The Mamas & The Papas - The Dad/ Parenting Thread

Most of my loveable demon spawn collectively went back to school today.

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And what a glorious day it is.

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Mine has one more day because teachers have their prep thingy today…

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Surely it’s strange that the consensus with a number of other doctors in the surgery, as well as the junior and senior doctor in Emergency, plus the physical blood tests all agreeing that she had a UTI would supersede a single other doctor? Especially considering as the ER doctors were pretty unanimous in telling us that kids get UTIs all the time.

In terms of the longer appointment, my wife just mentioned my daughter having a UTI in passing. It was a sort of: “yeah I came in because it slightly burnt and my daughter just recovered from UTI…” comment. The doctor took it upon herself to then go through my daughter’s medical history and lecture my wife on the full topic.

What would be stranger - that or ignoring the new development?

FWIW, the GP probably isn’t going to give a lot of weight to the EDs docs opinion.

Again though, we had a doctor arguing with my wife telling us there was no way my daughter had a UTI despite the fact that:

a) She came back positive from the urine test: Doctor told us it was a false positive as she probably had fecal matter there because she wipes herself. This despite the fact that she’d been at home for 2 weeks and we’d been wiping her bum the whole time.

b) She was complaining of a burning sensation when she peed, stopped herself mid-pee because it hurt and even said “ow” a few times whilst peeing: Doctor told us that it was impossible for a 3 year old to explain pain and where it was coming from.

c) Doctor informed us that, if she had a UTI, there would be other symptoms apart from just the peeing: She was informed that my daughter had been running an extremely high fever (40C) for a number of days, wasn’t eating, was projectile vomiting and was extremely lethargic throughout the day.

d) When my wife followed up on these symptoms, she was informed that they were probably something completely unrelated

e) Granted my wife had burning, but it disappeared itself and we’re actually thinking it was just nerves/lack of sleep

Now granted im not a doctor in any respect, and this is the first time i’ve actually had cause to doubt a doctor’s diagnosis (apart from one that was known in the industry for insurance fraud). But in this case, it very much seems like she’s going out of her way to refute the diagnosis despite the fact that she has a fairly big chunk of evidence to the contrary.

Maybe look for another doctor for a second opinion? Doesn’t sound like you’re going to have a good relationship with this doctor from here on in

I mean at a different surgery or something, as much as there are probably other doctors at this surgery, they work with this doctor so they have their working relationship to maintain, which may make them less likely to contradict

My father was a gp and a (small) number of the doctors that went through his surgery were not up to it. Sometimes to do with arrogance/ stubbornness rather than their actual technical knowledge

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Keep in mind that a (large) number of doctors are borderline autistic, burnt out, emotionally exhausted weirdos who are asked to deal with societies most fucked up shit on a daily basis.

Yeah, finding the right kind of weirdo is difficult but so important.

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We did actually go for a follow-up with one of the older doctors and she all but said the first one was wrong. In that round about way that they can…

We’re actually tossing up on whether to completely change Medical Centres. One of the reasons why we got so frustrated was because we couldn’t book in with our main doctor, even when we stated what the go was. Each time we came in, we had to see someone else. Part of it is purely due to the area, as we got one in Hunters Hill (where my wife grew up) and it’s right next to a nursing home.

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Today is my twins birthday.

Took a half day at work and planned to take them to their favourite park, because our daycare center does a mad birthday cake for all the kids (there’s like a birthday every week lol) so let them have the morning. . Race away from work, get to the daycare and they’ve just gone down for a nap. :rofl:

So now at the pub treating myself to a steak and a beer while they sleep off cake and sugar.

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In high school our rugby coach used to make us do something called the Irish Mile.

It was a 100m sprint followed by 10 full burpees. Repeat till he said enough.

After about 5 rounds it would set in that you’d hate burpees so much that youd look forward to doing the run. Then youd realise that was awful, and want to go back to the burpees.

Alternating between school holidays and school term elicits a very similar response.

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My wife has been with my two boys (3.5years & 8 months) in Germany for the last 6 weeks. She has family there (spent most of her life there until she moved to Australia to be with me). She’s on maternity leave, so made sense for her to spend a bit of time over there, and I don’t have a lot of leave at the moment so I stayed here.

It’s incredible how much I’ve missed them. It’s been nice having time do things that I haven’t been able to since having kids, but I wouldn’t trade it at all.

Can’t wait to go and pick them up from the airport on Friday night. During times like this I realise how grateful I am for having these amazing souls in my life.

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Football related children things… my 8 year old really got into Sydney FC this year (and football in general) – with Luke Bratten becoming his favourite player after one incident where Luke was bleeding and came back out with a bandage and kept going. My 8 year old thought that was just the greatest thing. We live in the Macarthur area and go to the occasional game with family members, my boy enjoys it (yes, mostly the cowbells) but has been resolute in telling his uncles he is sticking with Sydney FC. I told him that Bratten has signed for Macarthur which leads him to declare that he is now going to swap to Macarthur as Bratten is his favourite player. I talked to him about how you follow a club not a player – but really I also want him to make his own decisions on this… I hope it will be short lived but he did ask me to take him to the Macarthur store when we were last at that centre… which I did. Torn between him loving football and what is his ‘home town’ club and to keep pushing SFC. Fact a lot of his team mates on weekends are Mac fans makes me think it could be a losing battle!

He has also declared that he will be supporting Messi against Chile in the Copa even though my wife (and of course his grandparents) were born in Chile – told me he doesn’t care and that Messi is his favourite player so that he is going to go for Messi against anyone besides the Socceroos… so yeah – what can you do!!

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This is something I’m worried about with my kids. We too live in the Campbelltown area, 15 mins from Campbelltown Stadium.

What age did you take your kids to their first game. I was so keen season gone by but I didn’t end up doing it thinking they were too young.

I have family friends who don’t follow football who tell me they’re going to inundate them with Wanderers stuff. :unamused:

Do you have a soft spot for any clubs or players yourself? It would be great to be able to talk to him about the concept of a soft spot, and how you have a soft spot for a particular club because you like a particular player for example, but that Sydney FC is the team that you support year on year. That way he may be able to apply that to his own situation and make his own decision. Also remind him that Brattan won’t play for Macarthur forever :wink:

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My eldest didn’t go to a game until last season - He was 3 / 4 during Covid times which is when I would have first taken him, but then realised bit later that he was the sort of kid that really wouldn’t sit still there anyway and he wasn’t that interested, so I waited till he was 7… my youngest went to their first game at 4 (this season) and was initially bored, but luckily it was the game where we belted Perth so he soon got into it. I suspect every kid is different - I was of the mindset of not taking them until they wanted to go and I think it worked well for me

I actually don’t mind if he does switch to Macarthur in one way - growing up there myself I would have given anything for a local top flight soccer team - and if Macarthur treat the junior players in my area correctly, then both of my boys should probably be tempted across - but yeah, of course I want them to stay SFC (though - I guess if we support different teams - match day could get quite fun as they get older)

Well of course I have a soft spot for Macarthur as it is my and my families area as far back as the late 1800s and I have told him that as soon as SFC are out of the competition we would of course hope for Mac to win it - maybe it is actually all my fault lol

Took my daughter to her first game this season and she loved it. I made sure that one of my other mates was there with his daughter (similar age) so they spent part of it shouting “go Sydney” and the other part just fooling around etc. She absolutely loved the experience and it wasn’t too intense. I’d avoid taking them to a WSW game as my worry is she’d get scared of the crazy amounts of noise,

Problem with the games this season is that they were definitely not family friendly. Even with the 530 cutoff, we were home after 9:00pm just with trying to get out of the carpark etc. I’d love to see more earlier games that would allow kids to attend, otherwise they’re very much cutting out a fairly large portion of the market, even though i’d assume TV viewership would be up with later games.

I wouldn’t look into it too much. Kids are always going to go for the fads and they’re always going to be taken into the Euro hype. My 11 year old nephew has loved Sydney FC, PSG, Man United, Chelsea, Barcelona, Miami FC and whole load of other top tier clubs. He’s got all their jerseys, always talks about the biggest names including Messi etc. At that age, they don’t really care about the loyalty or the history or anything like that, it’s about the coolest things that they can discuss with their friends.

For yourself, I think the most important part is being happy they he’s supporting football and hasn’t gone over to the NRL/AFL

Yeah far more important to nurture a love of supporting a local team and watching live rather than more of the miami messi stuff.
I wouldnt mind if my kid liked a different local team, creates a point of friendly rivalry in the familly which can be a healthy way to talk about tolerance of others choices. Macarthur are relatively harmless (for instance, compared with wests) and need this kind of junior engagement anyway.
I live in canberra now, would love nothing more than for my daughter to be a canberra fan when she’s a bit older.