Soooo.... there are two things I want to say. First of all, you're way overthinking this. You... kinda do that a lot? Is that just a thing you do when you're stressed? I'm much the same, but it's not always an optimal coping mechanism! But yeah, you and your kids have had a lot of disruption and hardship over the past few years, and it's not getting better any time soon, and the very last thing you should do is artificially make your life more difficult so they can learn moral lessons or something. Maybe for some other person I'd give different advice - but that hypothetical other person is not in your situation at all. Secondly - and this is really towards a lot of other people on this thread, every one of whom knows who they are - kindness is just not enough. Teaching your kids to be "nice" is not enough. Listen, I went to a school with large population of quite wealthy white kids (and a larger population of Asian kids, many of whom were not wealthy at all, but proximity alone wasn't enough to force the two groups to mix much) and... those kids were nice. They were kind. And while I'll be the first to say that they all overemphasized their own raw intelligence and/or hard work in getting into Stuy and overlooked the compounding effects of their massive economic privilege; that doesn't mean that they were stupid. On the contrary, every one of them was plenty bright. But so ignorant of so many basic things, like you would not believe. And no amount of kindness or common sense or actual teaching was enough to shake them out of the comfortable, complacent beliefs that they had about wealth or the lack thereof. They just floated around in a little bubble of their own. I don't really know how to fix that. I tried, when I was there! But barring the kids attending actual social groups with a wide range of people and reading/watching a lot of books by/about people different from them, all I can figure is... idk, pen pals?

Oh no. Not that. Anything but that. I bet they just sobbed for weeks after she said that, huh. /s

Funny, that's why I never watch old TV shows - because of the problematic content. Even if it isn't outright whatever-ist, it's never very diverse. Why would I want to watch something like that? Sure, if the writing and acting is just excellent - but let's be real, usually it's not. So it's not-diverse, often toxic, almost certainly misogynistic, little to no non-white or disabled representation, definitely no *good* or *healthy* LGBTQ+ representation - ugh! That's not content I want to waste my time on.

The Y nearer to us offered, when we went, 45 minute classes for kids and teens, and 30 minute classes for preschoolers without a parent. I don't know how long the classes with a parent for preschoolers were, but probably 30 minutes. IIRC there was a small discount for signing up for two days a week instead of one, but they didn't do anything to encourage MORE than two days a week. I dragged my two there twice a week for years, except during the summer when they took their lessons at the public pool. The Y further from us offered 45 or 60 minute classes for kids and teens, and 30 minute classes for preschoolers. I didn't realize until the kids were about to enter high school that it was actually faster to get there than the other Y because I could've taken the train down instead of the bus, also, the train is free on Staten Island and the bus isn't. Well, we live and we learn. The NYC public pools are not offering swim classes this year because of the lifeguard shortage, but in previous years it was 45 minutes twice a week for kids and teens, and 30 minutes three times a week for preschoolers with parents. They also offered adult swim classes which I think were an hour.

You know, it really doesn't make sense that there aren't more programs designed to accelerate the education of very young students who are ready for college-level work but would still benefit from being with their same-aged peers. The USA is a huge country, we actually have the third largest population in the world. We surely must have enough students like that to support at least one such program in practically every state, and more than that in the more populous ones. Just considering demographics, if you have enough people, you have enough exceptional people. Don't mind me, just thinking aloud, as it were.

And if he was just saying "Oh, school was fine" when he actually was bored all day but otherwise there are no real problems, that'd be one thing. This is hiding a fever and potential illness. I don't think that's small.

Just to be clear, when you say that he'd probably deny being sick to "protect" you, you do understand that this is a bad thing, right? Something he and you should both be tackling in therapy, because YOUR job is to protect HIM, and HIS job is to be an adolescent. It's not good for kids to self-sacrifice to protect their parents. If you're clear on that and already working on it, fine. You probably are, in fact! But I'd rather say it if it's not necessary than not say it if it is, you know?

I wouldn't advise it normally, but given the PTSD then as long as he's okay with it it's probably not that big a deal. It's one dose of ibuprofen.

It's the same with students sometimes - it's a lot easier to say that the class is stupid and boring and they'd rather play video games or go out partying than to try as hard as you can and still fail. At least if you fail a test because you're soooooooo hungover, nobody can claim it's because you're actually stupid.

Clearly I very much did need to shout, because in response, people said the same thing. Addiction is not something people choose. Literally nobody. Even if they say they did - listen, people say things all the time for all sorts of reasons besides "This is the literal truth". As for "They could have just chosen not to take that drug in the first place", again, see what I said above about self-medicating. Sure, they could just have never taken that first drink in some alternate universe, but they'd still have all the same problems that over in THIS reality caused them to drink in the first place and then led to addiction. Addiction is not a choice, and this whole obsessive moralizing, backwards attitude is what makes it so hard to help people in the US.

Did you intend to suggest that addiction is a personal choice? MENTAL ILLNESS, INCLUDING ADDICTION, IS NOT A PERSONAL CHOICE. Nobody chooses to have an addiction.

Circadian rhythm disorders are yet another thing that's a lot more common than a lot of people realize - you just have to look for it.

Addiction is a disease, a mental illness - and it's one many people end up with after trying to self-medicate a pre-existing mental illness. It's not okay to say "We're not going to help you so long as you show the symptoms of a disease. Go heal yourself first, without any of the assistance that might make it possible to get better, then we'll help you". It's not okay, and it's not logical either. It's just stupid and backwards.

I don't think you're seeing pus (note spelling). This is just part of the healing process. If the wound is closing up, and there's no increasing redness or inflammation, then you're probably doing just fine. Just wash it gently with soap and water when you change the bandage, which you should be doing every day. You want to keep the wound covered. If you're squeamish about actually washing it then you can probably just irrigate the wound with water or with a saline solution. Gently means GENTLY, btw - you don't want to exacerbate things by scrubbing! You can use an antibiotic ointment if you like. You probably don't need to. You certainly should NOT be using alcohol or hydrogen peroxide - those home remedies are at best useless and at worst actively harmful, albeit on a small enough scale that most people don't notice. There are some situations where topical rubbing alcohol is an appropriate course of action. This is not one of them. And I would say no to honey or anything else as well. You shouldn't need it, and if you think you DO need that stuff then what you really need is to quit it with the home care and go to the doctor to have your injury looked at.

Even for a bot, that was an incredibly vapid response.

Stand firm. Giving in to her will not make the calls stop, it'll only teach her "I need to escalate THIS MUCH to get a response". Honestly, it's probably easier to just block her, as suggested upthread. You can unblock her later.

I know you're not supposed to, and I even know why, but I shamelessly use antiperspirant underneath in the summer. If this causes any sort of long-term problems, well, at least I won't be gross and sweaty.

Identical twins don't exist in this fantasyland?

I certainly have given money to strangers, both online and IRL, and also "given money" in the form of, say, buying them a burger and fries if I happened to be there anyway, or paying for their diapers if they were ahead of me in the checkout lane and short of cash. It's certainly possible some of those people were lying and didn't really need the money, but whatever. I don't live my life second-guessing my good deeds, not on those grounds anyway. But in this case, with this woman's tiktok followers, those people may not quite feel like strangers. Even if she's never interacted with a specific individual personally, they may feel like they have a sort of parasocial relationship with her. It's like being quasi-acquaintances. You know really they don't know you, but you feel like you know them.

Hm. And you don't have Disney+, and you don't have HBO - which has a terrible interface, but ALSO has Teen Titans, which might work for all three kids. That IS a toughie. The younger kiddo actually is in that venn sweet spot, so I'll ask her for her opinions when she wakes up. Though she might just suggest *even more detective shows and procedurals* - she's been watching her way through NCIS, and I actually sold her on Grimm by saying "It's a procedural with magical people in a masquerade, but the writing is actually infuriatingly bad in parts, like, straight up copaganda garbage".

I like to believe that 18, 16, and 11 year olds are not interchangeable widgets, but unique individuals. What sorts of things do they like to watch?

Shelf stable foods are shelf stable, which is why there is no law mandating expiration dates on them. All those expiration dates are put on by the manufacturer, and if they mean anything at all they mean "the quality may degrade slightly - it might taste a little stale". Though in some cases, as with sugar, they don't mean anything at all. Items with a high fat content may go rancid. They're still edible, but they might not be so palatable. If your powdered milk smells and looks fine, and tastes about the way you'd expect, then it probably is fine.

Which is probably why they waited a month to respond to that. Putin aside, he's not the only authoritarian jerkface with access to nukes. That'd be nice, but no. And if I've learned anything from disaster movies, it's that something's always gunning for NYC. (At least, I think that's the message in disaster movies. I don't actually watch them, because I categorically refuse to watch NYC get destroyed 5 minutes into a movie.)

Well, just last month Putin was saying that if the rest of the world doesn't lay off and let him invade whomever he likes, he'll destroy the world, so I guess the city felt they had to address that, however obliquely. https://nypost.com/2022/06/22/vladimir-putin-warns-satan-2-nuclear-missiles-could-be-deployed-in-months/

Is this your first stop, or have you already done research on compulsive hoarding in children? Because... honestly, I don't think the advice that works for the normal spectrum of kid behavior is going to work at all for somebody with compulsive hoarding issues, even if they're only five years old. This looks like more than you'd expect. I think you need to find a child shrink to talk to. And I'm suggesting you do that sooner rather than later, because it may take some time - the mental health field has been very slow to recognize that children at this age can suffer from anxiety, or depression, or OCD, especially without a trauma background, and so it can be hard to find an appropriate specialist. And if your child *is* suffering from hoarding caused by a mental health issue then no amount of explaining is going to help unless you're working on the underlying causes.