Just hit me on the bus just now that today is the last day in NSW that anyone with Covid is supposed to stay home. Any kid or adult on the bus or classroom could have Covid in it's most infectious stage and not even have to tell anyone! All this without masks or air mitigations. Wild. Always a new low to adapt to.

This. Plus, I would say we have a moral obligation to our own Self/soul. Not quite follow your bliss but not quite follow someone else's idea of the common good either.

I don't know what you mean by fanatical, but the stereotypes are hurtful, as someone who devoted five plus years to providing the best support I could (as did every other b/f counsellor I know) to other moms, free of charge. Nothing' 'fanatical', just knew how hard it was at the beginning with dd and wanted to support others. I'm sorry you personally had some unhelpful experiences; I doubt that every counsellor in LLL is a 'fanatic'. There is a lot of judgement in this thread for out of the norm!! Happy to leave it there. It is a bit off topic 🙂

Right. But if your child's potential is such that they are always going to find operating in multiple environments challenging in various ways, despite your nurture, it might feel quite horrid to have another parent come along and not only judge your child as 'weird', but judge your parenting as deficient. I might even go so far as to call that ableist thinking.

I have to say, much as I love Quill, I agree with people quitting the lazy stereotypes around LLL. Individual experiences are one thing, and some people do have negative experiences; misrepresenting breast feeding counsellors and support more generally is another. Of course, I am a crazy mom who breastfed dd2 till close to five. Anyway, off topic except to say that dd is my most 'successful' so maybe my extreme nurturing was good after all! Maybe I cured her through my extended breastfeeding from the curse of the family weirdness! (I didn't, she's still weird, just passes better than the rest of us).

That makes sense. But some of this is inbuilt. I think it's easy to look at personality and call it nurture. I spend a LOT of time with children, and I just don't feel I could ever look at a particular child and their behaviour and KNOW for sure that the parents 'made them that way', kwim? Other than in clear cut cases of abuse and maltreatment. Everything is interaction between the environment and the temperament/personality/Self. You only have (limited) control over the environment. Children are not infinitely malleable. You can provide the best environment within your capability and still have a 'weird' aka different to the norm kid, who may not ever experience smooth belonging and operating over multiple environments.

I have grown up kids, so btdt (and we had a combo of school for one and homeschool for the others, so very flexible about that). School can be a fix for loneliness for some; school can be a place of loneliness for others. Some struggle with social connections in any context. It can't all be nurture (environment). I'm not good with judging kids on the basis of their place of schooling as insufficiently 'nurtured'. Unless, as above, they are living a life of deliberate deprivation.

What does it mean to 'socialize kids properly'? I mean, beyond the whole locked in the basement thing...

A lot of kids seem unmoored.

So many. So many unmet needs out there. I don't ever feel smug; I often feel sad when I talk to my 'weird' students. They are generally awesome but underserved by the system and sometimes the family.

Yeah, I wouldn't call that quirky. I'd call that 'poorly socialized'. But, ya know, there's a reason kids try to self-regulate with screens and have selective mutism!

School wouldn't have cured my kids' quirks.

Yep. Amen. Thank you. (Also totally missed it.)

This x 100. I took a break over Covid from seeing many of my old homeschool buddies. Seeing them again recently reminded me that I feel way more 'myself' with then than I do working in a school - because the quirky rates are very high in homeschooling, and not just amongst the kids! I definitely feel that the choice to take dd1 (autistic, but we did not know) out of school saved her a lot of grief, and that homeschooling ds (ADHD, though again, we didn't know) was a good move as well. Most definitely, though, the quirkiness preceded the homeschooling.

Not sure if this is a male thing. I'm pretty similar re avoidance.

It is sad. Many women have children they did not want or expect or felt socially or culturally pressured into having. Ideally, that is not information you share with the child. No, she doesn't sound at all ambivalent. Ambivalence has its own difficulties.

I would love to set up a pod to teach, but yes, not legal here.

I have appt anxiety. One good thing my ex did for me before online booking was call and make appts for me when I asked. I never made his. He didn't have any appt anxiety. I may have if he did.

A lot of women are ambivalent about mothering/being a mother at some point in their mothering journey. We just don't talk about it much as a society. I was low ambivalence for most of my kids' childhood and am much higher in ambivalence now. My mother was the opposite - extremely high in ambivalence towards us, particularly during our pre and teen age years, somewhat lower now. I'd encourage ppl not to see their situation as some outlier and everyone else in these 'golden' relationships with their mothers. Good relationships definitely exist! Not denying that for a minute. Some mothers always feel low or almost no ambivalence, and maintain an active and positive regard for their children over their lifespan. But ambivalence is a normal human feeling, even for our mothers! Even for ourselves! It's ok for a mother of an adult child to be ambivalent about breakfast with her daughter. And very much ok for that daughter to be ambivalent in return. Mothering/being mothered isn't saccharine. It evokes some of our most difficult emotions.

I just asked ds. He said, 'mixed, but school would have been an ADHD nightmare and I would have dropped out. So ...' Not exactly a ringing endorsement of homeschooling OR school but pretty realistic, probably.

She might not like you. But she might just have a fairly rigid personality. It's less interesting that she leaves without announcement than that you feel guilty when she does, and likewise, mom's birth story is less interesting than the way it evokes your feelings that mom doesn't like you. Re birth - I wouldn't put much stock in this story on its own. I adore my DS and he had a very healthy attachment but after he was born and the midwife went to hand him to me, I got super mad and said ' oh my God, I've been up all night and have done all the work and I'm bloody tired. Can I have a moment thanks? Give him to his father!' I knew I had time to get to know him, I just needed some recovery time!

Gentle hugs

If you go into it knowing that you are gonna fail somewhere along the line, you can laugh at the expectation it would be anything but. I did not go into it knowing this - I was an idiot, lol. It is frustrating, but it is also just human life. I have never yet come across a parent-child relationship where mom did everything 'right' 100% of the time. Yes, you will always fail (at times, and to some - hopefully but not always minor - extent).

I didn't express myself clearly. It absolutely matters as they go through their education that you are responsive to their thoughts and needs. It matters less what you chose, ultimately, once they are adults, because it's a path in the past, with + and - elements, like all paths. Hope that's a little clearer!

Face yoga.