Lol YES.

You can ask to be exempt from the whole shebang, I imagine - but you'll either have to invent a story or tell the real one or be ostracized. There's no painless play, here - ime adults are largely expected to have dealt with their trauma, or they have to defend any resistance to the social contract with the detailed story of that trauma, which is rarely worth it. I hear you on the gift giving and receiving thing. I just open with "I suck at gifts, it's a weird me thing," and that seems to lower my expectations and theirs, which reduces my anxiety.

You're not the only one. Existing socially or professionally in an economic class you're not actually part of is fraught with these things. It's like when my kid's school wants every kid to fork up $25 for a field trip t-shirt twice a year.

Do you have a printer and maybe access to card stock or heavyweight printer paper? Sometimes you can buy this by the single sheet if you can't use the school's. There are lots of free (or minimal cost, I have a zillion of these I'd happily send you via email) digital graphic print things with like a positive phrase and some watercolor flowers or a tree or what have you. Cheap way to give art (made by independent real artists! But printed by you).

They get an hour for lunch! outside! (I grant that this is largely a weather issue in most parts of the states but still). 25 minutes for tea at 10:30 in the morning. A real solid plan for kids who might not go to college to start jobs or apprenticeships at 15 to 16, while still being supported by the educational system, without any negative judgment. The minority culture, at least the Maori, is formally recognized and there's ime a continual sincere effort by educators to respect their language, culture, customs, and to adapt education to what makes sense in Maori culture and communities where possible. As a student teacher you have to learn the basics of the language and culture, and are expected to apply them, and to treat Maori customs with the same respect you would European customs; it's unprofessional and impolite not to. I'm sure there are lots of failings in that respect, but the baseline expectation just felt different than it does here. Plus it's hard to argue with an hour for lunch for high schoolers.

I can confirm that imo, NZ does primary and secondary education the right way. I could go on and on about all of the things they get right that the US does not, from lunch periods to sincere frameworks and respect for Maori integration to the school leaving plans; it's just all so much more carefully planned, implemented, and so much more student -centric. There's at least a real effort to respect the needs of children. I have lots of respect for the NZ education system.

Well to be fair, this would make me pretty angry as a parent too - of course I'm very polite, so I'd never scream or yell, but I'd certainly be very upset if someone threatened to force entry to my home (or even just show up at my door) because I wasn't answering emails. I'm not sure ignoring emails from a school justifies the school threatening to use the coercive power of the state to inspect your home. That's an unfortunate power play on the part of the counselor, and as the parent I'd feel threatened.

The $600 thing was nixed for 2022, but could be relevant for 2023 taxes. PayPal or Venmo themselves will send you a 1099k if it applies to you next year.

If they know each other at school, she clearly lets her kid be around your kid already, so it's not the contact with your kid that frightens her. I'd suspect it's the idea of leaving them alone together in a house where there is no adult supervision (and thus no one except two twelve year olds, one of them hers, to call the police if your kid's dad shows up). The alternative idea, where they are in a different house with two adult supervisors, probably sounds a lot safer. I would have made the same decision she did.

This is highly state dependent, but in almost all states, a 13 year old cannot consent at all, even to sex with another 13 year old. It's not that it's rape - if they're both 13, who is raping whom? - but that neither of them are old enough to consent, and when thirteen year olds are having sex, something has gone terribly wrong. It's amazing to me that it's being referred to in this thread as teenage pregnancy, as if a pregnant 17 year old (still too young, imo) and a pregnant 14 year old are the same thing, more or less. 14, sex at 13, is not just teenage pregnancy. It's something much more concerning, which is why in many states it *is* an automatic report, and why imo child and family services should always at least run an evaluation to see if services are possible to help the family, and especially the child(ren). The idea that a pregnant 14 year old girl is anything but a tragedy is unintelligible to me

I would guess that in most states, a pregnant 14 year old is an automatic report to CPS by any mandated reporter, but maybe not. There's a lot you can do for a pregnant 14-year-old. You don't have to know who the father was to offer services or require parent education or therapy for the child.

Of course they wouldn't necessarily pursue the boy legally if he is also 13. That doesn't mean the girl (or the boy!) was able to consent. CPS involvement would be useful because a thirteen year old having sex, regardless of with whom, is always a situation that could use some sort of social support, whether education for the parents, therapeutic and medical services for the child, followup to help prevent further severely underage sex, etc.

Teenagers can have consensual sex. 14 year old teenagers (and 13yo teenagers, if she was 13 when she became pregnant) cannot.

I just...never move them back. Then for six months I mentally subtract an hour, and the slight pleasure of seeing the right time on the stove in spring helps compensate for having to wake up an hour earlier.

And yes, when you are in a therapeutic relationship with someone who sees you without the projections (at least mostly), and you eventually are able to see them without projections (as you work through your unconscious complexes/issues), it does become a very intimate relationship. The boundaries of it are explicitly and deliberately what allow this to happen - but ime it's only a therapist with a lot of experience and self-awareness who is truly able to hold this frame, to contain all of your unconscious projections as you work through them.

Yes, that's a better way to say it, Melissa Louise.

Part of the reason for needing someone who has done a lot of their own work is that the sense of support, of not being alone, ime comes best from someone who eventually really sees you. If they haven't done their own analysis (of some form or another), they're (again ime) not free enough of their own bs to be able to see you - instead they're seeing a template, or their own projections, or some aspect of themselves.

The professional distance enables the support. I haven't found it necessary to click at first; mutual trust is built over time. Because it's so hard to build this real relationship, without the projections that run most of our relationships (and that cause that initial "click" or "yikes not this one" feel), it helps to have someone who you believe on paper will be competent to hold the space for the real relationship. My criteria for this are: 1. Has done their own work: was in some form of analysis for several years. 2. Is extensively trained, beyond (but ideally including) just the master's in counseling or social work. 3. Has a broad and deep education in the humanities.

lIf he's violated the order that's not necessarily a matter you need to run through your attorney, who probably can't do anything about it; you can just file a police report. Unless orders of protection vary wildly between your state and mine, they only proscribe the person against whom you have the order from doing the various things specified in the order; they don't criminalize other unrelated people. I don't think the dad has any legal liability, although if he continues you could probably get an additional order targeting him (but likely a civil, not criminal one).

They're fantasies; anxiety fantasies, and masochistic fantasies, and power fantasies. You can get a lot of information about how your psyche works by thinking about your fantasies; I've always found it useful. Sometimes, though, you can get too caught in the fantasizing; the unconscious just takes over and you're controlled by that need to obsess. Sometimes analyzing the fantasy can help you get some distance from it, and help you see it rationally instead of being driven by the emotional energy behind it. So you might try analyzing them. For me this looks like: what is my unconscious telling me through how this fantasy goes?

You are not in a place, psychologically, where you can have your mom live with you. These things will not happen because she can't live with you. The reason she can't live with you isn't because she'd do these things or make these criticisms; it's because you absolutely cannot draw the emotional boundary internally so that these criticisms mean nothing to you, even in the hypothetical. You don't need to justify not being willing to take her in by thinking of all the reasons it would be a bad idea and getting external validation that she'd be unpleasant to live with. You can just not take her in because you don't want to take her in.

When you said in the first thread got his behavior had radically changed and you wanted advice for divorce, I said maybe you should take a second to wait since it was only a drug combination that he had gotten in the hospital. At that time you said no, this has been going on for months, he's been acting jealous and irrational for at least three or four months while on the oxy. The idea that he isn't cognizant right now of the need to give up all of his guns to keep his family safe indicates to me that this situation is not resolved. Good luck.

Breastfeeding is great, and if she's super committed to it, I'm not trying to invalidate that, more power to her. But if she's not super committed ideologically to breastfeeding, this is the kind of situation formula is meant for. Her health and sleep and sanity are important too.

Neat!

There's just no benefit to meeting him in person. She has an attorney; as far as I understand, she can afford the attorney. He can tell her anything he needs to tell her through her attorney; her attorney can communicate anything she needs to tell him. They can negotiate reconciliation or even the protection order without any risk. They can set up supervised visits for the kids. There's no downside for her to communicate through her attorney and preserve her legal options for protection. I mean, just getting an order that forces him to surrender the guns for the duration of the order (a few weeks, a year if she wins the full one at court) is a great thing and has no downside FOR HER. He might not prefer it, but tough cookies, he tried to kill her in a drug-induced paranoia last week.