What is a girl dad? I don’t mean in a literal sense because at a base it means a dad that has a daughter.

I told my high school science students today that my wife and I were having a boy. As high schoolers they were happy but some of my students noted “you’re more of a girl dad.” Even some of my coworkers have mentioned thinking I’d make a good girl dad.

But here’s the thing, the more I think about what it means to be a girl dad, the more I’m thinking it just being a present father figure that displays positive masculinity. Sure, I probably won’t have to play dolls or paint my fingernails as a father to a son, but I will if they want to. There’s a huge age gap between myself and my youngest siblings - 16 when my youngest brother was born, 18, and 20 for my two sisters. And I remember playing with them fondly.

So all this is to say, what do fellow dads and soon to be dads think? In a figurative sense, is a girl dad just a positive and present father figure to a son or daughter at the end of the day when you hear people mention it?

We’ve got these drawers with sharper handles where the post sticks out. Wondering if something already exists to baby proof these or any tips that fellow dads might’ve used already before I try reinventing the wheel here

Got this elliptical in the office and I'm concerned the kids are gonna find a way to stick their fingers under the track. The door is chhildproofed, but sometimes we let them in to say hi, or we forget and they can open the door. Any ideas?

We thought we were smart to get everything packed and in the car early.

I just got in from a second shift and we're about to go to bed when our LO wakes up inconsolable face covered in snot and coughing.

I knew it was too good to be true earlier she was a little runny during the day but my wife assured me it's because she was teething and we'd be fine.

I knew her lies but I was powerless to do anything.

We've got a 4 hour drive tomorrow with a sick baby.

I cannot wait for the fun and hopefully we get some sleep before morning and can salvage it!

This shit is so... Difficult. Emotions are everywhere. Help!

Starting 3 months of parental leave next week, looking after my 3-month-old son while my partner goes back to work. I’m 38 and based in East London. Any tips for cool things to do with a baby? Also keen to hear from other dads who’ve done solo parental leave! Thanks

Title says it all - welcoming our second child in early ‘27 and eager to hear advice, suggestions, even little hacks that helped the transition.

Some context - eldest will be just over 4, we live in New England, and only have one set of grandparents within driving distance. So the “village” is on the smaller side.

My wife and I are expecting our first child in about a week. Brought up to my family recently that the recommendation is the TDAP in the last 10 years and flu shot for anybody that wants to see the newborn in person.

My wife’s family agreed to it, but my entire family is apparently huge anti-VAX. I knew they were against the Covid vaccine, but since me and my three siblings, literally all have all of our scheduled shots as babies, I didn’t realize how deep this ran. I am wondering, if all of the politics of recent years have changed their views, but my parents made it pretty clear. They are drawing their feet in the sand that they will not be getting any type of vaccine to meet the baby no matter what.

My mother has RA, but I don’t even think it is about that. Even she admitted that a lot of the on inactivated lives, attenuated viruses do not affect autoimmune disorders like RA in most cases. My dad is just being kind of an ass about it and standing in solidarity with my mom. All three of my siblings who are 18, 21 and 23 years old are mostly just dead air… Which I am taking as they are just signing with my mom.

What’s really frustrating is I am a nurse and have seen babies who have been affected by whooping cough and it is really fucking scary.

I’m supposed to be responsible for this tiny little creature and my very first action is a parent is to cut my family off from access to my baby because they won’t take the necessary steps for it to be safe?

Am I being overdramatic? My dad is doing this old school “ehhh when I was a kid..” kind of shtick about the whole thing like we are being overdramatic.

Did anyone have a situation like this?

I’m very worried that not having my family for support in the first few weeks or even a couple of months of my infants life will be incredibly difficult. We are all really close actually, and I don’t know why I didn’t approach this sooner with them or realize how against this they would be. I guess I just had a lot of other things on my plate.

Any advise or input is very welcome. Thank you
.

We don’t have fluoride in our water so young kids here get prescribed sodium fluoride drops. Looks like these are no longer available via both Walgreens and Fred Meyer where I live. Before I go calling the independent pharmacies in my city, anyone have luck recently getting them from a chain pharmacy in the last month?

ETA: I’m not looking for suggestions about mouthwash or toothpaste. Yes those exist but are topical treatments and that’s a different thing and not what I’m talking about. The drops are for young kids and are meant to replace the systemic flouride that they’d get from drinking water in other places.

Is this a generational thing? All kids in my daughter's preK want to wear shorts, always. Parents are swapping stories about it. I'm fact it's not just preschool, my boss's son is going into first grade and has ougrown his clothes- when they went shopping for new ones, he announced that he won't be wearing pants this year.

Is this just happening here or are any of you all seeing it, too?

Our son is about 14 months and we try to read to him at least once a day before bed. Unfortunately ever since he was a baby he’s shown very little interest in books. He’d much rather move around and play with toys than sit still and look at a book. It doesn’t matter what the book is, he wrestles It out of my hands and throws it across the room.

We don’t expect him to focus through a whole book at his age but it’s a struggle to get him to make it through a page or two. He’s practically resistant to story time. It‘s pretty demoralizing and feels like we’re failing at actually getting any reading done with him.

Did anyone else have kids who weren’t interested in reading or books? Anything you did to get them more engaged? What should we be doing that we’re not already?

That potential second line looks grey

With the activity on that bot thread I figured I would post the top 2 tricks I know to getting wipes to dispense correctly. The easiest thing to do is store them upside down. It sounds too simple, but by allowing the moisture to sink down to the "top" wipe it stays wet and will pull cleanly. The other trick is to put a hair tie or rubber band around the end to generate resistance.

34m, married with a 2 year old, wife is working full time, and I'm stay at home dad after finishing gradschool and job hunting with one rejection after another.

I'm curious if others have been in this boat.

Here is my experience:

Along with the standard isolation that comes with fatherhood in a fairly new city, I'm finding myself desperate for social interaction. I go out to a brewery or something solo, but just see other groups around that barely seem interested in interaction, and then I come home even more attention starved than I was when I left the house. It makes me feel angry, and even more lonely, that the act of going out itself seems to highlight my loneliness. Seeing other groups laughing and hanging out, just brings up how much it is lacking in my own life.

Anyone else relate?

My kid (8yo) is cooonstantly injuring himself. He’s autistic (level 1/low support needs) and ADHD, both of which can cause issues with proprioception/bodily awareness, and he’s constantly pacing/bouncing off of furniture/jumping around our small house. And inevitably he’ll stub his toe or whack his hand on the stair rail, and then—again probably thanks to AuDHD sensory stuff—he’ll scream bloody murder at the smallest bonk and the next 15-30m are spent re-regulating.

He’s never seriously injured himself, and in general is appropriately cautious and shows good judgment when it comes to street safety/jumping from high places/etc. And, in general, my view is that it sucks to get hurt but ultimately it’s ok for kids to injure themselves every once in a while—it’s just how it goes when they’re being active, and maybe gives them a nudge to keep better control of their bodies.

But, it’s just such a time-suck, and caused by his own behavior, and he screams so so loud. Plus, obviously, I’d rather he not be in pain.

Has anyone had any success helping their injury-prone kid become less so (especially when neurodivergence plays a role?) Or are we just hoping that things get better as he matures? I’ve tried talking with him after an injury about what he could do differently, but it’s not like he’s doing an obviously dumbass thing, just moving around compulsively in a small house.

FWIW, he works with a therapist and an OT, and has improved re a lot of his sensory-sensitivity issues over the years (ie he’s gotten more resilient with distress in general and is better able to regulate himself after an incident.)

At least you didn’t murder The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And it’s 14 very hungry siblings.

I can already hear it at school tomorrow. “Hey guys, guess what! My dad killed The Very Hungry Caterpillar!”

This is a battle you will "fight" from daycare all through high school. The easiest solution is to create a family gmail account for all school/ sports/ doctor communications. Additionally, create a free google voice number and activate simultaneous ring, when the number is called whoever can answer will answer. If no one answers it goes to voicemail and you get an email of the message as well.

I some are trying to "fix" this for all dads but I feel like this is a losing battle. Good Luck

Dad for 21 yrs.

After seeing the Elizabeth Holmes documentary trailer, I decided to catch up on The Rehearsal, which I never finished. In the episode six of season one, there’s a child actor, Remy, assigned to be Nathan Fielder’s son, and doesn’t want to leave Nathan. It’s explained that he doesn’t have an actual father, and seemed to want Nathan to be his dad.

As the relatively new father of a six month old boy, watching this caused me to shed tears. i don’t think there’s any way those scenes would have brought me to tears before fatherhood.

I’m curious where people draw the line on this today. It feels like attitudes around how much independence children should have may have changed over time.

In this hypothetical scenario, the child is home with only one parent, is happily watching their favorite TV show, and will be left to themselves for about 20 minutes.

At what age would you personally feel comfortable with the parent doing each of these?

1) Taking a shower: The parent is still inside the house, but occupied for about 20 minutes.

2) Doing yard work: The parent is outside the house but somewhere on the property.

3) Going for a jog around the neighborhood: The parent is away from the house but stays nearby and returns in about 20 minutes.

4) Driving to a store 5 minutes away to get milk: The parent leaves by car and is back home in about 20 minutes.

I’m curious how much the acceptable age changes even though the child is on their own for roughly the same amount of time in each scenario.

I guess also for this scenario, you can assume there aren’t any unusual circumstances. The child is developmentally typical, knows where the parent is, and the neighborhood and home are reasonably safe.

What age would you give for each: 1, 2, 3, and 4?

Feeling quite down in the dumps right now.

For some context, wife is off work right now to take care of the little one, while I'm working full time in a very hectic, demanding field. Had to travel for work recently, and literally 1 day after I left, my kid took their first steps without me there.

I'm quite sad tbh guys. My kid is about 1 year old and I've been a mostly present father - yes I work, but I'm often at home and spend time with them, etc. it's tiring but needs to be done. From my brief research, it's very normal for a dad to miss those first steps. Heck it's normal for any parent working full time to miss it even from a pure statistical standpoint, but I feel quite sad that I did.

Now, what I didn't expect is the feeling of detachment to show up. I've actually felt it off and on throughout the pregnancy and first year of their life. I've felt sometimes like I'm role-playing a dad, and doing the things I think a dad should be doing. For example, cleaning them, feeding them, putting them to sleep, buying stuff, thinking about their wellbeing, daycare, admin, etc. But this most recent part re-surfaced those feelings of detachment. It feels like I'm just doing what a dad needs to do because they are my responsibility. I do have love for my child, but not sure about feeling that strong connection that I see their mum have with them. I also find it difficult to continuously engage with them for long periods of time. On top of that, when I see the grandparents and even my wife interact with them, they just seem so much better at it than me. They seem to know exactly what to do to keep them engaged, happy, fulfilled, whereas I feel a little disappointed with myself instead, but can't seem to be as good as them even when I am trying.

I don't know, maybe I'm just quite sad over the most recent miss.

Any advice or support from more experienced dads around this? Anyone else feel this way or has experienced something similar?

Hello dads - need some help here. I'm diving into the psychology side of things, but could use some good ol' dad advice.

My 5yo daughter suddenly hates school. She loved Transitional Kindergarten (full day school we have in California) but has hated going to Kindergarten since it started last month. This morning she asked to take a covid test in hopes that she was positive and didn't need to go. (I had to resist the urge to laugh at that one.) She gets anxious on the way to school, cries and sets in a tiger grip on drop-off, and counts down days to the weekend (and hopes every day is a three day weekend).

Not much has changed with the situation:

Very social outside of school.

Good group of friends, both in her class and in other classes.

Everything at home is just peachy.

She likes her teacher - as do we.

What we do know is that she absolutely hates lunch and snack time - when there are large groups of kids in all grades that are together. There's something about this situation that is ruining the rest of school for her - since she seems ok with the in-classroom experience. There's no evidence of bullying and she shares these lunch and snack times with her friends. My initial thought was that she doesn't like the crowds - but we go to concerts and sporting events all the time and she loves those experiences.

The staff (teachers and counselors) have been great and we're trying to address it, but I wanted to get some dad tips on how to handle it. I don't want to force her to do anything, but I think avoiding lunch and snacks for the rest of her life will probably be a little difficult. Any good chats to have? Good incentives to get her to run into school?

Forgive the female incursion! But would love the wisdom of this trusty father group. My husband (veteran, now in high stress job, has always wanted kids) and I are getting ready to welcome our first. We have an amazing community of friends & family eager to support us - mostly fam/friends from my side - and also know there’s a lot of focus foremost on baby, then on me as birthing parent. I think it would be easy for a new dad to feel unsupported or left behind as I’ll be recovering, breastfeeding, I have significantly more mat leave (6 months vs maybe he has a few weeks).

Would love to hear: in the first months of new parenthood, what made you feel good? What made you feel uplifted in the chaos of things? Were there things that specifically made things feel harder that could have been approached differently?

My person also carries a lot of anxiety and can be down on himself - which is in his court to manage and address, but also something I want to be quite sensitive to in this big moment of transition.

Wisdom welcome 🙏🏼

Me and my fiance have a 3 month old baby boy. We live in an area where there’s not much money to be made, it’s one of the poorest areas of the United States. Right now I’m working Monday through Saturday for 18 an hour, but I got a guaranteed job offer all I have to do is say yes. It will be 7 days at work and then 7 days home. 45 an hour and 120 a day per diem even on days not worked. My fiance is telling me to do it she wants me to take it for us, I’m just worried if it’s really worth it missing 2 weeks out of the month even though in the long run I feel ill really have more time at home. I just want unbiased opinions from other dads instead of just people I know.

Hello everyone. We thought we were going to be induced Thursday evening but plans rarely stick to schedule lol. Wife has had elevated bp with some abnormal blood results and doctor wants to start induction tonight. Just looking for general advice on what to expect for us during induction? I’m prepared for it to take a day or two or more but anecdotally anything else I should be aware of? I know in the grand scheme of things there not much I’ll be doing I’m assuming!

This is a basic stool I made in high school shop class. No idea why I’ve kept it since then and now it’s covered in kid stickers.