A lot of streets in my area (and ALL the new construction) have cluster mailboxes. I think that they are required now for new developments. One benefit is that there’s a locked slot for outgoing mail in each cluster box unit. I am wondering if your community could get a locked outgoing mailbox installed by the guard house?

They are clearly a fun couple who have many years of laughter and love ahead of them!

Due to a convergence of circumstances, neither my husband or I had had sex prior to our marriage. We didn’t have that as a religious conviction. My husband was a bit of a late bloomer and we married young so while he dated before, he’d not had sex. I was a SA survivor and while I had dated some, I didn’t really feel a huge degree of sexual attraction to anyone before I met my now husband. And certainly not enough attraction to feel like anyone was worth the hassle. Re: compatibility. I do think it’s possible to know that you are with someone who you can be compatible with prior to having sex. My husband and I couldn’t have intercourse for a number of months after we married due to my having vaginismus (not an infection- a muscle spasm). Mine was likely tied to SA. We both trusted that once that issue was resolved, we would be compatible and that was in fact the case. I guess we got lucky but we both knew early on in our relationship that we were in it for the long haul and that the other person was committed to the other.

One of my high school classmates was just killed after 5 years on the police force when she stopped to help at the scene of an accident and was struck by another car. Her job on the police force was centered around mental health.

A nice, high quality but lightweight scarf might work. I have found that elbow length sleeves work for me when I don't want to show my arms and also don't want to look like I am dressed for winter.

Abusers are very good at claiming that really, they are abused or the abused person is crazy. The same skills that allow abusers to groom their targets often allow them to groom and lie to other people, like social services. In the wake of experiencing DV, people often appear to behave in irrational ways and may be in need of mental health services. Accessing certain kinds of mental health services in a custody dispute though is a fantastic way to have one’s fitness as a parent successfully challenged. One of my sibling’s friends lost her kids in large part because she decided to go impatient for her mental health and that was used against her. She has visitation and despite the documented history of DV, the primary aggressor has primary custody and decision making. My sibling has managed to keep decision making and almost split parenting time but, informed by his friend’s experience, he’s probably gotten less medical care for his mental health needs than would be optimal. ETA: Basically nothing about DV and custody disputes is easy.

Yep, I have seen kids get returned who shouldn’t be and kids get taken out of the home when wraparound services to the family could strengthen and preserve the family.

The children’s aunt lost custody because she allowed the mom to visit them. IIRC, those poor children had been removed for neglect and poverty related reasons- not abuse. Foster parent payments are much larger in my state than the amount of direct cash assistance moms receive on welfare. Not always, but some of the time cash to the birth families would solve a lot of the issues that get kids removed when it comes right down to it. The only times CPS ever escalated against my SIL were for poverty related things like not having utilities. When I realized how hands off they had been when the abuser was still in the home, it angers me. There’s a big push to place with kin but I can’t help but think that that is not at least partly motivated by the lower cost to the state. The payment to kinship foster placements in my state are about 1/6th of the payments to licensed foster parents.

We have a program here that pairs diversion for mental health and poverty related low level crime with social service connections. It’s a good program (I know people involved in running it personally). I’m not opposed to social services but it’s just a much more complicated landscape than “less policing, more mental health”

The same could be said of the police force. Community policing that is shown to work costs more money and requires more personnel. And the bias that mostly middle class social workers bring to their jobs which results in women of color disproportionately losing their kids would not be erased by more money. Acting like the police are the only biased system or that “social workers and mental health agencies” are an easy solution to the endemic issues communities face is nothing more than wishful thinking.

15 years ago if asked for my opinion about CPS, I would have said underfunded people trying to do good work and I believed that if CPS was removing kids they had a good reason/it was the right call. What I have observed in the last decade has shown me that sometimes, and not just rarely, they get it horribly, horribly wrong. Often times the primary target in DV looks less stable on paper- my sibling’s situation isn’t a one off. It doesn’t help that in my state, CPS workers are in fact quite often just working there for long enough to get their grad school covered and then they bounce for better jobs. Friends who are social workers and foster parents have told me this. This isn’t shocking - who would want to work for CPS when they could earn far more for the much safer job of private counseling or adoption home studies? How newly graduated middle class people without kids are supposed to make the right calls in these nuanced and complex situations is beyond me. Kids are more likely to end up in foster care if they are from poor or black and brown families. A social worker wields a lot of power in these situations and power doesn’t always get used for good.

Defund is a crappy slogan (if we find ourselves having to *explain* a *slogan*, then it’s not doing its job well). And anyone who thinks the be all and end all answer is more social services and more “mental health resources” doesn’t have enough experience actually accessing those resources (or trying to access those resources) to understand that they are every bit as marred by systemic issues as the police. Social services have been absolutely *awful* to the most marginalized members of my family and CPS was full on weaponized against my sibling by his abusive ex husband- the CPS workers flat out didn’t care about the history of DV and they sided with the person who looked the most middle class on paper (despite that person being an abusive AF functional alcoholic who has admitted to doing things like breaking down a three year olds door). In another situation, CPS did nothing to help my niece and nephew when their abusive father was in the home but once it was just my SIL, they showed up for every thing and completely browbeat her. In researching this I learned that there is evidence that CPS appears more likely to steer clear of cases where there’s someone in the home that poses a risk to them (the abusive dad) but to become very picky when the HOH doesn’t pose a threat to them (my tiny SIL). A bunch of middle class 24 year olds doing their stint at the state to get their MSW paid for can in fact do a lot more harm than good. The more marginalized someone is, the crappier they tend to get treated in social work and mental health spaces. In general, the poor people I know don’t want social workers on their doorstep anymore than they want the cops.

My county was the first large/densely populated county in the country to hit 70%. That was a few weeks ago (June 21st).

My husband has that radio voice. It *is* remarkably soothing and he is excellent at negotiating/mediating, which now that I think about is likely partly due to his voice. He can also make himself sound like the guy in the movie previews. “In a world…”

Densely populated suburb here so the only target shooting is at a shooting range. Definitely no hunting. One year someone posted about gunshots on like July 2nd and I was like “um, check your calendar”. The NextDoor types didn’t much like that but seriously.

I'm always a little amused by my neighbors who hear any loud noise and think "gunshot" and not "I live in a place where that is exceedingly unlikely to be a gunshot". I have lived in neighborhoods where gun shots were heard from time to time. If your reaction to what you think is a gunshot is to go online and post that you think you heard a gunshot, it's probably NOT a gun shot.

I am going to take you at your word that the sitter is young and inexperienced and not disturbed. It says something that the parents want the sitter to spank...to a young person, the arm thing and the rice thing (which sound deranged to savvy, experienced mamas like we have here on WTM!) might be seen as "better than spanking". I commend the sitter for not spanking and assume that the child is being spanked by their parents when the sitter is not there (who tells their sitter to spank if they don't spank themselves? No one I can think of). I remember being very young, working in a daycare and as a sitter (I actually started working in a daycare at age 12!) and I would have ideas about consequences that were developmentally inappropriate because I just didn't know any better. Nothing physical but just dumb ideas that would never work, like getting a kid to write an apology note. Pretty stupid, but I was basically just a kid myself. If the child is intense and being spanked, that's a recipe for the child to learn to lie as much as possible to avoid the spanking. While it's not the sitter's job to rehab how these people are parenting, it is possible that if the parents see the sitter using more effective approaches with a child who is intense and overwhelming, they will be inspired to do the same. At the very least, the child will have time with the sitter where she is safe and not being spanked. I would recommend that the sitter stop doing *any* punishments that are physical and start trying to think in terms of natural consequences and teaching the child correct behavior. I like to catch children when they are doing good things and positively reinforce that. I would recommend rules be kept to a minimum so that the ones that are enforced matter. Setting up consistent, loving routines. If the child is expected to not open the toy before they finish (weird to me but whatever), then the child can be given the toy at the end of the meal. If I don't want a small child to have something, they just didn't have something. The toy is about 90% of the fun of a fast food meal for a kid so asking them to focus on the food while the toy is sitting there in reach might just be unrealistic/setting the kid up to fail. There are also classes on child development and positive discipline online that are free and low cost. In my area, there are professional development seminars for childcare workers that she might learn a lot from.

That sounds awful! I am so sorry. Bad air quality is hard to deal with, even if the fire doesn’t come your way. I could see needing permission from the state foster agency to evacuate a foster child before there is an actual evacuation order but I don’t think it is reasonable that you need the mom’s permission. Can you contact your social worker? I hope you get to leave soon.

I live in a very quiet suburb with minimal crime. In the decade that we have lived here, there has been exactly one homicide (which turned out to be a brother killing his sister- truly awful but not a crime where someone was killed by an intruder). If I were to go by what some people post online on Facebook or NextDoor, I would think I lived in a place where nefarious people up to no good were constantly roaming the streets. A car backfires or a kid has some firecrackers and these people are online insisting they just heard multiple gunshots. I stopped following the FB group because I just didn’t need to see all of those “I heard a noise” and “I saw a person walking” posts. I think it is good to be aware and take some precautions but try to keep things in perspective.

Seconding this. I will say that had I realized how fast the district would cave and that our lawyer could get the district to cover our legal fees, I would have lawyered up years earlier. I don’t like that it’s such an inequitable, litigious process but I just reminded myself that if the district followed the law in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed a lawyer. It’s not my fault they insist on doing the bare minimum until they are facing a lawsuit. They are extremely accommodating to our family now. We seem to have been placed on a list of people they shouldn’t piss off…

We rely on warranties. My older son has a very strong prescription (the kind that nearly $300 at the “$99 1 hour glasses” places) so we haven’t been able to rely on finding anything cheaply. I just took a chance on Zenni for backup glasses and sunglasses. Our last attempt wasn’t successful and my husband hasn’t had good luck either. For my son’s prescription it was still more than $100 a pair on Zenni. It’s been a long time since we ordered from them and the price difference is so great that I figured we’d try one more time but only for backups. We haven’t done prescription sport glasses. I do see some kids wearing them all the time, but that’s usually younger kids. I’m not sure an older kid would go for it.

Restraint and isolation use is such a big issue for special education. They often fill sped jobs with the least experienced, least prepared teachers because the jobs are hard to fill. I encourage you to file a case against the school district. Make them pay for better services.

Often times if you are going to need orthodontia, they want the wisdom teeth out because the wisdom teeth coming in will cause the teeth to shift, ruining the investment in the orthodontia. My orthodontist doesn't remove teeth so I don't think there's much of an incentive for her to tell me they need to come out for no reason (also, I had on and off fevers/infections from them for years before I had them removed). While I know that some orthodontia is done for small aesthetic reasons, sometimes it is very necessary (I didn't understand what biting down on something was supposed to feel like until I had braces and my top and bottom teeth could meet) and sometimes the cosmetic reasons aren't minor- my son had two teeth that stuck straight out of his mouth, you could see them when his lips were closed.

And even larger ones for the loans on the equipment for their practices. I read a long article about the economics of running a dental practice and it was clear it's not as easy to make money as one might think. Our dentist is married to a dentist and they have their practices side by side in the same building they built for that purpose (he does general dentistry, she is a pediatric dentist). I assume they carry a huge loan for it but at least they can share some of the costs.

We have been fortunate to find conservative dentists who don't try to upsell us. I was sure I was looking at a crown was putting off finding a new dentist (we decided to switch due to distance and a new dental hygienist who was aggressively hitting on my husband) and finally found a new one only to have him tell me that he could fix the tooth I though needed root canal work with a filling. Fortunately enough the new dentist is young and owns the practice in our area so I think we will be able to keep seeing him for many years to come. I had terrible dental experiences as a kid, mostly due to the spotty quality of care at Medicaid dentists. I am always very loathe to trust new dentists.