Plan: Survive

My son is 3¾. And ever since he's been able to reliably express opinions about this kind of thing (so, maybe two years or more now), he has always hated new clothes and shoes (as in, ones he doesn't recognise, not ones that have had no one wear them). He resists being dressed in them strongly. Shopping is a nightmare with him escaping from shoe stores on his hands and knees screaming at the top of his lungs. Today after some talking and some wrestling he wore new pants to daycare, and funnily enough today was the first time in about three months he wet his pants at daycare. "Now I'm in my pants!" he said happily when I picked him up wearing his spare pants. (This could be a coincidence, I don't really know, but I have suspicions.)

Since he grows, refusal to wear new clothes is a problem!

He doesn't seem to be afraid of new stuff in general. For example, after a parent briefing about how he would be moved to the preschool class at daycare gradually and gently over the course of a month or more, he was allowed to spend a morning hour in the preschool class. Then he flat-out refused to leave and that day, he became the youngest preschooler by about six months. Likewise, he enjoys travel fine.

It could be sensory, maybe. He has some weak signs of aversions: eg, he also hates hates hates wearing sunscreen, and he is a picky eater. But I don't think he's outside the normal range for a child his age. And to the extent that he can explain, it's all about liking familiar clothing, not about it being physically uncomfortable.

Things I'm not willing to try:

• Not having him try things on. Well, for shirts we don't have him try them on. But he's slender and a lot of pants fall off him, and I have somewhat messed up feet from poorly fitted shoes, so I am also unwilling to just buy shoes that are approximately right.
• Having him go naked. Well, not out of the house. This isn't an argument I want to have with his daycare, and a pale-skinned kid in Australia needs to be covered up in the sun.

Things that have worked, sometimes:

• Buying clothes that are especially attractive to him. He loved his bunny-and-tiger Threadless t-shirt straight away, for example. He generally accepts Thomas merchandise on the second or third try. But this is an expensive and exceedingly time-consuming way of acquiring clothing.

Things that haven't worked:

• Anything about getting bigger, stronger, older, etc. He doesn't actually believe he will, half the time. (He says he is going to grow little, stop talking, and live with the baby I'm currently pregnant with and they will be twins. Cute, but not useful to get him to agree to wear new bigger clothes.)

Your thoughts? Anything about getting him to wear sunscreen would be good too. (See above re Australian kid out of doors. It's not negotiable.)

I am mostly just checking before we get ourselves in a terrible pickle.

Here's the situation. V is not-quite-3. He's had lots of signs of readiness for a long time: he's been obsessed with hand hygiene for nearly a year. He has promptly told us that he's just done a poo for about six months. He has informed his daycare (although never us) that he no longer wears nappies. He loves his potty picture books. He's verbal enough to talk about the short-term past and future and to follow a short series of instructions (when in the mood of course). He loves routines and treats and all things older-toddlery.

My mother tried to get him to use a potty about five months ago, when she was caring for him for a fortnight. He promptly learned how to manipulate her with it ("I need to go potty!" gets an adult out of bed!) but did not start using it. So back to nappies then. We're only trying again now because, to be blunt, now is the first time in months that an adult in this household has not been preparing for or recovering from a hospitalisation. That's taken priority (and in some cases left us unable to lift him, which wasn't helpful).

His daycare is keen for him to use the toilet, because on his third birthday they can drop his carer ratio if he is using the toilet by then. Obviously if he's not ready he's not ready, but it would be nice because all his friends will move into the older classroom soon. They also just plain think that if a child is keen on undies, then It's Time.

( How he is doing with it )

Update: judging from comments so far, we probably need to keep doing what we're doing for a fortnight or so before deciding we need a new strategy? Seems fair enough. He's back in childcare Jan 9, it is shut down for a summer break for three weeks. Perhaps we'll be sorted by then.

A while ago I posted about our 2yo's too late (for us) bedtimes and there were various theories involving being stricter about them, or cutting his nap out, and similar.

I think everyone has a point, but one of the biggest issues seems to be food.

What happened was that once I posted, he stopped it for several weeks. Now he's started again. And both times it has been associated with what appears to be real late-evening hunger, and a growth spurt. It's a little bit complicated because he just acts awake and naughty, or asks for treat food ("cupcake! cupcake!"), but what makes us think it is real is that he will stay up for hours being awake and silly, but once he has a lot of milk and a big helping of crackers or similar (offered by us without prompting), suddenly he passes out and sleeps.

The question is then, how do we stop this? He refuses additional food with his normal dinner, he seems to want us to give him an extra meal at 9pm. Do we just accept that that's what his growth spurts demand, or is there some way to encourage him to eat more at 6/7pm?

We also struggle to work out how much of what we say about this he actually understands. He has an age-appropriate vocabulary (I don't have a count any more, but say he has 300-ish words and short sentences at least some of which aren't fixed phrases), and remembers stuff we've promised in the future (like going to the pool, say) for a day or two, but I think "if you don't eat now you will be very hungry when it is dark" isn't a thing that reaches him. I think he's some way off arguing meaningfully about this!

I suppose one possibility is giving him much more regular snacks, but I hate the waste of it so much. Feeding him seems to involve throwing away about two thirds of the food we offer him.

In terms of the "comfort briefly and leave" strategy for bed time, it's difficult to implement. He can open doors now: he can reach and turn adult-height door handles and descend stairs by himself. (We can't install locks, it's a rental house.) He can easily lower himself out of beds. He also knows that smashing stuff and climbing up things and jumping off brings us running, and will use this if he has to. So it's not a question of leaving a drowsy toddler in bed, it's a question of leaving a very hyped up very active and quite determined toddler alone in a dark room.

As usual we're going through this when we've both been quite sick too, so actually we really need him to start sleeping more in order to recover.

Some notes:
He's 95+% for height (approaching the height of a median 3 year old at 26 months), and given genetics we're surprised this isn't higher, if anything. Not sure about weight, 50–70 depending. Kids aren't measured that often in Australia, he probably won't be measured medically again until next year now. So those figures are rough.

He's in long daycare 4–5 days a week, so I don't have a heap of fine control over his portion sizes and similar. All I can tell you most days is that he eats somewhere between "most" or "all" of the food served at daycare. He often asks for food immediately on pickup.

My son is 23 months. I realise this is very little still, but is there anything we can do to encourage slightly more independent play?

We're in the lead-up to a house-move and some of this involves packing while he's awake. His reaction to this is to cry and try and attract our attention and when that fails he starts unpacking things and throwing them. We're also starting to both start to get really grumpy and defensive, introvert-style, from spending all our waking hours with a sad two-year old seemingly insatiably wanting super-happy toddler parenting.

What we'd like is for him to do something by himself. In the same room is fine, just I'd like to be able to avert my eyes and occupy my hands productively. Does anyone know how to encourage this?

Some notes:
- he's only just verbal, so there's no way we can have a sentence-type discussion of how he's feeling. His vocabulary is still name-things-with-concretes-noun-only (so "dog!" or "book!" not "I am feeling lonely!" or "please play with me again Mummy!" or "I don't like that toy!")
- we do not have local family or friends, this is a big part of why we're moving
- we have not in the past found that less-local family or friends are dying to help out. Per my last post, we don't have a lot of parent-friends so to use free babysitting, I need to hang around and actively teach toddler-care from scratch at which point I may as well do it myself: I certainly won't be packing up my house while this happens.
- paid childcare is difficult and expensive to access: it's the Australian summer and peak holiday season, it's the centre shutdown week, and we have enough trouble affording the care we use when we are both actively earning money at the same time: care in our area runs to $25 an hour or so.

You can give me advice, but also, feel free to chat about seasonal present shopping and choices, if they are coming up for you. I'm happy to host an open-ish present thread, I don't urgently need advice.

My situation:

V is 21 months old, will be 23 months at Christmas. Not totally sure what to get him! (And his birthday is less than a month later.) Some things about him:
1. he's still pre/early-language explosion, probably has about 100 words, no sentences
2. he is very active, likes to run and play in water
3. he loves music and dancing
4. we live in a walk-up apartment with little storage space

Some things we are thinking of getting:

A balance bike. Is he too young to figure out how it works any time soon though?

Some kind of play tent something. He loves to hide in child-size "houses" (tents, cubbies) and leap out laughing. It would need to be collapsible.

Very bouncy balls.

Books. Anyone got any young toddler book recommendations? He loves rhymes a heap, also repetition, board book pages that he can turn himself without scrunching them up. (Very toddler, in other words.) Things with plots he shows no sign of following at all. His favourite things are planes, trains, dogs, giraffes, balls, birds (especialy pigeons) and family.

Music. We have They Might Be Giants kids albums but not other kid stuff. Maybe that's OK. He is liking David Bowie right now. But on the other hand, during the year he will presumably make his big language leap into complex sentences and might enjoy things with lyrics that he understands and can sing along to.

My son is 19 months old and still breastfeeds a lot, anything up to 20 times in 24 hours, most commonly 8–12 times. And this is now too much for me. I don't want to finish weaning him, but I want to reduce feeding. And I want feeds to so often stop ending in one of us howling, either him because I was firm and didn't let him have an hour long on-and-off welcome-to-the-new-day feed, or me because he's dry-nursing and I feel like my skin is being flipped inside out and gently and horribly tickled. It's almost impossible to avoid shouting when I feel like that, because I'm just barely suppressing an urge to push him away and run instead.

He's eating relatively well, and we use daycare 3 days a week (soon, unfortunately, 4, while I finish my PhD, 4 is past my personal desire to be apart from him) so he's also used to extended periods without nursing, just not with me around as well.

So, specific question: what kind of favourite thing did your toddler take to after breastfeeding, be it toy or activity or game? Because nursing is for sure his favourite thing: it comforts him, amuses him, and gives him something to do when bored or shy. I don't mind at all nursing after a fall or hurt, or in fact for reunions and bonding. But I do mind boredom nursing a lot and the shyness thing (he's about middle of the road for a child his age I think, so shy-ish) is leading to a lot of public nursing requests. Again not totally averse, but I could have lived without being "that woman who gave the keynote address and had that perma-attached baby" at the tech conference on the weekend, frankly.

He does of course like other things, but unfortunately the two other activities he adores are bathtime and playgrounds. I don't want to transition him to 8–12 baths or playground visits a day, so it would be nice to find or help him find a substitute that's a little less energy intensive for me.

My 15mo's appetite has decreased substantially in the last month. Really substantially: I guess his food consumption at less than a third of what it was at 13 months old. A typical day is:

Breakfast: 1/4 to 1/2 Weetbix brick with dairy milk
Lunch: About 4 bites of an English muffin with peanut butter
Dinner: About 4 bites of an English muffin with peanut butter

(He's also been refusing nearly all meat, fruit and vegetables for the last month. He has substantially increased nursing frequency and my milk supply appears to have risen a fair bit judging purely by feel, so while his appetite is down, it's not down as much as his food consumption.)

I'd like to try that common suggestion of having a snack tray out for him, but... I don't see how it works! He'd just turn the muffin tray upside down, tip all the food out, and use the muffin tray to try and hammer the food into the table and into the carpet*. The only solution we've found to date to throwing/smooshing/playing with food is removing all food from his vicinity.

Is this just something people put up with? Or is the muffin tray with high calorie snacks something for slightly older toddlers? Or am I missing something?

* Just in case anyone is wondering: no, there are no uncarpeted areas we can have him play/eat. The kitchen and the bathroom aren't safe for him, and both would require an actual renovation to become safe.

Is anyone aware of an umbrella-fold stroller for sale anywhere in the world for less than USD200 new that has height-adjustable handles? (I'm not committing to buying at that price, I just want to know what's out there.)

Most of the discussions I see on this end in "nope, your lucky DH will never have to push the stroller!" I have a husband as it happens, but this solution doesn't work for us. I am 193cm (6'4") tall. Even among huge car boot eating prams, we only found one I could push without stooping. I'd love an umbrella stroller too, but... I'm yet to find one other than the $$$ Maclaren one that is height adjustable at all, let alone to my height.

My husband A is about to go away for two weeks of work travel. V (11.5 months old) and I are not accompanying him.

My mother insists that V will entirely forget his father within days, and that we should if anything encourage this process, that V will find phone calls, video Skype, pictures of his father upsetting. (She is basing this off her experience of leaving me alone at the same age: I was weaned about about 10 months old and soon after that she had a week-long holiday without me.)

To make things worse, there will be considerable other unavoidable disruption of V's surroundings at the same time. V and I are going to stay with my parents for the two weeks that A is away, and then when A returns, he, V and I are all immediately going away together for a week during which I will be working, and A will be V's primary carer (although V and I will see each other multiple times each day, so not the same thing).

For anyone else who has had a parent-child separation of about this length, did you find that the baby entirely forgot the parent? Is total erasure of his father the way to go here and if not, what level of contact did you have and did it work out? And how did the reunion go?