One other thing to consider as you try to find the right balance...years ago I told my kids that if they wanted to do the outside the house things that they were doing, then, especially when Dad was gone, we all needed to work together to make it happen. We talked about the fact that my responsibility was to make sure that they were clean, fed, clothed, housed, and educated. Everything else was extra, and absolutely did not have to happen, and couldn't happen if I couldn't manage the main things with bandwidth the spare. We did not leave for their activity until their routine chores and school work were done. If the activity was during the day, then certain things needed to be done before we left, or promptly when we got home or we couldn't do the next day's thing. My rule-follower didn't really need this and would generally do whatever I asked just because I asked. My other child has missed many sessions of activities over the years, and at times we've limited involvement in team activities because we didn't feel like kid could be a reliable teammate. But, over time, even thought it takes more managing, we have made progress on kid getting their work done on time, etc. I also give the kids the responsibility for managing their own stuff for their activity. I'll ask if they have their gear and may even mention 'do you have your hat/belt/easy to forget stuff?' but I don't chase it down for them. If their uniform isn't in the laundry basket, it doesn't get washed. Or they can wash it themselves. I tell them that, while there are few things that I enjoy more than watching them do something that they love, it isn't my responsibility to manage the stuff - it isn't my activity. I don't do it perfectly, and it only works as long as you are willing to let them miss the thing. You can't care more than they do or you'll give in. But, if you care more than they do, then you know that the activity can be dropped, or they can take a break.

You have my sympathies. We are a family that is out of the house a good bit, with both kids doing activities. Our drives are usually short (under 30 minutes) and I was able to take advantage of the 1:1 time with no distractions to work with the kids - if you are waiting on sibling, there isn't much else to do so you might as well get the school done. That doesn't work for everybody, but for one of my kids it was easier than trying to work at home. I don't know that it would have worked as well if we had needed to drive a long way, or if the kids had needed to be home to work. The disrespect and oppositional behavior is challenging. It may be that not having a consistent routine is hard for that kid. For my challenging child, a home-set routine was harder than a routine anchored by various activities - the work has to be done before class at 12, or we need to do get the math done while we wait for sibling and then we can... I think that many kids can learn to work with different schedules, so while something may be better or worse for your kid, I'm not sure that's the primary issue. That being said, the kids feeling like there is an escape hatch of going next door where they didn't have to do their work would cause absolute chaos at my house. One of my kids would do the work anyway, because kid is a natural rule follower who likes to check everything off the list. But, my other kid would be out the door all day every day. We've had a lot of challenge with managing school and behavior with this kid, and the biggest help has been that everybody is on board. I got spouse to see that any time my decisions were undermined, kid would know that it was worth a try to not listen and hope that dad came to the rescue. Kid now finds us to both be equally frustrating, which is what needed to happen. My parents, who are local, see us most weeks, sometimes more than once, and often take a kid for the weekend if we have an activity with the other, back us up, too. There's a difference between grandma always having ice cream for dessert or letting a kid stay up late at a sleepover and giving them a rules-free place to avoid their routine work. At our house, the rule would have to be that they couldn't go over until their work was done, and the first thing that my parents would say when they saw the kid was 'Is your work done?' and if not they'd send them back home. Alternatively, would it be possible for the other kids to get their social time with grandparents when you are taking your daughter to her activities and then you do school with them at other times? Most homeschoolers prefer a routine based during 'normal school hours' but there is no reason that you can't do school with them in the early morning, or evening, or Saturday, or whatever fits your needs and then let them hang with grandma on T/Th from 12-4 or whatever you need to do. If their work is done, they go to grandma's, and if not then they go with you and work while they wait. You have to be willing to re-evaluate if things aren't working, and school, or dropping dd's activity, or other options all need to be on the table. As others have said, it's about priorities. I'd get a week-long day planner and block in the things that are inflexible and see how you can position everybody to get what they want and need around that. If it doesn't work, then you know that you need to cut some of your inflexible activities. For most of my kids' lives, spouse has traveled a lot and I've always had to make plans with the assumption that I could be managing it solo. On one hand, we have a schedule that some people think is nuts. On the other hand, there are activities that I never considered allowing the kids to do because I knew that it wouldn't fit without causing major upheaval for all of us. Those decisions will be different for each family.

Right, but I could understand people being uncomfortable with an organization that they are part of using symbols that they don't understand the meaning of, or what will be expected of them. When I see an interpreter, I know that they are there to restate what is being said in another language. There are different color pumpkins with symbols - I personally knew about teal and blue, but when I did a search there were several more colors, some just to raise awareness for causes and others to symbolize that the people who had them were handling trick-or-treating a particular way (allergen-free, autism aware). If the promotional materials (signs, bulletin message, etc) says 'Come for our carnival! Candy and toy/trinket prizes!' I would think that would be enough to let a person who needed it know without leaving the congregation wondering what they had committed to providing. It would even make it inclusive for diabetic kids, while in some contexts allergy-free still includes sweets (I had a student with severe food allergies, and the class learned that one brand of gummies was made in an allergen-free facility...so the class always had various shapes of gummies as their treat. Great for allergy kid so it worked for that class, but terrible if you were watching sugar since it's pure sugar syrup - thankfully, nobody was). My own experience is likely colored by a few activities that I've been a part of, where publicly trying to make some accommodations has sometimes left people expecting more and organization finds itself almost wishing that they'd never made the first offer (like, they do the pumpkin thing and then families want every potluck to be free of all allergens - this wasn't our issue, but you get the point). I'm a part of a church that, for several years, only offered one brand of pretzels as the kid snack to accommodate a child who had all sorts of crazy and severe allergies. But, for our VBS, it had gotten so complicated, with families requesting many different accommodations to deal with a bunch of 'allergies'. Our VBS director finally published the snack list (Monday - capri sun and goldfish) and said that if your child could not eat a particular snack, please let us know and send something with them that day and we would make sure that they had that for their snack. Suddenly, there were no children with allergies that needed to be accommodated - in 4 days, not a single kid was unable to eat the provided snack. This is really unfortunate, since it reinforces people's ideas that allergies aren't real. As a person who plans things, I'm very torn between wanting to announce 'Hey - we want your kid here - let us help!' and realizing how many families will use that to ask for all sorts of special favors. This is all wandering from the initial topic, but in people's heads symbols often represent a suite of ideas and actions. We don't actually know the people in the OP's church, and everything that I've said has been in response to the initial question, which was basically 'Why would anybody think that?'. I thought that was the question that we were trying to answer, and I've tried to give examples of what they could be thinking, if they indeed do oppose the OP's request, which they haven't done as of yet. I don't really want to argue about it - I was just suggesting ways for the OP to get what I thought she wanted, which was to make the event more friendly for kids with allergies. Posting it on the teal pumpkin registry so that people who check it would know, advertising that the event had candy and trinket prizes, and providing those prizes were all actions that would make that happen. If the question is actually 'How do I make those close-minded people agree that this is the better way to do their event?' then I'd still suggest the same thing, letting them see that it turned out well, and maybe next year they expand on it. If the OP feels that a more direct way is important, then that's certainly her choice to make.

There's nothing particularly woke about the teal pumpkin. I know what it means and would be unbothered. But, at the same time...there is a person in my orbit who is very into educating people about every cause that she comes across, and would likely describe herself as woke and as an advocate. Allergies, an assortment of mental health issues, bi, trans, and gay issues, the rights of sex workers... Her facebook feed is a constant stream of education, with a list of rules that one should remember to make people feel comfortable and the symbols and language that should be used to show allyship. It is absolutely exhausting. However compassionate I try to be, I just don't have the bandwidth to memorize multiple lists of 20 rules and what words may cause offense and the symbols to go with each issue, particularly those that I don't actually interact with on a regular basis. I would imagine that, for some people, the teal pumpkin would go into that stack of stuff because they don't interact with it. So, while I'd think it's good to list the event on the teal pumpkin registry (as somebody suggested above)...the OP has already said that her husband thinks that people will find this offensive. He may be right or wrong, but if she thinks that it's likely to cause offense then why go that route? Why not just say 'sometimes not everybody wants candy, so let's see if the kids go for silly putty'? In my particular environment, the teal pumpkin would go over well. In a similar vein, in one of my circles hanging pride flags outside the church would be divisive while hanging a sign saying 'Join us - all are welcome' would absolutely be true. It feels like this is one of those issues, and just like I would feel uncomfortable with somebody describing that church poorly because they don't hang a flag, but would think poorly of the church if they ran off a gay person, I'm likewise uncomfortable with the people in the OP's church being described negatively by people who don't know them based on they way that they are predicted to respond to a symbol, but I'd have no problem with people being upset if they responded with 'no, we won't allow any non-food prizes, and if that excludes some kids, then too bad for them'. We all live in different bubbles, with unexpected responses to symbols because they so often represent more than what they are actually meant to. Until the people do otherwise, I was just suggesting giving them the benefit of the doubt about how they would treat the actual person donating the prizes and the kids that came, rather than getting irritated with them over what might happen.

I was referring to people calling it woke and responding negatively to non-candy treats, which the OP was concerned about but which hadn't happened. I know that there are people who don't believe that allergies are real, but the idea that the church as a whole was going to be opposed to offering non-candy treats, and posters saying things like 'if being kind is woke, then...' when as far as I could tell nobody had said anything negative about the plan...that's what I was talking about. I get frustrated when people conflate ideas. Like, even people who don't believe somebody's allergy claim may still honor their stated need to avoid something (we had a person in our family who was only allergic when they knew about the 'allergen'...this was entirely different from the person who had an issue every time that they ingested it...and as a family we avoided the allergens for both people even though we didn't really believe that one of them was real). I can think that somebody is doing something completely non-necessary when offering non-candy treats (not that I agree, just using the example) without stopping them from doing it or saying anything negative about it. That's what I was referring to - don't borrow trouble about a negative response to a particular suggestion, just look for a way to implement it that will be most likely to elicit a positive, or at least neutral, response. That's why I think avoiding the teal pumpkin is the better plan - instead of setting up a potential conflict, it's solving the problem without a conflict occurring. So, with no conflict, there's nothing to be upset about. And, I completely agree that beliefs often don't come in the packages seen in stereotypes. The healthy food people that I know may be crunchy cons, hippies, or homesteaders. I know several clergy who are more liberal than their congregations. I know a lot of people who don't have views that line up with any particular ideology and are unique to them.

After reading the thread, I just wanted to note that there seemed to be a bit of hostility towards 'those people who complain about things like this' but...it hasn't actually happened, and the only person who has said anything negative so far is the OP's husband. Several people have said that their churches do this with no complaints. I'm not saying that it couldn't be an issue, but one thing that I seem to be seeing more of across different aspects of society is people getting irritated with others for what they imagine that they might say, so they are 'guilty' of something that they haven't actually done. There's enough friction in the world without being ill with people over things that aren't happening, so I try to watch for it in the interactions that I'm a part of.

A nonprofit group that I'm affiliated with was reported to the state to be audited, so while I don't know exactly who it's reported to I know that it can be done. The person who reported it was a disgruntled person who had formerly worked with the organization and just wanted to cause trouble, but if there had been any shenanigans (there weren't) they would have found them.

I think that offering non-food options is great. I'm wondering if your husband's response is more about the teal pumpkin than the offering of alternative treats. The sheer number of flags, ribbons, and other symbols that are used to represent various issues can be overwhelming to keep up with and some may ignore it all as woke even if they would be happy to make the accommodation - it can seem a bit more of a spectacle than just offering alternatives. But, I can't imagine anybody in my orbit, which spans the political and philosophical spectrum, being upset that somebody brought non-food or non-sweet options. They would be miffed if somebody insisted on doing those instead of candy, but as long as candy is available to those who want it then I wouldn't expect complaints.

I'll throw out there that one of my kids comes across as smarter than the other. One loves to learn and is always perceived as very intelligent. The 'more normal' kid had an IQ test as part of a test for learning challenges because kid got so frustrated with schoolwork. It turns out that kid is extremely gifted, has some ADHD issues, and has a very low frustration tolerance. This kid really doesn't enjoy learning, doesn't like puzzles, and doesn't like anything challenging enough to potentially be frustrating. Despite what are likely comparable levels of ability, there will likely be different levels of knowledge and achievement because the kids gravitate towards different things. I could easily imagine that a smart kid who doesn't like stereotypical 'smart kid' things like puzzles wouldn't be perceived as a 'gifted' kid. In our case, this kid actively fought learning to read and, despite having gone to a little 1/2 day church preschool where the kids learned their ABC and numbers, when we started kindergarten kiddo insisted that they had no idea what the different numbers were when I opened the math workbook. As a toddler kid refused to go into the 2 year old nursery after turning 3 because it said 2 year olds on the door, but at age 5 claimed that they couldn't recognize any numbers at all. But, kid is capable of impressive insights and learns very quickly...when they want to learn. The ADHD-related issues and personal preferences really mask a lot, and I could imagine that other issues do, too.

My parents, with similar colors, chose black. Ours was painted when we moved in so we keep painting instead of staining. Our deck is painted gray. We switched the rails from white to black a few years back and like it better, but our are metal and always looked grungy.

At the college that spouse and I attended, it was typical for physics to be split over 2 years for most engineers. They took calc first semester and then could take physics I second semester. They took the second physics the following fall. Our kid is doing physics I and II over the 2 semester of senior year, but we chose that with the thought that if kid didn't want to do the second while in high school then it would be no problem to take the second after starting at whatever college kid picks. My remembrance of physics was that it was more like a math class - unless you completely forget how the problems work then it's not an issue to have a break. This is different than some of the bio classes, where you really want to go ahead and get through some sequences with as few breaks as possible so that you don't have to keep refreshing the vocabulary and pathways that you memorized.

Having read more comments, I think we underestimate how many operate in micro-social groups. Several years ago I went to a women's retreat event with my mom's church. Some church groups chose to wear matching event T-shirts, but even without that you could often tell which groups went together. Whether everybody had the same style purse, or they all wore the same brand of sandals, or had similar haircuts...people tend to do things similarly to their social group because that's what's 'normal' or 'stylish'. These weren't necessarily expensive things - most people in mom's group wore a particular brand of sandal that is under $30. One person got some and said that they were comfortable, and others followed...and they are comfy, I have several pairs. 🙂 So, for some there could be a feeling of everybody doing it even though the rest of us aren't seeing it. I see a lot of diversity of practice, but I travel between very different circles that don't really overlap much.

Smoothies with a scoop or 2 of protein powder if you can find a source that fits your needs? They can be juice or milk-alternative based. I sometimes put the stuff in jars in the fridge and then people just screw on the blade and pop it on the blender when they want it.

I know a lot of women who dye their hair, but also a lot who don't. It doesn't seem to correlate with make-up wearing or how 'put together' these people usually appear. Several women in my orbit quit coloring after their roots grew out when salons were closed. I tend to attribute it to preference about how they want to look. I almost always wear make-up - just powder foundation, a dash of blush, and tinted lip balm. Total time - under 1 minute. I don't like looking pale, although I'm not obsessive about it and have no problem running to the store without it. I still use hot rollers because I hate how lank my hair looks, but I also often just stick it in a bun while wet and don't fuss with it at all. I don't wear sandals without painted toenails. None of this is about societal expectations as best I can tell, since the people around me all have very different sets of things that they do, whether it be dressing nicer or always wearing jewelry (I don't even have pierced ears!) or wearing nice shoes instead of Birks and flip flops. My spouse, who is mostly bald with mostly gray hair where it remains, would never run around in the athletic wear that I don't think twice about wearing. So, with all of that, I'd assume that by 'have to' it means 'I'm irritated that now I have to do something to look the way that I want to look', in the same way that I used to say 'I have to wear contacts' - I wear glasses now and they were always acceptable, but if I wanted to be glasses-free I had to wear contacts.

We haven't seen anything unusual - just the usual storm damage.

My homeschooled DE kid loves the flexibility of asynchronous online classes. But, kid has taken either things that are non-major courses (humanities for a STEM kid) or are highly proscribed (Calc 3 and Physics). The last 2 are actually part of a state-wide ecampus, so I think that the goal is to make sure that prereq classes contain the material needed to succeed in the next class in the sequence. From what kid says, though, a lot of classmates struggle with the online classes. There is a ton of time management required. It's not usually a problem for a kid who gradually worked up to completely managing their schedule over the years, but I can imagine that for a lot of students they struggle to plan 15 hours of hard work spread across a week. A friend's kid is living at home and commutes to State U. This student signed up for their required sophomore classes, picking the favored professors and class times that worked together, only to find that all but one of their classes was online. Some are synchronous, a way for the U to put more students in a class without having to add another section in another classroom. The mom made 2 comments - 1 is that it can be a challenge because the student needs to do one online class on campus before running to their live class, so they have to set up somewhere to do that. The second is that she'd be really ticked if she were paying for a student to live on campus, only to have most of their classes taken from a dorm room.

This may not be relevant to your situation, but would having either you or your spouse reducing work hours give the other the ability to do significantly better? In our case, I quit/went to very part-time work when we had babies. What we found is that having me available to take on anything that had to be dealt with left spouse able to work longer hours and say yes to any travel that his employers wanted him to do. There have been times that he traveled more than half the month, which would have been significantly more challenging had I needed to arrange childcare around my own job. When he is home he does whatever is needed and now, as a more senior person, tries to schedule trips around important kid activities. In our case, though, we likely came out financially ahead by him being able to focus on career without having to worry about other things. This is mostly because my likely path wasn't particularly well-paying, while his upper limit is much higher. This worked for us largely because being successful in his career was significantly helped by being able to travel on little notice for several years. But, as you describe very intense periods in your work and it's high upper limit I was wondering if having your spouse work less might not affect your income much but might reduce stress significantly. It's all very situation-specific, but I thought it might be something to consider.

That is not generally what people mean by those terms. Being in the delivery room can be fraught if there are people who expect to be there, but most of the time it's 1-2 people (often the dad and the mom's mom or a friend). Sometimes I've heard of more people, but it's still more like 3-4, not 20. Other people are generally in a waiting room of some sort. The waiting room would be in the maternity ward, so only families of people giving birth. With babies coming at all sorts of hours, I'd imagine that there are busy times and not busy times depending on how crowded the ward is at the time. Being at surgery is also being in a waiting room. I've never heard of anybody being in/watching somebody's surgery with the exception of 1 person (usually the dad) allowed to be present at a C-section. I was in labor forever before my first, and spouse came with me for the surgery while my mom, who had also been with us during labor, was in a waiting room. In the situations I've seen, the family sits in the waiting room while the patient is prepped for surgery. Then a small number are allowed back to sit with the patient while they wait for surgery. The family returns to the waiting room during the surgery. Once the patient is in recovery, at some point a small number (1-2) are allowed back to sit with the patient until they are released or moved to a room. I'd imagine that the number allowed back might also depend on crowds. When my mom had surgery, she was the last patient of the day at the particular hospital and the only one in recovery. There were only 2 of us, but they might have allowed more to sit with her since there was nobody to bother. But, it was only because her surgery took forever. When they were prepping her, every pre-op bay was occupied and having more than 2 back at a time would have been a problem. Note - her surgery wasn't at a trauma center - it was at a hospital that deals with 'routine' things like appendicitis and heart attacks and is favored by the orthopedic practice that was fixing her shattered kneecap. Our city also has a university hospital with trauma center, which likely has surgeries going around the clock. For recovery, some hospitals have an open room and others have a room with semi-divided bays - separated by curtains for privacy but not really separate rooms. Most let somebody back once the patient has whatever tubes removed that they are going to remove. Some want the patient to be awake and others let somebody back while the patient is still groggy. I don't know if it's hospital-specific or type-of-sedation-specific or crowd-specific.

Depending on the family, it's not hard to have a fairly large group. My grandmother had 5 kids. If they and their spouses came to the hospital, that's 10. Add in a sibling and a pastor, or a spouse, or some grandkids and you have a crowd. Normally you wouldn't have a huge crowd for something like an appendectomy or gall bladder surgery. But, when a relative had heart surgery, her sibling, spouse, kids with spouses and teen grandkids were all there, plus a pastor. This relative was terrified and I think found comfort in having those people close by even though they couldn't all go in and visit after surgery, or were only allowed in 2 at a time for brief visits. This is different than when my grandfather was in hospice. He had been in the hospital with frequent visitors, but when he was moved to hospice he didn't want the grandkids to see him like that. So, despite it being set up to accommodate family (in a separate part of the hospital), it was only my grandmother and their 2 children. I was the only grandchild to visit, and I was there just dropping off food and clothing and the 3 of them asked me to stay with him so that they could get a break together. I give these 2 examples because they were the same side of the family and this is the less 'everybody go to the hospital' side, but under certain circumstances they still showed up big.

I'm not sure what non-Americans are envisioning when they talk about plenty of waiting room space. I've been in hospitals with family in 3 areas (cities in NC and NM, and a suburb in TN) and all of them have waiting rooms. Overflow into halls can happen during flu season or something like that but isn't typical. Waiting rooms are like doctors office waiting rooms, so enough space with chairs and a TV playing something, but not luxurious. When a relative had surgery to fix a broken knee, there were probably 4 each prep-op and post-op bays and the waiting room had seats for maybe 30 people. There was a cafeteria on-site that served the same type of food that was served upstairs plus sandwiches and such. So, plenty of seats in the waiting room for a couple of people per patient if every bay was in use, which isn't always the case, and then if one party had a bunch of people they could have congregated in the lobby or cafeteria, where there was seating, if needed. If they had wanted to convert the waiting room to patient care, there would have been space for maybe 2-3 beds, so it's not as if it would have converted to much more treatment space. Here there is somewhat of an expectation that, if possible, patients have at least somebody with them much of the time. When I had my first C-section, my husband changed the sheets on my bed when they became blood-soaked. If I missed a pain med dose while running back and forth to the NICU (which was on another floor) to nurse the baby or deliver pumped milk, my husband or mom would have to go find a nurse to give it to me.

I think that people have really different preferences and comfort levels with anything medical. I actually am fine with having visitors and with looking like a mess - I get bored easily and usually like having people to talk to. My first was born by C-section after a long labor, was in the NICU, we both had complications, etc. I had a friend from across the country who happened to be driving through town and he came to visit me in the hospital. It let my mom and husband both go rest. But, this friend had trained as a doctor before changing jobs. He was fine with wheeling me to the NICU while I had a catheter, and washed the breast pump stuff since I could barely get out of bed. He is gay and got a kick out of the nurses thinking that he was the dad helping out. 🙂 This is not the sort of thing that just anybody can and will be a part of, since lots of friends would not be comfortable with this kind of interaction. And, in that situation, I would probably have been more comfortable with this particular friend than other people that I was closer to just because I know that this friend wouldn't be freaked out by all of the crazy things that were going on. But, husband was absolutely frazzled, I was a mess, and baby was unavailable because it was in the NICU. Second kid was a more normal C-section and anybody could have come, but if I had been a mom who wasn't up to visitors there would have been no way to visit my husband and baby separately because we were all in the same room all the time. He couldn't easily step out because I was in the room unable to get out of bed on my own to get to the baby. In terms of whether a family is 'everybody gather at the hospital' or 'everybody stay out of the way', I have family groups in both camps so I try to respect their preferences. As somebody who can go either way, I want the people most involved to have what they need, whether it be peace or a vocal show of support. When I am the person most involved, I still want people to do what makes them comfortable since I am usually OK either way.

From what I've read, even though football is the sport that scares people concussions are more common in soccer. From my student pool, over the years I've had 3 soccer concussions, 2 cheerleading concussions, and 1 horseback riding concussion. I did once talk to a mom whose kid had gotten concussions doing flag and they were thinking that switching to tackle with helmets would be safer. I've also known of 2 concussions on the homeschool volleyball team over the past 2 years, and mild ones seem to occur a couple of times each year at my kid's martial arts school.

My mom always called her parents Mother and Daddy, and that's still what she calls them when talking about them. They reflect the relative formality of their personalities, not my mom's maturity level. My dad and his siblings always referred to their parents and Mama and Daddy. I don't know that I ever said Mommy - it was Mama and then Mom, although it was Daddy and then Dad. I agree with the poster above who said that these become their proper name. Various relatives are forever stuck with the name that some baby could say. My grandmother wanted to be called Grandmother, but all that the first grandkid could get out was Gran-Gran, so that's what she was for 40 years. It did not in any way mean that a bunch of adults in their 30s were stuck in childhood. We have many more since apparently my family is amused by what kids say and once you get tagged by a kid, it's for life. 🙂 Even as these adults reached the point that they were being taken care of, they were still called by these 'immature' names. You'd hear somebody say 'I've got to run help GranGran with her car' or 'We've got to go help Mama because Daddy is up wandering around at night'.

A paperwhite can't be used to record other people, so it's electronic but avoids the liability issues. I love mine because I can make the font huge for my old eyes. But, it doesn't help with not being able to click around unless the newer ones are faster at that than my old one.

I'm not sure it's 'kids are bad' as much as 'the adults are responsible for their behavior. If an adult gropes another adult, or shows them porn, or records somebody's tearful prayer request and posts it to social media, the person who will be blamed (and prosecuted if appropriate for the act) is the adult who did the bad thing. If a kid does something like that, the people who are blamed and liable are the adults who were supervising. Most of our kids are great and the worst that they would ever do is gossip (which isn't good, but isn't unusual). But, we have kids that we don't know. We have a few kids who have been in police-involved situations. We have 2-deep unrelated people covering every event to protect the adults from accusations by the kids, since we know that it in the range of possibilities for at least one of our kids. Communication is through group text/apps like GroupMe and not private. I do the same with my teaching and communicate through Canvas. I only have the numbers to text a handful of teens that aren't my own, and they are kids from families that we have done co-op and science competitions with for years. I would be willing to get involved in a situation if I thought a kid was at risk in some way, but as 'best practices' we are in the habit of keeping communication with kids in a public-ish forum like slack (for science competition team events that we coach) that parents can see if they look at the kid's account and that we tell parents we will be using.