our children (2 and 1) from a young age. We did the cry it out method. They were both great, so sleep has never been an issue in our house. They have a good routine and always go to bed right around 7:30. When we go on vacation the two year old sleeps in a bed my wife, but besides that she is in her crib, which she loves. It has been wonderful.

She is about to turn three and is starting to have s regressions. About once a week for the past month, she can’t go to sleep and starts screaming for us. After maybe a ln hour we go in to calm her down, which never works. She has said the she is scared or that she just can’t go to sleep. We’ve tried talking her through it and putting her back down or going through our nighttime routine again ; but it hasn’t worked. To get through the night she’s slept on the couch, our bed or one of us has slept on the floor.

Do we let her cry it out? It feels different now that she has full sentences. The wife and I have are disagreeing on what to do.

Gentlemen,

Hope you’re having a wonderful digestion week post thanksgiving.

Pretty simple; our daughter HATES having her teeth brushed. She’s only 15 months old, and has a full mouth of teeth.

Any recommendations? Suggestions?

Got a vasectomy. It was simple, quick, inexpensive, relatively painless, and the recovery has been smooth. Follow the doctor’s instructions and it’s pretty easy. Honestly it is so much easier than any alternative for women. There are very few potential complications and no real risk of harm. I cannot understand why men are hesitant.

How much more hollow can I get before it gets better? 2x, workaholic. 2nd is brand new. Love what we’re building, love this family we’ve made and we’re totally crushing it. Think I need to add something into my routine that allows me to decompress or something. Yada yada. No response expected, sometimes dropping thoughts into the abyss helps me.

After trimming both cats' nails and the dog's nails, and hitting the quick on all of them and dealing with blood, I should have waiting to trim kiddos nails. But our pattern is to do all the real animals, a few stuffies, then the kid, and we couldn't break the trend.

Y'all, I basically trimmed the tips off of two fingers. I feel so bad. But she's happy to be wearing band-aids (the other three in the photo are more for balance, I guess) and doesn't otherwise seem to be bothered.

Hello dad's new guy here old hand and being a dad five in total. But I have reached a point where I don't even know what they like. I work to help support them I work two jobs to provide what I did not yet I am burned out and feel I can't help them or my wife or me. Do yall have any pointers or anything to help steer a dad whose candle is about to melt away.

My almist 3yo son sat on the toilet for 5 minutes before his bath and didn't pee.

Got in the bath after filling it up and he's standing there and starts peeing in seconds.

Lord give me the strength

Hi Dads!

My son is ~5 1/2 months and is steadily getting worse at naps. Specifically, when nap time rolls around, he goes into meltdown mode, and will pretty much only take his afternoon/early evening naps in a carrier or the car.

Really hoping for some advice on what worked for you; my elderly in laws are coming into town for a few weeks to help with child care and carrying him for 40 minutes is just not an option for them (or me, at the rate we're going).

Thanks!

Hey Dads. How do you make that switch from work mode to home? How do you magically forget a terrible day at work, or a prolonged issue that follows you home?

I enjoy my job, for the most part. It pays very well, and ables me to provide for my family. But sometimes it’s not so great, and high stakes situations unfold and go sour fast and unannounced. I’ve had a terrible week, and an even worse day today. I’m incredibly stressed out, but I’m stuck in a position where I need this job and others won’t suffice, I’m in a niche market.

How do you do it? What helps you separate work from home and allows you to forget about your day? I love my family more than anything, but this job is kicking my ass and I’m tired of letting it impact them.

Dad of two here. You guys know how easy it is to neglect yourself. I’m neurodivergent, anxious/depressed and struggling with med changes at the moment. Dealing with kid’s sleep issues and not sleeping. Work is burning me out.

Keep calm and carry on!

Well I feel fried. I did the 90 min commute to sit in an empty office again due to hybrid work requirements. I felt like I was dozing off on the way home but had to get home to relieve my wife from watching the kids as she had a dr appt. Well I made it to my street. Turned on and drove over a fire hydrant. I’m pissed at myself, I saw it coming but my reflexes just didn’t work like they used to.

Were fortunate enough to take the financial hit without issue, but it could have been worse. My wife says it’s a wake up call for both of us.

Do less. Take care of yourselves as individuals too. Be safe brothers.

Last night I had my child hanging over my shoulders as we goofed around, and as I swung her back into my arms, I just lost control of her body and she smacked her head on the hardwood floors from maybe 3 feet. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t even remember how far or fast she fell. The noise was horrible, but she bounced back to complete normal in a few minutes. I couldn’t stop panicking, so I took her to the hospital where they examined her hours after the fall, and said she’s completely fine. I just can’t shake the feeling that an injury occurred since they didn’t scan her brain, but what do I possibly know?? I feel so horrible that I could have caused a deadly injury to my baby. Not sure what I’m trying to accomplish from this post, other than reassurance I suppose.

I don't care for sports, but these marble sports get intense!

My fiancée (27F) and I (27M), found out last night via 2 pregnancy tests that she is positive for pregnancy. This as a whole is no problem.

We already have 2 kids, 3 year old boy and 7 year old girl, with other coparents. We were originally planning to officially start trying later next year so it would line up with our general goals, but now we will be expecting another 3rd kid.

Currently we live in a 2BR apartment, where the 2 kids share a room. My full focus since mid-2024 has been adjusting expenses, along with searching and preparing to move to a bigger place with 3BR. It’s very important to me that the kids have their own rooms so they can have their own space and grow individually, and that’s what we were shooting for before we got these results.

We both work, I have a regular 9-5 career and an overnight side job, my fiancée also has a 9-5. End of December was going to be my last day at the overnight job so I can spend more time at home with the family. So i’m conflicted at the moment, I know everything will be fine in the end but it’s the feeling of not getting time to reset before taking on more responsibility.

Any advice or suggestion on mentally/emotionally navigating unexpected pregnancies while in the middle of knocking out goals?

I'm a stay at home dad and my 2 year old girl is like my little soldier. Brush your teeth? Yay! Cut your nails? Yay! Eat breakfast, lunch, dinner? Maybe not yay but she will eat most of it. Nap time is getting easier. She even started cleaning without me asking her today. I'm not even strict! She learned our routine and listens most of the time when I ask things of her. And we have a ton of fun together without screentime. Park almost everyday and sometimes twice a day for 1-3 hours total. Coloring for hours. Coming up with activities to fill the gaps. I've learned a lot from Bluey's dad.

My wife, whom I love, comes home and a demon eats my soldier and chaos ensues. She doesn't listen. She doesn't eat. She doesn't sleep without mom. It's driving me crazy. It puts a lot of pressure and tension on us adults and I've run out of things to say about it.

After 10 hours today alone with the little one, we met mom at a restaurant. We went out for dinner and the little one ran away. Fairly normal but happening less and less. I brought her back, basically kicking and screaming. She runs to mom and then looks at me with a smile and bolts again. Mom's turn. Only this time, mom just let's her run and bribes her with Paw Patrol to sit at the table. We go all day without tv and my wife goes 1 hour. I cannot find a way to say, your way doesn't work, without her interpreting it as, you're a bad mother.

I hate the TV and i thought we agreed to keep her from it but wife broke that before girl turned 1. She uses it all the time and says, it's the only way she can get free time. I barely get any free time now and I still rarely use the TV.

Apologies. What started as a question ended with a rant.

Question about kid treating parents with seemingly different levels of respect. Is this normal at this age or in general? Is there nothing that can help this? Am I actually seeing this or is it made up?

He was a good boy and he came with the wife. He was diagnosed with cancer over 4 months ago and was given only 1-2months to live. He did well these last 4 months but on Monday I saw my daughter petting him and he normally doesn't tolerate it. I saw him shaking and moving slowly and I took him in where they euthanized him.

I miss my dog. He could be super annoying and didn't like to play with my 1.5yo. She loved him though despite it. The first real belly laugh I got out of her was when I played with him. A few weeks ago she was sick with HFM and didn't want to get dressed and got really upset until he walked in the room and her mood totally changed. He stood vigil over her when she was a newborn

I miss my dog. We had corn bread tonight and the floor is a complete mess.

Who's gonna clean this up....

It's cliche to say, but kids really grow so freaking fast. I am probably not the only one who feels that your time could be running out to do certain activities with them, because once you pass that age, you have missed it.

Maybe I am having a bit of FOMO, but regardless, I would love to hear what others with experience have figured out.

Are there any activities that you think should be done before you kids turn a certain age? Or wish you did?

Expecting our first late this January, and I'm trying to figure out my leave situation. I work as an independent contractor (1099) for a tech firm. This means I get no healthcare (on wife's plan), no PTO, no sick time, and no paid leave. I'm straight hourly, if I work an hour I get paid for that hour. I work from home.

I need to tell them how many hours I am available work in the coming months. I get the ability to dictate how many hours I want to work each week as long as I communicate the approximate amount far in advance. I also get full control over my schedule so I don't have particular hours I need to be available.

For example, I could say I'll be available full time through Jan, no hours in Feb, 10h first week march, 20h second week march, etc.

My wife will still continue to be paid through her employer's leave. We can afford a 2-3, maybe 4 of months off if we want. But each month off is a lot of lost potential income, so I'm struggling to determine how much time I want off at the start. At least a month fully off seems right, but then what? The WFH probably will make it easier to ease back in part time. Fitting 20 hours of work however I want in a week is more forgiving than going into an office for 2.5 days.

What would you do in this situation?

I'm going to show my age here and say that I was thinking about getting a Nintendo Wii as a family gift for Christmas. It turns out that they haven't been produced in a decade :( We are a family of 3 (50's dad, 40's mom and 8 yo daughter), and I was wondering if you have any gaming console or other family game recommendations that we can play without getting bored with in a month. Bonus for good individual games and additional uses for the gaming system.

We have a 15 month old together and things have been strained for the last few months. I have been working to expand our house to provide more space and a room for the toddler (we're all in the only bedroom right now). It's taken a lot longer than we expected, and it has been a big sticking point for her. She took a 10 day vacation with friends and came back to say that I'm not providing what she needs physically, emotionally, etc, and that she doesn't see a way forward for us.

I suggested therapy, being more intentional with our time, etc. Basically, anything to try and make things work, but each suggestion was shot down, so it is hard to be optimistic. She has signaled her intention to leave sooner rather than later, but there's no exact timeline. We aren't married, and the house is only in my name. She makes significantly more than I do, and we have so far split costs of everything based on how much we make, so she has been paying the lion's share.

I guess what I'm wondering is, in the event that we can't work things out, what can I be doing now to help get the best custody agreement, etc? I don't think she would leave without telling me, but if she does try and leave with our child before any agreement has been reached, what steps should I take so that I can still get 50% custody? TIA.

Hey dads, need some advice before we lose it.

We've got 3 kids (2,5y and 6 month twins) who are sick, presumably RS virus. Oldest and one of the twins are just coughing and thats it, the third one is absolute hell. He cries all day when, with periods even in his sleep. We can't lay him down for a second or he is immediately in full panic mode, even when he is asleep. Also have to keep walking, he doesn't agee with sitting down or he goes ballistic again. Even standing still is not allowed.

He also vomitted for 3 days, although it looks like that stopped today. Doctors can't do anything.

Family is pretty much non existant with the help we need.

Anybody has tips dealing with this? He is keeping us awake every night in for over a month now, but the last few days this. We are exhausted and have no energy left to deal with this. My wife already is in a deep depression because of this, and I am afraid what I will do when I eventually snap.

We are getting professional help, but nobody can provide what we need, a break.

Sharing my plans for the wife's Christmas stocking with anyone else out there who might find it helpful.

A little context, my wife and I do a pretty good job of giving eachother thoughtful/desired gifts for Christmas. We also shop for the kids together and it's always a joy. We do socks for the kids but we've never really done socks for eachother which is something I miss from my childhood and want to share with her.

$125 (+ probably another 20 for the undecided chocolates)

Fuzzy Socks $9 Easy win.

Dry Shampoo $13 Wife loves the stuff but never buys it for herself.

Calligraphy pens $6 She's artistic AF and will have fun with them.

Jackbox 7 $18.50 She loves party games.

Chocolate $

Still searching

Chocolate $

Still searching

Chocolate orange $8.50

Coffee Keurig reusable cups. She recently bought a Keurig machine but I don't think she knows about reusable cups and she has some awesome coffee she can't use with the Keurig machine. Problem solved $10.

Hair tie things (hair clips) she never seems to have enough of these $8

True Crime Puzzlebook $12 Hopefully this satisfies her love for true crime stuff and keeps me safe.

Bookmark $3 picked a moon one she'll like.

Book - Feathers so vicious $15 She loves romantasy so I'm going with the dirtiest one I could find after a little research. Hopefully it makes her blush when no one's in the room.

Kindle gift card $25 Gift cards are all about taking the obligation/decision out of spending. We share the same bank accounts but man do mothers have a tendency to never spend on themselves and this is a way to get her to do that.

I needed a place to compile my list and if this helps one other fella out there up their christmas stocking game then I'll consider this a big win. Anyone who has read this far please feel free to suggest/critique/comment.

One kid, 7mo, perfect angel

here's the schedule:

Wife and I alternate baby care mornings, from 6-9am when I start work (WFH)

Wife watches baby from 9-4

Dinner is shared from 4-6

I watch baby from 6-8pm bedtime and am the "on-call" until I go to bed around 10-11p

I watch baby on weekends all day, from wakeup to bedtime.

The thing is, this effectively means I get 2-3 hrs to myself every other morning, then 2-3 hours after baby goes to sleep. Between work and baby care I barely have enough time to stay on top of the dishes/garbage/pet care/house projects/lawncare (thankfully winter is here)/etc with essentially 0 time for rest, except for roughly once a week I manage to get to the driving range in the mornings.

My wife doesn't just do nothing with her evenings and weekends, she manages the baby's wardrobe, takes and edits a huge amount of photos for distributing to family (and for making albums I know we'll cherish forever), keeps track of appointments, and does all the home organization i.e. what goes where, which brands of baby products to buy (I would just buy whatever's cheapest lol), and usually cooks dinner. She regularly complains about having no time for anything.

However, I feel like I get approximately 0-2 hours per week where I get to choose how to spend my time, and the rest of the time someone/thing else is choosing how I spend my time for me - work, baby, or house duties.

I want to be respectful of my wife's needs for time to herself, but I feel like I'm burning out and it's starting to affect how I feel about my time with the baby. Is it reasonable to ask for a weekend day to myself once or twice a month? Like fully off? Idk what the best approach is for finding some rest, can anyone else speak to how you find rest between dad/work/home duties?

And find my good snacks

Before I get into this, trigger warning. I will be asking about SA. Also, this is kind of a long post, sorry!

My youngest daughter is in kindergarten this year. It's our second child to go to this school and they are (normally) quite lovely people. The principal, teachers, everyone...awesome. However, my daughter is being harassed by a student. From day one, he has bothered her (and pretty much every other student) with little things like touching other's food at lunch, touching their face, and just being generally annoying. We mentioned this during parent teacher conferences back in August and the teacher was aware of the issue. The issues persist and I sort of feel bad for the kid because he is always being put to the side of the classroom but at some point, he needs to calm the F down because it's a legit disruption to learning.

Yesterday, I received a call from the school saying that my daughter had been spanked really hard multiple times by this demon child and he was touching her vagina as well. It was going on for ten minutes during recess and class and he wouldn't stop. Finally, my daughter just slapped him across the face. That got him to stop however, guess who is in trouble? My daughter. Keep in mind, she is six here OK. She had told the teachers at recess and her classroom teacher what was happening and they just told him to stop (which he didn't). I feel like common sense should prevail here and she won't have any long term consequences but still, this is stressful.

The plot thickens though. At the end of the conversation I had with the principal, she let something slip. The boy's mother is a teacher at the school and upon looking her information up I recognized the last name. Her husband and his family are very wealthy and have been donating to the school all year with very large sums of money...like 10s of thousands (neighbor mom is on the PTO and told me and my wife this last night). Could this be why the student hasn't been removed?

Regardless, I'm going to have a follow up conversation with the principal today and I want to tell her that if he isn't removed from the school, the news headline will read, "Wealthy donor to **school name** is donating to cover up the fact that his child is sexually assaulting classmates and the school refuses to act". Now, I'm obviously not a headline writer but I need your help dads! What do I do here? How do I stay calm? My daughter is being assaulted at school and they aren't doing anything about it. We didn't send her to school today because of this. I'm holding in the rage and trying to do the same for my wife but we are finding it hard to stay calm just when we speak to each other about this.

So we were driving back from my in-laws when my kid (5M) asked fit we could get McDonald’s at the drive through. Gf and I weren’t feeling it so I said not tonight, maybe another time. Kid started whining (not unusual these days) but then angrily said he wanted daddy to not be his daddy anymore because daddy always says no to stuff.

Not gonna lie, that one hurt me. I know he doesn’t mean it, and he doesn’t understand the way his words can be hurtful. But man… I’ve felt bummed out ever since. We got home, gf and I went outside for a cigarette while the kid was half-asleep on the couch, and she asks me what’s wrong with me. So I tell her, and her response was something like: “Oh, I’ve heard that plenty of times already.” Good for her, but I haven’t and I’m kinda sad about it but now I also feel dismissed which is exactly what I need at the moment.

Anyway, thanks for reading through that. I’m not really asking for help but I am grateful for your attention.

Cheers dad-bros!

Hi fellow dads, long time lurker here, needing some serious advice. Heads up it’s a long read.

For context, I am married, with a one year old daughter. I grew up in a house where my sister was the golden child, and I was the scapegoat. No real abuse at home, but I was always in trouble due to her. She grew up to be very narcissistic and I have no contact with her. My wife and I moved away while she was pregnant to another state, and my mom would frequently visit us and her granddaughter. We had a traumatic birth where I almost lost both of them. Especially my wife. My wife has postpartum of course and a bit of trauma from the whole experience. My wife had bonded pretty well with my mom as she helped us throughout, to where my mom would even confide in her about the chaos my sister was causing back home.

Back in October, my daughter had her first birthday. My mom and grandma came to stay with us to attend, and everything was going well, until her birthday came up. My daughter at least had a great day.

We had an hour drive back with my wife, my mom and me. My mom was talking about something bad my sister did, and My wife had made a comment about my sister, something along the lines of she wanted to smack her for something she did before to us. This completely set my mom off. The entire ride home my mom was aggressively debating her on her beliefs and everything else, (my wife is very religious) getting to the point where she was referencing “what about if your daughter dies” and stuff like that. My wife being postpartum and everything, she was completely distraught. I confronted my mom who had admitted that she did it because of the comment towards my sister. After arguing with her, she told me she didn’t want to stay at my house anymore and she left for a hotel. We didn’t even do her cake and ice cream and gifts that night. They were done the next day and everyone was tense. Not a single person other than my daughter was happy and we have no good pictures of her birthday. It was truly ruined.

My dad enters the picture and guilt trips me into her saying goodbye to my daughter. He didn’t come on the trip. My sister also verbally attacked my wife over text that night so somehow this made it to her.

My mom went back home and has not spoken to me since she left. No apologizing or nothing. My dad however, has been harping me for over a month now to talk to her, to send pictures of my daughter, to allow them to FaceTime. My wife and I were discussing how to move forward here so we don’t deprive our daughter of a grandma, but they have made no effort to rectify this at all!

I told my dad that her birthday was ruined and we needed space, he proceeded to tell me it wasn’t ruined and that they wanted pictures from Halloween. I ignored him. Then he proceeded to reach out every week until thanksgiving where he was guilt tripping me to talk to my mom where I told him that “she hasn’t talked to me since she left, I don’t expect her to talk to me”

For additional context, my dad was very upset that I moved. He proceeded to barely talk to me ever until this drama of course. Now all of a sudden, he can text me all the time because there’s a problem.

I don’t know how to move forward here. There has been so much energy wasted on this, it’s affected my job, my relationship, my time with my daughter. I clearly have to spell it out for my parents but I don’t want to cause a huge eruption that will of course continue to affect my life. They refuse to leave me alone about access to my daughter, and I wanted to come to a resolution but with how much it seems they don’t care about mine or my wife’s feelings, I don’t know if I even want to reconcile.

I’m really hoping for some advice from other dads who have maybe been in similar situations. Thank you to anyone who has taken time to read this.

Do any of you all struggle with what extracurricular activities your kids should/could do? I’m definitely not a pushy “sports dad” or theater parent, but we do have a rule in my family that each kid chooses one body (sport, dance, etc) and one arts (music, drawing, etc) at a time.

Here’s the current struggle: 10 year old girl. Sports have been “meh.”But she is a talented artist, singer, actor... to the point her teachers always bring it up with us too. She loves these things and has natural talent that could grow. She has loved the arts programs, theater day camp last summer (which she vehemently refused) ended up the highlight of the year, she genuinely loved it and was so glad she did it. The same program is back once a week, but she acts like she’s not interested because deep down she doesn’t like committing her time to anything and just wants free time…

So, balancing that in the past she was always glad she did things vs. never wants to sign-up. Am I a butthead dad if I make her? Am I failing her if I let her just skip everything altogether?

Hoping you folks have some breakthrough perspective.