If I were her, I'd want to sit down with you for 20 minutes or so (during my workday) and discuss how things are going. I bet she has questions for you, too. If you have a laundry list of things you want to tell her about, you should probably got a couple of the most important, then give her a chance to talk to see if some of her concerns overlap with yours. I watched kids while their mom was home once in high school and hated it fiercely. It was horrible awkward to know how to co-lead children alongside their mom. If she can get to know you better, it might ease a lot of the problems you are having.

Ours are one unit, and I'll use "stove"to mean the whole thing, like "Do not play near the stove!" Or "careful, the stove is hot!" But I bake in the oven and fry on the stove top.

What I do with mine when they are that little and doing something I know it's about to be trouble is get closer and intervene before the trouble starts. Like, when we first go outside, I'd get toddler's attention and say, "let's pet Kitty. Kitty loves when you are gentle like this. She wants to be your friend, but look know big you are and how tiny she is. We have to be very careful and gentle with Kitty." Then, when toddler picks up a stick, I say, "wow! What a big stick! It feels pretty hard. What are you going to do with it?" Mine don't talk much at that age but generally have ways of showing an idea, like hitting the ground or a near by tree. If their idea is acceptable, I support it, saying something like, "oh, it makes a cool sound when you hit that bush, but be sure no one is near by. No one wants to get hurt by that big stick!" I let kids do their thing until I see that light in their eyes that says they are headed for the cat. I go over and say, "what are you doing now with the stick?" Generally they indicate that they are headed to seeing at the cat since they don't really understand deceit yet. I say "oh, Kitty will be hurt is you swing that stick near her. Which do you want, to pet the cat or go hit the tree with the stick some more? I think I'm going to pet the cat." I then make the kid decide. Either he puts down the stick and we pet the cat together, or I carry him over to the tree and encourage him to hit it with the stick. I don't know if that works with most kids and I'm confident it won't work with all kids, but it has worked with the three I've gotten through that stage. For the record, I'm not against all spanking, but I view it as a personal failure any time I do spank, because I think there was probably a way I could have intervened earlier and taught a real lesson instead of just delivering a punishment. I'm not perfect and I don't dwell on my failures, but I try to learn from them and do better. I live in a place where it is legal to do things many of us would consider physical abuse and all would agree are terrible parenting. My husband sees a lot as a police officer. It's not at all uncommon for someone to call the police because their child is disrespecting them. Generally, their only "tools" for getting obedience have been berating their kids or hitting their kids, and now their kid is too big to be willing to take a beating and is no longer phased by yelling. These parents want my husband to tell their children "respect your mother" and have it work. It doesn't, but he does take the teens aside and encourage them to keep their heads down, graduate asap, get a job, and move out so they don't get sucked into family craziness.

I don't have direct experience with this, so I hope someone will show me my mistake if I'm wrong, but I think it would be vital to teach those with intellectual disabilities that not everyone who gives them attention and acts friendly is a real friend. There are lots of people who exploit those with disabilities, and I would think that trying to learn to avoid that would be a major life skills goal in an educational plan. It may have hurt the boy's feelings in the story above to have the mean girl called out on her behavior, but perhaps it could have prevented future heart ache.

I occasionally point out if something is wrong or out of date if I respect the poster and think it was just a mistake. A couple of times I've sent PMs to people I think are coming across as offensive because, despite being nice people, they think something is funny that is actually awful. Those people either cleaned things up or maybe blocked me. I don't really care since the ball was in their court. I also put my husband's grandmother on mute, as did my husband. She posts tons of illogical, angry political memes full of language she would never use herself. The last time we were together she asked if we had seen something she put on Facebook. Dh told her we had blocked her. She thought he was joking. I almost choked.

I would like to go see it but will probably wait until it is streaming somewhere. If I had a local friend to go with I would, but dh, though he's go if I pushed him to, just really wouldn't enjoy it. Our date nights are rare enough I don't want to waste one.

I like this idea! Thank you

I was thinking about this some more and figured that I should add that with my in laws, it is a two way street. They criticize my husband, and me, in a caring but annoying way, and my husband does the same back. For example, they want to sell their suburban house and move way out in the country. My husband tells them, every time it comes up, that he thinks that is a foolish plan because it will move them away from their friends, children, and grandchildren and make them more car dependent at a time in their life when they are getting closer to needing the help of others and would benefit from moving closer to doctors and medical centers, not further away. So, those of you who are open with your opinions with your adult children, are you open to hearing their thoughts as well? Truly I'm just curious since it's not at all what I grew up with. I tell my husband he and his family are odd, haha.

We get pantry moths from time to time. The grossest was when I was a kid and didn't know about them. I opened some grits and fixed a couple of bowls for my little brothers, not paying attention but thinking it was weird that a couple of moths were in the container. Later, I looked more carefully and noticed lots of the caterpillars crawling about. I had fed my brothers a very protein-rich meal on accident, and I've never told them about that discovery. A recent gross one was a giant caterpillar inside a bell pepper from my garden. Probably I could have used half of the pepper no problem, but I couldn't feel ok with it. The chickens were happy, though.

I got that for my daughter thanks to your recommendation on a thread, and she and I have loved it and the sequel.

I think there's a wide range of normal. In my husband's family, there's a little too much unsolicited opinion sharing, in my opinion. (For example, I get to hear a comparative analysis between my homeschooling my kids and how my sister in law does it. They like my way better, but it doesn't make things more comfortable. Or when my husband was deployed and I had a headlight out, my mother in law went on and on about how I needed to get my dad to fix it and I had to be careful to stay home after dark until then. Nope! My dad is less handy than I am when it comes to new things we haven't done before.) On the other hand, my family is bad at communication and most members go out of their way to not share opinions because they are scared of stepping on toes. This leads to a certain lack of closeness. Our generation is trying to do better with what we have, but I realize that so are my parents and my in-laws. All that to say, most people are trying our best, but our kids are going to see areas where we failed and make their own choices. They will likely about many of our failures but will likely stumbled into some others. Good luck to all of us as we navigate that

My kids are little, but my mother-in-law had some very stubborn teen boys and perhaps some moldy dishes at some point, not that I'm telling tales ... Anyway, from what I know of that situation, give him 1 set of dishware, like an orange plate and an orange bowl and an orange cup and have him only use those and wash them himself. When it's meal time, if his plate isn't there, ask him where it is and get him to get and clean it so you can put more food on it. It can help build the habit of cleaning up each time, and it doesn't have to be said in a nagging or punitive way.

My cousin had POTS as a high achieving teenage girl and ended up getting treatment at a residential facility (I think through Mayo) almost like an addiction treatment facility to reset her body in some way. She now is a high achieving young woman who had to be very strict about her bed time but is otherwise doing really well. I know literally nothing more than that, but I figured I'd mention that as something to look into. Her family aren't quack medicine kinds of people, but if I'd just heard about the treatment, my mind would jump there.

My old college basically required students to write thank you notes for certain scholarships, and they were supposed to be hand written.

This may be obvious, but don't send electronics or pricey things without checking how much she will owe in duties. It can be steep! And frustrating to have to pay in cash to the mailman who shows up with an unexpected bill.

Last year's six week trip when he chaperoned: did he get paid for that? A 21 year old working without pay, only food and lodging covered, sounds very generous to me. If his parents aren't thinking of that, he should reasonably feel unappreciated. If they are also deciding to add a child and 2 days on the trip without consulting him (it is unclear in the original post who the "we" mailing decisions included), then they are treating him like a teenager, and poorly even for a teenager, but expecting him to act like an adult.

There aren't only those two options, though. We don't have to either believe that things are exactly the way she says they are or else believe she is a liar. I generally read all these type threads assuming that the original poster is telling the truth the way she sees it but that a different witness would have a somewhat different story. I think Scarlett is hurt and doing what most of us do when we are freshly hurt, reacting emotionally and justifying our actions to ourselves. Sometimes it takes some time before we can take a step back and say, "yeah, he shouldn't have done that, but I can see why he reacted that way. Maybe I shouldn't have done the thing I did when I got angry, or maybe I should have found a different way to share my thoughts with him."

I know you don't understand why your son is acting as he is and you find it irrational (not to mention hurtful), but if you want to improve the odds of healing, I urge you to try to see things from his point of view. Not that you should have to agree with him, but make it your goal to understand what he is thinking. Because I'd bet that he has reasons thinking the way he does and acting the way he does. Those reasons may be based on a misunderstanding of the facts at hand or skewed priorities, or a number of other mistakes, but it sounds like he's thought about things a lot and believes himself to be right. If you can see through his eyes, you may still completely disagree with him, but you may also find ways to reconnect with him. Lots of families reconnect after a young person storms off in (what they believe to be) righteous indignation, but it generally requires at least one party actively keeping lines of communication open and preventing the building of walls. It's not fair that the burden rests on you, but at this point, you are the only one you can control, so it does.

I have a kindergartener who has been doing great, too. He's very much not a crafty kid and hates being shown up by big sister (17 months older), so he's always avoided coloring and writing activities. We are doing a lot with those, and he's pleased with himself about how well he's improving. He's in the "advanced" section of Progressive Phonics and everything is really clicking well. Once he starts thinking of himself as a reader and so reads outside of lessons, he'll take off! Math he's great with. Right now we're dialing things back and focusing on how to write the numbers, but then we'll get into Math Mammoth 1. He won't find it hard, but I think he'll learn some new things. He's enjoying our history, science, and literature read alouds and has memorized an old mother goose poem so far this year.

To be fair, I know a number of people who would be surprised to learn Jamaica is another country. They seem to operate under the assumption that most islands in the Caribbean, particularly those where English is spoken, are some kind of American territory. Many of those people are likely also some what racist of the "unthinking ignorant" variety.

In this state (same as op), she can be fired for literally nothing, as I understand it. As long as no one says that it's because she's pregnant, old, female, or some other protected class, she can be fired at will.

I went to a Christian college, so there were a lot of funny little ones as the result of young people maturing and making missteps ("God told me we should date." "I didn't do the assignment because I felt that book wasn't godly enough."), but the over arching culture kept those in check and people grew out of them. The one that hurt was that I was friends with a seminary student with dyslexia. I helped him a lot on his papers, spending hours each week helping him to edit them, and he really improved as a writer. Not only that, my friends rallied around him, attending his sermons and being encouraging. He really wasn't a good preacher at all, but he was still a student and learning. As a group we had loss of interesting conversations and debates. It's funny because some people aimed he and I were an item. One of my friends asked each of us separately if we were interested in the other and our answers matched. We were friends, but he was looking for a submissive wife and I wasn't looking to be a submissive wife, so no way. Anyway, I helped him out a considerable amount, my friends helped him as a favor to me, and we all enjoyed each other's company. Then, one day in our conversation it came up that I was unwilling to say that people who died as non-Christians were going to Hell. That, I said, is between them and God. I was very willing to say that Jesus is the way to salvation as that is one of my core beliefs, but I thought it was hubris, not to mention unnecessary, to claim we know all there is to know about how Jesus saves people. This was apparently a line in the sand for my seminary friend. He told me I was dangerous and refused to speak to me again. Like, cross to a different sidewalk to avoid me. On a very small campus, we saw each other daily. Then one day years later I saw I had a Facebook message from him. It had been plenty long enough I was ready to forgive and forget. It was a request for money to support him as a missionary. I quickly deleted and moved on with my life. I've had friends hurt in much worse ways in the name of the church, but that was my most personal, and very confusing, rejection. Now I mostly fell bad for him as he hasn't found a job in his vocation ten years after he graduated seminary.

Earlier this summer I spent some time with a friend's nieces, and they were on track to become like this girl. For example, we were at a picnic and the 11 y.o. asked why I wasn't giving my baby any food. I explained that he's too young for sandwiches and that I would nurse him later. She said "huh?" and cocked her head to the side. I explained further and still just got the "huh?" and head cock over and over. I didn't say it because she was young and not my charge, but I was loudly thinking "be careful, those who try to make themselves stupid frequently succeed."

Since you've hired her essentially under the table and you said she has trouble with English, I would wonder if perhaps her immigration status has caused her difficulties as it has for some other immigrants in the area.

Yes, we both had gloves and eye protection.