You can’t let them explore on their own to build independence and confidence without CPS being called on you.
When kids misbehave in public, all the boomers get their panties in a wad. My parents get flustered when the grandkids get loud playing together in a back bedroom.
Getting kids launched well in life, with some chance of adult prosperity, requires thousands and thousands of dollars in private clubs/ competitions/ tutoring/ schools/ etc - the highly competitive nature of the US economy has reached down into elementary aged children at this point. Where I live, people even pay for tutoring to get their children into GT programs.
Lost my wife in September. Girls aged 6 and 3. I’m already a hollowed out husk of a human, without support from grandparents that live in the same city I don’t know how I’d ever get by. I am a parent and I don’t see how parents do it. Sorry to dump but this resonated with me.
Dad of girls myself and have experienced (and helped support my family through) a loss that felt similarly severe, when I was kinda too young to do so. Nothing you could say would bother or surprise me (at least not too much), so - with all sincerity, feel free to drop this random Internet stranger (me) a line anytime. Can be literally about anything, I don’t know you and promise to never judge, no matter what you say. There is nothing about what you’re going through that invites sanity, wellness, reasonableness, etc.
Good friend of mine is facing similar, on an unknown but not great timescale. It’s rough out here. I’ve got some gas in the tank for now. Holla if ya wanna, don’t feel any obligation, but don’t talk yourself out of it for silly fruitless reasons either, I guess I mean.
Edit: and if me DMing you first and laying out some credibility on my own story helps you get the ball rolling, I can sum that up too. Again just saying, there’s enough barriers in life, no need to introduce false ones (unless they’re helpful, anyway).
I am actually really angry that in the aftermath of Covid, and all the ground that children lost, that we did not overhaul schools to be year-round like they are in Asia. Kids lost whole years of education with the endless school closures!! Why the fuck didn’t we make it up with the summers?! Why did we just go back to the same shitty broken system?!
Sadly because the rich would never allow it to be funded, so it was never a serious possibility, and summers off is among (or the sole?) thing keeping many many educators hanging on at this stage.
Make no mistake, far as I’m concerned they should all get probably 100% raises no bulshit, and anyone who was at it throughout COVID should get some kinda large thank you bonus too.
Aren’t a large portion of them glad to have summers off because their kids have summers off? I think if there was a paradigm shift of childcare needs like that, it might not be so bad.
Yeah that’s probably an important point and I should be slower to phrase things like I’m speaking for teachers en masse.
Frankly the public school system is largely babysitting so adults can work and has been for a while, no reason we couldn’t reorganize that to function better. Well. There are reasons. Just not good ones.
Edit: ya know what, I really just springboarded off of your thought to deliver my own half-related frustration. Even without needing to change money in big ways, there could be large improvements from reworking the schedule. Certainly for students’ ability to retain any info. Thoroughly agree with you and apologies for the unneeded slightly off topic bummer vibe.
Society has become outright hostile to parents. Cost is a major reason, but far from the only one.
The future does not look too promising.
Yes.
You can’t let them explore on their own to build independence and confidence without CPS being called on you.
When kids misbehave in public, all the boomers get their panties in a wad. My parents get flustered when the grandkids get loud playing together in a back bedroom.
Getting kids launched well in life, with some chance of adult prosperity, requires thousands and thousands of dollars in private clubs/ competitions/ tutoring/ schools/ etc - the highly competitive nature of the US economy has reached down into elementary aged children at this point. Where I live, people even pay for tutoring to get their children into GT programs.
Financial demands on parents have increased, but so have non-financial demands.
Unless you have a lot of support from extended family (which also means that you live near them), I really don’t see how parents do it.
Lost my wife in September. Girls aged 6 and 3. I’m already a hollowed out husk of a human, without support from grandparents that live in the same city I don’t know how I’d ever get by. I am a parent and I don’t see how parents do it. Sorry to dump but this resonated with me.
Dad of girls myself and have experienced (and helped support my family through) a loss that felt similarly severe, when I was kinda too young to do so. Nothing you could say would bother or surprise me (at least not too much), so - with all sincerity, feel free to drop this random Internet stranger (me) a line anytime. Can be literally about anything, I don’t know you and promise to never judge, no matter what you say. There is nothing about what you’re going through that invites sanity, wellness, reasonableness, etc.
Good friend of mine is facing similar, on an unknown but not great timescale. It’s rough out here. I’ve got some gas in the tank for now. Holla if ya wanna, don’t feel any obligation, but don’t talk yourself out of it for silly fruitless reasons either, I guess I mean.
Edit: and if me DMing you first and laying out some credibility on my own story helps you get the ball rolling, I can sum that up too. Again just saying, there’s enough barriers in life, no need to introduce false ones (unless they’re helpful, anyway).
It doesn’t help that the state of schooling and instruction here has grown abysmal, largely non-functional.
Kids, on average, aren’t learning shit here.
While “preparing for” and entering the economy of today and tomorrow. Things are grim.
I am actually really angry that in the aftermath of Covid, and all the ground that children lost, that we did not overhaul schools to be year-round like they are in Asia. Kids lost whole years of education with the endless school closures!! Why the fuck didn’t we make it up with the summers?! Why did we just go back to the same shitty broken system?!
Sadly because the rich would never allow it to be funded, so it was never a serious possibility, and summers off is among (or the sole?) thing keeping many many educators hanging on at this stage.
Make no mistake, far as I’m concerned they should all get probably 100% raises no bulshit, and anyone who was at it throughout COVID should get some kinda large thank you bonus too.
Aren’t a large portion of them glad to have summers off because their kids have summers off? I think if there was a paradigm shift of childcare needs like that, it might not be so bad.
Yeah that’s probably an important point and I should be slower to phrase things like I’m speaking for teachers en masse.
Frankly the public school system is largely babysitting so adults can work and has been for a while, no reason we couldn’t reorganize that to function better. Well. There are reasons. Just not good ones.
Edit: ya know what, I really just springboarded off of your thought to deliver my own half-related frustration. Even without needing to change money in big ways, there could be large improvements from reworking the schedule. Certainly for students’ ability to retain any info. Thoroughly agree with you and apologies for the unneeded slightly off topic bummer vibe.