What is the thing you do not let your kids get away with, the thing you are willing to be unpopular with them over, late for school over, that you will nag until your dying day about?
Mine is taking your dishes to the sink and pushing in your chair after you eat. There is always time to do that. Running away from a mess at the table after a meal we made for you when we already have dishes/everything else to do afterward is a bridge too far for me. Any child over the age of, say, 3 can clean up after themselves at the table, and I have no qualms over (nicely) asking other kids to do this in my house when they’re over, too.
God, I’m getting riled up, and this is making me want to make my sleeping kid up and make him clean just because.
What’s your thing?
P.S. We all have different “things” so please keep it witchy and remember that just because one person's “thing” may be way different from yours, it’s not an indictment that your thing is wack.
Hard lights-out bedtimes during the school year for my kids even though they’re teens now. (I am squishier in the summer.) Everyone in the house is happier when everyone gets enough sleep.
Closing the damn door. Not getting a cell phone (I work in tech so know too much about them). Wearing sunblock. I would say my branded _thing_ is my kids not being rude/entitled. Can’t handle it in other children either but make my kids say thank you for having me, speak politely to adults, write thank you notes for presents etc. I will not tolerate them being shitty to me or other adults. I’m always proud that other parents tell me they are polite.
No YouTube. Generally speaking, I try to avoid all streaming services during the week (I hate the endless loop of it all). We have an old TV/VCR setup with a large library of tapes that my daughter is allowed to watch during the week. She gets to have autonomy over what she watches (a vcr is very easy to operate for a 5 YO) and I get control over the content. On weekends she can watch limited amounts of streaming kids shows. A funny side effect of the VCR is my kid gets very excited about previews for movies that came out 25+ years ago.
I won't answer to someone screaming my name from another room. Get up and come find me if you need something. I will die on this hill no matter how long it takes for them to get that I won't be responding to MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?????
Sitting calmly at the dinner table and facing our family while we eat. It’s a stupid hill at some level because neurodiversity, but even his brain can handle 10 minutes and a piece of garlic bread.
Bike helmet. Kids in my town seem not to wear them ever, and my young teen doesn't want to stick out. So he never bikes, which is sad. But I've been car doored and fallen in traffic on a bike. Helmets are life savers.
Oh! And my other hill is that I will not be yelled it in my home. Not by my husband, not by my kids. The flipside is also true, however, which is that I don't yell at them either. People are allowed to feel their feelings, but yelling isn't okay with me.
(My family of origin was a yelling family and yelling makes me feel unsafe).
Making a good faith effort to look for something/try something before giving up. I lose my mind when my kid is wailing "I can't do it!" when I know for a fact that they haven't even tried lol
Am I the only one reading this terrific thread and thinking how so many of these are my non-negotiables too, but they're constantly being tested so I am always losing my mind/dying on a hill? For instance, I also want my kids to have good table manners but I can't get my oldest to eat with his fork half the time and I am always saying, "Knees down!" because he's folding is legs up at the table. He is almost 12. My 7 year old is always getting up from her seat and I am always telling her to put her butt in the chair while she eats. Every meal. I absolutely will not tolerate rudeness and yet all three are so rude! I will not tolerate someone losing their temper and making personal attacks, and yet, at least twice a day someone is getting upset and screaming, I HATE YOU! YOU'RE AN IDIOT! On and on in this way. Sigh. Anyway, parenting. What fun!
Washing/cleaning hands before eating. I do not care if we are in the middle of the woods, you'll damn well use a wipe and some hand sanitizer if that's all we have. Also washing hands when we come into the house from anywhere. Not even a covid thing, this has been the rule since she was old enough to reach the sink on a step stool.
No multitasking (when it comes to screens). So, if we are watching a movie together then we are watching the dang movie and are not also looking at phones/iPads. My kids understand why I care about this...the only one who won't comply is my husband (arghhhhh).
Washing hands when you get home from anywhere (you little germ-carriers), throwing away snack wrappers, hanging up the bath mat after a shower, and putting laundry in the hamper. For the record, none of these things happen without me nagging incessantly. It’s super fun to follow them around and say these things 12x a day (for years!).
Screaming in the car. My kid tends to operate at two volumes: high, and screaming. My husband and my kid have a terrible dynamic in which they rile each other up with jokes/teasing until they are both screaming. I'm jumpy in general and jumpier when I'm driving so I like a super mellow environment in the car and I cannot tolerate screaming in there. I have been known to pull over and firmly remind the occupants of my rule. If my kid's super hyper, I always say, let's get where we're going (or, if it's a longer drive, I will stop after X time) and you can tell me everything that's on your mind at any volume you like; in the meantime, draw me a picture of what you're excited about.
I am finding as my kids get older that the only hill I would die on is that they be kind. We teach table manners, clearing the table, make them do their own laundry and do things like limiting social media, no TikTok, no TVs in bedroom, and encourage intuitive eating and moving the body. But none of this matters to me if my kids are unkind to themselves and others.
I will let bedtimes slide on occasion, I will look the other way if someone is staying up late to read, I've even been known to forget to make them brush their teeth, but my hard-and-fast hills to die on are:
1. checking in your tech with me in the kitchen before bed (even the 17yo, not allowed to have her phone overnight, she's got ADHD and I know she'll just stay up scrolling and be a wreck the next day)
2. cleaning up the front of the toilet & seat - the 9yo WILL LEARN NOT TO PEE SLOPPILY IF MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. I recently wallpapered the guest bathroom and when i got down low I noticed that the front of the toilet had faint stains of pee rivulets down the front, and it smelled like vinegar. I got his butt in there to clean it up so fast. He's going to keep doing this until it has an effect on his behavior while peeing, so help me god.
For the love of all that is good in this world. My kid will freaking learn to be “bored”. There is never a need to constantly be doing something or have your face attached to a screen. Creativity is found in “boredom” and their imagination is far too active to ever be bored.
I have several that have already been mentioned, but also:
No talking from 8:28-8:30 every morning. My ADHD kid cannot focus on the backpack/shoes/snack/coat tasks while his sister chatters at him, so things go a lot more smoothly with an enforced two minutes of quiet before we head to the bus stop. Babble your heart out once we are out the door.
Any time one of them starts whining about X kid having a huge house or a beach house or a pony or some other gross demonstration of wealth, we sign them up for a volunteer community service event that weekend.
Intentional rudeness or cruelty is an immediate timeout or loss of privileges, depending on the offense.
They will go to school/practice/other commitment unless they are sick or there is some real emergency. “We don’t bail on our commitments just because we don’t feel like going” is a thing they hear a lot.
No phones/socials until at least ninth grade, but we honestly might push this even further back. No screens at all during the school week unless we are watching Jeopardy together as a family.
Everyone has to do some kind of exercise and something creative 3x a week. I don't care what those things are.
Things I’m pretty chill about: bathing (twice a week seems fine until puberty starts?), whether their hair is brushed, homework, cussing, dining etiquette.
I am very strict on bedtimes (even for my now high schooler) during the school year and that there are no phones or devices allowed in their rooms after bedtime. My husband works at an elementary school and the number of deeply sleep deprived kids he sees is really sad. Little kids shouldn't be up at 11pm on a school night! This is my hill!
Jun 21, 2023·edited Jun 21, 2023Liked by Claire Zulkey
I'm finding the hills I will die on are changing as my kid gets older. Or at least the hills I THOUGHT I would die on are changing. My kid has ADHD/GAD and dyscalculia. That combination means there are things that I would LOVE to die on but no one will care or collect my corpse for a proper burial after. Their brain just isn't developed enough yet to implement the tricks/tools necessary for any of my nagging to do anything other than add massive piles of anxiety onto an already anxious kid.
So! For right now it's no screens after 7:30 p.m. on school nights, 8:30-9 p.m. in the summer. Plus, we don't allow any screens to remain in their bedroom after those points; everything goes in our room. Clear dishes/scrap put in the sink or dishwasher. Some sort of movement every day. Saying hello/goodbye/thank you to adults, and addressing them in the eye, especially when visiting their homes. Bedtimes, always. No cellphone till eighth grade and even then we have a list of things they'll have to prove to us they can handle before we say OK.
I love this question and Im curious - how do yall handle these hills when your spouse does not exhibit the behaviors that is your hill. This has been hard for us bc it feels like Im nagging him and them
My (teenaged! able-bodied! bright and capable!) stepkids have to fold and put away their clean clothes in order for me to wash their dirty clothes, or they can wash their clothes themselves. I finally got my husband to back me up. I think we’re going on week 3 of this standoff...?
Basic table manners -properly setting the table, napkin in your lap, elbows off the table, ask politely for things to be passed to you, asking to be excused/clearing your plate/push in your chair. No phones at the table.
No commenting on peoples bodies!! Kid and husband. lol. No making sex talk "weird" or "gross." My son is 12 and has questions and my husband and I are both from sex negative backgrounds so we both have to take deep breaths and speak with intention to sex positivity.
This comments section is teaching me that I am a disgusting goblin and need to get my life together before my baby is old enough to adopt my goblin habits
Screaming for fun, minor stuff, as a game, etc. Unless there’s active danger or blood or genuine panic attack no kid or mine needs to be screaming. Toddlers get somewhat of a pass but elementary aged? Absolutely not. We are not screaming for fun.
We don't have a TV in our bedroom, so it wouldn't have occurred to my kids to ask for one. So my 'thing' was that phones had to charge in the kitchen at night, well into high school. I think my daughter may have been a junior, my son a freshman, when we started letting them have their phones all night. First weekends, then school breaks, then summer, then 'set your own alarms' with me as back up. Same for school IPads, even though most apps were banned from the devices.
I skimmed so maybe I missed it...but I"m shocked that no one said CHEWING WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED. I started very young with gentle reminders to "Please chew with lips closed" and my kids are pretty good at it. I WILL NOT listen to your food EVER. (Misophonia? Never heard of it......)
No inside locks. If one of my kids locks their bedroom door, I will take it off the hinges. Fortunately this has only ever been in the threat stage, I have never actually taken a door off (yet.) I inherited that rule from my mother.
Mine is ingratitude. I lose my ever-loving mind if I feel like either/both of my kids are being ungrateful. Related: god help you if you are rude to one of your grandparents (all of whom are loving, generous, accepting, and mostly sane). Zero tolerance for that BS.
It’s funny because I’ve noticed that I have these things when taking care of other kids and it’s just random what I’m enforcing versus other parents. For instance, I am envious of kids who put away dishes and I try to enforce but it only lasts a few days. But mine are wearing shoes on the right feet, wearing socks (usually matching) and having properly brushed hair.
I saw the subject line and thought... oh, mine's all around eating and table manners, *most importantly* cleaning up after himself and bringing his plates to the kitchen. We shall die on this hill together! He does it at EVERY house, even when it's a birthday party and they're paper plates and the parents insist he doesn't have to. I am relentless about it!
No phones at the dinner table. Currently this is a rule for my husband and me, but we are setting an example for the inevitable future for our child. Also, you have to try the food. The phones have occasionally slipped (hrmph... dear husband), but we have never slipped on the try the food rule. It has almost always lead to eating it, sometimes with grumbling, but I recognize that we are lucky in this regard.
My (mostly successful) hills where enforcement started early and caught on: clearing dishes from the table, no individual screens during the week (we will still watch sports or occasional group show)
My hills I am constantly dying on: turning their gross socks (especially baseball socks ugh) right side out and separating the undies from the pants before putting in the hamper, wiping the pee off the seat, not using your shirt/pants as a napkin... aka all the gross stuff that they just don’t seem to understand/care about, and probably won’t for years 😒
Bedtime lights out and no solo screens after dinner—pbs kids family night is a cuddle ritual on fridays that actually helps speed bedtime and on mondays she can watch a streamed jazz concert with her dad if she wants but those are on tv!!
She is great at sleeping and total crap at going to/falling asleep which means a lot of work goes into smoothing that process and literally this week, two weeks before her 7th birthday, we moved her bedtime to 7:55 instead of 7:10.
Screaming. Being intolerant of or rude about someone else's hurt feelings or difficulty (this is hard to police but when I see these friend interactions I try to intervene.) And here's the one that seems like it makes me weird: In addition to not literal swearing, there's certain manners of speaking that I think are a problem. Does nobody remember that "sucks" refers to women sucking men's peniuses? Let's not have children saying "sucks." And "freakin'" as an adjective is just a stand-in for "fucking." Let's not have children saying a word that means "fucking" when they don't know what that means. I'd rather not hear "crap" from a kid. I believe in swearing for when something is really wrong or really hurts, not just for whenever you want to sound cool. Nice language is powerful. Swearing all the time makes people seem weak, messy, and unaware.
Clearing dishes, turning off lights! Flushing the toilet (sometimes the kids bathroom has pee that sits there for so long it smells horrific), going to sleep at a reasonable hour.
I don’t respond to whining or crazy demanding shouting like I WANT MILK. Must ask nicely. I’m pretty easy going other than that but rudeness is totally unacceptable.
I was very intense about no food in the car seat until my son was about 2 and a half. I just couldn’t shake the image of him choking and trying to do the heimlich with him in the seat. Similarly, I’m still pretty intense about him sitting on his butt when he eats! Doesn’t always have to be at the table, but he better be sitting!
No iPads at home until kindergarten (only on an airplane for now!). Fingers crossed I can keep it up.
Weather appropriate clothing. Raining? Raincoats and boots. Cold? Jackets and pants. Really cold? Hats and gloves. Park or walking long? Sneakers.
My son is 7 and daughter is 3 and I have many people warning me that in fact I will DIE on this hill because at some point the demand for shorts and no coats year round wins out.
Do not sit on my bed in your outside clothes. Take off your shoes.
We changed clothes at home into house clothes and never wore shoes in the house. All the things you carried in from the outside had to stop at the door. I went to college and noticed people going out in all types of weather then sitting on their beds. Imagine my shock and disgust. I catch my husband and chastise him. I won’t budge. Never.
Hard lights-out bedtimes during the school year for my kids even though they’re teens now. (I am squishier in the summer.) Everyone in the house is happier when everyone gets enough sleep.
Closing the damn door. Not getting a cell phone (I work in tech so know too much about them). Wearing sunblock. I would say my branded _thing_ is my kids not being rude/entitled. Can’t handle it in other children either but make my kids say thank you for having me, speak politely to adults, write thank you notes for presents etc. I will not tolerate them being shitty to me or other adults. I’m always proud that other parents tell me they are polite.
No YouTube. Generally speaking, I try to avoid all streaming services during the week (I hate the endless loop of it all). We have an old TV/VCR setup with a large library of tapes that my daughter is allowed to watch during the week. She gets to have autonomy over what she watches (a vcr is very easy to operate for a 5 YO) and I get control over the content. On weekends she can watch limited amounts of streaming kids shows. A funny side effect of the VCR is my kid gets very excited about previews for movies that came out 25+ years ago.
I love this topic so much.
I won't answer to someone screaming my name from another room. Get up and come find me if you need something. I will die on this hill no matter how long it takes for them to get that I won't be responding to MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?????
There will never be an Elf on the Shelf in my house. No thank you. Also sunscreen. I tell my three-year-old she’ll thank me in 30 years.
Sitting calmly at the dinner table and facing our family while we eat. It’s a stupid hill at some level because neurodiversity, but even his brain can handle 10 minutes and a piece of garlic bread.
Bike helmet. Kids in my town seem not to wear them ever, and my young teen doesn't want to stick out. So he never bikes, which is sad. But I've been car doored and fallen in traffic on a bike. Helmets are life savers.
Oh! And my other hill is that I will not be yelled it in my home. Not by my husband, not by my kids. The flipside is also true, however, which is that I don't yell at them either. People are allowed to feel their feelings, but yelling isn't okay with me.
(My family of origin was a yelling family and yelling makes me feel unsafe).
Making a good faith effort to look for something/try something before giving up. I lose my mind when my kid is wailing "I can't do it!" when I know for a fact that they haven't even tried lol
Am I the only one reading this terrific thread and thinking how so many of these are my non-negotiables too, but they're constantly being tested so I am always losing my mind/dying on a hill? For instance, I also want my kids to have good table manners but I can't get my oldest to eat with his fork half the time and I am always saying, "Knees down!" because he's folding is legs up at the table. He is almost 12. My 7 year old is always getting up from her seat and I am always telling her to put her butt in the chair while she eats. Every meal. I absolutely will not tolerate rudeness and yet all three are so rude! I will not tolerate someone losing their temper and making personal attacks, and yet, at least twice a day someone is getting upset and screaming, I HATE YOU! YOU'RE AN IDIOT! On and on in this way. Sigh. Anyway, parenting. What fun!
Washing/cleaning hands before eating. I do not care if we are in the middle of the woods, you'll damn well use a wipe and some hand sanitizer if that's all we have. Also washing hands when we come into the house from anywhere. Not even a covid thing, this has been the rule since she was old enough to reach the sink on a step stool.
No multitasking (when it comes to screens). So, if we are watching a movie together then we are watching the dang movie and are not also looking at phones/iPads. My kids understand why I care about this...the only one who won't comply is my husband (arghhhhh).
Washing hands when you get home from anywhere (you little germ-carriers), throwing away snack wrappers, hanging up the bath mat after a shower, and putting laundry in the hamper. For the record, none of these things happen without me nagging incessantly. It’s super fun to follow them around and say these things 12x a day (for years!).
Screaming in the car. My kid tends to operate at two volumes: high, and screaming. My husband and my kid have a terrible dynamic in which they rile each other up with jokes/teasing until they are both screaming. I'm jumpy in general and jumpier when I'm driving so I like a super mellow environment in the car and I cannot tolerate screaming in there. I have been known to pull over and firmly remind the occupants of my rule. If my kid's super hyper, I always say, let's get where we're going (or, if it's a longer drive, I will stop after X time) and you can tell me everything that's on your mind at any volume you like; in the meantime, draw me a picture of what you're excited about.
I am finding as my kids get older that the only hill I would die on is that they be kind. We teach table manners, clearing the table, make them do their own laundry and do things like limiting social media, no TikTok, no TVs in bedroom, and encourage intuitive eating and moving the body. But none of this matters to me if my kids are unkind to themselves and others.
I will let bedtimes slide on occasion, I will look the other way if someone is staying up late to read, I've even been known to forget to make them brush their teeth, but my hard-and-fast hills to die on are:
1. checking in your tech with me in the kitchen before bed (even the 17yo, not allowed to have her phone overnight, she's got ADHD and I know she'll just stay up scrolling and be a wreck the next day)
2. cleaning up the front of the toilet & seat - the 9yo WILL LEARN NOT TO PEE SLOPPILY IF MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. I recently wallpapered the guest bathroom and when i got down low I noticed that the front of the toilet had faint stains of pee rivulets down the front, and it smelled like vinegar. I got his butt in there to clean it up so fast. He's going to keep doing this until it has an effect on his behavior while peeing, so help me god.
For the love of all that is good in this world. My kid will freaking learn to be “bored”. There is never a need to constantly be doing something or have your face attached to a screen. Creativity is found in “boredom” and their imagination is far too active to ever be bored.
SIT WITH IT, CHILD. 😂
I have several that have already been mentioned, but also:
No talking from 8:28-8:30 every morning. My ADHD kid cannot focus on the backpack/shoes/snack/coat tasks while his sister chatters at him, so things go a lot more smoothly with an enforced two minutes of quiet before we head to the bus stop. Babble your heart out once we are out the door.
Any time one of them starts whining about X kid having a huge house or a beach house or a pony or some other gross demonstration of wealth, we sign them up for a volunteer community service event that weekend.
Intentional rudeness or cruelty is an immediate timeout or loss of privileges, depending on the offense.
They will go to school/practice/other commitment unless they are sick or there is some real emergency. “We don’t bail on our commitments just because we don’t feel like going” is a thing they hear a lot.
No phones/socials until at least ninth grade, but we honestly might push this even further back. No screens at all during the school week unless we are watching Jeopardy together as a family.
Everyone has to do some kind of exercise and something creative 3x a week. I don't care what those things are.
Things I’m pretty chill about: bathing (twice a week seems fine until puberty starts?), whether their hair is brushed, homework, cussing, dining etiquette.
I am very strict on bedtimes (even for my now high schooler) during the school year and that there are no phones or devices allowed in their rooms after bedtime. My husband works at an elementary school and the number of deeply sleep deprived kids he sees is really sad. Little kids shouldn't be up at 11pm on a school night! This is my hill!
Handwritten thank you notes. Call me a hold out but if someone spends the time/energy/money to get you a gift my family will be writing them a note.
I'm finding the hills I will die on are changing as my kid gets older. Or at least the hills I THOUGHT I would die on are changing. My kid has ADHD/GAD and dyscalculia. That combination means there are things that I would LOVE to die on but no one will care or collect my corpse for a proper burial after. Their brain just isn't developed enough yet to implement the tricks/tools necessary for any of my nagging to do anything other than add massive piles of anxiety onto an already anxious kid.
So! For right now it's no screens after 7:30 p.m. on school nights, 8:30-9 p.m. in the summer. Plus, we don't allow any screens to remain in their bedroom after those points; everything goes in our room. Clear dishes/scrap put in the sink or dishwasher. Some sort of movement every day. Saying hello/goodbye/thank you to adults, and addressing them in the eye, especially when visiting their homes. Bedtimes, always. No cellphone till eighth grade and even then we have a list of things they'll have to prove to us they can handle before we say OK.
I love this question and Im curious - how do yall handle these hills when your spouse does not exhibit the behaviors that is your hill. This has been hard for us bc it feels like Im nagging him and them
My (teenaged! able-bodied! bright and capable!) stepkids have to fold and put away their clean clothes in order for me to wash their dirty clothes, or they can wash their clothes themselves. I finally got my husband to back me up. I think we’re going on week 3 of this standoff...?
Basic table manners -properly setting the table, napkin in your lap, elbows off the table, ask politely for things to be passed to you, asking to be excused/clearing your plate/push in your chair. No phones at the table.
We did not tolerate whining. They had to use their "big kid voice" and speak to us respectfully if they wanted our attention.
No commenting on peoples bodies!! Kid and husband. lol. No making sex talk "weird" or "gross." My son is 12 and has questions and my husband and I are both from sex negative backgrounds so we both have to take deep breaths and speak with intention to sex positivity.
This comments section is teaching me that I am a disgusting goblin and need to get my life together before my baby is old enough to adopt my goblin habits
Screaming for fun, minor stuff, as a game, etc. Unless there’s active danger or blood or genuine panic attack no kid or mine needs to be screaming. Toddlers get somewhat of a pass but elementary aged? Absolutely not. We are not screaming for fun.
No unsupervised YouTube except specific channels.
No Mr. Beast.
We don't have a TV in our bedroom, so it wouldn't have occurred to my kids to ask for one. So my 'thing' was that phones had to charge in the kitchen at night, well into high school. I think my daughter may have been a junior, my son a freshman, when we started letting them have their phones all night. First weekends, then school breaks, then summer, then 'set your own alarms' with me as back up. Same for school IPads, even though most apps were banned from the devices.
Oh I love this thread. 1. Sunscreen 2. No shoes in the house 3. Thank you notes when a gift is received.
I skimmed so maybe I missed it...but I"m shocked that no one said CHEWING WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED. I started very young with gentle reminders to "Please chew with lips closed" and my kids are pretty good at it. I WILL NOT listen to your food EVER. (Misophonia? Never heard of it......)
No inside locks. If one of my kids locks their bedroom door, I will take it off the hinges. Fortunately this has only ever been in the threat stage, I have never actually taken a door off (yet.) I inherited that rule from my mother.
Mine is ingratitude. I lose my ever-loving mind if I feel like either/both of my kids are being ungrateful. Related: god help you if you are rude to one of your grandparents (all of whom are loving, generous, accepting, and mostly sane). Zero tolerance for that BS.
It’s funny because I’ve noticed that I have these things when taking care of other kids and it’s just random what I’m enforcing versus other parents. For instance, I am envious of kids who put away dishes and I try to enforce but it only lasts a few days. But mine are wearing shoes on the right feet, wearing socks (usually matching) and having properly brushed hair.
I saw the subject line and thought... oh, mine's all around eating and table manners, *most importantly* cleaning up after himself and bringing his plates to the kitchen. We shall die on this hill together! He does it at EVERY house, even when it's a birthday party and they're paper plates and the parents insist he doesn't have to. I am relentless about it!
No phones at the dinner table. Currently this is a rule for my husband and me, but we are setting an example for the inevitable future for our child. Also, you have to try the food. The phones have occasionally slipped (hrmph... dear husband), but we have never slipped on the try the food rule. It has almost always lead to eating it, sometimes with grumbling, but I recognize that we are lucky in this regard.
My (mostly successful) hills where enforcement started early and caught on: clearing dishes from the table, no individual screens during the week (we will still watch sports or occasional group show)
My hills I am constantly dying on: turning their gross socks (especially baseball socks ugh) right side out and separating the undies from the pants before putting in the hamper, wiping the pee off the seat, not using your shirt/pants as a napkin... aka all the gross stuff that they just don’t seem to understand/care about, and probably won’t for years 😒
Bedtime lights out and no solo screens after dinner—pbs kids family night is a cuddle ritual on fridays that actually helps speed bedtime and on mondays she can watch a streamed jazz concert with her dad if she wants but those are on tv!!
She is great at sleeping and total crap at going to/falling asleep which means a lot of work goes into smoothing that process and literally this week, two weeks before her 7th birthday, we moved her bedtime to 7:55 instead of 7:10.
Please and thank you please and thank you please and thank you please and thank you please and thank you
Screaming. Being intolerant of or rude about someone else's hurt feelings or difficulty (this is hard to police but when I see these friend interactions I try to intervene.) And here's the one that seems like it makes me weird: In addition to not literal swearing, there's certain manners of speaking that I think are a problem. Does nobody remember that "sucks" refers to women sucking men's peniuses? Let's not have children saying "sucks." And "freakin'" as an adjective is just a stand-in for "fucking." Let's not have children saying a word that means "fucking" when they don't know what that means. I'd rather not hear "crap" from a kid. I believe in swearing for when something is really wrong or really hurts, not just for whenever you want to sound cool. Nice language is powerful. Swearing all the time makes people seem weak, messy, and unaware.
No TV on school days. 1 hour each weekend day, not all at once.
This is much harder on us than it is on him!
Putting your filthy ass clothes (especially socks) in the hamper!!!!
Clearing dishes, turning off lights! Flushing the toilet (sometimes the kids bathroom has pee that sits there for so long it smells horrific), going to sleep at a reasonable hour.
I don’t respond to whining or crazy demanding shouting like I WANT MILK. Must ask nicely. I’m pretty easy going other than that but rudeness is totally unacceptable.
I was very intense about no food in the car seat until my son was about 2 and a half. I just couldn’t shake the image of him choking and trying to do the heimlich with him in the seat. Similarly, I’m still pretty intense about him sitting on his butt when he eats! Doesn’t always have to be at the table, but he better be sitting!
No iPads at home until kindergarten (only on an airplane for now!). Fingers crossed I can keep it up.
Bussing dishes, wearing effing socks in the winter, shutting doors for god's sake, and putting on sunscreen.
Weather appropriate clothing. Raining? Raincoats and boots. Cold? Jackets and pants. Really cold? Hats and gloves. Park or walking long? Sneakers.
My son is 7 and daughter is 3 and I have many people warning me that in fact I will DIE on this hill because at some point the demand for shorts and no coats year round wins out.
Do not sit on my bed in your outside clothes. Take off your shoes.
We changed clothes at home into house clothes and never wore shoes in the house. All the things you carried in from the outside had to stop at the door. I went to college and noticed people going out in all types of weather then sitting on their beds. Imagine my shock and disgust. I catch my husband and chastise him. I won’t budge. Never.
Claire this is the best post! Love the community you’ve created here. ❤️