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Comment by highhedgehog | Hacker News Reader

Not that good. Struggling at work. We had a series of hard issues in a row and I felt being accused for poor work in the past, when while it is true I should have understood technical stuff in the past better, a lot of this was due to technical debt.

I am seeing the end of the tunnel, but I hope nothing else comes up for a while or I'll have a mental breakdown.

On top of this I'm struggling with my little kids. They are giving us a hard time going to bed on time, keep coming up, and I get frustrated with them and hate myself after because I have a reaction and get mad at them.

I just hope this period passes soon.

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Heres something I learnt ont eh kids side for bedtime routine: choices and consequences. You can have a discussion with them about the choice they have on bedtime, and what the likely consequence can be (getting up late, not going to school etc). Then let them make the choice and bear the consequence. It's both trust building, and genuinely gives agency and outcome to the kids. Not sure if you can implement this, but if you can, it helps.

Don't wish for the period to pass, since parenthood is a sequence of these challenges, this will go and the next one will come. It's rather a chance to "upgrade" your parenting.

Wishing you the best.

Yeah, we are trying to do that with our oldest, but he might still be a bit young (4)?. But that's essentially what we are trying to do: coming out of bed is your choice and everytime whether will be a consequence. No cartoons, or no books before bed, or stuff like that. We also tried to give him a timeout: if you come out, then you'll sit on this chair facing the wall doing nothing. No talking, no interactions. This last one seems to be somewhat effective. At some point he realizes he's bored and he tells ok "Ok I want to go to bed".

Yeah parenting is hard. Overall my kids are not bad behaved, it's just that this being stressful period it adds up.

Thanks :)

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