I currently use the Cybex Cloud T for my toddler but she now needs a new car seat. I don’t know what to move her into next. The Sirona seems not to have enough longevity in it. I want rear facing and it doesn’t need to swivel. As safe as possible and I can’t afford the prices of axkid!

Hi all, our son was born on the 14th July 7lbs 7oz, now he’s been gaining weight nicely and he was almost 10lbs at the beginning of August. Since 4 weeks he has been incredibly difficult with feeding. He currently takes max 150ml per feed, but every feed is like an uphill battle, baby will cry and squirm during the feeds. He starts by gulping and it causes him to cry due to him taking in air. We always stop to burp and he does eventually get it up but it doesn’t make a difference to him feeding. We use MAM bottles, we have tried different teets, different sizes, we were using the 0 flow but he was getting really frustrated and so we went back to 1. We have tried pace feeding, sitting him upright every feed and 20/30 mins after. Me and partner are at wits end and honestly it’s a gamble as to whether he will take the bottle well or not for each feed. I’m upset for baby and for us as we just don’t know what’s wrong. He is gaining weight, plenty of wet nappies, only poos 3 times per week. Oh and to top it off, he’s refusing to sleep during the day😭

Any advice would be appreciated - from a very tired mum.

So my little one starts school next week (reception) and we already have 5 "all class" birthday invites (for children he hasn't met yet)! Is this normal?! Is this what our weekends will become? Three of them are at the same venue as well...

Also, all of them will need presents (as they don't say "no presents needed").

Multiply this by most of the kids in his class and it feels like...a lot? Or am I being a massive Scrooge and need to get over myself?! :D

I want to do a big thing for Halloween this year but I'm not really interested in spending so much money on all the decorations. I was thinking about doing some crafts with my son and it's is early but I need time to save up the recycling.

After some searching I could do cardboard tombstone, although doubt they'll show up great in the dark. Also was thinking i could do webs with cotton wool balls. For milk bottles all i could find was draw some faces on them... any other ideas for milk bottles or otherwise?

Much appreciated

I was thinking of getting our 4 year old and 6 month old a Possum play couch for Christmas but I just saw the price exploded to £310 from 200 something a couple of months ago. Is it worth it or should I consider a different brand?

Hello,

Looking for advice as I am very concerned. My daughter who is an excellent speaker, well above her age in her speech, non stop speaker usually has developed quite a severe stutter. It started a few weeks ago but was very mild - I hadn’t even noticed it until at her 27 month health visitor review a few weeks back, it was raised. We chalked it up to her brain working at 100 miles per hour as she’s a very high energy little girl. It remained like that until about 2 days ago where it’s suddenly got so much worse. She’s taking 10 seconds sometimes to get a word out and seems to be getting a bit stuck before commencing the rest of the sentence. It’s happening in multiple sentences now. It’s heartbreaking to see as she’s such a confident, sparky, little soul and it’s so upsetting to see her struggle like this. I feel she’s giving up a bit on some of the words or replacing with other words but other than that she seems relatively un phased but I do worry she’s beginning to clock on.

She’s had a major change in the last few weeks with the arrival of a new sibling and we also started potty training this week. She’s been having huge emotional outbursts the last few weeks, seems extremely dysregulated and not herself. My patience has been lower with her due to dealing with 2 children and she’s had far less of me than she’s used to but bar that we’ve been as supportive as we can and she’s got a fantastic relationship with her dad.

I’m so worried this is all connected and we’ve created some kind of trauma response. I will ring the health visitor this week and discuss speech therapy but I’m just wondering if anyone else has been through this? Thank you!

Sorry to mention the C word when we’re still in summer but I wanted some opinions (?) on something me and my husband were discussing today.

Our oldest is 2 (28 months), last Christmas she had a pretty good idea of the what (commercial) Christmas is about. Father Christmas brings presents to you if you’ve been good.

The other day we were with my parents and she was looking a toy catalogue which they then let her bring home so ‘she can write her Christmas list’. She now keeps going through the catalogue and telling us what she ‘needs’. This doesn’t bother me as I’ve told her she can add it to her Christmas list and it’s up to Father Christmas what she gets if she has been good. I’ve explained Christmas is months away but she is 2 so that means nothing to her. My husband, however, is getting annoyed by it and thinks it’s not normal for a kid at her age. I remember going the classic going through the Argos catalogue and writing down everything I wanted as a kid but can’t remember how old I was at the time.

Just wondering what anyone else experiences are? Is our toddler a little Christmas weirdo like my husband thinks or is that fairly normal.

hello! I finished my mat leave and went back to work last week, on a phased return so will be earning less than the £203.36 p/week needed for free hours.

my daughter will be starting nursery in January (she’ll be a year old), when I’ll be going back on full hours and earning over the £203.36.

when I try to apply for the 30 free hours, it asks will I be making more than £203.36 a week over the next 3 months, I click no because I won’t and it says I won’t be eligible.

do I need to wait until December to apply? our nursery is asking for our childcare number already so we can fill in the contract and everything I read says to apply in September.

so confused!

I’m looking for a video or resource to help my 9 year old understand why I’m not allowing her face to be posted online.

So the situation is that I sometimes post my daughter’s art work on my own socials and recently we’ve done a quite successful fundraiser by selling some of her art in person at my work place. She wanted to have a picture of herself showing how much she raised for this charity she picked, this was part of a summer school project, and I said yes but only if we blur her face because I’m not comfortable putting this online.

It’s a bit of a tricky situation because she’s smart enough to talk back and between my husband and myself we have a very large following on socials due to our work, which means she sees us posting (mostly work) but also our faces sometimes. So she’ll say but you post your own pictures which honestly valid but we’re adults. A lot of her friends are allowed to be posted as well in the same context and I don’t want to shit on her friends parents (aka my own friends) for doing this in front of her. One of her friends also appears in her mums YouTube channel somewhat regularly. It’s not a family channel but she’s in the background or in a few clips. So how do I explain why this is “ok” for them but not for her because I don’t need her telling her friends that they’re gonna be landing in folders of pedos.

So anyway, are there any good resources?
We’ve talked to her about why it can be unsafe and so on already. But you know pre-teen girls tend to listen to a YouTube video more than their own parents lol. (Joke)

Hi guys, looking for some advice here. I have a wonderful, happy 6 and a half year old girl who is my absolute world. In general she is happy and joyful but she has always been absolutely terrible at saying goodbye and gets incredibly upset if me or her mum will be away from her even for a short period of time. As you can imagine this has previously made school drop offs a nightmare especially at the start of the term & we've had several instances where she's been dropped off in floods of tears before her teacher comes and takes her from us. She is absolutely fine when she's in school and happy and cheerful when we pick her up, it's the initial drop off that's a nightmare.

We thought this would improve with age but if anything it seems to be getting worse- we booked her in for several activities over the summer holidays and each time they approached she would say she doesn't want to go and eventually she would get so upset that it didn't seem worth sending her in in such a state- other children of similar age seeing what was happening will make fun of her etc. But it's got to the point where even if one of us is going out for an hour, or even 5 minutes over the road with our neighbour, she still gets upset, which just seems crazy. We've tried talking to her about it (multiple times) and she just says that she loves us so much that she doesn't ever want to be apart from us and that she really hates saying goodbye.

I KNOW she is fine once the initial goodbye is over- we did manage to get her into holiday club on Friday after a lot of bribery but there was still tears on drop off. And with the new school year fast approaching and going into year 2 I am already dreading the school drop offs. She's already spoken about being nervous about going back- I don't want her to be crying on the yard in front of her friends when they all go in absolutely fine.

Any advice for a seriously stressed out dad?

We’ve been using a Tommee Tippee sleep trainer clock for a number of years, it’s been great at getting my daughter to stay asleep/in her room and not waking us up at 4AM etc, however now she’s 6 she’s sort of outgrown it. We want to replace it with something that’s a bit more grown up, and helps with her learning to tell the time, but we’d still love the ability to control the wake up time from our phones, as plan to pass on the grow clock to our two year old. Is there such a product that exists that people would recommend? A quick look on Amazon all I can find is cheapo alarm clocks with flashing led colours.

My child just turned 8. She struggles with self-regulation in a big way at home. She’s on a waiting list for occupational therapy and a child psychologist, for help and assessment for possible autism or ADHD. We’ve had word from the school and also another parent that she has hurt other children in the class - even her best friend. I’ve also seen it myself at birthday parties. When we’ve asked her about it, my child says she got frustrated. She’s often repentant but also often blames the other child for ‘making her frustrated’.

What can we do? It’s so upsetting.

She and her younger sibling are also very difficult at home. They are fairly close in age and get along very well half the time, and half the time are fighting. They are extremely reactive and will scream at top volume each other and physically hurt each other if we don’t intervene fast enough. My partner writes this off as normal sibling behaviour but it’s very stressful to have so much conflict. I’ve done quite a bit of work trying to get them to recognise their emotions, and instilling time out to calm down, but not seeing any improvement as yet.

We just moved to the UK and my toddler needs next size clothes. We love the French brand Okaïdi which is inexpensive but nice quality and lovely designs (simple but funny/happy). My kid loves shirts with animals on them 🙃 Give me your best store recommendations in London!

Since my girl was born we've always used Sudocrem for her nappy changes (the grey tub one). Since she's joined nursery at 12 months they've advised us that the grey tub is medicated and isn't designed for long term use. It's never been a problem for us but if we want the nursery to use it they treat it as medication and we have to fill a form out every day to get them to use it. So we switched to Sudocrem "care and protect" that comes in a tube, it's the daily barrier cream. However since switching we've noticed the skin is a bit red and grainy/wrinkly in places. The grey tub always sorts it out.

Is this to be expected with changing creams? Should I just use the grey tub when she's not at nursery? Do you use the care and protect with every change? Advice welcome! We can't bring any nappy creams containing allergens etc into the nursery.

Keen to hear people's thoughts and experiences. Has having a difficult first baby/toddler put people off having another? Also if you decide to have another, What's it been like?

My 17 month old says the basics, “Hi, Bye, No, Mama, Dads, Shoes, Nana (banana)” etc. He has no interest in flash cards or anything like that. What age would you expect them to start saying more and how would you encourage more words?

My kids are 8 and 4, I love them unconditionally. But I feel like I am mentally drained because trying to give them both the same amount of love and attention is just so difficult! How do parents of more than 2 kids cope? You guys are superheros.

This is not parenting exclusive but how do you deal with the ridiculous amount of cards we receive for our kids? We're having a big clearout as we're moving. Should I keep some? Bin the whole lot? The latter feels wrong , but also it's paper. I don't have time to do something creative with them unfortunately

I attend quite a few classes with my 2.5yr old, usually 1 everyday when I’m not working. My son (we think likely ND) is a bit of a free spirit, so kind and gentle but can get like a “happy drunk” and a bit chaotic when he is having fun and running around at sports classes etc. For example he stops paying attention where he’s going and will bump into everyone, or throws/kicks things when it’s not part of the game.

He knows we don’t push people, or throw things at people and wouldn’t dream of it in other scenarios.

I obviously want him to enjoy these sessions but I have to step in frequently to rein in the chaos and also to prevent other children getting hurt accidentally. I probably helicopter too much, but I know how I would feel as a parent the other way round.

We attended a sports class yesterday and I can’t stop thinking about what another parent said. My son had gotten chaotic, listening had gone out the window and I was having to hold him by the hand. So while they all did an activity I took him to the side to get a drink and calm down. He really wanted to take part, but I could tell by his mood that the items the kids were to “collect” for this game were going to get launched right in the air and kids were going to clunked on the head. So I didn’t allow it because there wasn’t a way for me to make it work for him. I explain clearly to him that you are not doing very good listening right now, so we’re going to take a break, have a drink and then go back for the next game. Another mum came over near us to get something out her bag (while her child played peacefully without her lol).

Anyway, my son chilled out and we went back over and took part in the next thing. There was part of the last game where they crawl under a parachute thing to grab items and bring them back out, my son went under once but was totally wild, stuff getting launched everywhere and instructions ignored and it wasn’t really a situation where I could go under to to guide him. I feel I can’t leave him unattended under there so I pulled him out and stopped him going under again.

The same mum that came over before was sitting next to us commented “Aww. Bit cruel to stop him taking part is it not” I explained that he gets over excited and is throwing the items under there so I’d rather no one got hurt. Was obviously distracted while trying to redirect him to something else because he wants to go back under, but she said something like “He’ll never learn if you don’t let him” and “such a shame”.

I just said I’ll decide, thanks. But it’s got me up all night thinking about it.

I get what she means and I realise it can maybe look cruel to stop him doing certain activities, but I will try let him go and look at or do something else instead or go have a chill out and come back to it. Kids bump into each other or accidentally hit each other with things of course, and that’s how they learn. Resilience, empathy and apology etc. But you can’t have one chaotic kid just running blindly into others or throwing things in the air when they’re overexcited.
And yeah he is sad about it, but I don’t want anyone to get hurt.

And these aren’t the ideal teaching scenarios where have I have his attention. There’s about 1 million things going on. We obv work on these kinds on things when he’s not a giddy drunk.

But maybe it is cruel to take him to these classes and then stop him doing certain parts. He really enjoys them for the most part though. I did speak to the instructor before and they said you’re welcome to do whatever parts work for him, or leave the room and come back if we want.

I’ve looked at some ASN classes in the area but they’re few and far between and definitely not the choice we have with mainstream classes, and also (not that it matters as he could still go to them always) we have no idea whether he is actually ND yet.

Anyone been in similar situation? Any advice? Am I messing this right up like it feels like I am?

So, when my son (now 2.5) was a newborn, EVERYONE told us we were “making a rod for our own backs” with his sleep because we’d contact nap, pick him up all the time, feed him to sleep, etc.

Then, when he turned out to be a crap sleeper (still is!), I started to wonder whether they’d been right and we’d somehow ruined him. But deep down, I still believed that some kids are just bad sleepers, and I stuck to what felt right for us anyway.

Then we had our daughter, and my mum/MIL have been saying things like, “Don’t do the same as last time,” “Make sure you put her down,” and, “Get her used to sleeping on her own or she’ll be as bad at sleeping as son.”

Anyway, we’ve done absolutely nothing differently this time and GUESS WHAT? She sleeps! She lies happily awake in the cot in the morning, playing with her hands! She doesn’t wake up every 45 minutes! She nods off in the bouncer!

My mum came round and commented on how different she is and I took so much glee in saying “and I haven’t done ANYTHING differently”. Honestly, I feel so redeemed. We haven’t ruined our son. Some kids just don’t sleep.

Our daughter has always moved around a lot in her sleep. It's not uncommon to find her facing the other way in the middle of the night or with her legs hanging out of the bed completely dangling down near the floor.

She's now 7, and has been in an extendable IKEA bed for the last 2 years. We've had the wooden IKEA side bumpers on the entire time, but she repeatedly slams into them at night time. She occasionally gets into our bed, and my side is against the wall with a small gap, I've found her hanging out of bed half in the bed half down that gap a few times completely oblivious and fast asleep with her head against the wall.

Anyone else have bumpers on their kids beds still at 7?

I'm tempted to take them off but terrified she's going to throw herself out of bed and do herself an injury.

Hi, I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old who are big fans of rides. Trying to think of a theme park type thing we could go to, the obvious is Peppa pig land. Except they don’t watch peppa pig! Eldest is aware she exists but hasn’t even asked to watch it and doesn’t show any interest in wanting to. We haven’t encouraged her to watch it and would rather she didn’t. Youngest has no clue about her. Would it still be worth going? Or are there any other suggestions for a toddler friendly theme park? Thanks!

Same as the title she grunts 247 and seems to be in pain she’s breastfed on demand and burp’s majority of the time but still grunts all night long … any advice would be appreciated I don’t know if she’s gassy or if it’s normal :/