“Please go away.” Is a complete sentence and should be used copiously in such situations.
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Try to sell her crystals next time you see her. If she says no, she’ll leave you alone so you stop bothering her about crystals, if she says yes, profit.
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Or really any MLM product. Pampered Chef, Tupperware, Amway…
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Wife called this morning in tears because of how awful the 4yo was a daycare dropoff. So, yay Friday.
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I.used to.take my son hunting. Now he takes me humting.
Me, the boy, and his gf are going for dove tonight. Ive been trash talking to his gf (apparently a crack shot) the last couple.days, so heres hoping i hit something.
My 8yo son came to me tonight in tears asking to speak with me privately, so I sent his dad out of the room. He is worried that I have changed lately, that something is going on with me and I’ve been acting like a different person, and not the mom he has always known and loved. He kept saying “I’m not trying to be rude, ok?” I asked him what he meant, and he said that ever since we imposed the rule that they have to do two hours of reading a week, things had changed, and he was concerned for me.
I quickly pieced together that he isn’t used to having me be the enforcer of things, that’s usually his dad, and also he doesn’t like being forced to do things, he is stubborn like his dad…and his mom.
I somehow managed to keep a straight face. I told him how proud of him I was, that he shared his feelings with me and how brave that was. He initiated a hug and we shared a very sincere moment, and I told him how important reading was and how lucky he was going to feel as an adult that he was able to read so many great things, and that my job as a parent is to make sure he’s doing things that are the best for him.
It was hilarious and sad and poignant and sweet, major life moment for me. Probably not memorable at all for him.
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Not sure what the equivalent is here.
Our kids went to outdoor school for a week.
I went to outdoor school for a week, in another state (I mean, not in CA), in a more foresty area.
My high school had Field Studies, where high schoolers go to the Rockies for 30 days.
(This had been written but not posted.)
that’s what new NA thinks…
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It is so weird how the amount of work we force our children to put up with is mostly arbitrary.
Like there are I guess some extremes, either 16 hour days or 0 hour days, but everything in between is just about feels.
Do you let your kid get away with no homework and no chores at all, no problem. Do you force your kid to get all As, do all the chores, and practice piano 4 hours a day, also acceptable.
We have big feelings about these extremes, but it’s mostly just a reflection of what’s normal in our culture. And our kids have no clue, they only sense what has changed for them, and as they grow older, what is normal for their (also arbitrary) friends.
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Orphanage Pretend
“Will you let me keep my things?”
“No, we don’t believe in keeping things. Holding onto them will make you think more about things and less about people.”
“But I need these things to remember my family.”
“You need to start a new life here…”
“I’ll make a deal with you…”
“There’s no deal here. This is just how it is.”
“But I made an important promise that I would keep these things…”
“Okay, you can keep one small token of remembrance.”
<…thinks for a while…>
“I am keeping this photo of my mother and father taped on my Switch.”
I think your point is important, we paid attention to this when our kids were young. They had school and schoolwork and one extracurricular hobby only, that they were never very serious about. And we let them pick their hobby, and change it. Chores existed but were minimal, mostly walk the dog. Seemed to work out well, we didn’t want slackers.and we didn’t want to drive them to excellence at that age either.
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Cough
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Lol, he’s 27, he could volunteer to cut the lawn, but I’m not going to make him do chores at that age.
When they were younger, they had some chores, but not the heavier stuff like cutting lawns and shovelling snow. He’ll chip in if I ask now though, I just don’t ask unless I’m not available.
There’s a balance and throwing chores on kids is a good way to make things imbalanced IMO. Plus, the directive was always ‘good marks first’, and they mostly got good marks so we gave them leeway.
Except for that one time in HS he had crappy marks and was pissing around. Sat down and had a chat, which did nothing. So I pulled his car for a week and made him ride the bus. That was surprisingly effective lol.
He’s not lazy, if that’s what it seems like. Quite the opposite.
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Sure but think about how unlazy he’d be if you had tiger-mom’d him to death!
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They don’t teach kids times tables in our school. They hope that their parents teach them at home, but they aren’t doing it like I did as a child.
I asked my 3rd grader what 8 x 12 was, and he knew immediately. He hasn’t started memorizing his times tables yet. I wonder if he’s naturally good at mental math; I am not!
It took him a few seconds to get 8 x 18, but he did get there. They think of things in terms of 10’s now. 8 x 10 + 2 x 8; 8 x 20 - 2 x 8.
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Have noticed the 10s thing as well. Currently teaching the little one using Numicon.
I noticed this with my 8 year old. She was basically at grade level for math, which I thought was not great since she’s in a wealthy suburb and is on the older side for her grade so now we do “Daddy homework” everyday, which is about 20 minutes of math everyday. Now she’s ahead of grade level.
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I spent my 5th grade year homeschooled and worked through as many math books as I could because I just couldn’t get enough of it. Got through algebra 1. I credit my love and talent for math to that, it makes a huge difference at this age. Of course, you have to enjoy math in the first place to do something like that, but it took me from bright to extremely accelerated and middle school was a breeze for me.
This seems bizarre to me
I thought maybe it was a Covid thing when my 11yo didn’t learn them. It was not. When I was in 3rd grade, we had to recite all our times tables in front of the class, if we got through a number without screwing up, we would move on to the next number the next day, until everyone got through them. And we had timed multiplication tests. They don’t do that here!