Good Things Friday (172) and Link Love
June 10, 2022
Heck of a week.
1. We brought home an armload of clothes to donate. JB even liked the one thing I picked for them which was a surprise.
Parenting in the Time of School Shootings. I still have not been able to tell JB about the Uvalde shooting. I felt (still do) like a coward but they were already out of school and I have no way to reassure them because our country’s lawmakers won’t do a damn thing to keep them safe. Teacher friends and therapist all think I shouldn’t tell JB yet either. Doesn’t make me feel any better about any of this.
Giving Cards: Want $20 to share?
This is sickening: Poland, Which Bans Nearly All Abortions, Has Created a Pregnancy Registry
As is this: Illinois is routinely housing wards of the state in Chicago’s jail for kids. I worry all the time about how we’re parenting our own kids and reading what the system is like for kids without homes is devastating and heartbreaking. I want to be able to do something to help beyond donations to our local CASA. I just don’t know what we can do right now.
I don’t know that this is new but I do know that this is absolutely horrifically ridiculous: Big Oil Is Suing Countries To Block Climate Action
There was a Tumblr post going around where someone discussed how they did this against the school dress code as a kid.
“Because of me these rules had to be written about boys wearing a tie:
Tie must be worn over the shirt.
One tie per student.
One student per tie.”— Michael Marquis Albright (@ChicagoMSTie) June 9, 2022
I truly don’t know how you would talk about Uvalde with a child. NOT doing so seems okay to me. I don’t know if you have any bandwidth for podcasts, but Glennon Doyle did a We Can Do Hard Things podcast on May 25 with Shannon Watts (founder of Moms Demand Action) and she had some interesting things to say, including how to opt your kids out of active shooter drills. Her position is that it doesn’t help at all but does traumatize kids. I certainly don’t have any answers.
I actually quit my job and today is my last day. I linked to my blog that I will TRY to keep updated, and I’ll probably still be active online .. but without a work computer I don’t know exactly how it’ll all go!
Congratulations!
YAY for taking the plunge, congrats!!
I’ll be following the blog and hope to hear from you on your adventures.
Thanks so much for sharing that! I can’t usually listen to podcasts but if they have a written transcript that would be awesome. Otherwise I’ll try to make time to listen.
I talked about it at a very high level with my 6-year-old, mostly because my husband was so upset by the whole thing that it affected the household mood. We’re still not back to normal. I wanted her to understand that the sadness and anger she was hearing was because of something a bad person far away did with a gun, and that it wasn’t because of her. I also told her that I wrote to people in the government because I wanted the government to make it harder for people to get guns, and I wanted the government to know how I felt about it.
Our school doesn’t do something they label as active shooter drills. They do lockout drills. Lockouts at my kid’s school consist of locking doors, turning off lights, and getting the kids into a closet which also has a lockable door. During the first drill, the kindergarten teacher gave them lollipops to help them stay quiet. I’m not sure if that’s happened since then, but my kid was quite pleased by the lollipop.
For us, opting out wouldn’t have shielded my kid from experiencing a lockout. In addition to the 2 drills, my kid’s school did 3 actual lockouts in the last year. Two were due to “police activity in the neighborhood” and one was due to on-campus/outdoor violence involving a middle school student at the adjacent middle school that shares sports fields with the elementary school. Apparently a middle school student attacked other students with an object (not a firing weapon, an object used as a striking weapon). They did a lockout at both schools while the eruption was in process.
Have I mentioned that I hate all of this and it makes me wish I could simultaneously home-school effectively, hold a job, and maintain my sanity? Because it does.
I hear all of that. I hate it all and it’s the only thing that’s ever made me want to homeschool even though I know I’d be terrible at it and I can’t do that plus my job plus running the household.
I like your approach to the topic, I couldn’t figure out how to broach it when I was feeling it too deeply.
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Thanks for sharing our Giving Cards!! 🙂
You’re very welcome!
I wish the US as a country cared about children.
Me. Too.