How do you keep going after a fight with your spouse?

My husband and i are going through a rocky road in our marriage. I'm afraid it's not going to turn out good. I'm trying to stay motivated in taking care of our 7 month old but i feel like breaking down every second of the day. Resulting in me not having the energy to wake up early and entertain my son and just putting him somewhere to entertain himself which leads me feeling like a horrible mother. I'm looking for tips to stay motivated for my son, how do/did you deal with it? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3bLnORF

I just adopted my 13 year old sister after a year of her living in a group home, what prank can I pull on her today that isn’t too evil??

She’s been going through a hell of a lot lately, and I want to do something funny to cheer her up but also prank her good. I’m not good at these types of things and I was gonna like hide in the house and pop out and scare her but god forbid she walks around nude or something thinking I’m not there.. so I don’t really have any ideas..I also have a 5yo son so if it could be a double whammy that’s even better. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/343Aa52

Why does my kid wake me up?

My kid (3, almost 4) wakes up numerous times a night and comes into my bedroom. I am a very light sleeper so he always goes to me instead of my husband. I sleep really bad and have insomnia so sometimes I don't ask what is wrong (don't want to wake myself up fully). However, he does this sometimes 2-3x a night.Basically, he sleeps. Wakes in the middle of the night. Immediately gets up to wake me up and goes back to his room waiting to be tucked in for bed. He just did this 330a today and now I will not get anymore sleep.Should I get rid of his nightlight? Lock his door? Tell him to only come get me if it is an emergency? I am getting irritated that I am not getting any sleep. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/3ayLGHL

20m daughter can't stand mom.

So this started once we put the daughter in daycare, I have to leave early for work, so wife is left to do all the morning work. Eating is where this stems from. Daughter takes forever to eat and is picky, my wife only has so much time in the mornings so she started getting really frustrated, but in general wife has a really hard time controling her frustration. Well it's started to impact our 20m old daughter, she wants nothing to do with the wife ever. Fights her on most things and won't let her do anything with her, just pushes her away, But will do things for me usually without an issue. We have been working on this for a week now where basically I take on most of the discipline duties but It's not really working. I don't know where to start with addressing this. It's really hard on my wife having her daughter push her away all the time. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/39yhGdO

Dear Fathers of reddit: what tips would you give your former soon-to-be-dad self if you could go back in time?

Asking for a friend. His first child is about to be born and this is a scary time to become a dad. What would a soon-to-be dad need to hear? What did you struggle with? What would have helped you? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2Uz4ukQ

Amazing parenting win

I have a special needs daughter (global developmental delay-iq of 4/5 year old) She has always had great teams of people making sure she was learning the skills she needed at the levels that she could master. From a young age If I ever tried to teach her anything it was a fight so I always concentrated more on life skills learning and athletics which are things she wouldn’t fight me on. I figured I wouldn’t waste her life cause if her fits to learn things she would probably never need.Today we attempted some math skills and I found out she can multiply which surprised me, I don’t think she would ever have that high of math abilities, so I asked her if she had been taught division which she hadn’t. I decided to attempt it; i taught her division how I learned as a child and she got it right away, there was no frustration or fits or anything. I am so proud of her and proud of me (I mean it’s mostly her)I believe we are about to learn a whole bunch of new skills in the coming months! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/33YgWxA

How did you decide your children's names?

Posted with permission from my children.I'm a proud papa of 5, all of whom are budding etymologists. My youngest son always liked getting told his "name story" when he was stressed as a little one, and we've sort of reverted to that now that we're all cooped up and under so much stress. I wanted to share my kids's "name stories" and if any of you guys wanted to share too, that'd be super interesting.Our eldest is Josephine Indigo. She was originally going to be Marjorie Morrissey, but my ex-wife ended up reading "Little Women" while she was pregnant and wanted our daughter to have that strength and confidence. She goes by Jo these days, and has the spirit to match her namesake. We didn't really decide on Indigo until a few days after she was born. It was Josephine Morrissey on the birth certificate until my mother-in-law brought us a book about the rainbow, and we flipped through it, and Indigo just sounded right for our girl. I've always been a little bit granola with my name choices, the kids don't mind, though.Our twins are Cosima Rose and Ripley Fox. We had this feeling that it would be boy/boy the entire pregnancy, and planned on Cosmo Hunt and Ripley Fox. Then, out pops girl/boy and we had to reshuffle a little bit. We were already pretty married to Cosmo, and Cosima being the feminine form worked so perfectly. We gave her the middle name Rose after my mother's favorite flower. Ripley was named after Robert Ripley, of Ripley's Believe It or Not. My dad collected the books and comics for a long time, so we decided to honor him there. And Fox just came out of no where.Then, we have MacKenzie Morgan - the plainest of our naming choices, but one of the most colorful kids on the planet. We felt that we'd picked very gendered names with our other three, and wanted something really neutral, something that he could grow into. We knew that MacKenzie was mostly a girl's name, but it just spoke to us. Now that he's older, he hates to be called MacKenzie and mostly goes by Morgan - which we pulled out of a baby name book. Morgan's name is the only one I really, truly regret, just because he can't stand it now.Our (4 yr. old) baby is Juno Leigh. Her name has always been very simple to us - we found mythology to be a great inspiration to us, and everybody really loved Juno. We thought about Hera, but we could never connect to it the same way that we did with Juno. Leigh was the middle name of my late sister in law, who passed away very shortly before Juno came into our lives, so we chose to honor her and give her a connection to our daughter in that way.How did you name your kids? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2Uzkwev