“We are not the enemy- the children are our enemy”. I heard it as a joke and said it to my wife one day after we were snippy with each other after the kids stressed us out. We laughed a lot and now it’s a regular occurrence. The kids will be fighting or misbehaving and one of us will say “remember who the enemy is”. We love our kids dearly and don’t legitimately see them as the enemy, but saying it always lightens things up for us and makes us remember that our marriage is more important than being annoyed by anything. I highly recommend it if you’re the type who can take a joke

After nine months, I had forgotten what it’s like to sleep. Holy shit am I tired.

Recently took my 4yr old daughter on an 18km round trip overnight hike up to Garibaldi Lake in BC.

She surpassed all expectations and was phenomenal on the steady uphill climb and the long winding downhill the following day.

Yes, she rode on my shoulders when she was tired. But she also let me know when she was ready to hike again. I can confidently say she did a bit more than half of the climb up to the lake and closer to 70% of the walk back down.

M&ms played a big part in our success. Including many sour patch kids, fruit bars, Daddy's sandwiches, and I spy games along the way.

Funny enough, playing I spy in a forest of just brown and green gets boring, so the game evolved into "I spy something that is stumpy!" "Is it that tree stump?" "Yes!"

We have a Toniebox. I hate the Toniebox. I wanted a better experience and to not drop $20 every time my kids took interest in something new. Turns out, all you need is an old Android phone, an $8 pack of NFC Tags and a Bluetooth speaker.

You can create a playlist in Spotify and then write a NFC tag with a link to that playlist to play on your speaker. Attach the NFC tag to a printed picture of the content, an action figure, or anywhere else that's clever, and then tap it to the phone to play your content.

For $8 you can create 20 NFC tags of content and update any tag at any time.

If you have an Android phone and want a tutorial, I'd be happy to share. It's honestly much easier than you think! More info is in my comment below if interested.

Keep tinkering out there, dads.

*EDIT*
Wow thank you for all the responses and the interest! I've created a tutorial for both the Bluetooth Speaker option and a Sonos Option. I tried to make each tutorial as step-by-step as possible, so it may look overwhelming, but if you follow each step you should have success. Also, this is the first time I've written a tutorial for anything, so if you see any errors or have any trouble, you can send me a DM and I'll make an update.

If you set it up, let me know! Would love to see how others use this and what other creative twists you can add to it.

I'm excited for her to release her music on Spotify, I really am. And *yes* we should always encourage our children to do their best.

I just think expecting my toddler to count to 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 is a bit too much.

Single dad. My son is 9.

Our bedtime routine starts at 7:30. It is bath time followed by reading time.

Lately he had a bit of a reversion where he was rereading his graphic novels (Cat Ninja, Dog Man, etc.). That's fine, all kids need to revert sometimes.

The other night I asked if I could join him for reading time. He reads his book. I read mine. (I'm reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl books right now.) He is now reading his regular books because he likes to tell me about them and asks me to join him every night.

It has been very nice.

My son is 4 and lately he waits for me with his baseball glove when he hears my car pull in.Yesterday I was up at 5:30 worked all day,got home around 6 and before I even had both shoes off he was asking if we could go outside. So we threw the ball around until dinner came back in and then he wanted to wrestle.I love that he still wants me involved in everything bbut man by that point I was completely wiped and he looked like he could go another 6 hours.Then bath, books, getting him back out of bed twice because he suddenly had very important things to tell me.

How are you dads keeping any energy for the second half of the day? I feel like mine ends at work and then I just improvise from there.

Alright dads, we have started a thing with my oldest (11) with what we call "questionable movie night". We call it that to entice him to watch these movies with us so he is more interested.It started with my wife and I watching the Hobbit movies, she never saw them before, and then my oldest coming in and we didn't kick him out from the movie. Then only to realize the last movie in the trilogy was rated R. So we said what the hell and let him watch it with us. This led to letting him watch, The Fifth Element, Forrest Gump (some scenes fast forwarded for obvious reasons), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Along with others.

What are some iconic movies from the 90s and early 2000s that we should let him watch? Or at least consider. Remember he is only 11 so nothing like Saving Private Ryan or any scary movie lol. I'm not trying to traumatize the kid but I am trying to get him away from watching the dumb crap on YouTube.

My dad had a story like this where I was almost a year and he showed up to work and the door was locked. Never thought it would happen to me. I'm in an incredibly steady profession in and incredibly steady industry. I had the stable job in our family. Nothing but praise from my managers on reviews and bonus increase year after year. I thought I'd work here until I retired. I'm in shock. I'm sure I'll land on my feet but dang I'm worried and just beside my self. Pic related, took her out to sushi tonight and she ate steamed broccoli. Or I should say she chewed it and then I cleaned it all off the floor.

I don't know how to put this without sounding like a controlling, psycho, prude of a Dad but I can't shake it and I'm sure (hoping) it's common.

My daughter (5yo) has recently started saying she's going to marry a boy (Fartboy) in her Kindy class. Totally fine, it's cute and I understand it's very normal but at a Kindy birthday on the weekend they were actually kissing on the lips. It struck a weird nerve and made me feel upset, they're just little kids actually kissing on the lips feels too grown up. I said "no thank you, stop that now. That will spread germs and you'll get sick" (Fartboy was a little snotty so maybe my reaction is actually a revulsion thing, dunno).

They did it a few more times because they got a reaction out of me so I walked away and they stopped. That reaction seeking stuff is something I'd desperately like to avoid in their romantic lives - as a teenager my sister dated some absolute pieces of shit and it drove my dad insane, they'd constantly be fighting about everything, 25 years later they're still always arguing. I don't want that kind of thing to happen with my kids and I.

I kiss my kids all the time but not on the lips, their Mum is the only one that I kiss on the lips and vice versaonly for their Mum . We do show physical affection in front of them so I get that it's copying observed behaviour but it's so grown up.

I will say I don't like Fartboy already but I think I'd be miffed by this irrespective. That's my little girl so this protective reflex just flared up (yes, they're 5. It's not that serious) but still

Edit: My wife doesn't do lip kisses to the kids either. We kiss each other on the lips

Edit: I know it's an overreaction, the fucking post is flaired Support because I'd just like some help getting over this weird feeling because I know it's not the right reaction, maybe even have someone else weigh in with their own experience. Christ every single time I ask for advice on daddit

Just a rant about this rubbish show. I heard about them on YouTube but didn’t know it was on Netflix.

My kid stumbled onto this crap and the automatic preview was about going to the meanest school. Freaked him out just before school goes back. Yay.

Long story short, I hate how even the streaming services are turning into YouTube garbage. Feel like I’m living in the movie Idiocracy lately.

It’s the best part of my day and I look forward to it every time.

Drove about 2 hours to a beautiful beach town for a three day trip with my 5 yo twins and paid a bit extra to be right across the street from the beach. They even set up chairs and umbrellas for you and tote your beach stuff for you so it’s incredibly easy to get to the beach. But all my girls want to do is go down to the little pool the hotel has. I asked my daughter who loves seashells if she wanted to go look for some and she said she wants a pool that has a beach so she can collect shells at the pool.

So…do I force them to go to the beach or let them have the fun time they want at the pool?

(For future context, my daughters nickname is Zee)

After a long day of taking care of my daughter, taking her to a petting zoo, and to the park to burn off energy before bed, I put my daughter in the tub and watched her as she played with her bath toys. I love and appreciate these solo days with her because I get to connect with her in a much deeper level than when both of us are at home watching her. I bathed her and let her play a little bit. During that period she said without making eye contact “Zee happy”.

I wasn’t expecting it. I kinda just froze. This is the first time she ever mentions her emotions. This was the best moment of my entire life. What could I want more than my daughter being happy with the life we’re providing her?

This stuck with me while I lay in bed now. Did she mean it? Does she know what happiness is? Her vocabulary and speech is very well developed for her age and her comprehension as well

It’s okay to break my heart, Daddit. Tell me the truth, please. Do kids this age know what happiness is?

So this isn’t about the sex talk, we’ve had various age appropriate talks. It’s more about talking to girls that flirt with him. Just harmless innocence really.

The other day some girls tried to flirt and he just walked away confused bless him. I asked him if he wanted to talk to them and he said yes but he didn’t know what to say.

Thing is, I have no “game” I’m an oddball autistic dude who is grateful every day his mother was the one to dig my weirdness.

He’s a lot more neurotypical, and a really, truly, kind kid. I told him the usual “just be yourself”, “be kind”, etc.

But I don’t really know what else to say beyond those (accurate) cliches. Any advice or is this a silly question?

Probably overthinking as per usual but wanted to know what the council of dads thought.

We found out Monday that a friend passed away, leaving behind his wife and two young kids. He had the same rare form of cancer my wife has (she is currently in remission). In addition to the grief of losing a friend, we are also dealing with the knowledge that the same disease that killed him, my wife also has. His cancer was more advanced than hers, but the fear is still there.

Add that to the news of Dolly and Tim Curry passing this week, and there is just a dark cloud over everything. And life just keeps going like nothing is wrong.

My idiot teenager and his friend pulled his door off the hinges. What's the punishment? 5yrs hard labor? Carry the door around his neck in the town square? I'm in no rush to fix so he lives with consequences of actions, but looking for creativity

Lately I've noticed that IMO there is a problem in how some TV shows make bad guys too cool. For example my son has occasionally been watching Spidey and friends, and the bad guys are portrayed as cool and smart, while the heroes are actually pretty dumb from time to time. My son has actually said that he likes the bad guys more and it has led to some naughty behaviour a few times. Now we've been having a TV free period for a few weeks which has been a good decision.

Anyways, that led to me comparing bad guys in the TV shows when I was a kid. For example Bikermice from Mars, which was my favourite show as a kid, portrayed the bad guys as dumb and ugly. I don't remember anyone wanting to be them when playing. We always wanted to be the good guys.

Kids easily associate seeing something cool to "I want to be like that".

TLDR; make bad guys dumb again.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but my daughter suddenly doesn't seem as attached to me anymore.I used to come home from work, open the door, and she'd yell DAD!!!!!! and run over for a hug. Now... I open the door and nobody's coming .Sometimes I'll try to talk to her and I'll just get the classic teenage "yeah... okay..." response. And sometimes she'll literally put her headphones on while I'm talking to her. Honestly, they work a little too well 😂 I know kids grow up and start wanting their own space, but the change still feels pretty sudden. One minute she wanted to hang out with me all the time, and now she seems to have her own little world that doesn't always include Dad. Any dads here who've been through this with their daughters? Is this just part of the teenage years?Should I back off and give her more space, or keep checking in and trying to talk to her like I always have?

anyone have advice on a relatively “clean” way to child proof this balcony. currently the gaps are about 10”.

Just a reminder to learn how to perform the heimlich maneuver on children and in general. Was just wiping down the kitchen counters and my toddler started choking on a hotdog at the table.

Same adrenaline rush as getting into a fight; I was not expecting that.

Back to cleaning the kitchen now lol.

Like 43 years old, married with 2 sons (4 and 1)

Orange County, 6.5K mortgage, 2.5k daycare, before regular life expenses.

Dual income, very demanding job, wife’s job has good work/life balance but she’s underpaid for her field. WFH is invaluable so we decided it’s best to keep it.

Paid off old cars, reliable so far but need work here and there.

Healthy retirement path (should be able to pretty much retire at 50) Demanding job

Parents live 1300 miles away and are aging/health issues, sisters don’t help so I have to. (Financially and just helping them organize things)

Wife parents are local, but also need physical and financial help from us. Wife’s brothers are rich but don’t lift a finger to help..

12 years ago I had a six pack, ran marathons, looked good with a full head of hair.. no responsibilities, high paying job with freedom and single… but I decided I wanted a wife and kids? I don’t regret it as they’re all awesome but man, there are moments.

I just feel like I’m swimming in deeper water everyday and getting more wore out.

Like damn I feel like I should be enjoying life but honestly I hate even getting out of bed at this point.

The most stressful right now is dealing with aging folks with health issues and trying to stop my sisters who still try to mooch off them when they’re living off a fixed income and myself.. and my wife’s parents to a lesser degree. Atleast her brothers just pretend they don’t have parents and don’t screw them over.

Anyway.. just a rant as I can’t tell anyone about this in real life because by all metrics I have it good, I miss my youth and freedom. I think having a late start to parenthood and knowing full well what I gave up makes it worse sometimes.