Somewhat related to last night’s posts about teachers, I don’t know how parents and teachers do it.
I was having my morning coffee and a friend called, and she had a 4 year old daughter and a six year old son. We were having a conversation and in the background there was some blasty ass tv show blaring, one kid doing something, while the four year old was in a chair eating breakfast, banging her spoon off the highchair table, and screaming about sprinkles. My friend was going on like nothing was happening and I just blurted out “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ARE YOU IN A WAR ZONE ARE YOU CALLING ME FROM CHUCK E CHEESE?”
She just laughed and said “oh I don’t even hear anything” which I know was a lie because she was calmly responding to the screaming child. I finally just said “this is giving me anxiety I feel pressure in my chest I have to go.” I could feel my face and chest get flush and I felt like I was starting to have an anxiety attack.
I don’t know how breeders do it. And I certainly do not know how teachers go into a room with that x25 and deal with it. I’d have a heart attack in the first four hours.
Raven
So the “kid” is a boy?
Gin & Tonic
You get used to it, like your friend has.
John Cole
@Raven: yes fixed it.
Frankensteinbeck
In a lifetime of… difficult treatment, I have never experienced flashes of rage like I felt raising children, and I don’t know how I strangled it down and didn’t act violently on it. I certainly bear the emotional scars of that effort.
Related, with Republicans thinking they can hire anybody to be a teacher, expect there to be multiple cases of these low-quality hires screaming profanity and hitting their students before they find out you get fired for that.
Betty Cracker
Toddlerhood is a breeze. The teen years — now that’s panic attack time. I’ve fled a building in an active shooter situation, docked a large boat in a storm, been a passenger on a home-made ultralight aircraft and been cave diving. But the scariest thing I ever did was teach a teenager to drive. Sweet Jeebus, I get sweaty palms and an urge to depress an imaginary brake pedal just thinking about it. And my kid is now 23!
Tony G
@Frankensteinbeck: Yup. And in the God-fearing gun-rights states, many of those poorly trained, inexperienced, low-paid teachers will be armed in the classroom with a semi-automatic handgun or rifle. It’s hard to imagine what could go wrong in that scenario.
PsiFighter37
As the parent of a nearly 3 year-old, I can attest to the parent’s statement of ‘not hearing anything’. You get so used to cacophony that it becomes background noise quite easily.
Ken
Evolution. You are descended from a very long line of organisms that did not kill their offspring. Well, not all of them.
Matt McIrvin
Most people rise to the occasion. You’d be surprised.
I’ve often thought I’d like to be a secondary-school teacher in a world in which secondary-school teachers were treated better. (My parents both were, for a little while, and my mother spent many years as a public-school psychologist.) The kids can be trouble but what really makes it hell in our world is not the kids.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck:
Assuming that in these districts you can.
The ability of teachers to hit students in the olden days is a weirdly large component of right-wing educational nostalgia. The idea that corporal punishment is necessary to raise good people is an article of faith.
trollhattan
Just one was work enough. Friends who raise as much as a passel of kids, they’re made of different stuff. I do not know how fratricide is not more prevalent.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: The kids aren’t even what makes it hell in a classroom. My DIL is a kindergarten teacher who finds parents much harder to deal with.
thebewilderness
Breeders? Srsly?
David Fud
Being a breeder with a house like you describe above, like a pinball machine, I posted this the other day on a FB group for our school district, which is one of the best public school systems around (and still has a lot of problems): “There are a lot of people that think that being a teacher is not difficult and that training about how kids learn is somehow intuitive or obvious. They are willing to put people in the classroom who slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night or have a degree from Google University.
We are experimenting with our childrens’ education and the public education system at large, and it isn’t going to go well. But, the bigger picture is that the destruction of the public school system is the goal, so I guess we are on track to dig through the rubble to figure out how to educate our kids.”
The same group of voters (acting much like a spittle dripping lynch mob) keeps showing up to all of our government meetings: county Board of Commissioners, county Board of Education, sub-committees thereof, etc., and drowning out everyone else with conspiracy theories, CRT, and QAnon crap. They are commenting in a 90% to 10% ratio against anything to do with government (schools, parks, bike paths, county services, etc.)
We parents have things to get done. We can’t go to every meeting to push for a healthy, positive agenda. These folks are almost certainly financially supported to get away from their Fox News and disrupt everything they can. It is going to become a serious problem, and I am at a loss about how to deal with their disingenuity/ignorance/preference for non-competence. Where’s Soros when you need him??
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Children ruin everything. Everyone knows this.
It’s like owning a pack of completely undisciplined cats. At any given moment, two are fighting, one is knocking everything off the mantle, two are disemboweling the furniture, three are destroying the framing around doors and one is shredding the carpet.
oldster
@Betty Cracker:
“…an urge to depress an imaginary brake pedal just thinking about it.”
People ask me, “why is the floor caved in on the passenger-side footwell?”
Yeah. The fear and the rage. And unlike you, I did not find toddlers easy. Unless you are a saint, they try your patience.
Frankensteinbeck
@thebewilderness:
Is this your first time hearing the term? It is popular among people who don’t have children and never wanted to have children.
RobertB
My sister-in-law, not a Trumpist, was arguing with us that teacher’s armed in class was a good thing. That this would help protect kids in a classroom. I was gobsmacked. My other sister-in-law, also a teacher, vehemently disagreed. I think is because the pro-carry teacher was an elementary school teacher, and the anti-carry teacher was a high-school Special Ed teacher.
I think it’s just that watching TV makes people think that a gun is a magic wand, and that you can wave it around and bad guys just go away. Pro-ccw s-i-l has never even fired a gun and thinks she would be effective with it.
Miss Bianca
@Frankensteinbeck: I never wanted to have kids, except for a brief spasm of “biological clock ticking syndrome” around age 30 when my ex-husband and I were first getting serious. (And, ironically, he was the one guy I *couldn’t* have children with, as a late-childhood case of the mumps had rendered him sterile.)
And part of the reason for that was that my mother had been subject to fits of psycho rage that amounted to serious emotional abuse. (My niece’s theory is that my mother was bi-polar.) I was terrified that I might subject my own kiddo to that sort of abuse, and I was absolutely determined that that cycle was going to end with me. Let others breed, including my siblings.
And yet I managed to endure a couple of seasons of being a substitute teacher, on long-term assignments yet, AKA the worst of all possible worlds! I’ll never forget the middle-school moppet who screamed at me, face contorted with rage, how she HATE HATE HATED ME!! (mostly, I think, because I expected her to work harder than she wanted.) And how her mother’s reaction, at a parent-teacher conference (yeah, I had to do those too) was kind of, “oh, ha ha, well, girls will be girls”.
That’s when I realized that the whole parenting paradigm had really changed since my growing-up days, because my parents would have chewed my ass raggedy after getting a report like that from a teacher!
Ken
@Matt McIrvin: “It doesn’t even have a cricket field or a whipping post.” — Laszlo Cravensworth, vetoing a private school because it doesn’t have the amenities of his (18th-century) youth.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I can imagine.
The closest I came in reality was being a teaching assistant in graduate school. That has its horrible grind aspect, you’re the professor’s hired help, but in hindsight, that’s like just the fun parts of being a high-school teacher without the worst bits. The pay is bad and you do have to grade endless homework assignments and exams. But you get to actually teach stuff to the kids and help them out when they’re having trouble; you don’t get pestered by helicopter parents or even have to effectively fund the school system out of your own pocket, and as a TA, you don’t even get demonized by politicians.
David Fud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Don’t forget the part about taking the losers of the fights to the urgent clinic.
Rivers
I taught 8th grade for many years. Without fail on parents’ night one parent would ask “How do you stand it?” Alluding to the parent’s experience with their own 8th grade child. I would console them with the the thought that they behave better at school than at home. It’s not unfailingly true of course but I think teenagers have a need to torture their parents that outside the home operates on mute.
oldster
@Frankensteinbeck:
I first heard this among gay men. I think it’s mildly derogatory, but Cole is using it in a jocular way.
Keith P.
Day-drinking and happy hours
Matt McIrvin
@oldster: Yeah, it was a gay-culture thing that became a childfree-culture thing. Sometimes it’s really contemptuous but not here.
Geo Wilcox
So they want to do away with the schools that form the very bottom of the professional sports complex? Pretty damned short sighted if you ask me. Where are all the sports teams going to come from?
C Stars
Well, to your point, I started taking daily medication for my anxiety two years after my first was born. That was 10 years ago and I’m still filling the prescription.
But it’s also hard to imagine life without the kind of love and responsibility I feel for them. Schoolteachers, now they are on another level. They deserve three times what they’re currently paid.
Ohio Mom
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh yes, all the times I thought to myself, “Maybe we shouldn’t have tossed corporal punishment.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Rivers: When we went to our first middle-school parents night, the math teacher opened by saying, “You son is charming.” I blinked and then said, “We’re Son Winsor’s parents.”
Mike E
If I could do it then anybody can. Generic advice:
trollhattan
@Geo Wilcox: Charter
schoolsfootball academies, of course. “Here comes Touchdown Jesus.” (Also, see Slamdunk Jesus.)Laertes
Four-year-olds are assholes. Ours is, anyway, so I hope it’s all the others too.
But as to how teachers deal with it, I’ll tell you a secret: The shit they pull at home, they’d never try on teacher.
Yes, we know that means that we’re letting too much slide. And no, we don’t know exactly how to fix it. We’re trying.
FDRLincoln
My first son, now age 23, was a breeze to raise. He was talking in complete sentences at 10 months and responded to reason and logic from the beginning.
My second son, age 16, is autistic and non-verbal. He is a normal strong healthy teenager but functions at about toddler level emotionally and intellectually.
I love him intensly and dearly. But You have no fucking idea how hard it was not to completely breakdown and snap for years.
But even in that situation, we got used to it.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: Success!
C Stars
@Matt McIrvin: still kind of hard to read it–i associate the term with utter disgust toward both children and their parents. I understand that that is not what Cole is going for, but it is jarring. Maybe I am just a moralizing cancel culture millennial. . .
mali muso
As the parent of a 5 year old whose last day in daycare/pre-school is today (sob) and who will be starting Kindergarten in a week…I have so much respect for teachers and early childhood educators. I have my hands full with just ONE kiddo; trying to wrangle a roomful of them takes special skill. And patience.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My kid is honestly an easy kid to raise, as they come, but I’ve noticed that she was always willing to try, endure or eat new things in the care of other people that she’d flatly refuse with us. Most kids with good parental relationships know that with your parents, you can get away with a little more, and that’s also sort of their comfort space where they’re going to be less accommodating of any irritant.
Ken
I’m going to see if I can get this added to the examples of grammatically-valid but semantically-nonsensical sentences on wikipedia’s “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” page.
raven
@John Cole:Thx!
artem1s
Imagine having to spend half your life knowing that you could be forced to parent whether you wanted to or not? and no, forced fatherhood is not the same thing in a country that believes woman have no role in the workforce except as caretakers. And the GQP believes in codifying parental and care taking roles based on birth gender.
C Stars
@Mike E: Nothing you say resonates with me as remotely helpful other than the head wound thing. They do bleed a lot.
RobertB
@Geo Wilcox: My daughter’s first boyfriend, back when she was 12 or 13, was a pretty good baseball player. We took her to a couple of his games, and her boyfriend had a friend who was 6’2″ or thereabouts, at age 13. Man-mountain seventh-grader gave us a small glimpse into a different high-school athletics world. He was entertaining offers, at that age, from HS football coaches to come live with the coach and play sports for the coach’s team. Football/baseball/basketball/whatever. This school was mad about sports, and was willing to spend the time, money, and effort to make it happen.
There will still be schools making efforts to get the best players, and these players will get found by coaches and scouts. Your average student might end up with a garbage education, but the professional sports feeder system will be fine.
OzarkHillbilly
My wife and I recently had our 2 youngest granddaughters for 2 days and 2 nights and my son showed up for the last night with his eldest (14 yo) daughter.
The youngest GD is a piece of cake. If she is crying she needs one of 3 things: Food, a diaper change, or sleep. The other… For a year plus she was the absolute center of attention and now she has to share. No, she does not like it either. She is acting out in numerous ways, sometimes for the most trivial of reasons. To say she was a handful for my wife and I is certainly one way of putting it.
Then my son (the stay at home Dad) showed up and she went thru this rather miraculous transformation, into a sweet, kind, polite, and calm child. To say that my son has a rapport with her is really not doing justice to how good he is with his children.
Raven
@Miss Bianca: Neither of us had kids nor did my first wife and I. I spent 20 in municipal recreation running lots of kids sports program and my wife worked as a breastfeeding coordinator for the local health department. We love kids and feel fine about how things are.
C Stars
@mali muso: oooh, good luck.
ETA I found 5 yo to be a really rewarding age because they are so curious about everything and you get to explain to them all your theories about how the world works. But when they are not being little dialectical philosophers they flip back to toddler mode in a really uncanny way. Uh, anyway, yes, good luck 🤪
eclare
@Betty Cracker: Yep. I am an only child, loved to read, good student. I was very quiet, reading under the covers with a flashlight does not make noise. Then I turned thirteen and decided that my mother was my sworn enemy. The teen years were tough…once I went away to college, when I came home for breaks, everything was cool again.
mrmoshpotato
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: You have 9 kids?
Raven
@RobertB: Calling high school sports programs a “professional sports feeder system” is one huge leap.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Ken:
One of the best shows on TV. Every character has its own endearing quirks.
– Nandor’s frequent credulousness and occasional sarcastic asides;
– Laszlo’s cheerful depravity and recklessness; and
– Nadja’s uncontrollable mania for everything she does are delights.
Great as those are, nothing touches the sheer brilliance of Colin Robinson’s energy vampire – he makes me gut laugh (particularly when he had the relationship with the emotional vampire).
Ohio Mom
@FDRLincoln: Sometimes in explaining my autistic son, I say to people, That is why we call it a developmental *disorder*, his developmental is out of order, as in out of sequence.
Yes, he started reading “ahead of schedule” but self-care (such as toileting, putting self to sleep, etc.), was years and years “behind schedule.” Some aspects still are, at 25.
Knowing that there is no end in sight, that my kid will never be fully launched, is very hard, especially since there are no siblings or nearby cousins in his generation to whom I can hand over the reins. We will be dependent on the county DD board to take over when we can’t anymore.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My eldest Sis, (4th and 5th grade, thankfully retired now) would agree whole heartedly. Dealing with parents was always approached like entering a lion’s den.
Cmorenc
I had a wonderful 6th grade teacher on whom, as an impulsive prank, I put a small empty pink plastic trash can over her head. Instead of going nuclear on me or sending me to the principal’s office etc., she grinningly chuckled along with the joke. And then a few minutes later, when our class went out side for recess to play, she discreetly recruited the biggest kid in the class 2x my size to sneak up behind me and stuff me in a large round metal trash barrel by the outside door. I took the retaliation with good humor. Everyone loved Miss Hardin!
That was in a small-town school c.1960 – now days, we respectively would have been in deep doo-doo.
Scout211
I marvel at how our youngest does it. Three kids 12, 9 and 5 with a dog and 2 cats a spouse who works nights. Add to that, she’s a kindergarten teacher.
I marvel that she seems like she has about 4 full-time jobs and still manages them all well and is a calm person. But then I look back and remind myself that I did the very same thing when I was her age.
It’s a lot of work, but at least for me, worth it. The 7 grandkids we now have between our three kids is kind of icing on the cake in our retirement, too.
Matt McIrvin
@Raven: Depends on the school. At the high school I went to for my first three years, it kind of was, at least where football was concerned. Scott Secules was probably my best-known fellow student there, a couple years ahead of me (I was in some classes with his sister).
Kay
My grown children seem to be stopping at one child – which is fine!- I’m thrilled with two little girls.
I wonder if there’s more of that what with housing costs and expenses, etc.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@Matt McIrvin:
Nah, trust me. Some of us would not, and we know it. It’s also not just about rising to the occasion but whether or not you even want to. Which I realized at about 13 years old that I decidedly did NOT want to, and contrary to the insistence of a lot of smug jerks over years and years, I never changed my mind. One part of that is this kind of scenario John describes–I could not deal with that at all. I don’t have the patience or the fortitude or the adaptability for that shit. I would never in a million years lay a finger on a child, but I might be driven to fling myself into a volcano.
SteveinPHX
@Matt McIrvin:
My brother taught gifted in middle school and often opined that the parents were the toughest part of the job.
Miss Bianca
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: OK, that’s it – that series is going into the watch queue.
I’ve seen the original movie a couple times now and really loved it (“Bat fight!”).
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: Hm. Maybe it’s a parent-teaching-their-own-kids thing. I’ve taught several teens how to drive (and standard at that!), no muss or fuss, but they were all someone else’s kids (friends’ kids, nephews, nieces, etc.).
OTOH, my brother and I watched my parents freak out several times while teaching our older sister how to drive. After seeing that, we both signed up for high school driver’s ed summer classes when the time came. I don’t think I drove a car with one of my parents in it until I returned from college.
MinuteMan
@Frankensteinbeck:
You can say something similar about most slurs.
opiejeanne
@Mike E: Dear God, head wounds do bleed a lot, A LOT! All three of ours managed to achieve those scars, and the worst were our two girls. One night right at midnight I heard a loud thump and a wail. I didn’t turn on the light when I went into their bedroom and I stepped in a puddle of something warm when I got to the bed of the youngest child. it wasn’t pee. At midnight she turned 4, so happy birthday kid, here are five stitches on the bridge of your nose. Took several people to hold her still while she screamed at them and us.
She’d fallen out of bed and whacked herself on the edge of the window seat, the bridge of her nose just below the brow. Midnight wild ride to Kaiser. She’ll be 40 this year, still has the scar.
Baud
I like children, as long as they’re other people’s and I can hand them back.
Matt McIrvin
@SteveinPHX: And in hindsight, the worst shit I saw from my peers in middle school was being abetted by the teachers, either on purpose because they thought bullying built character, or because they were pathologically avoiding conflict.
mali muso
@C Stars: I really am enjoying her perspective on things. She comes up with some really interesting philosophical tangents. And then can quickly flip back into self-centered me-mine-my demands that tax my patience.
RobertB
@Raven: The first step, here in the States.
The local high school that my daughter went to, right down the street, is only standard-level sports crazy. But I know they have 20,000-seat high school football stadiums in Texas, and they didn’t build them to field football teams that let everyone on the team play. They want to win, bad. Closer to me, Cincinnati Moeller is a thing.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Miss Bianca:
You won’t be sorry.
emmyelle
I have an only, who is about to head off to college. Has been a generally quiet kid. I learned fairly early on, though, once we got past the “playdate” stage, that whenever there was another kid in the house, the noise would more than double. And two or more other kids was like a effin’ mad house.
I really think that my lack of ability to handle that level of noise and chaos made me a shitty parent and probably impeded my daughter’s development.
Mai Naem mobile
Completely unrelated. Apparently there was child pron found on Alex Jones’ phone. Its always projection with these guys. Even when it comes to stuff like chile pron.
UncleEbeneezer
I coach kids from 2-3 to about 13 years old. I much prefer older kids because they at least can comprehend what I’m telling them and have (slightly) better impulse control. But in general, kids seem to vary a lot. I have some toddlers who are super-sweet and conscientious and some that are just complete assholes. Same goes for the older students but their assholery is usually more subtle because they know they really aren’t supposed to be assholes so they try and hide it. I can say emphatically that my girl students are exponentially better behaved than the boys. The male (and especially white/male) sense of entitlement starts very young and is very prevalent. I have 1 girl student and 9 boys on my court today and I swear I have no idea how she copes.
trollhattan
@artem1s:
Nothing more charming than a 10 YO mom with her infant. Just think of the Christmas cards!
And in another five years, the Tweets: “I just dropped her off at kindergarten on my way to my first day at high school.”
Matt McIrvin
@C Stars: I remember explaining set theory to my kid when she was still little enough that I was helping her take a bath. And I said you could have a set of just about anything, including infinite sets like the set of all numbers… and she immediately said “The set of all sets!” Which is going straight into water so deep that it stymied mathematicians. I had to restrain myself from trying to explain the Russell paradox.
emmyelle
@Betty Cracker: I’m told, by my husband, my my kid’s friends, by my kid’s friends’ parents, that she is an excellent driver. I have no firsthand knowledge of this, though, because I still can’t bring myself to let her drive when we are together. She’s almost 19.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
The dish or the country?
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Some parents will swear to you that that’s all genetic, they don’t know where else it’s coming from. I think that hyper-gendered acculturation starts basically at birth, even if the parents are trying not to play along.
trollhattan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Nobody who has endured office work has avoided working with Colin Robinson. Truly brilliant character.
eclare
@emmyelle: I am an only, with parents who were older at the time and not very good with disruptions to routines. Your kid will be fine
PS your kid will learn a lot about how to adapt living in a dorm. I know I did.
C Stars
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Yeah, as a parent I feel really strongly that when people say they either couldn’t or don’t want to be parents, we really need to take them at their word. Not having kids is a 100% valid decision to make and I don’t get the weird, persistent compulsion to second-guess it. And to the point that another poster made above, yet another reason why the forced-birth movement is so horrifying.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin:
Adorable.
Ours had little foam letters and numbers that gave her endless entertainment arranging them on the tub walls. She called them her “ceedees”–the result of memorizing “A, B, C, D….” Actually liked baths, so win-win.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I will fill out my all girls basketball team next March.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Is this possible?
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah the boy/girl disparity I’ve seen completely refutes that, imo. I don’t think I’ve EVER had to warn a girl that I was going to talk to her parents after class if she didn’t behave. Not even once. Yet I have to threaten this with boys several times a year, and have had to do so for the past seven years.
MisterForkbeard
@Gin & Tonic: This is it. No one (outside of adoption) becomes a father or mother to a 5 year old overnight.
Which isn’t to say the first month or two isn’t rough as you adjust to living with a small mammal that occasionally makes a lot of distressing noise for no reason. But over time you get better at handling it, and as they get older you can teach them how not to do certain things.
Betty Cracker
@Mike E:
LOL! I was the eldest child in my family, and my mom said the first time I had a bleeding head wound (minor! just hit my chin on the side of a pool!), she rushed me to the ER. By the time my little brother came along, she just yelled, “Don’t bleed on the carpet!”
Fraud Guy
So you’re not taking DeSantis up on his offer and moving to Florida to teach?
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That would… highly surprise me. Wait for more confirming polls.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@trollhattan:
“I will totally be a wine mom on milestone days once I’m old enough to drink”.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s the only thing I’ve encountered that is as great as people say it is.
The two girls are really different. I hung back a little with the smaller – my son’s daughter- because she seems cautious but she eventually came around. He was and is cautious too. It’s fun to see aspects of your kids again in THEIR kids.
“They’re back!” :)
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@MisterForkbeard: That would be awesome if true, but I’m not holding my breath.
cain
@Betty Cracker: I’m teaching my step so and step daughter to drive. I’m fairly calm, but there has been times I was like..uhhh.
My wife on the other hand refuses to be in a car with either of them if they are driving. She has some trauma from the past that makes it really anxious for her to do that kind of thing.
She’s an educator as well. She was just tweeting about how she makes 3x less than I do, and works 3x as hard. Both are true.
trollhattan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
“My designated driver is my own kid!”
OzarkHillbilly
@UncleEbeneezer: Probably the same way my granddaughter does on her junior high school football team. Of course, it helps that she is a head taller than all the boys on her team.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like a wild outlier. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some Floridians are having regrets.
Josie
I had three boys and a husband who, although a good man, wasn’t much help. The oldest was so easy – hardly ever cried, slept well, ate well, etc. The two, born later, were only 2 years apart. There are whole spans of time that are a complete blank to me. I know I parented and worked full time, but I actually can’t remember many details from their early years. Probably for the best. They are all wonderful adults, and now I find myself dealing with two precious little girls who are doing all those things I barely remember. Also, since I am a glutton for punishment, I was a middle school librarian for 26 of my 30 years in public education. Some of us just like children better than adults.
Betty Cracker
@oldster: I agree toddlers aren’t easy — except when compared to teens. I’m not particularly patient, but if there’s no malice behind bad behavior, I can usually roll with it unperturbed.
As for rage, I was never really tempted to hit my child, but I very often wanted to snatch up other people’s odious toddlers and punt them into the next county if they were mean to my kid.
It surprised me — that instant rage. I’m still prepared to go ballistic if someone hurts or disappoints my now-adult kiddo. I guess that never goes away…
cain
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My wife gets hit on by the married men! (well, she is a very beautiful woman and that’s not just my personal bias )
cain
I dont know.. I think you can just shorten that to ‘cats’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an disciplined cat.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I don’t think Jesus loves us that much, but OMG, if DeSantis loses, I am throwing a days-long party!
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That seems like a major outlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s falling, but that’s a huge drop. Not even Oz is down that much in PA, and he’s as pathetic as they come.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I might send some cash to DeSantis just so we don’t lose you to alcohol poisoning.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@C Stars: What always baffles me about people trying to urge someone to have kids when they say they don’t want them is like……..why would you want a child born to someone who doesn’t want them? I’ve known a lot of people who grew up in such a situation, and it is not good.
cain
Guess which states this is going to be a problem going forward. :-)
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: All my STL granddaughters seem to prefer MawMaw to Pawpaw. (tho with the youngest Vivi, it’s more like a tie) But my NOLA granddaughter showed an obvious preference for PawPaw the last time we went for a visit. I got to stick my tongue out at my wife quite a bit that week.
cain
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: They are obsessed with the fetus, not the child. When you’re that single minded, practical things like that are waved away. Rigid thinking + religious zealotry and a bit of racism is the reasons.
Betty Cracker
@cain: I used to go to a giant cemetery to teach my kid to drive. I figured no innocent bystanders were likely to be killed…
Jeffro
Cole, as a parent, you only get nervous when you don’t hear them making noise.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I do think that a significant fraction of people who voted for DeSantis probably were not voting for “performative, sadistic red meat to make the libs cry 24/7.” I doubt it’s enough for him to be 13 points down, of course.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: Shindig in the Swamp!
Mike E
@UncleEbeneezer: My niece has 3 kids ages 10, 8 & 5, the youngest two being boys. Her parenting style basically is firm and frank communication with low-key “FAFO” which is pretty much the only way to deal with them, shouting at them is pointless; the two have already lost a good number of teeth due to roughhousing and “see what will happen?” has had the effect of reinforcing consequences that any number/levels of threats can’t achieve.
Her eldest daughter, witnessing all of this mayhem, when she grows up, will save us all, I have no doubts.
MisterForkbeard
@Betty Cracker: Yep. The first time my (now 7 year old) hurt her head we took her to the emergency room. Two months ago my 5 year old cut the side of her head on a chair (don’t ask) and we just calmed her down and slapped a big band-aid on it.
That said, it’s gotten to the point where my first reaction when my kids hurt themselves is “seriously? How/why did you do that?” Like 5 days ago, when my oldest got a big goose egg by flinging herself onto her bed repeatedly and… decided that a flying headbutt of her hardwood bed frame would be fun to try.
trollhattan
@cain: File under “Lies cat owners tell themselves.”
eclare
@Betty Cracker: I learned to drive in a cemetery! As did most of my friends. Like you said, not much damage you can do to others.
MisterForkbeard
@OzarkHillbilly: This reminds me of one of my favorite stories. When my first daughter was 2, she decided that “Grandmaw” and “Grandpaw” took too long to say. So she’d just refer to either or both of them as “PawMaw” collectively.
I’ve been trying to encourage her to keep doing it, as my parents loved it too. But now that’s she’s 7 she thinks she’s too grown up and dignified to do it.
@Betty Cracker: Yep. My parents took me to an incomplete housing development. Full streets and infrastructure, but no one actually drives there because there’s nothing there yet. Though maybe driving through a graveyard sends a better message about caution. :)
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
There’s cemeteries just for the abnormally tall? Who knew?
:)
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
Then what the hell were they voting for?
trollhattan
@Jeffro: The story goes that mom would come look for me when I was “too quiet” and some percentage of the time, find me with screwdriver in hand and some household item or toy half-disassembled.
One would think today I would be a master mechanic, but that path of development was derailed at some point.
C Stars
@Matt McIrvin:
@UncleEbeneezer:
Re Nature/Nurture: I’m the parent of a trans-femme kid (born with male biology, presented outwardly on the feminine since the day they learned to put on clothes, uses they/them pronouns). Sorry, lot of backstory there, but the difference in behavior between the two is shocking. Having a trans kid you learn to steer very clear of gender stereotypes but my younger kid is physically aggressive, loud, athletic, interested in competition and combat play. Like, he fits almost all of the “boy” stereotypes other than the fact that he likes to talk and is pretty chatty (higher levels of socialization and social value of conversation is something that is often ascribed to female hormonal development).
Trans-femme kid, though? NONE of those. Like, not only do they not LIKE sports, but (don’t tell them this) when they try they’re really not that good at them. Just a clumsy person. Has always been a calm and even-keeled person and has been interested in cooking, babies, music, doing homework, hanging out with adults and friends their age. Also a pretty intense interest in mathematics and engineering–not sure where that falls on the spectrum but it involves a lot of quiet time and research.
I can’t believe that my spouse and I did all that, nor that the culture we exposed them to can account for those very inborn-seeming preferences. I dunno. There are some studies showing clear brain differences between females and males, and transwomen often have a brain anatomy closer to women’s brains.
It’s a lot to think about and right now I have my hands full. I’ll spend a good long while pondering it once they are out of the house.
Baud
@James E Powell:
Betty C has said that DeSantis didn’t campaign as a Trumpster. More like a traditional sane country club republican.
WereBear
@Mai Naem mobile: He’s hitting some kind of karma trifectra this week.
Loving every minute of it.
MisterForkbeard
@James E Powell: If I remember right, DeSantis went hard-trumpy during his original primary and then spent the general talking about how awesome and nice he was, and implying that Trump sometimes went too far, etc.
It’s the normal Republican thing until recently. They need to lie about their agenda to get elected. This is less true now, since outside of their base people literally do not believe them when a Republican talks about their own policies due to how insane they are.
@Mai Naem mobile: I think the current theory on the right is that… he also had a copy of Hunter Biden’s Laptop on his phone. Or people had sent him pictures of what was on HBL. So it’s all Democrat’s fault.
Betsy
@cain: I want to know what you do!
trollhattan
@NotMax:
The midget cemetery is where the Shriners go to practice in their little parade cars.
NotMax
@James E Powell
“If you come after the
kingMouse you best not miss.”//
West of the Rockies
@Ohio Mom:
That sounds daunting. My nephew has a similar son. Best of fortune.
Tom Levenson
@Mike E: That “resist the urge to throttle them” adage refers to both the “helpful” other parents and one’s own spawn, of course.
CaseyL
I knew from a very early age I wasn’t parent material. What’s a little strange is that all of my peer generation in my immediate family – my brother and first cousins (on Mom’s and Dad’s side) – also never had kids. A tidy little handful of bloodlines ending.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
My daughter’s daughter likes my husband better too. He’s more fun. True. She will garden with me though -she likes to dig.
She’ll come in and ask me where he is – very subtle :)
C Stars
@mali muso:
@Matt McIrvin: It’s interesting because I am the furthest thing from a mathematician or scientist (I am a book editor) but whenever my oldest one would ask questions about the nature of our physical world I tried very hard to give them answers that addressed our contemporary human understanding of the issue (spent a lot of time googling, actually, still do, even though the kid can google for themself now). And now at 12 they are a bit of a math prodigy and we have to have a separate math tutor for them and have had them audit classes at Cal. When the young ones are not being self-centered little sh*ts, I think it is really important to take their questions seriously, so that then later on they will take their own questions seriously.
zhena gogolia
I’m with John. So glad the kids I deal with are 18+.
Steve in the ATL
@David Fud:
Wow–you are a terrible parent. The losers have to walk themselves to the clinic!
cain
@Betty Cracker: Are you saying there might be guilty bystanders at the cemetery, madame cracker?
OzarkHillbilly
HA!
cain
@Jeffro: Gods, every time its quiet.. that’s when you definitely need to worry. Kids focused on doing… something. Terrifying.
I feel that way about pets too.
Andrew Abshier
@CaseyL: That was me. Is me. I also avoided the family business (teaching) to go into veterinary medicine. Ironically, a lot of what I do in my work is education, but at least my class sizes are super-small and most of them are adults.
My two sisters didn’t start families either, so it is making writing a will a rather interesting exercise. I’m probably going to donate almost all of my possessions after I pass.
Frankensteinbeck
I just realized that Biden killing the leader of Al Qaeda while Trump is golfing with the Saudis is going to give Trump flashbacks to Obama killing Bin Laden during the White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump must be vomiting bile.
@MisterForkbeard:
Now that Roe has been overturned and red states are passing draconian laws, that might be changing. Abortion was an issue particularly afflicted with “Oh, they’re just saying that, they would never do it” conventional wisdom. A vast swathe of potential voters had the luxury of not noticing the threat.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
In the snow. Uphill both ways.
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@C Stars: My mother had a rule that if a child could ask a question, they were old enough for the answer. She might simplify it so their young brains could understand it, but it would be the truth.
David Anderson
Ahh,, the fuck you fours — those were the worst years. Right now, with my 10 and 13 year old, I am having a blast seeing them figure out who the hell they are and what they really like to do and how they like to do things….
C Stars
@CaseyL: Sad thought: I love my children and having kids. I think if I were making the choice now I would not have decided to have kids (or at least would have given significantly more thought to the matter), given the state of the world. I’ve got Obama babies.
Matt McIrvin
@C Stars: Whereas mine ended up deciding that, despite getting decent grades in the subject, she’s definitely NOT a math prodigy–she’s an artist at heart, trying to figure out how she might someday parlay that into an actual career. Also a natural performer but I don’t think she’s inclined toward that.
Kay
What if we find out they don’t have to campaign at all until September because no one normal pays attention until then? If even then?
60 day campaigns.
mali muso
@C Stars: Sounds like you are doing a great job at parenting!
I try to take my kiddo’s questions seriously and to do my best at answering within the capacity of my knowledge. And then being really honest and telling her I don’t know, rather than make up something. Being raised in an uber-religious environment and the indoctrination that it entailed, I’m maybe hyper-vigilant at trying to develop her critical thinking habits.
cain
I work on open source communities. I’m not exactly a community manager – but I’m the person you put into a open source technical community and I worm my way into their good graces and build relationships and trust. It’s a combination of technical skills, chatty catty, and wanting to do good. I’m a nerd whisperer. :) I’m good at it. I rub shoulders with some of the top people in my industry.
My wife – she is a powerhouse. She can and will eventually outpace me and the world will be better for it. The woman makes a measily 60k, but has the earning capacity to easily make 4x her salary. She’s that good. She’s already an award winning educator and is teaching teachers on teaching equitable social science. She’s been making inroads in my community now as well.
We both have similar talents but with different focuses. I’m excited what the two of us could do together.
C Stars
@Miss Bianca: It’s a hugely rewarding show, I recommend it. I haven’t seen the movie!
The person who plays Nadja plays a very different character in the British sitcom Stath Lets Flats, which also features a bunch of actors from the British version of Ghosts. It’s cringe-core, and from England so times 10—sometimes I can’t bear to watch it but the rest of the time I am rolling on the floor.
C Stars
@Matt McIrvin: The world needs (more) artists. I wish her luck.
cain
@CaseyL: I didnt’ have kids either – but I think I would have been a pretty good parent – I have my wife’s kids now and they adore me. (they are both adults, the youngest turns 18 this Sunday) My ex and I didn’t have kids because we were always fighting, I couldn’t bring kids into an unstable marriage.
Which is too bad, because my DNA is pretty awesome. :) It’s too bad I couldn’t pass on those great genes. (by great, I mean I generally am problem free health-wise)
Matt McIrvin
@C Stars: One thing I’ve learned is that the political state of the world, or of a country, changes on a time scale much shorter than a human life. So your assessments of how things are going to be when it’s time to decide about children, for better or for worse, might not reflect what things will really be like 20 or 30 or 60 years from now.
Some of the big global menaces I worried about when I was young are still problems (global warming)–others just evaporated, or got fixed through concerted action (acid rain, ozone destruction), or have come back periodically like a pendulum (right-wing culture warrior politicians, the risk of nuclear war).
Betsy
@cain: That’s interesting! You’re kind of a facilitator and relationship builder, I guess. What kind of employer has a need for that and why?
Talented people doing their thing are fun to watch.
Tony G
@PsiFighter37: My kids are all grown up now (in their thirties) but I recall that back in the day my wife and I learned to differentiate between the normal sounds of yelling, shouting and banging things, and unusual sounds that indicated that a kid was about to get hurt. It’s a learning process that starts when the first kid is home from the hospital.
Betty Cracker
@MisterForkbeard:
That’s my recollection too. And he didn’t go full MAGA right out of the gate when he squeaked out a narrow victory either. He fully went nuts during the pandemic.
Kiag
@C Stars: The meaning of the phrase “Breeders” must have evolved a lot since I used to hear it if it causes such a reaction with you. I think I am about Cole’s age; Breeders was a slang term in the gay community for heterosexuals, not specifically parents. It was humorously disparaging, which I think was a vibe back then. It wasn’t a mortal insult. Kim Deal named her band The Breeders after it, and I remember one friend’s pregnancy announcement email had the subject line “The Breeders”. That was about 18 years ago.
TerryC
@thebewilderness: Breeders is offensive.
cain
@Betsy: Usually companies that want to influence technical communities of which their products are based on. Most of the worlds big software shops have some kind of relationship with open source.
The primary currency is trust – and so it’s pretty important that you present yourself as honest and truthful. Your reputation is a big part of what makes you a success. In my position, my personal brand is more important than my company’s brand. So I’m not going to compromise my brand if my employer tells me to do something that compromises my integrity.
C Stars
@mali muso: Back to the nature/nurture issue, I’m not sure whether its the parenting or the person (this kid has very clearly had a “math brain” since an early age). It’s interesting in your case how your experience in your youth has led you to be a very intentional kind of parent to your own child. Sometimes it seems like everything stays the same (Hollywood is still making sequels of movies I watched as a tyke), but in fact the generational changes in culture are momentous. (And lucky for your kiddo, right?)
pluky
@Matt McIrvin: Continues to stymie mathematicians actually. Nothing like having to come to grip with the inevitable incompleteness of any formal system.
Ohio Mom
@West of the Rockies: Before she died somewhat unexpectedly (she was 88 so is that unexpected, really, even if you hope and anticipate for a few more years), my aunt said she would talk to other family members in my generation and tell them that at least one or two of them were going to have to see that their children would step up and commit to keeping an eye on Ohio Son.
That would mean, going to the annual planning meeting with his caretakers, checking on his bank accounts (including the trust), sending him cards and presents for his birthday, that sort of thing. None of them live in our city but these minimal actions could be accomplished without too much effort.
Hint, hint, maybe this is something you could go on your nephew’s behalf?
zhena gogolia
I would never use the term “breeders.” But on the other hand, having someone (who was fully aware I had no children and no plans to have any) say to a recent mother in my presence when I was in my 30s, “You don’t feel like a real woman until you have a child, do you?” was also highly offensive.
Ksmiami
@trollhattan: Valium and gummies.
C Stars
@Kiag: I saw it used most frequently on the internet in massive pile-ons that occurred on a daily basis about 5-10 years ago (when having kids was very, very out of fashion for my late GenX cohort) about how terrible children are (children in restaurants, children on planes, children in any public place whatsoever) and relatedly how terrible and selfish parents are as a class of people. So yes, I have a strong reaction. Things have softened a bit with that kind of anti-child language, and of course I know that Cole doesn’t mean to be offensive. But it is a term that does still make me feel shitty about myself sometimes.
Tony G
@Kay: The length of political campaigns in the U.S. is so bloated because it’s basically a lucrative industry. “Consultants”, campaign managers, advertising agencies, etc. — everybody’s making money, which means that candidates have to raise a lot of money by pimping themselves out to special interests — sorry — I meant to say “soliciting campaign contributions”. The longer the campaign lasts, the more everybody gets paid. In Japan (the land of my wife’s childhood and youth) it’s actually illegal for a candidate to purchase TV advertising. Campaigns are much shorter and cheaper as a result.
Ksmiami
@C Stars: but, for me having kids in this world gives me the motivation to fight harder for the better. I mean it’s easier to be a nihilist when your timeline is short.
Tony G
@zhena gogolia: The Breeders were a great band though.
C Stars
This is what I hang my hopes and dreams on.
Tony G
@Kiag: Yeah, that’s the way I remember the term “breeders” back in the seventies and eighties. A joke used by gays to refer to straights.
Kay
@Tony G:
I agree. Normal people hate it (or all say they hate it) and so do lesser-known candidates who have work and families so maybe Fetterman just…arriving late will show no one has to do it.
I no longer rely at all on OH polls since they were so far off in 2018 and it’s sort of great :)
Jeffro
@trollhattan: that’s great!
yup, quiet usually = something bad is going on (or is about to)
Tony G
@Tony G: Most parents I know like to joke about about the difficulties of parenthood. Many years ago when one of my college friends had four little kids (yeah, wow) she used to joke that “God made them cute so they won’t be strangled.”. (The kids are all mature adults now, with a couple of them having kids of their own.)
PaulB
No. Once you click through and actually read the poll, you’ll see that it’s a February poll, with numbers that no other poll ever saw.
Baud
@PaulB:
Kudos for checking.
WereBear
@cain: They are self -disciplined.
Ksmiami
@Mai Naem mobile: barf. Why are Republicans such vile people?
Baud
@Tony G:
It’s an advantage of the parliamentary system, where the party matters more than the individual candidates running.
Tony G
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, that’s what I did with my sons back in the day. Every question got an. answer. Sometimes a 30 second question would lead to a 30 minute long-winded reply from me. I think that taught them to hold off on questions unless they were in the mood for a long-winded explanation.
Matt McIrvin
@Kiag: Among the hardcore childfrees and VHEMT types, “breeder” is indeed dripping with contempt, like calling someone an Earth-rapist or a pedophile. The assumption is that only a profoundly evil person would have children.
Tony G
@eclare: As a kid we used to climb the fence to the local cemetery and play football among the gravestones. We were never haunted why ghosts, so I guess it was OK to do that.
Matt McIrvin
@C Stars: I remember one conversation where various people were struggling with the ethics of reproduction and then someone pops in and says something like “haw haw look at all the breeders dropping in and moo-ing about their self-justifications”. “Moo-ing” was definitely the verb.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Hate is more diverse than it used to be.
Laertes
@TerryC: Among my cohort (older Gen-X), “Breeders” just doesn’t land like that. I’m the sort of cishet against whom it’d be used, and it never seems to have any real throwing weight.
It’s got no history of menace. Nobody has ever said “breeder” while cracking a whip. Feels to me like anyone offended by that word was maybe eager to take offense.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I dunno, there are probably a lot of kinds we’ve forgotten about.
Matt McIrvin
@Laertes: Anti-reproduction extremists never controlled US politics, that’s for sure.
C Stars
@Ksmiami: Thank you for this little lifeboat. It’s a good thought in an ocean of apprehension.
And also for the valium and gummies comment.
Josie
@zhena gogolia: Wow! Not only offensive, but right up there with one of the dumbest things ever said.
Ken
Impossible. Without a full eight months of
advertising revenueinformative media, voters will be unprepared for the election.C Stars
@Matt McIrvin: @Laertes: Indeed. It’s possible to both appreciate the genius of Drivin on 9 and recoil when someone sees fit to call you a breeder.
WereBear
People must want kids.
Because doing it wrong is horrifying and doing it right takes a lot of resources.
Ken
That is why I restrict myself to Presburger arithmetic.
Captain C
@Frankensteinbeck:
If the Republicans have their way with guns in the classroom it may be a case of shooting their students.
C Stars
@Josie: You are a hero
ETA My kids’ school librarians are truly some of the coolest people I’ve met.
raven
@RobertB: Dude, I live in Athens, GA. I moved down here 36 years ago and high school football is a world apart from the midwest. Obviously the of the kids who go on to play college ball are also the ones who ones who go on to the NFL so, yea, in that sense you could frame it as a “feeder system”. To me a feeder system is a youth league where they run the same offense and defense as the high school and “feed” it that way.
Laertes
@C Stars: I’m not saying it’s impossible to take offense at being called a breeder. I’m just saying it’s silly.
There exist slurs that sting. To act hurt when hit with one that doesn’t is to mock the targets of the real ones. It betrays a deficit either of empathy or perspective.
C Stars
@Laertes: Let’s fight!
ETA can someone tell me how that “pie” function works?
Gin & Tonic
@Matt McIrvin: Mid 1960’s US elementary school “new math” was completely on a set-theoretic foundation. I loved it.
ian
@Geo Wilcox:
We will have bigger problems than that when the schools go away.
Laertes
@Gin & Tonic: I remember hearing grumbles about “new math” when I was a tot. I was never clear on what had changed.
Later I learned that Tom Lehrer was singing about it not long before I was born. I gather there’s a “new math” today that’s causing similar grumbles.
I’m pretty sure there’s some surviving letter from Cicero in which he grouses about the new math of his day.
I became a breeder late in life. I speculate that I slept through several rounds of new math. Anyone know how many cycles there’ve been, just between Lehrer and today?
GoBlueInOak
@Frankensteinbeck: Its an insulting and derogatory term for parent.
jonas
The worst thing about raising young kids, say 2-6 or so, is that they get up with the sun Every. Fricking. Day. 365. And then are really, really noisy and energetic right out of the gate. There are about 5-6 years there where you do not sleep in a single weekend morning, ever. I don’t know whether it’s more frustrating than the 2 hours on/2 hours off sleep cycle with a newborn, but it sucketh bigtime
ETA: my wife and I are NOT morning people, so maybe that’s part of the problem. If you’re the kind of person who likes getting up at 5am and getting the day started, it’s probably not a big deal.
Laertes
@jonas: That’s a pill alright. We take turns tanking him. I have no idea how single parents do it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
There were six of us. We were pretty good at entertaining each other. My parents’ rule was basically, “don’t call us unless somebody’s bleeding.”
Which occasionally there was. My mother was pretty good at first aid.
Don’t remember any actual broken bones [*] though, which is kind of a puzzlement all things considered.
[*] Except on myself. I have a broken finger which was never treated and healed wrong, but I have no memory of when that injury happened. I only noticed it when I got my hand x-rayed for something else.
The Lodger
@cain: Somehow I missed that you married your sweetheart! Looks like you got a good one. Congratulations!
Matt McIrvin
@Gin & Tonic: I was just a little late to get the full blast of New Math in school, but I encountered some educational materials about it outside of school, and I got a little bit of set-theory-for-kids in the primary years.
Of course it was the focus of exactly the same culture-war eruption that happened about “Common Core” decades later, which is why there are educational materials focusing on the evangelical Christian market that tout the absence of set theory in them.
GoBlueInOak
@jonas: Yup. After the “enhanced interrogation technique” of the “you don’t get to sleep more than a few hours in a row” of a newborn, you think its all over once they start sleeping for 6 hours. then you find out you don’t actually get a break – you just start Phase 2 of your jail time with 4+ years of a crack of dawn maniac jumping on your head every Saturday and Sunday.
Ksmiami
@C Stars: Don’t tell anyone – I have a viperous reputation to uphold around here.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@jonas:
Not just at age 2-6.
I never got over liking to be up at 6 am. Woke up at 6 this morning, and was absolutely thrilled that by 8 am I’d had breakfast and a couple hours hanging out with my wife, and the day was still just beginning.
As an older kid, say 5-10 or so, I remember being woken at that time most mornings by the sounds of my brothers playing. I was always the last one up. In high school there was constant anxiety about my making the bus, but I think that bus was about 7 am.
Problem now is that I still like seeing the dawn, but I also like being up till 2 am. Those things aren’t really compatible.
dnfree
@Raven: I would think that the reference is to a few particular high schools that recruit. I don’t know of any public high schools that recruit athletes, but religious schools and other private schools do. But I would guess that some public schools recruit, if they’re offering to let the kid live with the coach (which sounds like far from an ideal living situation).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Matt McIrvin:
My younger daughter was an art major. Took a while to get her degree too. But along the way, she did some projects that involved interfacing to the web, so she learned some web programming languages.
That turned out to be a golden combination. She’s having a pretty amazing career working for web backend companies.
lee
2 kids now in their 20’s. It is a tough job and you really do tune that normal shit out. You learn to hear the important sounds or the dreaded silence.
I learned a phrase not too long ago, that really hits the nail on the head.
To a parent, there is no sweeter sound than the crying of someone else’s child.
dnfree
@UncleEbeneezer: my brother still remembers a coach saying to him, back in the 1960s, “Do you want to be an athlete or an asshole?” He decided to be an athlete and in return got a scholarship to a small college.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Adults have expectations. Not necessarily good expectations, but they have them. Kids are not born with them but they do pick them up pretty quickly, especially if adults have them and show them often. I believe that is what adults learn to understand if they have kids (and haven’t beaten them half to death or scared them to that same level) is that they are kids, they have to learn and it takes time. I often think that the age of adults having children is important, that they do not wait to the later stages of child bearing age to procreate. Because we mostly settle into a game of expectations of what our lives should be during that time that procreation is most likely (normal, reasonable humans that is) and as we age we go one of two ways, meeting our minimum expectations or not coming close to way, way over the top expectations. And yes on rather rare occasions, some humans do seem to go beyond expectations, both good and bad. And often far beyond, in either direction. And that often leaves out the youngster’s expectations of their own life completely. IOW we often turn out as expected/hoped and we also often end up completely opposite, and the variety of that end up is pretty amazing, also in both directions.
But expectations that kids will not be a pain in the ass growing up at least some of the time is just proof that humans often think different of themselves than others do. We all do, some are just worse at it.
C Stars
@Ksmiami: Vipers=viviparity
lee
@Laertes:
Major revisions probably only 2 or 3. Another 3 or 4 minor revisions.
The last major one started while my kids were in school. I remember a ton of parents freaking out about it. Finally I got tired of hearing about it at every soccer practice so I decided to learn what it was all about.
It really is a pretty interesting way to learn math. You learn about the relationship of numbers not just memorization. The idea is that the flexibility of the kid’s brains make it much easier to learn about the relationships earlier than later.
Matt McIrvin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve told her that UX design is actually a lucrative field with a lot of demand, and that does interest her.
The Moar You Know
The problem with teaching these days is rarely the kids. It’s their insane parents.
Matt McIrvin
@Laertes: I think a lot of it is that I actually did spend a lot of time fretting about whether it was ethical to have a child, and I’m still not sure it was, so when ethical antinatalists say it’s obviously, monstrously evil to reproduce, this does sting because it awakens those doubts.
Ruckus
@Mike E:
Sound advice – all of it!
Don’t have any of my own, but I did help raise a number of cousins, I’m third oldest in an extended family of 12 cousins.
Diapers, wiping, loud, crying, nice, fun, responsibility, etc, etc, over and over.
Come to think of it helping to raise all those kids may have clouded my view of having my own.
cain
Thank you! Yeah, I asked her to marry me less than a month after I met her. We’ve been married since November, but officially married in May.
cain
@GoBlueInOak: lol – that wasn’t me. I always got up late. I hated mornings even as a kid. I was a night bird, and I would stay up late reading even at 6 years old.
Lyrebird
Not gonna do it!
I can teach teenagers all sorts of things, but I am simply not going to try teaching my own to drive no way no how.
I trust and totally respect you for knowing and stating that! One of the less important things that is awful about the Supremely Bad Decision forcing parenthood and risk of death on people is, the people I know who love parenting, who know we were born to be adorned with stickers and spit up and all that, we would NEVER ASSUME someone else wants to take that on.
Anyone who missed “less important” above, now note – I am not saying this is the top problem with taking away reproductive freedom.
It just makes me so sad. I mean, some people dream of becoming ER doctors. I would suck at that. I never want to do that. No one should make me become an ER doctor.
I wish most governors and senators had maybe 10% of the self-awareness that Cole has, is all.
Tim in SF
@Kiag: It was such a fun word back in the nineties. One can’t say it anymore, though. Times have changed.
Dopey-o
I frist heard the term ‘breeders’ in San Francisco in the 80s. So it’s been around for at least 35 years. Spoken with mild contempt.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
That was me as well, just didn’t have the desire, as I’d actually had the experience as a kid, doing a lot of the work.
Some seem to be wondering why life doesn’t happen like it used to for most. Fewer kids, etc. Well, life has changed a bit in the last half a century. There are far more humans in the world, some want to return to a simpler time, which it really wasn’t, and some are so full of it about that time, even though they didn’t live in it, or seemed to have forgotten what it was actually like for most people.
Laertes
There’s people running around who are just super pissed off that Chris Rock can use the n-word as he sees fit and they cannot. What these clowns fail (or choose not to) understand is that a slur belongs to the people against whom it’s used. They get to decide who gets to use it and when, and their decision can’t be appealed to anyone else. They don’t even have to be fair. They can rule that the meaning of the slur depends on who uses it.
You have the power to decide, unilaterally, that a given slur will never pass your own lips. But unless it belongs to you, you never get to make that decision for anyone else, and aren’t even entitled to an opinion about their ruling.
Applying that same principle to this much-less-fraught case, I feel entitled to declare, with some authority, that “breeder” is a slur of trivial throwing weight, that it may be used by anyone in a jocular manner even with strangers, and that if it’s ever used with venom, it still shouldn’t sting: it simply makes the user sound ridiculous.
And I encourage my fellow breeders to let it slide. They don’t have to, but they should. You’ve got to pay some heavy dues to stand alongside the real victims of bigotry and claim to be one of them. Some breeders have, but they didn’t get there just by being called breeders.
Real slurs have real histories of oppression and violence behind them.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: Not to mention how much (neverending) WORK kids are. I too never wanted kids (except for a brief unfruitful period around age 40 when the window was closing). I was always amazed at new parents who would tell me they hadn’t realized it was so much work. What about taking care of a totally helpless being 24/7 doesn’t say work to you? And everyone says as the physical demands lessen as they grow older, the mental demands get greater. Meanwhile, I have friends who were wonderful parents and always wanted kids. People have different strengths and people who are good at parenting (and want kids) should have and parent kids. They can go ahead and have extra kids and use my kid quota. I meanwhile, am a cat lady and currently do foster kittens for the local Animal shelter. I have said I would have had kids if you can send them out into the world after 10 weeks or so like kittens, but alas, no, that’s not how it works. I have a lot of admiration for people who are good parents. It’s a real talent and not everyone is good at it.
In addition, I had a problematic relationship with my own mother, and never wanted to replicate it, from either end (mother or child). When I was in therapy years
C Stars
Oh my, I do love a little patronizing lecture on the correct way to express oneself on this here little blog (I coulda said “mansplaining” but…)
I stand corrected. Of course it is illogical that on this date of August 2022 there would be any reason that any woman might assume a history of oppression in a term that describes us in terms of our biological capacity to reproduce, or be slightly taken aback by a term that has been repeatedly used against us as an insult. Next time I will be very conscious to not express my slight discomfort with a term that many here state they have only used with slight contempt. And I do apologize to any boomers here who might have been offended.
Skepticat
JC, I cannot begin to express how profoundly I agree and empathize with you. From the time I knew they were optional, I knew I didn’t want children. I’m on the spectrum and knew I couldn’t be a good parent. I’m awed by people who do it well, but I’m so grateful I don’t have to.
UncleEbeneezer
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: This season has not been nearly as good as earlier ones, imo. And the major change made to one of the key characters (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) has been a big colossal miss, almost ruining that character. I just don’t get it. The show was already so good, it really didn’t need such a silly gimmick.
stinger
What exactly is the distinction between a “slur” and a “real slur”? Any insult, whether applied to an individual or to a group, has the capacity to engender oppression and violence. It doesn’t matter if the recipient is okay with the term or not. Some Black people use the “n-word” among themselves, in order to diminish its power to hurt; others do not. If someone expresses discomfort with the term “boomer”, for example, it’s only courteous to stop using the term, rather than to explain its historical derivation and suggest that they get over it. Have we come to such a point that we don’t CARE when people are hurt by our language? Are we all Republicans?
C Stars
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Oh god, it is so much work. It is so much fucking work. Just wrapped up a proof, getting ready to go to the grocery store and I just wrote the words “Irish Breakfast Tea” and “gnocci” In purple crayola pen on the palm of my hand, then took a minute to rest and found that I had placed my forehead on my hands for…long enough. Off to Trader Joe’s now, bearing the mark of the “breeder”….
ETA yes, kids like gnocchi. It’s white and smooshy
Laertes
I think the difference is that a “real slur” has a history of violence and oppression behind it, and in which you’re rubbing someone’s nose when you use it. That’s where the n-word gets its throwing weight. It’s not just a sound. When someone who looks like me uses it, he’s saying “ha ha ha, people who look like you used to be robbed, raped, and murdered by people who look like me, and died with this word ringing in their ears.”
There are white people who crave the moral authority that comes from victimhood who’ll claim that, say, “whitey” is the just as bad. And it’s not, because it lacks the history that gives it force.
And I agree with you: If some boomer objects to the word “boomer” then I, being not a boomer, would be rude to continue to use it. As with other slurs that don’t apply to me, I’m not entitled to an opinion. I don’t sit on the committee that gets to decide. And if the people who to whom it does apply have disagreements among themselves as to how it ought to be used, that’s a family discussion of which I’m not a part.
I am a breeder, though. So I feel entitled to an opinion as to the propriety of using the term, and I also feel entitled to express that opinion to other breeders. Some of them face real oppression due to other elements of their identity. But as far as I’m aware, simply being a human who has contributed to bringing another human life into existence doesn’t by itself make me an oppressed person.
I think it’d be pretty silly for me to roll up on, say, a gathering of women of color, and say to them “Hey, I feel you. I understand the experience of marginalized persons in America. Because, you see, someone once called me a breeder.”
And I feel like taking offense at such a lightweight slur would be roughly the equivalent of doing that.
I got the tiniest little taste of oppression once. At a poker table once, at a Vegas casino, some other players with whom I’d become bitter enemies got the idea that I was gay. (i’d objected to their use of the ‘f-word” and they jumped to what seemed to them to be a reasonable conclusion.) A casino floor seems to me to be a perfectly safe place, and even so, feeling myself as the target of their stupid irrational hate was exhausting, and it made my hair stand on end. Just an hour or so of it was about all I could stand. I can’t imagine living my whole life with that kind of burden, and I know people do.
I’ve heard the word “breeder” and it doesn’t trigger anything close to that feeling. That’s why I think it’s not a real slur.
Citizen Alan
@Dopey-o:
To be fair, the contempt was somewhat justified since one of the primary arguments against gay marriage was that it was biologically impossible for a same sex couple to have a child (of both parents; ignore surrogacy). As if there could be no reason for a straight couple to get married if they didn’t want kids.
dnfree
@Laertes: this is an excellent analysis.
C Stars
@Laertes: The thing is, your beliefs or experiences regarding this term are not universal, and when you condescendingly call people “silly” or imply that you are far more socially conscious than others for having a different reaction, you come off as a huge asshole. I expressed several times that I understood that Cole and others here were not using the term with intent to cause harm, and you kind of obsessively responded to me about this issue with very weird and patronizing language to try to escalate my reaction. Have you been pregnant? Have you been denied a job or access to healthcare because of that pregnancy? Have you been the subject of sexual assault? If not, then I suspect that you and I may have very different experiences of being “breeders.” You are not right on this buddy; you don’t get to tell me (or anyone else) how they’re supposed to feel about something. The fact that you are trying so doggedly claim the philosophical or moral upper hand on this is just creepy.