They haven't even gone through RCIA. I don't think they really know what they are fighting for...

Catholic school is not the same as FHC prep. Unless they are teaching FHC during class?? My child does not go to Catholic school. His Sunday school/CCD was done on weekends. Going to Mass is not a substitute for a First Communion class, either. I'm honestly surprised they didn't go through RCIA before or during this year so that they would all receive Communion around the same time.

There are other layers here, too. Part of First Communion prep is First Reconciliation (aka penance or confession). It's going to be hard to explain mortal sin/venial sin when you repeatedly allow the child to miss Mass. If FHC is so important to the family then going to Mass should be a priority.

These seem like two separate questions. First of all, if a child is preparing for FHC then the parents would be taking him to Sunday school each weekend. If they are there for class, they should be there for Mass. I literally just went through this. Ds made FHC a couple weeks ago. Dh is not Catholic so he would usually drop us off at the church but I would stay with ds for Mass. Before that we did homeschool Sunday school using an online program. I still brought him to Mass with most of the time.

If they have a problem with this, they should talk to their priest or someone to get a better understanding. Sounds like they are in the dark.

Yes because weekday Mass is not a substitute for weekend Mass. Sunday (or Saturday vigil) is an obligation. If you miss weekend Mass it's considered a mortal sin unless there's a reason like illness. Actually even travel is considered an excuse but I try not to be too loose with that. If I know I'm traveling I look up Masses on masstimes.org.

Ds' last day of school was this week. I dropped off goodie bags to the school. Notes and candy. His main teacher got some stuff for her classroom along with the candy (books for the classroom library, cute sticky notes, container to hold something like paperclips/brads/pushpins). I really like picking out gifts/creating things but it's hard to do anything with a toddler. I try to be practical so I lean toward useful and/or consumable items these days. Went to a baby shower last weekend. That was super fun for me. I bought her a few things over the past few months and made a card with colors to match the gift wrap. One of the most special gifts for me was a loving family necklace. When we had dd I got a new necklace which showed a bigger family (but I can't find it :( )

I don't even know how one would do that. I mean, the sheets would be hanging off the board and dragging all over the floor. We have California King but I imagine this would happen for anything other than say, crib/toddler sheets lol

I'll just tell you our experience. YMMV. We signed ds up at that age. He joined a 4-6 yr old group. It was Kung Fu. He always struggled to follow along. Some of it was issues paying attention (like he'd make silly faces at the mirror instead of looking at the instructors) but some of it I think goes deeper than that (still looking into it). They gave everyone a white belt and each month? they would earn a sticker for their belt (stickers were a word they discussed in class). At the end of the year he got a certificate and gold belt (which was a white belt with a gold stripe down the center). I'd say a large number of the kids did fine in the class. Ds probably had the most trouble. So I think a lot of it is just dependent on your child. We took him back for a trial session at the beginning of this year (age 8) and he kept reversing everything the teacher did. Had he not done that, he would have fit in perfectly. We decided it wasn't in the budget and he still struggled a lot so we didn't return, but it's not out of the question forever. My biggest piece of advice is do a trial session and find out of the one doing the trial will be the teacher. We felt like we got a bit of bait and switch. His trial session was done with a man we really like. But his class was taught by a teenager (she had a black belt so I think she was qualified but we just really preferred the owner).

I'd join a sewing group if they taught me to sew lol. Then we'd meet up and work on a project(s). I'd also join a movie group where we picked out movies to go see together. Maybe some months I don't go because the movie doesn't interest me or I don't have the money. A long time ago I tried hosting a goth meetup group. It was hard to get people to RSVP for anything and then the site started charging money so I stepped down as organizer and I think the group just vanished by doing that. We just had similar interests and met up at a coffee shop once. We maybe saw each other again in other settings like a goth night at the club. Also years ago I had a weekly bowling night I organized with coworkers. I love the Mom's Night Out thing. I have only been to a few of those and was disappointed the co-op hardly ever did them. I don't really have the time for a book club plus I mostly read for information but I like the sound of them in theory. Game nights also sound good until I think about them too much. People like to play games I might not be familiar with or have anxiety about (I have anxiety about card games with math/numbers. I think I have dyscalculia so this makes sense. Also the reason I never want to play banker in games like Monopoly! Probably also why I don't like traditional Yahtzee. I only like the ones with cartoon pictures on the dice).

Yes and no. If I had the time I would be more involved. Twice I tried to volunteer at local places but life got in the way. I did help with Vacation Bible School last summer and ds really wants to do it this summer, but the problem is that I have to bring dd if I go with him. And it's too far away to drop him off every day. Last summer I only did it two days as the third day I had a dental appt. and for those two days dh took off work to watch dd as a favor to me. He had enough vac. days so it was okay, but I don't like to resort to that. They provide daycare but that actually was a young girl in charge of any volunteers' kids and since I can't even handle dd I hate to put that responsibility on a teen. Ds really wants to do it again this summer and I'm trying to figure out a way to make it work. It is the last summer he can do it because of his age. The church has made it known they are seeking adult volunteers, too. To a certain extent I have and continue to live in a solitary way. I do speak to people and have acquaintances but I can also be a hermit and not sure it makes a big difference. What I mean is we do a lot of our shopping in larger cities, in a different county, and I don't feel like I'm typically going to run into someone I know when I'm out and about there. I am more familiar with some families at the church but that's because I sent ds to a new church this year for their Sunday school program (the one we did VBS with last summer). Prior to the Sunday school program, we went there quite a bit, but usually to a Mass that young families don't attend. I know several neighbors and that I guess makes one feel safer, but I'm not sure I have to know a lot of people to feel safe. Some areas are just low crime, laid back with friendly people and that is what makes them feel safe to me not necessarily my sense of belonging. Like if you are traveling you can stop somewhere and feel safe without being a part of that community. Likewise you could stop somewhere shady and want to get the heck out of there as soon as you can lol. It sounds like you really want that connection so you'd want to live somewhere where you could make it.

Ours is in January. I don't think we even considered the holiday, but we saw roads being blocked off for a parade during our honeymoon. We worked at places that were open just about every day of the year and I think we returned to work that Monday. We wouldn't have normally chosen January but I was pregnant and he proposed the same month I found out I was pregnant, which was October. I didn't want to try to do an Oct. wedding though that is our favorite month and if it was up to dh all the guests would have shown up in Halloween costumes lol. A summer wedding isn't particularly ideal to me in this area due to the temps (even an indoor wedding, which ours was).

Good that you can have some humor about it. Overall my day was good, but dd would not go to bed at all yesterday and it was pretty annoying. She also wouldn't quit eating lol. I had things to do last night so I didn't get to bed til well after midnight and when she did go to bed it was only because I twisted dh's arm to go to bed with her. Not the same but my toddler randomly rolled off the recliner last night. What's up with these kids lol

Not just your house and honestly I think I'm bad about this myself. If I ask dh to pick me up a bag of blue corn chips, I end up eating too much at once and not rationing them out. In your case I might just hide food Lol. Like put one box of unopened cereal in a hidden spot. Of course, your kids might go looking for that hidden spot later. It's more the snack/convenience food that is that way I think. We'll buy bread at Sam's that comes in two packs. Usually put one in the freezer and if we are going crazy with the bread we can pull one out of the freezer before the next shopping trip. Other idea is to warn the kids, "you need to make this last" and/or get onto them if you see them eating it all at the beginning of the week? lol

Thank you for clarifying. Sorry I got so confused in this thread.

In general, yes.

Isn't there a thread about this where someone said that the innocence was not there... too much s*xual content for young viewers? I'll see if I can find the thread.

Ah, I see. Yep, dh and I have had our share of things like this. We both ordered the same meal at a restaurant once and got very ill. Don't know if it was from the food handling or something else but I went to the dr and they said I had E. coli and gave me antibiotics or something. My sister and I are way more sensitive to food than some of the others in our family so we are quicker to toss food. Dh and I will go out to eat and I start the countdown on the to-go box. He'll say, "it hasn't been out that long" and I'll start doing the math lol. "But they brought it to the table at X time so you have to count from then, not what time we bagged it up." I try to keep it in the 2 hour range. He doesn't care.

I honestly somehow didn't realize that the families were related. I know it states it in the OP but it didn't sink in. Yeah, they need to be supervised and the aunt(s) or whoever should speak up if there are issues. Now the group text chain makes more sense, since they are related. But if you know who your audience is, you might wanna rethink that text. I could see that going either way (hey it was a harmless text, don't sweat it). As for noticing laughter, they probably used a laughing emoji. The whole thing seems more harmless now that I'm understanding the group text context better but yes still questionable judgement. As far as branding a kid a jerk or a thief. I think that was done after multiple interactions, not one? So if your child stole candy multiple times, yes, it's possible that other parents might whisper to each other, "keep an eye on this one, she might steal from you" or such. It wouldn't surprise me. And no, people shouldn't get stuck with a label just because of something that happened at age five.

We already live in that world... go laugh at the scene of an accident or something and see how that goes. Face it, there's a time and place for everything. To you it would diffuse a situation, fair enough. To me, I couldn't get over the darkness in the movie Kobo (I made a thread about that) and most people were unfazed about the witches threatening to pluck the boy's eyes out! I found it extremely disturbing. But, I've also had a chemical burn and a papercut in my eye which maybe intensified my defensiveness about content with eye injuries. I was greatly disturbed by a couple other movies for similar reasons. These movie makers must know it's disturbing. In short, you're allowed to do whatever you like, but you might be judged for it. Just like every time I post on this thread I know people are judging me.

you guys are bold LOL. I think I'm more of a 3 day rule person...

Yeah, we don't know. I'm just saying that if you're not friends with someone then rude and/or mean things are not seen as funny or even necessarily acceptable. They are seen as rude and/or mean. Saying, "my eyeballs are on fire I'm so mad" is way different than, "You're driving me nuts, I want to light your eyes on fire." Yes, this child may not be able to have the judgement to discern that. I guess we can give him a pass. I was picking on the parents because they laughed at the matter in front of the parents of the other child. Laugh in the privacy of your home or with other friends if you want... but at least don't do it in front of the parents of the child that was upset. I don't even know how this happened, guess they are all linked on facebook or something.

Seriously lol. My hair is almost jet black. Those white/gray hairs stick out like a sore thumb.

The tone when saying something really outrageous is what makes it sound potentially malicious. That and the relationship. Since they don't seem to have a good relationship and the child was probably actually angry, not saying something like, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" it doesn't put it in the same category as the two friends on the basketball court exchanging smack talk.

It may or may not affect how safe she feels. Like someone else said, she's probably going to have trouble returning to work if it happened there. A couple nuns from my church were stabbed to death last year. It was very upsetting to the whole community. Still don't know the motive, we just speculated. Anyway, it really messed with me and how safe I felt even though they caught the guy within a fairly short amount of time. I spoke to a couple professionals about it and basically realized I had survivor's guilt (I dreamt about being stabbed to death a few days before it happened). Just talk to her. Who knows what she's thinking.