I think this is tied up in the horror most Americans (in the middle class anyway) have of being viewed as "privileged" or spoiled. I'm not sure why we have it (probably part of the whole Protestant Ethic thing that dominates so much of American culture), but it is pretty strong. People (me included) who don't eat out much tend to be proud of that too, although it's usually presented as more of a health issue. It's very uncomfortable for many of us to admit that we're doing well or have something nice unless we preface it with a big disclaimer about how hard we've worked/sacrificed to get there. We tend to feel a little guilty instead of just lucky.

Is there an Ikea near you? They have armoires in enormous sizes with a zillion interchangeable shelves, drawers, baskets, etc that are very easy to install (and to move around if you change your mind).

We got our oldest a clock that lights up at wake-up time (like the one someone else described above) when she was 3.5 or 4, and it is WONDERFUL. She plays quietly in her room until the green light turns on and the rest of the family is ready to start the day. Her clock is called "Teach Me Time" (http://www.amazon.com/American-Innovative-Teach-Talking-Nightlight/dp/B003D7KV0Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1309381220&sr=1-1), but prices seem to have changed and this cute Kid Sleep wall clock (http://www.amazon.com/KidSleep-KSCLB-Classic-Blue/dp/B000VVIHPS/ref=acc_glance_ba_ai_ps_t_4) looks even better.

:iagree: I think people are confusing "political" either with "liberal" or with "not what my family thinks." The parent organizations of both these organizations (and Frontier Girls too, though in a different way) all have a definite liberal or conservative slant to them, they're just appealing to people on different points in the spectrum. The only parent organization website that looks noncommittal on this batch of oddly intertwined liberal-conservative, religious-what religion-no religion set of issues is Camp Fire, at least based on 2 minutes' worth of research. ETA-- Never mind; Camp Fire programs aim to "reduce sex-role, racial and cultural stereotypes and to foster positive intercultural relationships," which probably makes them too liberal for some.

That is awful and CRAZY!!! If a person had some unreasonable dislike of bikes, why would he force them out of a bike lane and into the lanes with cars??? The whole point of a bike lane is improving the safety and mutual convenience of bike-car relations, isn't it? Maybe it seemed to make sense after 36 beers... :cheers2::cheers2:

For folk songs, my family loves Pete Seeger's "Birds, Beasts, Bugs, and Fishes." It's one of the only explicitly kid-oriented CDs I actually enjoy listening to, his voice and banjo are amazing. I think the recordings are from the 50s, but they still sound great. If you don't want to go the patriotic Wee Sing route, I agree with Krissik on just finding a good patriotic-type CD intended for adults-- the songs will be the same on all of them, so you might as well pick performers you like! I'll have to look for Phil Rosenthal at my library soon, too.

If you happen to have a kid who's just learning to write letters, the LeapFrog Scribble and Write is a lot of fun. My 5yo spent several happy hours with it on a recent trip, and we've hidden it for a few weeks until our next trip. My mom made me a tote bag with many little pockets in it for long drives when I was a kid, and we stuff it with the types of travel-friendly things people mentioned above before long trips. When we get home, we stash it away again so it all stays somewhat novel. I sometimes buy a couple of new Whimzy Pets to give my 5yo about halfway through a really long drive, she LOVES that. She enjoys Imaginetics type play scenes too, although the teeny magnets fall off more often than she'd like. My 1.5yo's favorite car activity is currently putting on and taking off velcro sandals-- she'll do this (intermittently) for hours! So much for travel toys there!

They actually do it around the college campus where I work, especially at the beginning of the school year. I am really glad-- so many riders don't seem to know how to do it safely. The tickets are expensive too, so word does seem to get around to some extent. Outside of that, I've never seen it happen.

For some reason college students seem especially prone to ignoring bike traffic rules (and to assuming they're allowed to do so). I suspect it's because many of them haven't done much cycling outside of parks and trails until they start college, and don't really realize how different it is riding on city streets every day. I work on a college campus and that part of my driving commute always makes me nervous. I've definitely added bike safety to the list of things to teach my kids! Someone I know was once hit (in their car) by a cyclist in exactly the same situation the OP described. The cyclist was unhurt (thank goodness!), but was incredibly angry and insisted on calling the police. The driver said, "Okay, but they'll give you a ticket." The irate cyclist kept insisting, so my acquaintance called the police... who obligingly came and gave the cyclist the traffic ticket he seemed to be so intent on receiving.

My oldest sounds similar to your son, although she's only 5. I agree that introverts don't become extroverts, but I also think there's value to making sure a shy kid has a chance to acquire the skills they need in order to join in, if and when they choose to join. For us, a class in which she regularly interacted with the same group of kids helped immensely, although it took quite a while. Over the course of about 9 months she gradually lost a lot of her nervousness. She's still definitely an introvert, but now she can join in a group activity when she feels like it, even with strangers. It's still a bit of an effort for her, but she now knows she can do it if she really wants to. If the competition aspect of sports seems like it will make things harder, is there some kind of group music class he could try first? Like a choir or something? My daughter actually does better in these situations if I wait somewhere she can't see me rather than waiting in the area she's in, once she's gotten to know the adult in charge (she seems less shy with adults than kids). YMMV though, depending on how your son is with adults.

I would also consider an email "enough," especially for a sibling I have a good relationship with. Maybe you could figure out what it is you miss that's making you wish for a paper note, and find some other way to get that missing thing? Maybe you want more news about how she's doing, or to talk about what you both like about those DVDs? If it's something like that, calling and just spending time talking with her and catching up might make you feel better.

We hire someone to clean for 4-5 hours every 2 months. I wasn't sure at first that hiring someone that rarely would make a difference, but for us it has. She does the things I never manage to get around to (dusting blinds, mopping the back hall between the bedrooms, wiping baseboards) and it has been a HUGE help. Our house is smallish and I can (kind of) keep up with the absolute necessities, so the occasional help pushes us back over the edge into cleanliness when things start to slide too much. I wish everything was cleaner and better organized, but it's good enough, and other things are more important to us.

I like to get some sort of acknowledgment that my gift arrived, but anything (pre-printed note, email, phone call, verbal thank-you upon opening it, whatever) is fine with me. I grew up HATING thank-you notes. My grandmother in particular seemed to constantly grouse about them-- people (myself, and others she complained about in front of me) never sent them soon enough for her taste, or made them long enough, or personal enough. (She expected elaborate notes IN ADDITION to a phone call, which I was always prompt about.) I hated that the established way of complaining about such notes appeared (and still appears) to be a passive-aggressive dig at the gift-receiver via remarks to his/her mother, never a direct, polite enquiry to the person in question. And, I hated that adults never seemed to feel obliged to send a note to children, just children to adults. These things have pretty much soured me on thank-you notes for life, and have made me feel like people who see receiving proper notes as incredibly, vitally important may be giving gifts with strings attached or as part of some elaborate game of manners rather than giving them because they really *want* to give something. I'm sure that's not always true, but unfortunately it tends to be my gut reaction to this issue. If it's clear that someone has spent time and effort making/choosing something special for me, I will send them a special note. If they've given me a scented candle or something else that says "I have no idea what you like, but I care enough about you to try" I feel no guilt over either saying "thank you" when I open it, or sending them a "token" thank-you.

I haven't seen the other thread people referred to, but I do have trouble with this. I try to respect people's right to believe as they wish, but sometimes I feel like certain beliefs mean holding men or women back from doing things I personally see as individual rights (not parents' rights), and when that happens I feel like I have to say something. For example, I have trouble when people say they will pay for their boys to attend college and not their girls. Or, when parents tell their girls they must choose between working OR motherhood and it's "selfish" to do both, but place no such restrictions on their boys (or tell their boys they must be "providers" and cannot be SAHDs). I'd like to phrase my disagreement respectfully, but I'm not sure there's a "nice" way to tell someone I think their closely-held belief is both wrong and deeply unfair. I can't think of a way for someone to contradict my belief on this that wouldn't bother me, because I feel like this is something that affects society at large, not something that stays within a family. (So, apologies in advance to everyone I just offended by writing this. :() As an aside, I found Lise Eliot's book "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" on boy-girl differences fascinating. It's written in more of a "science" tone than a "self-help" tone (which I prefer), and it really influenced the way I think about some of these things. (N.B. Although the author is interested in differences, she is a mother and a professor of neuroscience, so she has an "equal-opportunity" perspective that definitely comes through.)

Let. Christmas. Go. It is ONE day. It's not worth creating huge family tensions over year after year. Invite them, or ask if you can visit, but keep it low-key. If they're busy on The Day, just arrange something else.

Just chiming in to agree that puppy nipping is not unusual at all; you should find lots of tips on the dog forums or in a training book. It sounds like she is playing with your kids the way she'd play with other puppies. It takes a while for them to learn that they can't play with humans that way. We used to joke that our dog at that age probably thought "no" was part of her name.

If at all possible, I avoid taking electronics to the dump. Components in many of them are relatively rare metals that can be recycled, many of which aren't great to have leaching out of landfills. My city takes them only on special drop-off days, but some commercial computer repair places (like Data Doctors where I live) will take them anytime. Here's a website that might help: http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/ecycling/donate.htm

Thanks, Katie and Nicole. :001_smile: For what it's worth: we pay a family member to take care of our girls part-time, and it is WONDERFUL. She didn't want to be paid at first, but we talked her into it, and I think it was a very good thing; we don't get a build-up of guilt and awkwardness from constantly wondering whether we are taking advantage of her despite what she told us, and she is in a financial situation where the extra income makes a difference. We reassess a couple of times a year and offer to make other arrangements, but so far everyone is happy. That's what I meant to write when I started reading this thread, had various things not conspired to push me over the ranting edge. I'm trying to be careful what threads I open this week...

I would imagine at least some of the complaints aren't about the fact that kids are home all day, it's about the kids being home and bored. I went to PS and remember hating summer break. Where I live, it's too hot to play outside much in summer. You can only spend so many hours a day reading and playing board games before it gets old; there is such a thing as too much free time. My mom was always struggling to find inexpensive day camp type activities for us-- not because she didn't like being with us, but because she didn't like being with us when we were bored. Homeschoolers presumably have that problem licked long-term, but for others it comes around every summer.

I guess I went off the deep end Monday. I am a feminist, and various things lately in real life have felt like an assault on that. To everyone who was just reporting an isolated incident, and who feels that men AND women who choose to work are good parents until proven otherwise, I apologize for misreading you. To everyone who thinks differently, I will try to be more respectful of your right to believe as you choose.

I guess I should have quoted the posts that bother me. I just feel bad holding specific people up for things they probably wrote in a moment of frustration and may not have really meant the way they sounded. I was referring to statements like "I really don't understand why people have children if they aren't interested in raising them" and saying a family you've never met ought to give up custody of their children. I hope I wouldn't say anything like that on a public message board, or that if I did someone would tell me to "simmer down." Sorry if I sounded condescending to you for some reason; I've been trained to write in kind of a stilted way, and it comes back to haunt me sometimes. The empathy I mentioned is because women are criticized whatever they do: for working, for not working, for having kids, for not having them. I've been criticized for one choice, so I can imagine how it feels to be criticized for the other one, and I think the whole criticism thing is wrong and unnecessary. I understand the need to vent, but I felt like the statements I mentioned above went a little too far. "Us vs them" attitudes are a pet peeve of mine, so maybe I'm overly sensitive.

I agree the situation the OP described is troubling. But I'm also troubled by a few of the comments. As a working mom (By choice! Gasp!), I resent reading that I should never have had children knowing I didn't intend to stay home with them full time. I resent reading that I am a bad parent. How could you possibly know all of that by knowing only ONE thing about me? I understand that this is a mostly-homeschooling board, and that these sorts of posts are a reaction from people who've been negatively judged (by strangers, by family) for choosing to stay home with their kids. I know these statements come from uncertainty and defensiveness, and I empathize. I understand not wanting to self-censor when you're on a board among like-minded people. The thing is, it really is better to defend your own choices without having to issue a broad condemnation of other people. An argument based on the strength and rightness of your own choices makes you stronger; an argument based on opposition to some perceived weakness or flaw in other people makes you weaker, because it only makes you feel more defensive. You end up *needing* other people to fail in order to feel successful yourself, and that cannot be good for anyone. These are the same kinds of feelings that make some people *enjoy* the problems with public schools because it makes their choice seem "more right," when in reality these problems should make all of us sad. The women on this board are strong. You've made tough decisions and stuck by them, even when it's hard work. Please don't demean yourselves by feeling "right" only when you can cast others as "wrong."

:iagree: It depends on how tall you are of course, but a petite friend of mine wears girls' clothes quite often. They tend to be less expensive, too!

Depending on where you are, Peach Tomato Gazpacho: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Peach-and-Tomato-Gazpacho-232601 If peaches and tomatoes are coming into season where you are, this is SO delicious! (And really easy too!) It's not so great with bland off-season peaches and tomatoes though. Where I live, early summer is the perfect time for it. I second the grilling suggestion, too. We do that a lot in the summer. And avocado BLTs (with microwaved bacon).

Anyone in the mood for a science and/or art field trip? Many public gardens nationwide are offering free admission tomorrow (May 6) with a coupon from the Better Homes and Gardens website. The coupon and a list of participating gardens are here: http://npga.bhg.com/?ordersrc=rdbhg100989. This is an annual event the weekend of Mother's Day, so mark your calendars!