I’m pretty much a lifetime Texan (I lived in Louisiana for a couple of years). When we moved to California, it took me less than a week to realize I never wanted to go back to Texas even for a visit. I sure hope I never have to.

I agree with you, but I also think that how much face to face human time people get is dependent on both that person’s location and also their location. Some people need very little in person socialization. More is not better for them. We used to live pretty isolated. We had good friends across the creek in case there was an emergency, but otherwise, it was easy to go all week without seeing anyone outside of the family. Where we live now, the kids see their friends every day. Friends meet every Saturday at the coffee roaster for social time. You see your friends at the farmers market. Every single evening, there is a show or a political meeting or a museum fundraiser. None of these things revolve around technology. It is certainly a different culture from what I was accustomed to. I know that if Dh takes a different job and we move back to suburbia or exurbia, we will need to readjust. I always find it interesting how location specific some things are.

My guess is that they haven’t had a quiet block of time to really look at it yet.

I sympathize, OP. My son got an office job where he was to proofread contracts and do whatever extra jobs his boss wanted him to do. His boss got super busy, was always out of town and didn’t get around to giving my kid enough work. Once, executives from Germany were visiting the Houston office. The first thing that they saw was my kid sleeping at his desk. It wasn’t pretty. My son admitted that it was unacceptable and told his boss that he was making an appointment with a neurologist to rule out a physical cause since he does have a sibling with a sleep disorder. This kind of muddied the waters about firing him. Soon after, a different VP said he wanted DS in his department and he started getting interesting work that he is well suited for. Now he has been promoted several times since then, and they tease him saying, “And just think, we almost fired you!†All that is to say that understanding how to be a good employee is a learning process. I think it is pretty common for kids to have a few bumps along the way. What is important is that they learn from them. No matter what the work environment, I would not be encouraging my kid to blame the company. I’d stress that he isn’t a good fit and that he has better options available.

I’m glad my kid in Austin is finishing her thesis this week. She doesn’t plan to leave the house until Sring Break is over. I’ll have to tell her not to get the mail either!

My response is skewed because I hate attending birthday parties. The ones I hate the most are the ones where “too many†kids were invited. Even when I’m not invited to a function by my own friends, if I hear about it, I think, “Oh yay! They got to have fun and I didn’t have to go to a party!†I would much rather spend time one on one, and my kids have family birthday parties. They strongly resemble how we celebrate graduations-we take them out to eat. But if I had a kid who was devastated by being excluded, my focus would be on how to model maintaining a happy and open relationship with his friends. After all, the friends really didn’t do anything wrong, did they? You can only invite so many people right? So that is why I would talk to my kid about what part of a party would he really enjoy and invite his friend over to do those things. Would it be better if the friend said, “We can’t invite everyone so let’s not have a party at all? What if they didn’t invite any friends and had a family party? Would that be better? What if they had one friend over? Is that just as hurtful? Where do you draw the line? If my son enjoyed this friend so much, I’d suck it up and make nice and do my best to maintain a relationship with the family for his sake.

Here is what I would do, I’d call the mom and say, “Hey, I realize your daughter had an all girl party and that is cool, but my son would really like to celebrate with her too. Is their any way she can come over on Thursday for a little get together? We will be decorating cupcakes and taking funny photos in dress up clothes. Let me know if that there is a better day for you. Love you!†Because for me, that would be a win/win and let us all move forward without awkwardness.

I have had 6 miscarriages and my hpt line started getting lighter before bleeding even started. I think you should find someone to give you a US and see what is going on. I’m sorry you are going through this.

We took them out for a nice meal at a restaurant. We do the same for college graduation.

For us, we modify our plan depending on the child. My older children all had smart phones and SM accounts by the time they were 13. My oldest just uses her SM to post pictures of her art work. She texts photos to her sisters and all of her emails are about school. I know because once our phones got linked and I got all of her content. I thought, “Girl, do you even think about anything other than school? “ Ds had to be monitored more. He had a Runescape account at 10 and then got pretty involved in LEGO forums because he was buying guns, adapting them and then selling them for a profit. He briefly had a FB account, but shut it down and deleted it because of his desire for privacy. Looking back, I wish I had asked them to use fake names for their FB accounts even if it is against the rules. My middle daughter has more social needs than the rest of us. We were in a pretty isolated place, but I made sure she had homeschool classes several times a week. She never bonded with those kids. We also sent her across the country to art camp every summer. That is where she made her friends. She relied on texting and Skype for almost all of her social life because her friends were all over the world. Everything was fine until this one friend.... She loved to stir up drama. Dd has an issue that she wants to take care of everyone and solve everyone’s problems. If she had been born in my generation, she would have been sneaking the land line and staying on the phone all night or sneaking out of the house to be stay with a friend who was having a crisis. She crossed my line by being grouchy to her siblings (lack of sleep) and lying to her dad about where her iPod was so he wouldn’t take it away. At that point, I figured my kid was crying out for help, so I took away all screens for 18 months. I talked to her teachers and she had to hand write all of her papers and do all of her research with the card catalog. This only worked because she was physically very far from her friends. When she earned her screens back, she was much better able to set limits. And I gave her one uninterrupted hour each evening to talk to her friends. But here is the thing, her underlying problem is the same. She is in a dorm and a close friend on her floor attempted suicide this semester. That is the kind of thing that sends her spiraling. She is tempted to not leave his side, stay up all night taking care of him, miss her exam the next day.... Instead, she called the authorities, let him know she was there for him when he got better, went to sleep, went to class, took her test.... I think the only reason she did that was because she KNEW if she let friends interfere with her school work, I’d drive up there and jerk her out of school in a heartbeat. But how could she know that if we hadn’t gone through all of the challenges and learning opportunities with her friends when she lived at home? Really, I feel like SM is inherently neutral. I remember when I first got internet at home and my grandmother thought it was only for porn. She couldn’t figure out why I would want that. Instead, I made great friends and learned things that I never would have learned in my own little neighborhood. I think alcohol is neutral too. It can be used for good and for evil. But my own family has a tendency towards alcoholism so our policies are going to look different from another family’s. That doesn’t make either one wrong. My 11 year old has an iPhone. She uses it to take pictures to send her sisters. She listens to audiobooks. She can’t really even text her friends much because most of them don’t have phones and if they do, they are only allowed to use them a couple of hours each weekend. I’m not too worried about this kid yet. Asked her to look up something for me, and she didn’t even know how to get to the internet on her phone. She also has a sport that takes up a huge amount of time. She only watches movies when she is sick. Otherwise she is reading a book or playing outside. I don’t see any reason to limit her screen time, but I absolutely would if she shows signs of needing help. So for us, our policies look different depending on the kid and the time.

This is 100% how I personally feel. I hope for the very best outcome for everyone in second marriages and blended families but the odds are so stacked against a happy ending that I would never choose that for myself. We suffered horribly when our mother remarried. I once asked my dad why he didn’t intervene. He said that honestly, he was just so happy that my stepfather had to deal with my mom instead of him and really, from the outside things looked okay.

I think there is some truth to the idea that there are trade offs for walkability. When I lived in suburbia, I was researching places to move. We ended up getting a little acreage outside of town. I remember reading that places with higher tick and snake populations tend to have lower crime rates. It was a good move for the time, but I got tired of driving 30 minutes to the grocery store, 1 hour to swim practice or piano lessons or a friend’s house. We spent a lot of time in the car, but we lived somewhere inexpensive and safe. Now we live where we can walk to restaurants, grocery stores, the library, the dentist, art galleries, the theater, and more, but there is definitely a high crime rate. At 7:00 last night, an unarmed man was killed by the police in an alley a couple of blocks from our house. Gun shots and high speed chases are daily occurrences. You get used to it. We carry fox repellent (pepper spray) and the kids have to at least go in pairs and I prefer it if they also take a dog with them to walk. My middle daughter lives in a town that is both walkable and low crime. The trade off there is affordability and diversity. I know it is a great place for her, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I find the trendy, yuppie whiteness unappealing. I think it is great that people have options to live where they get what they value most. I just think we would be hard pressed to find a place that is walkable, safe, affordable and has good jobs available. You might be able to get a couple, but there will always be a trade off. As far as food and obesity I do what works for my own family, but I have no idea how you could make these improvements on a national level. One thing I have done in my own neighborhood is to teach kids to cook during the summer. During the week, each kid picks something from my cookbooks to learn to cook. We practice make each thing once during the week. Then on the weekend, we have a dinner party for their parents with China and placecards and cloth napkins. This summer I’m teaching the neighborhood kids to sew and to spin. I should see if this next batch is interested in cooking too.

I see absolutely no indication that the girl is trying to look sexually attractive. I think she just wants to look nice, look pretty. There is nothing wrong with a 13 year old, girl or boy wanting to look nice. There is nothing wrong with a 2 year old, 8 year old, 20 year old, 85 year old wanting to look nice. In fact, we often view it as a sign of healthy self esteem. What is wrong is sexualizing a completely natural and benign, maybe even positive desire because it makes an adult uncomfortable.

Quoted for truth.

And her hair was so pretty in the before picture. Who would do this to a child?