was it by choice? How did you feel about it? DH was there when #1 was born, and I hate to say he was worse than useless during the delivery (although I could!), but he was certainly useless. He doesn't do very well in situations where there's nothing he can really do to help me. Plus, I was kind of "in the zone" for most of the hard parts of it and didn't care if he was there or not. Plus, instead of finding it miraculous, he thought it was among the grossest things he'd ever seen. Plus, while I was lying there getting stitched up after spending 4 hours pushing out my son's 16-inch head, he actually said, "I'm so tired. I haven't sat down for four hours," and if I hadn't been so tired, I probably would have hit him. So, I didn't think he was a particularly great labor coach, and he didn't particularly enjoy being there during labor, but we figured he'd come for #2's birth. Then, when I went into labor, all three of the friends who had said they could watch DS while we were in the hospital were either busy or not to be found, so DH ended up staying home with him and I labored alone. I didn't love the laboring and delivering alone part, but the postpartum part was great. DH and DS got there just as I was doing the last push, and could hear DD's first cry. DH had tons of energy and was in a great mood and it was nice and restful for me. For #3 we went back and forth and finally decided that I'd hire a doula and he'd stay home. DD was only 15 months when the baby was born, and I'd been very stressed out about leaving her with somebody overnight, so that was a big part of it. That birth went great. I loved having the doula there, DH loved not having to be labor support, and it was just a really good experience. DH and the kids left the house when I was in transition, and got there right around the time the baby was delivered. They saw him a few minutes after he was born. If we have another, I think we'd do a homebirth this time, but if I did do another hospital birth, I think I'd do what I did with #3 and have a doula and have DH at home with the kids. I know that some of my friends think it's crazy that I delivered without DH and am fine about it, but for us it worked out quite well.

Do you do TV/DVDs? Could he have a quiet movie time in the afternoon? By the time my second was born, DS was old enough to handle a quiet rest time. At 4, though, it wouldn't have worked. He stopped napping at 1-1/2--and there was NOTHING that would have kept him staying quietly on his bed. It really wasn't until he was reading well enough to get through chapter books that he was able to have a quiet time. But I have friends who have had preschool-aged kids who didn't nap when the littler ones needed to, and most have decided to make that when their child had their daily screen time.

I'm not sure if it's ever happened to me, but I don't know why it would be a problem. I usually put the divider up myself so that the person behind me knows that it's fine for them to start putting stuff on the belt. I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, and they move you through checkout really fast there. I usually have so many groceries that I'm much more worried about getting my items on the belt quickly and not taking too long than I am about what anybody else in line might be doing.

I work at a university. I'd say that reliable internet access is a need for pretty much every college student today. At my university, the internet is the primary means of out-of-class communication between students and instructors. My department requires that students submit their work via a plagiarism-detection program that is available through Blackboard, which is an online course management site. Any college student who does not have at-home internet access is going to be at a disadvantage, educationally, compared to their classmates who do have it. Yes, access to the computer centers is provided to students, but if they don't have the money to live on campus and if they don't have a car--which is more common among poorer students, who are far more likely to not have internet access at home--their practical access to those centers is limited. Can they get by? Sure. But, the point is that it will be much, much harder for them than it will be for a student who has at-home internet access, and yet the two students will be judged by the same standards when they are graded in their classes and when they are applying for jobs. The student without internet access will have to put in more work than the student who does have it just to complete the exact same task.

I used to babysit other people's kids when I was 12. As long as you don't have any reason to assume they can't be trusted, I'd say go for it.

Genuine question: Why should the cars on the opposite side of the road stop? I totally understand why you wouldn't cross in the middle of one or, even worse, turn so that you were driving right into the middle of one, but what is the reason for cars on the opposite side of the street stopping? With emergency vehicles with their sirens on, it's generally a safety matter: oftentimes I notice the emergency vehicles driving in the center of the road, and it's safer if everybody pulls over. But funeral processions generally stay in one lane and are not going fast.

I see them pretty frequently, I'd say maybe every other weekend when I'm out grocery shopping. But, I drive down a very major Detroit road to get to the grocery store, and there's lots of churches and funeral homes along it, so that's probably why. Some of the funeral processions are VERY long--just a few weeks ago I waited at a light for 15 minutes until the whole procession passed. And, thinking about it, that's the only road I've seen a funeral procession on for a very long time.

I'm not sure? I won't get in the way of it or jump into the middle of it--like I'll wait at a light or stop sign if a funeral procession is going by, until the whole procession has finished, which seems to be what everybody here does. But, if one is coming in the other direction, I don't pull over until it passes unless everybody else is. I will pull over for an ambulance or police car with sirens on coming in the other direction, though.

#1: DH and the hospital staff (the doctor delivering and two nurses) #2: The OB (who was the OB I'd seen my whole pregnancy), a few nurses, and some med students #3: My doula, the CNW on staff, a few nurses, and some med students With #2 and #3, DH came (with DS with #2 and with DS and DD for #3) when I was delivering but didn't actually come in with the kids until the baby was delivered. Both times, he and the kids stayed on the other side of the room (separated by a curtain) until I was all sewn up and cleaned up.

Right. I don't know, I'm just very saddened by this whole conversation. Because I'm sure somebody will look at the thing I wrote about my students who don't have in-home internet access, and the extra difficulties they therefore encounter in doing their schoolwork, and will think, "Whatever. Nobody said life was easy." Well, sure, nobody said life was easy. But, we live in a society where a student who needs to work 30+ hours a week to have a place to live and food to eat or who needs to take an hour-long bus ride to access the internet or who is responsible for caring for a sick parent or who may be dealing with all of those things at once is sitting alongside a student who doesn't need to work at all during college, has a family that can afford to hire somebody to care for ailing relatives, and who has devices that allow them internet access anywhere they go. (Let's not even consider that Student 1 also had all of these difficulties going through K-12 and probably went to lower-performing schools than Student 2.) Now they're in college together, in the same classes. Who is going to have an easier time studying? Who is going to have the time and energy to do an internship? Who is going to be able to take on research opportunities and get to know professors outside of class, who can write them good, detailed recommendations? And then job search time comes around, and if either of them are lucky enough to get a job, it'll probably be Student 2, since they'll likely have higher grades, better recommendations, and internship experience. And then people will look at Student 1, now unemployed and probably mired in debt, and say, "Well, they should have tried harder!" It's just so frustrating. No, it's infuriating. We fail to see the many, many ways that poverty already makes things harder. If there is something I'm pretty sure of, it's that any poor person is working harder than I am, just to get by on a daily basis. This idea that poor people would not be poor if they worked harder fails to take into account the ways in which poverty make doing even basic things considerably harder to start with. Off my soapbox now (and I'm not ever sure how I got on it ;)).

I'm not sure a valid distinction can be made between "true poverty" and first world poverty. Yes, poor people in the first world are by and large better off than poor people in the third world. But, that doesn't change the fact that they are living in the first world. You cannot live a third world lifestyle in the first world. Many first world poor people are living in urban areas. What is necessary in that environment is very different than what is necessary in the third world. For example, it is very unlikely that you will be able to adequately feed yourself in an urban environment without either reliable transportation, some sort of refrigeration system, and/or some way to cook food. Going to the local market each day to buy what you need for the day and preparing it over an open fire is simply not an option.

But phones did. And, today, many people, particularly poor people, have cell phones instead of landlines. I think that many of us are reading these questions from a privileged standpoint. We see "cell phone" and think "on top of the landline, an extra (probably expensive) phone and plan." But, that's not going to be the case for many poor people. Their cell phone will likely be one of those pay-as-you-go deals, and it will be the only phone access they have. We see "microwave oven" and think of some fancy, $200-300 model that we might sit on our counters near our nice, working oven. But, for a poor person, that might not be the case. They may be renting a room and not have an oven. They may have owned an oven at some point, but it broke, and they can't afford to replace it. They may rent and the oven that came with their apartment stopped working, and the landlord hasn't gotten around to replacing it yet. So a small $50 microwave might be the only means they have for cooking. (I saw somebody say "They use use the fire." What fire? How many poor people have working fireplaces?) We see "washer and dryer" and think, "Of course you don't need that! You can just drive your clothes to the laundromat once a week and do laundry there." And, many poor people do do that. But, if you don't have a car, it's much harder to get to the laundromat. If you have to work many hours at your minimum-wage job to make ends meet, you might not have the time it takes to sit at the laundromat. If you're poor, you might not have enough clothes that you can get through a week without doing laundry. I think it's very, very easy for many of us who choose to live "simpler" lifestyles than we can afford to assume that, if we had less money, we'd just make the same choices and life would be just the same. It doesn't work that way, though. If living in Detroit and around many people in poverty has taught me anything, it's that being poor is really, really hard. It's not simply "Middle class life minus luxuries." It's much harder and more complicated than that. It's easy for me, with my netbook and access to a car, to think that in-home internet access is a luxury. Sure, we have it, but we could get by okay without it. However, I have students who live on the east side of Detroit. They get to campus by taking the bus or getting rides with friends, both of which are terribly inconvenient (the bus rides are long and unreliable, and when you ride with friends, you're pretty much tied to their schedule). If they don't have internet access at home that very negatively affects their school performance. Sure, they could access the internet from campus, but getting to and from campus is a burden for them. Sure, they could use one of the local libraries, but the libraries have a one-hour-per-day internet limit, and the libraries are much sparser on the east side than they are on my side of town, so again transportation can be an issue. Is it a "need" for them to have internet access at home? No, in the sense that they won't die without it. But is it necessary for them to be on an equal footing with their more privileged classmates, and so to have an equal chance of success at college (and a shot at getting out of poverty)? Yeah, I'd say it probably is. Or, TVs. Sure, a TV isn't a need. But, my husband and I have seen TVs that are nicer than ours (we got ours 8 years ago or so as a present) sitting discarded in front of people's homes. So, if a poor person has a TV, it doesn't mean that they aren't poor. It doesn't mean that they have a luxury that they should sell. We'd have to pay somebody to take our TV! (It's huge and heavy and worth nothing at this point.) TVs aren't some asset that poor people are being selfish and irresponsible by keeping. Anyway, that is long and rambling, but the point is just that I think it can be hard to judge, from the outside, whether or not an item is a "luxury" or "necessity" or a person who is in poverty. If you look at it from a more privileged perspective, I think it can be very easy to assume that certain things are "luxuries" that may not be.

I do feel badly for public school teachers. I think they are in a difficult situation. I especially think we place unrealistic expectations on them, and then fault them when they can't meet them. FWIW, though, most of the public school teachers I know love what they do. They don't like the public scorn aimed at them, they don't like taking pay cuts year after year, and they don't like being the scapegoats for like everything that is wrong with society, but they love the kids they teach and they love teaching. Statistically, kids are safer from violence in schools than they are at home. School violence, especially serious school violence, is actually pretty rare. Unfortunately, child abuse is much more common. I'm also not sure that the reason kids misbehave in school is because they weren't taught to behave at home. Behaving at home, where you have, usually, one or two adults watching a small (or at least small-ish) number of children in a familiar, comfortable environment is very different than behaving at school, where there's one adult and numerous same-age children in a different environment. That's a very difficult situation to control, and it's certainly hard for teachers, but I don't think it's necessarily the fault of parents, who can't replicate the school setting at home in order to train their child to behave in it.

You need some basic resources to begin or do those things, though. If you want to eat game, you need hunting equipment, a hunting license, and transportation and access to a place to hunt. If you want to keep chickens, you need to live in an area that allows it, have the space to keep them, and have food to feed them. If you want to fish, you need equipment and transportation and access to a place where you can fish, as well as a place to safely store the fish you catch. If you want to garden, you need a plot you can garden on, seeds, information, time, and tools. If you want to pick food in the wild, you need knowledge of what's safe and what's not, and probably would be better off having some medical care available in case you get sick. I can't imagine, personally, assuming that if somebody didn't do one or all of those things the reason would be that they were just too lazy to want to do the work. I just can't fathom making that assumption. I tend to assume that other people are at least as hard-working as I am, and if they aren't doing something, there's probably a good reason for it.

You can get small microwaves now for $50 new. I don't think a microwave fits easily into the "luxury" category. Plus, if somebody has a broken or unreliable oven, or no oven, they might rely on their microwave to cook.

:grouphug: I bled with both my boys around 6-7 weeks. With the new baby, I actually had some reddish pink bleeding, and everything was still fine. It can be normal. :grouphug:

And Jane Seymour's open heart pendant design is actually going to become the universal symbol for hope and love. Good luck with that.

You're also going to be getting answers from all over the country, which will very much affect answers. On what we make now, we are pretty comfortable where we live. We'd be doing very well in some parts of the country. We'd be scraping to get by (if we were able to get by at all) in the parts of the northeast where we grew up.

Hard to say. We've had some elderly people die in Michigan during the summer because of the heat. We have cold winters, but we also have summers with very humid, 100+ degree heat waves, and those can be dangerous for elderly or sick people who don't have either a/c or the means to get to one of the cooling centers that get set up to provide relief for those without a/c.

It depends. If I can tell he didn't understand a math problem, then yes. If it was obviously a careless mistake, I'll usually ask him about it orally ("Hey, what's 7+4?"), and if he gets it right, that's fine. But if he has numerous careless errors in a given assignment, I'll either make him redo them all or give him extra problems.

I couldn't answer most of the questions. I needed a "maybe" or "other." (Oh, I've gotten spoiled here, I guess. ;)) A person without a cell phone may or may not be impoverished. A person without a car may or may not be impoverished. A person *with* a car or cell phone may or may not be impoverished. I don't know. I have some hippie, live-off-the-land friends who don't have TVs or cars or air-conditioning by choice but are not impoverished. I also know some very impoverished people who have cell phones and TVs, but not much else. So I really couldn't figure out how to answer most of the questions, although I did want to. A few I could answer, like access to nutritious food and reasonable shelter. But the other things would really all depend on the specific circumstances a person was in. An impoverished person might lack a washer/dryer, but a person who was not impoverished but happened to live in an apartment without a washer/dryer hook up might also lack them. I can't determine if lacking a washer/dryer means somebody is impoverished.

Love the Jesus Storybook Bible.

"No obligation to follow their rules"? From what the OP said, this is the ONLY act of rebellion she's aware of from this girl. And if this rule is any indication, I'd say that puts the daughter up there in deserving-of-teenage-sainthood territory. When my kids are teens, I do not want you to tell me if they break my house rules. Unless they are doing something truly, imminently dangerous, that's a parenting issue between them and me. So don't tell me. But, if I have a bunch of insane, overly-controlling, infantilizing rules, please let me know that.

:iagree: X and you are both worried about the way her parents will react to the news that she has a legal, appropriate FB page? There are bigger problems here than this girl having the FB page, if that's the case. If her parents are basically waving off her depression and not caring if she drives around with a guy with a documented history of dangerous, irresponsible driving, but forbid her from having an FB page because they think a child molester is going to kidnap her and will freak out if they find out she has one, there are some very, very serious issues at work in this family that need to be addressed. I wouldn't want to be in the middle of it. It's nuts. I wouldn't worry about my friendship with these people: I do not need that kind of crazy drama in my life. I can go to FB for that. :tongue_smilie: I'd focus on being there for X, who sounds like she needs some reasonable, caring, and down-to-earth adults in her life.

Most overweight/obese people are not food addicts, and all food addicts are not overweight/obese. If he comes to believe that people get fat by being "food addicts," and the secret to losing weight is overcoming their "food addiction," then he hasn't learned much at all. A more realistic lesson might have been his doing something like going on a medication that causes him to gain 40 pounds, even though he doesn't change his eating or exercise habits, and then trying to get that weight off while staying on the medication. That would be a far more valid picture of what the situation of most overweight/obese people is like than eating to excess for months on end.