General discussion - Mom and Dad Esq.

[Flinty_McFlint]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Oh, it's on. His monkey ass is grass.

Shall we have the same bet as last time?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
So relax. The biggest schmucks in the world are competitive people who are competitive about their kids, and you don't want to start down the wrong slippery slope.

Damn straight. I am not at all competitive about my kid. So he's gonna be way less fucked up than the rest of yours'.

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by OscarCrease
How big are you guys? We stressed out a lot about these charts and percentiles at the other extreme - because our kids are so mini - until I found height/weight percentile chart for adults. I'm 49% and my wife is 40% so certainly we can't expect our spawn to be six footers.

If the thought of having short children bothers you sufficiently, you could opt to give them HGH shots. The shots cost over $20,000 a year. Double blind studies by Eli Lilly suggest the shots can cause a kid's ultimate height to be 1.5 to 3 inches taller than it otherwise would be. The shots are only -- medically -- approved for kids whose height is at least 2.25 standard deviations below the median.

The stuff seems expensive, but it's hard to say, given that short people tend to have worse prospects in career, with sexual partners, etc, etc.

WoPo article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true

Originally posted by Skeks in the city
Double blind studies by Eli Lilly suggest the shots can cause a kid's ultimate height to be 1.5 to 3 inches taller than it otherwise would be.

Wow - our kid might reach 7' with these shots and genetics on his side.

-T(Where the hell would I find pants to fit him?)L

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
In any event, the Law of Large Numbers makes it comforting to think that your kid who's in the 90th percentile for weight, while he may be the fattest kid out of most, but not all, randomly selected groups of ten, is also one of 402,172 kids born last year who are the same weight or fatter. Etc.

Well, at least we can agree that some people should stay away from statistics....

The Law of Large Numbers is not the source of your "comforting" observation. Quite the opposite: what the Law of Large Numbers says is that if you keep randomly selecting kids to compare to your 90th-percentile kid, in the long run, 90% will be thinner.

The observation that 10% of a very large group of kids is still a very large group is, on reflection, also not very comforting. (Well it's a little bit comforting, but only because it reminds me of one of my favorite paradoxes, the one of my favorite paradoxes, the one about taking a grain of rice away from a heap....)

If you want comfort, however, we could actually do the calculation about your randomly-selected group of ten kids (actually, I'll limit it to 9, since most randomly-selected groups of 10 won't even include your hypothetical 90th-percentile kid ). If you randomly choose 9 kids, the chance that all of them will be thinner than the 90th percentile is exactly 0.387420489 = 0.9^9. So, in fact, it's only a bit more than a third of the time that a kid in the 90th percentile will be heavier than 9 other randomly-selected kids.

Next time you step up to the plate, just try not to crack baltassoc in the head, ok?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by credit this

The observation that 10% of a very large group of kids is still a very large group is, on reflection, also not very comforting. (Well it's a little bit comforting, but only because it reminds me of one of my favorite paradoxes, the one of my favorite paradoxes, the one about taking a grain of rice away from a heap....)

Is anyone else humming Gilbert and Sullivan now?

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by credit this
Well, at least we can agree that some people should stay away from statistics....

Yeowch. I'm going back to the FB, where my touchy-feely approach to mathematics and other fact-based sciences is more welcome.

[Nut Case, Sensitive]

Originally posted by credit this
Well, at least we can agree that some people should stay away from statistics....

If you want comfort, however, we could actually do the calculation about your randomly-selected group of ten kids (actually, I'll limit it to 9, since most randomly-selected groups of 10 won't even include your hypothetical 90th-percentile kid ). If you randomly choose 9 kids, the chance that all of them will be thinner than the 90th percentile is exactly 0.387420489 = 0.9^9. So, in fact, it's only a bit more than a third of the time that a kid in the 90th percentile will be heavier than 9 other randomly-selected kids.

Nuts!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by viet_mom
Vietmom
(Speaking of fat, remember I said I was going to buck the Atkins trend and go on a high carb and low fat diet? The results are NOT pretty. You know you're a fatty when your UNDERWEAR feel tight.)

There is an easy solution to that. Stop wearing underwear. Of course, then you probably would want to stop wearing skirts and dresses, too IYKWIM.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Yeowch. I'm going back to the FB, where my touchy-feely approach to mathematics and other fact-based sciences is more welcome.

You don't think touching a scientist is welcome?

Tell that to whomever is touching Eva Silverstein.....


Eva Silverstein with her favorite equations

Hah! got you AG.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

L'il Ty (who is, for these purposes, four years old) is having a really hard time saying goodbye to people. When his mother went out the door this morning, he sobbed in the doorway as she left, and 15 minutes later, when I got out of the shower, he was standing in the front door sobbing again. When it's time to drop him off at pre-school, he does well until it's time for a goodbye hug, and then he doesn't want to let go. If I'm going to get to work, I need the help of the teacher with a crowbar and some pepper spray. OK, not quite, but there's more sobbing.

This seems like a phase. Any suggestions for dealing with it?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
L'il Ty (who is, for these purposes, four years old) is having a really hard time saying goodbye to people. When his mother went out the door this morning, he sobbed in the doorway as she left, and 15 minutes later, when I got out of the shower, he was standing in the front door sobbing again. When it's time to drop him off at pre-school, he does well until it's time for a goodbye hug, and then he doesn't want to let go. If I'm going to get to work, I need the help of the teacher with a crowbar and some pepper spray. OK, not quite, but there's more sobbing.

This seems like a phase. Any suggestions for dealing with it?

Squirt gun. At least that works with my cat and I don't see how it would be much different with a baby dinosaur.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
L'il Ty (who is, for these purposes, four years old) is having a really hard time saying goodbye to people. When his mother went out the door this morning, he sobbed in the doorway as she left, and 15 minutes later, when I got out of the shower, he was standing in the front door sobbing again. When it's time to drop him off at pre-school, he does well until it's time for a goodbye hug, and then he doesn't want to let go. If I'm going to get to work, I need the help of the teacher with a crowbar and some pepper spray. OK, not quite, but there's more sobbing.

This seems like a phase. Any suggestions for dealing with it?

It is a phase. Keep smiling and leave him quickly. If he can sort of tell time, point out on the clock exactly when you'll be back (and get there on time.) Once he realizes that the people who leave keep coming back, this will quickly pass (as long as you don't train him to pitch a fit by allowing his behavior to delay your departures.)

Alternately, you can beat him. Then, he will be happy when you leave, and things will go much smoother at drop-off.

[Flinty_McFlint]

Originally posted by bilmore
It is a phase. Keep smiling and leave him quickly. If he can sort of tell time, point out on the clock exactly when you'll be back (and get there on time.) Once he realizes that the people who leave keep coming back, this will quickly pass (as long as you don't train him to pitch a fit by allowing his behavior to delay your departures.)

Alternately, you can beat him. Then, he will be happy when you leave, and things will go much smoother at drop-off.

Are you my mother?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
It is a phase. Keep smiling and leave him quickly. If he can sort of tell time, point out on the clock exactly when you'll be back (and get there on time.) Once he realizes that the people who leave keep coming back, this will quickly pass (as long as you don't train him to pitch a fit by allowing his behavior to delay your departures.)

Alternatively you can point up at the sky and yell "Look its an airplane!" and then when he turns to look, dash out the door. Of course, that will only work maybe twice before he catches on. That is when the squirtgun comes into play.