So your 3 year old has started weeing herself after you thought they were potty trained.
Should you take your baby to bed with you?
My 3 year and old has started nursery I'm feeling lost without them.
I have a picky child that won't eat anything I cook for them.
Go on twitter and read peoples blogs and these are questions there every single day. Accompanied by hundreds of answers, suggestions and words of support, from parents in the same situation, parents that 'come out' the other side unscathed and from grandparents, professionals and others.
Well now it's time to redress the balance. I've offered support, information, advice and posted hundreds of links and now I need something back please.
I have a 15 year old son who is taller and stronger than me. When he was little and didn't want to eat his tea/go to school/hid his wet trousers/wouldn't sleep at night. I followed all the advice, I read the books, I asked for help and it was possible to implement the suggestions.
There wasn't twitter or facebook. I went to playgroups and spoke to other mums. I picked up the telephone and asked my parents or took him to the Doctors. It outside his bedroom door listening to him cry, I put him in bed with me, I did a star chart and rewards for potty training...I could go on, you all know the drill.
So what now?
He won't go to sea cadets any more, he refuses to take part in family activities, won't do his homework, tidy his room, help around the house....he just wants to do his own thing all the time and I'm expected to pay for it.
So what was the point in spending his formative years making him go to school, encouraging him to eat his veg, getting him to tidy his toys away?
It seems it was all a waste of time...I spent his formative years encouraging independence, feeling like a bad mother if I didn't follow the latest parenting techniques, suggested by playgroups, grandparents and government...and all for what?
A child now, and I hasten to add he is still a child, who does his own thing, when he wants and how he wants, locked in a world of social networking sites and computer games. I face pressure from school because he's answering back in class, not doing his coursework, refusing to co-operate around the house and generally thinking he's in charge.
Yes I can take the lap top from him, I can tell him if he doesn't eat what I cook he can go without, he can live in a pig sty and not have clean clothes if he doesn't bring them down for wash.
But, either way I'm at fault, his behaviour outside the home is due to bad parenting? well, that's how the media view it...but I did everything according to what/how I was told to do it...and if I had my time again...I'd bloody well ignore it, after all no-one is advising me how to sort it all out now...are they?