My kids and notes: Year 10.9
January 21, 2026
Life with JB
One of PiC’s parenting struggles is seeing JB start to shy away from new experiences. Their first several years of life were brazenly curious to the point of lacking self preservation, so the shift, for him, is hard to adjust to. I’m taking it a bit more philosophically. Just like they used to eat everything and love it, their tastes and preferences are undergoing some refinement. They’re allowed to have opinions and preferences as long as they’re not obnoxious (bratty or rude) about them.
We shared some hilarious parenting stories with our friends who equally struggle with their kid who is a few years ahead of us. They’re currently in a really touch patch where their kid knows everything and therefore they know nothing. When they try to share their experiences, they get the stereotypical teenage shrug of “well that’s how it was for you, but it’ll be different for me.”
Life with Smol Acrobat
We had our Winter parent teacher conference and the teacher had some surprising (but good) things to share. SmolAc’s had a terrible attitude about going to school almost every day for weeks. They never want to go. We empathize verbally but privately have worried that they have no friends and that they don’t want to go because it’s just sad solo time all day. That’s certainly how they start their mornings after dropoff every day. When we drop them off, they very much do their own thing even when old friends are around. But it didn’t quite seem to track with how they end their days – they always seem engrossed with whatever they’re doing and don’t want to leave. If they were miserable all day, I would expect them to be raring to leave when we pick them up.
Their teacher said that they do participate in all activities, from beginning to end, even if there are challenging moments. There are kids who will often quit or refuse to try so this is good. It’s with varying levels of confidence and enthusiasm but they are consistent. They apparently do better with writing at school than at home which is a mixed relief – they’re very apt to quit on me after writing one sentence. They even raise their hand in class and talk to their classmates. It sounds like they do actually seek a balance of playing with classmates and choosing to have alone time. That is a relief.
Precious Moments
SmolAc kept asking me to sleep on the (short end) sofa with them.
“But I will fall off.”
They hug my hand really tightly: I will hold you on!
JB: Smoooooool what happened with my soap?? (Translation: you screwed it up)
SmolAc, thinking about the answer that won’t get them in trouble: uhhhh. I .. don’t know?