I haven't had time and energy to continue to keep up with this thread, but thought you all might be interested in the newest developments in the Loudoun County School Board public meetings:

ETA: sorry for derailing

My kid with cancer has developed a phobia of needles. Here are some things that have helped a bit. -Lidocaine numbing cream (slathered on thickly and hour and a half beforehand, then covered with Press n' Seal wrap, so the entire section of arm is well and truly numb) -Not allowing the nurse to try to reassure/talk him into it beforehand. This only gives him more time to work himself up. The "little pinch" phrase is the worst; it's like a signal that the torture is about to begin. -Not asking it of him to hold still for it. It's too much to ask, and much easier on him to just hold him down and get it over with as quickly as possible.

My (church) friends from college mostly have kids quite young, too, except for one who went through major fertility issues and now has two little ones ten to fifteen years younger than his friends' oldest kids. My college roommates had their first kids at 21, 24, 25, 26 and 29. My high school (non-church) friends mostly still don't have kids yet at 35. One has a five- and a two-year-old, one has a one-year-old, the rest are childless. I'm a major outlier in that group.

I worked to support us through most of dh's law school so we could keep our debts lower, and I was so ready to be a mother before that but waited for practical considerations. So, technically you could call that delaying, but I was really young by normal standards, shy of my 23rd birthday when my oldest was born. I had the others at 24, 26, and not-quite 28. I loved being a young mom. It was the right decision for me, but I recognize that a lot of women aren't ready yet at that age. However, I have discovered that pregnancy at 35 is a monster compared to pregnancy at 22-27. I keep considering whether we should try for one more so that this little surprise caboose won't be lonely so much younger than the others. The prospect of going through this again does not look appealing.

There are absolutely people who don’t lie. Just because studies show that lying is normal doesn’t mean that an individual person is a liar.

Excuse me. Either a liar or otherwise misreporting what occurred--even though no one involved, anywhere, has made any claims to this effect. ETA: I didn't post the slides.

They may not be able to say what the other reason for failing him is, but legally speaking, they absolutely can say that he is incorrect.

I'm not drawing universal disquiet from that. I am saying that until/unless someone else with knowledge of the events suggests otherwise, there is no reason to call the boy a liar. There hasn't been a single source or bit of publicly available info that contradicts his allegations/version of events.

One party says A happened. The other party does not dispute that A happened, but does dispute whether what they did was wrong. I don't see how it is logical to assume that B is actually what happened, when no party involved is claiming that B happened. ETA: None of the other students have said that A didn't happen. They haven't come forward in public support of the student's fight with the school, but neither the other students, the teacher, or the administration has claimed that it didn't happen.

Well, if one of my kids comes to me upset saying a sibling did A, and the sibling essentially responds "I still think I was right to do it!" I don't decide that what really happened was B. I believe that A happened and then sort out whether or not A was the wrong thing to do.

But wouldn't the school have said he was lying? Wouldn't they have made some public statement that the boy's report of it was incorrect, that the teacher never said that, that his failing grade was received for ____ reason, not what he thought? When one party says such-and-such happened, and the other party involved doesn't contradict them, even though it paints them in a bad light, why decide that the teen must be wrong, even though the school didn't disagree with him? It seems like a real stretch. Unless the school issued a statement of that kind that I missed.

Intersectionality, as I have had it explained to me here in the US, is absolutely understood to be hierarchical. On the hierarchy are a number of categories such as race, class, gender/sexuality, religion, which seem to be accorded different weights, and different levels of "privilege" within each category. Like the wheel someone demonstrated. Where a minority group falls depends on the success that minority has achieved as a group overall, more than on historical disadvantages. Thus Jewish people and Asians are deemed to be barely less privileged than white people.

What was so bad was that they were failing a biracial student and denying him graduation for refusing to publicly outline the oppressor/oppressed elements of his heritage in class. The school didn't alter their position on this until his mother made a huge public outcry over it.

Ouch! I recall once when I was a daycare teacher before I had kids, my coteacher wanted to skip sunscreening the little black girl in my class before going out for recess because she "didn't need it". Idiot.

I know they do. Just in my family personally, though, my paler kids burn way faster and worse than my daughter with a more hispanic complexion.

Privilege: a special favor, honor, or right granted to a person or persons I just used the term "white skin" to echo your wording in your prior post. I assumed you meant having a complexion that people see and assume you to be white.

But is having white skin a privilege? Being discriminated against for having a different color skin would be an injustice. I don't think my kids who take after my side of the family have a "privilege" over my daughter who takes after the other side of the family for having lighter skin. Frankly, my pale daughter envies her sister's lovely brown tan, and not having to be so careful about sunburns. My one daughter may someday encounter injustice over this in her life. But does that mean that my pale, freckled kids are privileged? I think of not being discriminated against as a right, not a privilege.

I’m over sixteen weeks now. My last three I was only sick for the first trimester, but the first one was twenty weeks.

We’ve been so swamped dealing with the physical side of his health, it hasn’t even come up.

I know it’s just semantics and not really important, but the part of me that loves precise language really dislikes this use of the term “privilege”. I understand what is meant by it and why it is used, but in my mind, a child receiving support from its parents, not being abused, basic medical care, sufficient food, receiving a decent basic education, etc. in this country is a right, not a privilege. The child who doesn’t receive these things, whose deadbeat dad walks out on them, or is abused or neglected, whose caregivers are too drugged out to notice they’re hungry or to take them in for the free food assistance or free medical care offered for vulnerable kids—these kids, my foster girls, they weren’t just lacking a privilege. They were robbed of something that was theirs by right. Most (but not all) of the “privileges” we’ve been discussing seem to fall under this category. (Like the unfair, discriminatory lending practices—those people weren’t just disallowed something extra. They were robbed of what should have been theirs by right.) Some others, such as generational wealth or a family history of higher education, do actually seem to fall under the category of privileges that some are able to obtain on behalf of their children. I know it’s not really relevant to the underlying message, but I just wish a different term had been settled upon for this purpose. For most of these, it feels much more accurate to say something like “injustices” or “disadvantages” for those who lack them, than “privileges” for those who don’t.

100% agreement. I think the arguments against mail-in voting are ridiculous. Clearly, if we can find a way to pay taxes securely by mail, we can also find a way to make voting by mail secure against fraud.

My efforts at frugality are being hampered by the fact that I cannot smell food cooking in our house without getting sick right now. This morning it was still enough to get me after dh cooked dinner last night, even with having the windows opened and the fans going all night long. This morning sickness is so much worse than my last three pregnancies. I guess we are going out to eat for ds8’s birthday tomorrow. Even though all he wants for his birthday dinner is chocolate chip pancakes and bacon. Argh!

My ds7 seems to be doing a lot of thinking about death lately. This is my child with cancer. He knows that his cancer is not a kind that is likely to kill him, and when he hears references to people dying from cancer, these were a different type than his. (I never realized how frequently references like this come up in life, on the radio, tv commercials, etc. until I was aware of my cancer kid taking it in.) He has made a number of references to himself with this that have generally not seemed to be in a depressed or worried way. Several times he’s said things about being grateful to be alive. The other day he was describing a story he’d imagined to me about magic eight balls not just predicting the future, but making it. He said he asked one if he was going to die, and the answer was no, so then he got to live forever. Mostly his worry on this has been expressed about the baby I’m pregnant with. He talks to my stomach all the time, and told me last week that he really wants the baby to know that he loves him now. My immediate thought was that ds7 was thinking of his own death, but then he was talking about being worried the baby would die in my tummy before he is born, and crying . I gave him lots of comfort and reassurance that there is no reason to think that would happen, and the baby is fine and healthy—but he brought it up again twice more in the next few days. Even though he hasn’t seemed upset or down about concerns over his own life, I think it must be related. He is mostly a very happy kid and most of his references to death have not been made in a negative way, but I am still worrying about this. He is very familiar with our family’s beliefs on life after this one and on eternal families. I don’t think he fears death. I heard him praying in the bathroom yesterday. “I am grateful for this life, and that I get to be here right now.” It’s just such heavy subject matter for such a little guy who has been through so much. I don’t really know what I’m asking, even.

Well, there is good reason to include race in medical records, because some important health issues vary with race. For example, one of my cancer kid’s blood tests came back wonky the other day, and I couldn’t reach his doctor to find out whether it was far enough outside of the range of normal that we should worry, so I googled it. Turns out the healthy range for that blood test varies widely by race.