I have two young kids and spend a lot of time thinking about how to approach the process of parenting. LLMs are a great resource to augment some aspects of parenting. In this blog post, I go into some examples that I use for the following uses:

• Coming up with activities
• AI Generation games
• Thinking through past and future events
• Approaching complex topics
• Talking to parenting books

I hope this isn't an inappropriate question to pose here.

If all goes well I'll be a first-time dad this summer and I want to do my research. I've done some general searching online for answers to specific questions, but I'd love two or three more comprehensive resources. You know, the kind of thing to give me answers to questions I hadn't even considered.

I spent some time searching for pregnancy books oriented to men, thinking it could give me some useful insight into being an ideal partner during the process. At the same time, I'm hoping it'll give me a good general idea of what to expect. The results of my search were rather disappointing. It seems like the majority of books of that nature seem overly bro-ey and just generally too macho for me. I found titles legit along the lines of "Baby Hacks EVERY Man Must Know." Ok, not for me ...

A few popped up that on the surface seemed more promising, but when I looked into them I got wary. One seemed to be sponsored by some men's parenting social media site and the other was written by a self-professed influencer. Also not for me. (I'm on Lemmy because I can't stand influencer-culture.)

I finally settled on a book that seemed a little more my speed in terms of attitude, but with very little substance. It's basically 150 pages of, "Hey, you should be nice to your wife." OK. That's already my standard operating procedure, so we're good there.

I feel like what I want has to be out there. I'm just looking for a resource to tell me all of the little things. You know, stuff like signs to watch out for regarding potential dangers during the pregnancy, what the hell I'm supposed to do while my wife is giving birth, how to avoid falling down the stairs with my new baby, etc.

Anyway ... Do any of ya'll have any hidden gems to recommend? My wife and I are elder millenials so we've got some life experience under our belts. As it probably matters for the topic of parenting, we're quite progressive but don't buy into anything too woo-woo (we're big believers in science).

I'm going to try and keep this clear and concise.

I'm not confident in my parenting. I don't feel like I've been a good parent, but I have done the best that I can with the tools and resources that I have.

My 18 y/o has lived with us since she was 4. My partner has been in my 18y/o's life since they were 13 months old.

18y/o is copy->paste of their deadbeat mother and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what I can do about it at this point.

I have tried to instill structure, while allowing wiggle room at times. I recognize that it's my job as the parent to draw hard lines and it's my kids job to push the boundaries and cross those lines.

18y/o is almost mute around us. Doesn't communicate much of anything beyond surface level 'pleasantries'. And it's more often than not, anything but pleasant. They (biological female) are diagnosed with ADHD, 'change disorder', anxiety and depression. I've done so much reading trying to figure out this person and how I can help, but nothing seems to help. Kid has never really be honest with therapists. Lies for no reason, and doubles down even when presented with irrefutable evidence that they've been caught. If I had to 'self-diagnose', they have ODD and are a sociopath, but I've seen how they behave around friends and peers. They only have disregard for us. Outside the home, they are a people pleaser. But if we suggest something, or ask for something to be done, it's a fight, every time.

They are a senior in high school, is a good student when there's nothing rocking their boat, but had steadily declining grades as the school year presses on. I have no idea what's going on in their life, everything is responded to with a random selection of the following list:

I don't know

I don't remember

I don't know how you want me to answer that

Do you want me to respond?

I don't see what the problem is.

I don't see how this is a big deal.

The current argument is regarding whether we should be expected to wake them up for school in the morning. I've already put my foot down about it, and since December 1st, they've already walked themselves to school twice because they overslept.

They are impossible to motivate. When things finally come to a head and an argument breaks out, which typically boils over because there can be no constructive conversation with someone who is either unable or unwilling to have a conversation. And only when the argument breaks out do we get any action on anything, and then it's an overcorrection. For example, we've been pushing for them to fill out scholarship applications for 8 months. We've had friends provide spreadsheets with links to what we collectively think are viable scholarships, for no action responses. Then when we finally get a break in the wall, they fill out scholarship applications for tens of thousands of dollars for enrollment in a school states away with misleading GPA information. We are not in a financial position to accommodate that kind of enrollment, even if we wanted to support the decision. It comes off as an "I'll show them" move.

Nevermind the drivers license thing. Can't get them to get off their ass and get their license. It's been a battle for 2 years. Something always goes wrong. Last time I pressed on it hard, we ended up in intensive outpatient therapy.

They're unmanageable and I don't know what to do for or with them. Our home is small, 800 sqft and it's a hell hole. My partner has almost left me twice over this kid's behavior over the years. Partner and kid do not get along at all at this point, and has lead to a false CPS report so my kid could try and move in with their crush's family.

There so much context missing but there's no time or room for 18 years of back story.

I don't know if there's a question here, but I need help or support, or something. Any stories or advice anyone cares to relay would be appreciated. I'm terrified that once this kid leaves, I'm never going to hear from them again. But I can't control that, and I recognize it.

Thanks for reading.

I like all my kids friends except for one. She stayed overnight a few weeks ago and there was something off putting about her. Took her out the night of the meteor shower and again she’s just non-responsive? Last night she was part of a big NYE sleepover. She didn’t pick after herself, insisted on sleeping in the closet (was at an Airbnb, not our house), wouldn’t wake up when we were trying to get everyone ready to leave, and refused to help with picking up the house/clean up for check out. Wasn’t necessarily disrespectful to our face but not respectful either. If asked to have this one over again, I’m inclined to say no. But maybe fourth time is the charm? Not sure if I should be telling the parent. She’s in sixth grade so probably 11/12. Maybe autism spectrum? Thoughts?

My kid , 4 year old. She repeats some patterns in my life.

I was good with maths, science, books but was dumb/stupid for day-to-day interactions with other persons and lacked common sense . I am not an introvert and want to company with huge number of people around me. But I miss the sense in people talk, my replies will be foolish. And, do things ( like : gym ) in artificial/goofy ways - my default facial expression was embarrassment.

This pulled me back and I lived with books, cinema etc. And my friends are either similar persons or persons who can tolerate(?) me. I do joke to them that I only have few friends . The number is 4+3 and the answer is 6 ( last one being myself )

Now, my kid behaves similarly . She is good at studies, but lacks sense and do things in stupid ways. She wants to be friend with kids. From what I understood, she has one friend only and others are not ok with her.

My innermost feeling is that even if she is having stupidity/lack of sense, she should be friends with same age kids.

My Qns are:

1. She is concerned with the not-loved-by-others situation. She sometimes cry that kids said H ( hate ) to her. How to help her. Can I simply say your dad faced similar situations ( I do remember feeling what's the issue with me at many places, why they do not like me, and crying )

2. How can I tell the world is not fare. And if she did not get friends here, she could find soulmates somewhere else.

3. I think she is not a listener-type and keep talking what's in her mind at that moment. How to make her understand on listening to others.

4. Finally, which doctor assistance required , like child psychologist ..

Thank you for reading all this, fellow parents. Any advises/Qns , let me know.

Just turned 3 toddler has been saying factually untrue things and trying to get me to agree/repeat these things. They won't let me just ignore their statements and push for an affirmation. Not affirming leads to tears and a tantrum. I've been just saying 'ok' or 'I think you're wrong but ok' but mostly letting things go if they seem trivial like: 'Ice cream is not cold!', 'It's not dark yet!', 'Snow isn't white', etc... I've been mostly targetting statements they make about other people and their feelings or desires like 'You're not tired!', 'She doesn't want to sing.', 'He's not hungry.', etc... and letting the meltdowns happen in those situations but my spouse is concerned that I'm making toddler believe they can have their own facts outside of reality and that I should push back every time something factually inaccurate comes up. I feel like this behavior is probably developmentally normal and like everything else, we need to target specific things to work on one at a time. Thoughts?

I've always been a fencesitter when it comes to having kids. I'm getting to a point where I think I'd like to have a kid. I don't know if it's because I really want one, or there's just nothing major left on the list of life accomplishments and it's a societal expectation.

The thing is, I can think of a million and one reasons not to have one and can't put into words why I would want one. However, I'm starting to have a nagging feeling that I want to start trying. I just don't know if that feeling is something I actually want, or just society telling me I should.

It doesn't help that I don't have a lot of small children I regularly interact with, so I honestly don't have a clue what life would look like after kids, beyond it being a lot of stress and hard work. It also doesn't help my spouse says it's my choice and they'll go along with whatever I want .

Any advice or things that helped you know it was the right choice/time for you to expand your family?

Hello everyone,

As a non-parent (but plan to be at some point in the future), I always enjoy reading about parents experiences. I also have some friends who have children, so it is a topic that interests me.

It seems that the current moderator hasn't been active in the last 4 months, so I guess they could probably use some help.

Would someone be interested in animating this community, creating weekly threads "Questions to other parents", "What did you kid say this week", etc.? Adding a few resources to the sidebar, create maybe a megathread?

I'm already busy with a few other communities, so I would prefer avoiding to mod here too.

My 11 year old spends 50% of his time with an anti-science and anti-vaccine family. Single parent me (in Ohio) doesn't have a lot of support when I've tried to help fight some of those thoughts he's been brainwashed with in the name of religion. I'm christian, but his other household is extremists. "You believe in science too much" and "cavemen never existed" are things he's said in the last year. He's a straight A very smart child, he's just been brainwashed and I want to try to help him before it gets worse.

What kinds of shows, books, documentaries can I expose him too to make him think more critically about some of these things so he understands science is real and vaccines work?

He does get into Veritasium on YouTube, so I feel like that's a step in the right direction for science and critical thinking.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Cheers

Those who are lucky enough to have a partner.

How do you divey up the workload and ensure an even partnership where one partner is stay at home and the other works full time?

My kid [3yrs] speaks the local language with his other parent (separated. 50/50). and English with me (my native language). I speak both and my kid knows this, so I can't hide it.

He speaks the local language well, but English is a struggle. Comprehension is 100%, but he only speaks random words. He mostly speaks to me in the local language. Where we live, he will learn English in school, so I'm not worried about that.

I've tried various things to get him speaking English, but it's a struggle.

Are there any strategies that might work?

I'd like to introduce my app which I have been working on for about half a year, it's called Baby Journal and it's an end-to-end encrypted app for tracking your baby activities, like feeding, diaper changes and so on.

On iOS you can install it to your homescreen as a webapp, on Android you can either install it as a webapp or directly from Google Play. On both you can just run it from your browser. Neither has any advantage over the other, the content will be the same.

Links:

• baby-journal.app - the (optionally installable) webapp
• Google Play Store
• Backend source code
• App source code

Now onto the app itself!

The biggest feature is that it's entirely end to end encrypted and I as the server operator have no access to your unencrypted data. I'm of the opinion that the privacy of your kids should not be compromised for some company to make a quick buck.

What activities can the app track?

• feeding tracking - nursing (left and right breast separately), bottle, solid foods
• diaper changes - wet, poopy or both, you can also select the color and amount
• breast pumping - left and right breast separately
• sleeping
• temperature taking
• weight
• length
• milestones - with cute descriptions!
  • with ability to add custom milestones

And some cool features!

• tracker - just hit start on your activity and let the app count how long it takes
• multiple babies - if you have more than one bundle of joy, you can switch between them easily
• sharing with multiple other accounts - you can easily share your data with as many people as you want without compromising privacy
• shared tracking - if you use the app with multiple people, you can enable shared tracking - start tracking on one device, finish tracking on another
• data at a quick glance - on the main screen you can see when was your baby fed for the last time, when they had a diaper changed and so on
• various fine-tune settings - do you want to calculate the time since last feeding since the beginning of the feeding or since the end? Do you want to ignore small gaps between multiple feedings (for example 10 minutes while you switch from nursing to bottle) as one feeding session? Does water count as feeding? All configurable!
• daily summary - you can get a nice summary where you can see all the important data in a concise format

Currently the data can only be tracked in metric units, but imperial support is coming.

Note that the encrypted nature has one downside - if you don't export your account code and lose access to the app (for example your device breaks), there's no way to recover your account. I advise you to securely store your account code as soon as possible.

For advanced users there's also a self-hosting option! You can run your own backend and app. Or you can just run your own backend and point the official app to it. Currently there's not much documentation on how to do that, but if you need that, I can write something up.

Do let me know if you have any questions!

For those unaware, Miku baby cameras are now charging a monthly subscription for features that owners previously had access to such as remote access, live breathing monitor, nightly statistics, DVR of movement through the sleep. We originally paid $400 because it was advertised as a product that would not require a monthly subscription, and we've been using it that way for the past 14 months. As of this month, the only functionality that exists without a subscription is video monitoring, but only on your local network. Everything else requires you to pay.

Likely what led to this was due to the fact that they released a buggy firmware earlier this year that bricked everyone's cameras and they were on the hook to replace cameras. A few months after this they declared bankruptcy, only to be purchased by someone who has instituted the monthly subscription (rumors it's an investor of Miku trying to make their investment back).

I didn't get an email about this change, only saw some chatter on that other site about it. Anticipating this change, I blocked the app from updating on my Android phone and all apps from updating on our iPad. I know it was a long shot thinking that would work, betting that it would be a server side change as opposed to client side.

Looks like the change went live a day or so ago, people are pissed, however I still have access to features. Looks like the subscription block is a client side update based on the screen shots I've seen.

Long story short, how can I pull the .apk from my phone to distribute to others? Fuck this company.

EDIT: Figured it out, here's the update from May 2023 with features still intact - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sOOCY08j8nxvfXJd1SU7Kll-uMjiRftm/view?usp=drivesdk

EDIT 2 - I figure this company only has a few months left, we'll easily just transition to a cheap Ubiquiti camera that records on my local network. Fuck this remote recording approach.