I have had students or known kids named Princess, King, and Legend. Charleigh Brown. Atilla Hunt. Harley Quinn. Their name just becomes the collection of phonemes you use to address them. It’s funny when you see it, then you don’t even think about it anymore.

Connect with the local Deaf community. There’s likely a Facebook group or something that you can browse (even without an account). Look at local community classes, college courses, or even free classes held at a church. Our local community has a bi-weekly silent dinner at the mall and other events that hearing and Deaf people attend. I started with a local community center class ($50 for 8 weeks or whatever) and then found everything else through the instructor. I usually screenshot the silent dinner dates from the Facebook group and then attend when I can.

Paid refers to money. Payed is a nautical term.

Our current “game” is figuring out if my toddler is ok with me coming and getting her out of her room or if she wants me to come in, get her clothes, and leave (closing the door) so that she can get up and meet me in the bathroom by herself. If I choose wrong the entire morning is filled with crying over everything else. My husband walked in the bathroom the other day and asked “what seems to be the issue” at her end-of-the-world screams. “I brushed her teeth”.

I read the book Screentime Solution by Emily Cherkin (also Anxious Generation and Screen Schooled). Basically her advice is to be screen-intentional as a family. Right now my husband and I make an effort to put our phones away when we come home from work and spend time with each other and our toddler. Another thing is that she does not have any of her own internet devices. It’s the family tv and my iPad that she uses (with supervision and sparingly). We have a few devices she uses that are dumb (old gameboy and old iPod) but still rarely. Restaurants and family dinner are screen free zones. Even as she gets older we’re more likely to get a dumb phone and a family phone than let her have her own device. Something from the book was to let your kids have access to the internet and social media when you’re ready for them to see porn (not necessarily her opinion but an anecdote) and there’s no fool-proof parental controls. We are getting a family computer soon to teach her typing, using a mouse, and general computer skills but that will not be unsupervised or even internet connected most of the time. My goal is to teach her responsible use and to always have a line of communication open about it.

Just because a person doesn’t have a memory of a traumatic event doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them. Kids can have lasting trauma effects even from things they were too young to remember.

When I ordered a watch band that for some ungodly reason required a signature they would accept anything. Wouldn’t take it anywhere else. Wouldn’t accept the signature on the back of the “sorry we missed you” paper. Wouldn’t let me change anything online. They came 3 days in a row (Wed-Fri) before informing me they were returning it to sender. Luckily they tried again on Saturday and we were home.

My great aunt gets their fish catered for her family Christmas party every year

“Necessary” I’m fine with. “Unnecessarily” is impossible for me though. Can’t even get close enough for autocorrect, needed to use the microphone…

This sucks. Hopefully they’ll keep the program going. Our local Imagination Library is run through a small non-profit and they have fundraisers with small and corporate donations. They’ve even partnered up with the local hospital to sign kids up automatically when they’re born. It’s such a great program.

I have ONE good picture of both of my dogs. I got it by taking a bunch and splicing two pictures together. Even then my one dog isn’t looking at the camera. He refuses.

I didn’t do the marriage thing because of love. I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me that. I did it for the logistical stuff. Buying a house. Having a kid. Combining finances. Life insurance. Health insurance. While all of this could be possible without being married, it’s much easier to have a marriage certificate than to try to prove to everyone all the time that we’re partners. If my husband were in the hospital on life support, being next of kin would simplify so many things. My culture is designed in a way that traditional marriage shapes so many processes. There may be workarounds, but they’re not always simplified and most people may not know how to use them. That can take valuable time that you don’t always have.

I think my hospital bills were around $5,000. What I didn’t anticipate was the fact that once my daughter was born I was paying hospital bills for me and for her. I think without insurance it was around 30k? So insurance covered 25,000 and we paid the rest

We have a table in our kitchen near the garage door that we call the clutter table. Its job is to hold all of our crap and it gets cleared off weekly or so. It helps declutter the rest of the house a little.

There’s a buzzfeed show called “I draw, you cook” where kids draw something and 2 chefs try to create it. Then the kids judge which is better.

Give him some words to use in stressful situations.

“I need some space”

“I don’t like that”

Especially if he hasn’t been around other kids a lot. They’re loud. They’ll take what you were playing with. They won’t give you the toy you want. They’re in your space. They’ll run into you. Pack 10+ kids in one room with 1-2 adults and there’s bound to be some chaos.

Teach him to ask for help and vocalize what he needs. Sometimes kids won’t advocate for themselves because they’re so used to the adults in their lives knowing them so well that they anticipate their needs.

Also, I second all the independent stuff from the one poster.

My husband recently broke his foot (second time in 5 years). While at the doctor they discovered he has an extra bone in some parts of his leg, then they’re looking at things on the x-ray and asking if all these various parts hurt because apparently his leg is all kinds of fucked up from high school sports.

Pretend it’s a seed

I recently read the Oh Crap, Potty Training book and thought a lot of her ideas made sense. Admittedly, her method is not how we trained our almost three year old, but if I could start over I think I would. The recommended method is: a day (or two or three) of completely naked with the potty in the room. You’re trying to get your child to move from the realization of 1. Clueless 2. I peed 3. I’m peeing 4. I need to pee. You’re also looking for their signs of needing to go. Then you go pantless, then commando for awhile. You’re trying to have fewer things to take off but also removing the “comfort” of having the poop and pee close to them. You’re also having them go every 30 minutes or 1 hour.

A few suggestions about your specific situation. 1. The more you “kinda” potty train, the longer it’s going to take. It’s confusing for kids when you’re only trying once or twice a day. They don’t learn their bodies that way. We had the most success with our kid when we just decided we were done with diapers. I know I could’ve trained her at 2 if I actually gave it my full attention. We did no diapers during the day and no diapers at nap. We still do night diapers but honestly they’ve only been wet maybe twice this month. We also did diapers on an eight-hour road trip, but again, still dry. 2. About her fear, poop is a big thing. It took a long time for our kid. Pantless and leaving her alone is what eventually worked (full disclosure, she did poop on the floor and even step on it before she figured it out). Bring her in the bathroom when you poop. Have her sit on hers while you sit on yours. But giving kids a little privacy can go a long way. There’s an entire chapter in the book about poop if you’re interested in checking it out.

We bring ours home to our outside trash can because once we threw it away in a neighbor’s and he brought us the poop back and not-so-kindly suggested we keep it out of his trash. (The trash collector was coming within the hour to collect the can, and the bag was tightly tied)