Patterns everywhere. My husband moved to Chicago during the recession. We thought it was going to be temporary, but our situation has since evolved into a lifestyle. We’ve been schleping 1850 miles twice a year for 8 years now. This one was take in Tulsa on our way out here. That little girl was an infant when he moved. You can tell by their body language she and the dog have the drill down cold.

What a beautiful building-is it yours?

Now so do I.

Sunday afternoon. Perfect weather and a beer by the open window. Ignore the peeling paint

We went to City Museum in St.Louis last month. If you’ve never visited St. Louis I highly recommend a trip out there. It’s probably the most affordable city for a family vacation. The zoo, history museum, science museum and more are all free. City museum is a family playground housed in the first four floors and rooftop of an old shoe factory. We spent the entire day there and even my husband and I played like kids. Some of the place can get a little tight. These guys were so tangled in this climbing structure I thought they were going to need the jaws of life to get them out.

Hahaha! That explains it. I thought he was a particularly attentive kitty.

That cat is so flat! He looks like a cat rug:

So my 24yo recently had a birthday so we used that excuse to sneak away to the city for a long weekend. The view from the rooftop was pretty glamorous ?

Well. To be fair you did ask a population of homeschooling moms to produce glamour on a moment’s notice lol

My cat’s Vogue shot

We have competing scripts happening here in the US. We say we value education (and many of us do) and we wring our hands and cast blame and hold up other countries as examples of success to contrast with our failures. But then we scoff at facts and logic, denigrate knowledge and expertise, and vote to keep more and more of our tax dollars (and give them away to large corporations) while allowing school buildings and text books to literally fall apart in chunks. That is why Finland will never happen here.

Bingo. Large chunks of the US population view education and educated people with skepticism or outright hostility.

While that is a valid and laudable goal, hoping for radical change isn’t a concrete solution to the pillaging of our country’s schools. I refuse to believe there is no one running for office who has integrity and a spirit of public service. If we aren’t willing to vote for someone “in the other party” in a two party system then I fail to see how four or five parties will make a difference. Please don’t be so cynical. Get to know the people behind the campaign. It’s easier than ever now with social media. People of integrity are running, but they aren’t getting the attention they deserve because they’re running quiet, clean campaigns and aren’t part of the circus. They are looking for votes from people like you and me.

In the past couple of decades there has been more “my way or no way” adversarial attacks from a certain niche population of the government. And they are the ones responsible for the unconscionable situation I linked up above. That situation is playing out in Oklahoma now. We are getting close to that in arizona. This is what stripping schools of basic funding looks like. some states are in the early stages of a similar downslide and more schools will begin to look like this over the next decade as years of funding deficits take their toll. Vote.

Children cannot have access to education with no textbooks or supplies, desks that are falling apart, classrooms with mold, and teachers who are living in their cars. We aren’t talking about adequate funding across the board where some schools have more than others for fun things like smartboards and ipads. This is an example of what I am thinking of: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/26/us-school-funding-what-its-like-work-oklahoma-teacher?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=276217&subid=21688839&CMP=GT_US_collection

Aura, you are correct. Zero sum thinking is foundational to the philosophy of the people currently in power. Anyone who would like to see win-win thinking should be prepared to fire their state, local, and national representatives in November if they aren’t properly representing you.

In Finland local school funding isn’t tied to taxes on property values. Unless we vote to equalize funding if schools at the federal level Finland will never offer a valid comparison.

I don’t even know how I stitched those replies together.

I have to admit I’ve not watched the video in full yet. I’m packing for our yearly cross country trip and I’m trying (and failing) to stay focused. This thought regarding sexual confusion germinated a few weeks ago due to something my 9yo said. She told me she thought she’d like to be a lesbian when she grows up. I was a little startled as this came out of thin air, but I asked why she thought that. She said because girls are nicer to her than boys are and she thinks having babies would hurt. I told her that she would change her mind about a lot of things about romance and babies as well as other things like dolls and college over the next 10-20 years and that she didn’t have to make any decisions now. But that could have gone differently. I feel like it’s related though. I think it was Kate up above who mentioned that exploring some of these topics in this context is less controversial since the discussion stems from the confusion and pain kids and teens can experiencing due to media exposure and the resulting influence on their social interactions.

I didn’t mean to imply that. I think that too many...maybe I should have said competing influences...can create confusion regarding sexuality, especially in late elementary and early middle school when thoughts about sexuality and identity are just beginning to crystallize.

Out of seven, five were climbers and two were more cautious. My 24yo gymnast recently confessed she would walk tightrope on the crib rail at age 2.5 to entertain her baby sister. That gave me retroactive heart failure

My gut agrees with you.

Soo, could this be another symptom of too many choices? My thoughts are still amorphous, so bear with me? When I was a child, Little Women spoke to me as no book had because like Jo, I felt the greatest tragedy in my life had been being born a girl. Undoubtedly part of that feeling had to come from having grown up in the 70s and 80s budding feminism where old ideas were still stuck in cement. But I loved hanging out with boys, playing with boys toys and wanted all of the advantages I inferred boys had. My nature is more typically male and maybe if I were growing up today I would wonder if I were homosexual, bisexual, transgender. These ideas were just off the table for a fifth grader in 1980. And thank goodness. I’m neither homosexual or bisexual (in the sense that I don’t identify that way...I believe we all fall on the continuum somewhere), nor transsexual. But I can see how the surrounding culture could have me made me feel confused in middle school. A generation or two ago, everyone felt forced into a heterosexual mold; now maybe the opposite is the problem. Kids are smacked in the face with gender identity and sexuality ideas they aren’t quite ready to grapple with. What do you all think?

Yeah, I must be talking in circles because it isn’t the early marriage I’m against, it’s the feeling shepherded into an early marriage to save boys from themselves that I’m against.

I was with you back then on the Hannah Montana thing, fwiw even though we didn’t experience the same sort of hero worship here.