Good Things Friday (188) and Link Love
September 30, 2022
1. I adore my soot sprites bag, a birthday present from a dear friend. It holds exactly everything I need for our twice daily dog walks..
We’ve donated to Aseel in the past thanks to Shep’s sharing on Twitter. I still feel strongly that we have a responsibility to help people in need at home and overseas: He wanted his company to be the Etsy of Afghanistan. Now it has a crucial new mission. We’ve donated to two campaigns this week: Help working children of Bamyan to go to school and Help families affected by the flood in Malistan
Tov Li B’Mahaneh Ramah: Remembering A Culture Of Sexual Harassment At Camp
I don’t know how anyone can still trust police: 3 Stoughton cops had ‘inappropriate relations’ with woman who killed herself, chief says
Gutwrenching Twitter thread from Robb Elementary school parent.
I really hope that this turns out NOT to be a correlation because I have bad dreams almost every night, and I guess I’m now middle aged: Bad dreams in middle age could be sign of dementia risk, study suggests
Longest single-volume book in the world goes on sale – and is impossible to read. As a comic lover, this would drive me up the wall. I want to read!
Pregnant Asians at Unique Risk in a Post-‘Roe’ World: This present moment has Asian American women in the crosshairs of the criminal legal system, and as Asian American feminists and activists, it’s our duty to disentangle ourselves from the police state and redefine our commitment to freedom and justice for all. Our commitment to justice must extend beyond ourselves—it must encompass other disempowered communities who also experience systemic violence.
Culture Wars and Criminalization
The kids are too busy: I don’t want to be this crazy; it cuts against my soul. But I also don’t want my daughters to miss out because I brought a butter knife to a sword fight.
PiC and I are compromising on this subject a lot. He’s worried that JB needs more activities during the week because they don’t have organized aftercare. I’m concerned that many more activities for them means a higher likelihood of us losing our damn minds and I feel it’s a priority for them to have free time after school to be independent and creative. It’s good for them to learn some self management skills even if I’m just in the other room. We’re both right to some degree. They’ve been in swim during the week with one tutoring session a week. Now we’ve secured swim on the weekend and added self defense twice a week; they’ll continue their once a week tutoring for enrichment and shoring up basic reading skills. That’s how much our sanity can handle. They’re lacking the team sport experience and they’d benefit from learning sportsmanship in that context. I just don’t wanna add that (yet).
I wonder if anything will come of this legwork: Veterans group presses state and local prosecutors to go after far-right Patriot Front
low on patience pic.twitter.com/yEG3HxFQWF
— Dont Show Your Cat (@DontShowYourCat) September 24, 2022
Seriously that Stoughton police crap is sooo f*cked up. I live in Massachusetts not anywhere near stoughton but have been aware of this. You can reread articles and realize you’ve missed something or something new comes out and you want to just jump through glass….with the level of harm. What they did to this child….
And then how it’s all okay or can’t be wrong…Because it’s the police. F*ck that!!
Anon in Mass
It’s all SO wrong.
Also many great links here!
Patriot F*cks are here in Massachusetts, being their loser selves.
People shouldn’t feel comfortable because they live in blue state. This country is in the can and so vulnerable.
Eek sorry…it’s been a long week!
Anon in Mass
I’m in a blue state (mostly) and definitely don’t feel comfortable. We’re not safe/free if we’re not ALL safe/free, to paraphrase the saying.
I am firmly in Camp Slacker because A) Even if kids would theoretically benefit from doing multiple activities, it doesn’t mean they need to do everything all at once! Rotating activities over a whole year allows them to be savored instead of just blitzed through. B) Parental stress, financial pressure, and logistical challenges are TOTALLY VALID reasons to set healthy limits on how much you try to juggle. C) Parents of >1 risk resentment if they have to force the older one to drop activities so younger sibling can have a turn. So we prefer to set a sustainable per-kid limit on activities from the start.
All good points!
I know we’re at my limit and we have to respect that.
Smol’s “activity” is daycare but the distribution of activities and funding for activities is definitely a balancing act that will come into play in a few years.
What’s your limit per kid?
To be honest, we’ve barely done any activities due to very limited funds and energy. And when we did it was just one kid at a time (except when the stars aligned for a single, beautiful round of communal swimming lessons… just before Covid hit. 😖) Now they each have a free weekly activity night through our church, and I really should figure out how to get my oldest access to a particular sport she wants to try. (I have lots of mom guilt for not being more enthusiastic about it, but mentally I can really only handle one scheduled thing a day well and we’re already pushing that. Meanwhile my friends are running taxi services keeping their kids in half the extracurriculars in the dictionary. I hate having such meager limits.)
If I may, I encourage you to let that guilt pass on by as someone who barely has the energy for one activity a week! We’re pushing my limits with JB’s new self defense twice a week. PiC takes care of swim lessons. JB’s friend’s parents are like yours, but I’m not willing to sign up for that life and I don’t think we should have to! I think the “happy mom, happy baby” mantra applies here too.
My bad sleep last night correlated to a crabby/bad mom. When I’m overtired mom even beyond my limited limits, I’m liable to metaphorically chomp JB’s head off and chew it liberally when they’re just being a slightly annoying kid and I won’t have any perspective about it at all.
That kids are too busy article hit home. Our kids play club soccer, and the other also plays tennis. Then, because they are in high school, they play for their school team. My kids are crazy busy (at their request, I assure you, not mine) & they are the least busy kids of anyone we know. Other friends are doing: Chinese tutors, AP Bio tutors, college counseling, private soccer coaching… We are also doing driving lessons (required in CA, so not exactly an option). We have an on demand calculus tutor we use, when they have a test & need more help.
I always knew raising them in the bay area was going to mean this. We’ve tried hard to balance things, but have failed in many regards, and again, are still doing less than most kids. Our 16 y.o. had a job this summer, and our friends were shocked that he could fit than it between all of the “enrichment camps” they’d scheduled for their kids in the summer. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Hawaii Planner recently posted…September Goals
Oh my goodness. Our friends have one kid in soccer and it feels like they’re just constantly at soccer games. I don’t want that to be my life! Or theirs but they might enjoy that.🫣
Goodness that’s so much. I don’t understand where they find the time for all those activities!
I’d like JB, and later Smol, to have enriching activities but also to have a life and enjoy down time too.
You can definitely set parameters, but at some point, most kids have a very clear interest in something. And, you can go along with that, or not. High school has been the biggest adjustment for us, because there’s just so much going on. One of our kids is super social, and wants to go to all of the things. The other meets up with his friends once a week at the park, and they play Magic together. 😉 Suchhhhhh different kids. This was our weekend: tennis tournament, three soccer games, two birthday parties, volunteer tennis lessons, reffing a soccer game. All of those things required driving. It was a pretty standard weekend. However, both of my kids have learners permits, and we are SO. CLOSE. to having two drivers. Even if they can just get themselves to half of the activities, our lives will completely change.
Hawaii Planner recently posted…October Goals
“However, both of my kids have learners permits, and we are SO. CLOSE. to having two drivers. Even if they can just get themselves to half of the activities, our lives will completely change.”
Thank you for this perspective. I have health issues that limit what I can handle and I’ve been despairing over how I will manage taking multiple teens to multiple activities for the next 10 years. But I should just focus on making it through these first 3 years, and then they’ll probably be able to start helping with their own transportation.
@Bethany D <3
I appreciate the insight into the next steps of kiddom! Ours are temperamentally so different too, I suspect we will have similar situations. JB wants to do EVERYTHING and Smol’s willing to follow along but I suspect their “everything” will be less overall.
Your weekends consistently astound me, I can’t imagine being able to do all that you do!