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Friday Afternoon Open Thread

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Blog Related
Posted on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 01:30:16 PM EST
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A couple of college football picks - Texas Tech (-13) over Minnesota (6 units) and Virginia Tech (pick) over Rutgers.

More tomorrow and the rest of the bowl season.

Open Thread.

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    Friday Afternoon Open Thread | 49 comments (49 topical)

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    Tragic news from India (5.00 / 2) (#10)
    by shoephone on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 05:43:55 PM EST
    The young medical student who was brutally gang-raped and beaten has died from her injuries.

    What a horror. (5.00 / 2) (#11)
    by desertswine on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 08:09:48 PM EST


    Parent
    And an 18 year old... (none / 0) (#25)
    by unitron on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 11:22:19 AM EST
    ...gang rape victim in India has committed suicide after the police told her she should drop the charges and marry one of the attackers.

    Too bad there's no way to charge those cops with murder.

    Parent

    too bad (none / 0) (#33)
    by TeresaInPa on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 02:43:36 PM EST
    karma doesn't always work instantaneously.  If it did, those cops would know what gang rape was like.

    Parent
    Time Has Come (5.00 / 1) (#15)
    by sj on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 10:10:48 PM EST
    Coincidentally, I just purchased that song by the Chambers Brothers a few days ago.  It's shameful how record companies have treated their artists.  I may have to buy the album that comes out of this.

    The original Time Has Come Today album... (5.00 / 1) (#26)
    by unitron on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 11:23:53 AM EST
    ...has a great version of "People Get Ready" on it.

    Parent
    From which, according to the story SJ linked (5.00 / 1) (#30)
    by Peter G on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 01:44:42 PM EST
    Lester Chambers never made any money, due to the sleazy record company deals that were then prevalent. Hence, the promotion of a newly created, Kickstarter-supported, independent version.

    Parent
    As someone on one of the newsgroups put it... (5.00 / 2) (#49)
    by unitron on Sun Dec 30, 2012 at 05:44:07 PM EST
    ...record companies are concerned about artists the way ranchers are concerned about cattle.

    Anybody notice the RIAA bustin' their behinds to get Sixto Rodriguez all the back royalites he's due for all of his records that were sold in South Africa?

    Me neither.

    Parent

    Woman charged in connection (none / 0) (#1)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 03:39:03 PM EST
    with firefighters shooting.

    New York State Police Senior Investigator James Newell says Dawn Nguyen, of Rochester, faces a state charge of filing a falsified business record.

    He says the charge is connected to the purchase of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun that William Spengler had with him Monday when firefighters Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down. Three other people were wounded before the 62-year-old Spengler killed himself. link




    straw purchasing (none / 0) (#2)
    by Reconstructionist on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 03:47:12 PM EST
     is a pretty  common occurrence where i live with lax gun laws. sometimes, as alleged here it's on behalf of a prohinbited person and other times it is just someone who does not want the guns traceable back to him.

      Here's a more thorough link:

    I think your link (none / 0) (#3)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 03:48:45 PM EST
    is missing

    Parent
    You were right (none / 0) (#6)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 04:04:50 PM EST
    The ABC link provided better info.

    I linked it for you.

    Parent

    Yeah, sorry (none / 0) (#4)
    by Reconstructionist on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 03:51:55 PM EST
      apparently I don't know how to do links correctly.

    It's from ABC and basically states th she bought the weapons on behalf of a convicted felon and lied on the affidavit stating she was the true purchaser.

    Instructions on how to do links (none / 0) (#5)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 04:01:00 PM EST
    courtesy  of Yman:

    Type in whatever word(s) you want to use as the "name" of the link (i.e. "Link")

    Copy the url/web address by highlighting it and right-clicking on the copy command.

    Highlight the name of your link by left-clicking and dragging the cursor across the name.

    Click on the "link" box above the comment box (looks like a chain link).

    In the box that pops up, right-click and paste the url/web address of the link.  Click "OK".



    Parent
    link (5.00 / 1) (#7)
    by Reconstructionist on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 04:05:41 PM EST
    LINK

    Parent
    That is even better than (none / 0) (#8)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 04:10:09 PM EST
    the one I found.

    Parent
    allegedly (none / 0) (#12)
    by Peter G on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 08:36:54 PM EST


    Parent
    S&P 'does not expect' to lower (none / 0) (#9)
    by MO Blue on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 04:24:58 PM EST
    the US credit rating further.

    "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services does not expect negotiations over the fiscal cliff to have an impact on its 'AA+/A-1+' ratings on the U.S. federal government," it said in a statement.

    S&P said the current negotiations continue to validate its previous conclusion on political brinksmanship.

    "We believe that this characterization still holds," it said.

    As far as the negative outlook is concerned, S&P said that allowing the $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts to occur, or reaching a short-term deal, would be roughly equivalent. link



    From our "Mommie Dearest" file: (none / 0) (#13)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 09:16:59 PM EST
    An Ohio court judge has issued a restraining order against the parents of a 21-year-old University of Cincinnati honors student, after they admitted to having:

    • Illegally installed software on her laptop and cellphone without her knowledge, in order to monitor her daily activities and whereabouts;

    • Accused her of drug use, promiscuity and suffering from mental instability;

    • Publicly accusing her of being a liar and mentally unstable in front of school officials;

    • Informed a university administrator that they'd seek a court order to have her committed for mental evaluations; and

    • Told their daughter's attorney that they wanted her to reimburse them for the $66,000 they'd spent on her college tuition and expenses.

    Aubrey Ireland's parents, Dave and Judy Ireland of Leawood KS, have been ordered to stay at least 500 feet away from their only child, and to have no contact with her until at least Sept. 23, 2013.

    ooh (5.00 / 2) (#14)
    by womanwarrior on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 09:41:39 PM EST
    now my kids can't think I am worst parent in the world any more.

    Parent
    I'm pretty sure (5.00 / 1) (#17)
    by Peter G on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 10:53:22 PM EST
    that your kids never thought that, WW, not for one moment.

    Parent
    Honestly, I don't know how so many (none / 0) (#16)
    by Anne on Fri Dec 28, 2012 at 10:16:08 PM EST
    kids can even breathe with their parents so on top of them - it's like the kids can't have anything that's just theirs, no area where they have even a tiny bit of autonomy.

    I feel sorry for this girl - and the many others like her whose lives have been micro-managed since birth; I only hope that if she decides to have her own children some day, she can allow them something she clearly never had: some freedom.

    Parent

    Anne and others, do you have any ideas about what (none / 0) (#19)
    by ruffian on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 07:13:03 AM EST
    made so many parents that are in our general generation (I'm 55) be such hoverers? So glommed on to the kids. I don't have kids so it is hard for me to imagine. I have talked with one friend about it- she is a few years younger and on the conservative side and thinks it is a reaction to the sixties. I didn't quite get what she meant. Something about not wanting all authority overthrown.

    It puzzles me because people my age are kind of tweeners. My patents were to old to be hippies but too young to be the parents of boomers. I wonder what parenting style my friends are either modeling or breaking away from.

    Parent

    The parents I know who are like this (5.00 / 3) (#21)
    by Anne on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 09:46:25 AM EST
    just seem to be consumed and driven by fear - they're afraid of everything, and convinced that if they aren't hypervigilant and always in control, something terrible will happen.

    Strange thing is that I am a very Type A person, but for some reason, I learned early which battles were worth fighting and which ones weren't.  My brother, on the other hand, had his kids on such a tight leash all the time, about everything, with everything being a battle for control - I kept telling him that when you put your kids in a chokehold, they will do whatever they can to break free - or you will choke the spirit out of them - but he just could never let go an inch.  

    But on the other side of that, my sister-in-law is one of those mothers who wants to be the cool mom that all the other kids like...a dangerous combination with my control-freak brother.

    So, really, these kids never knew which end was up, and probably still don't.  

    Overall, I go back to fear: these helicopter parents are afraid of everything, and seem to have so much of their own self-esteem tied up in whether their kids are successes, and it seems like even the most minor "failures" are cause for alarm.  I have friends who e-mail constantly with their kids' teachers - I don't know how these teachers do it, I really don't.  And they're like this with all aspects of their kids' lives.

    Lest you think I was one of those anything-goes parents, think again - that's not me at all.  But I let my kids decide, at a certain age, what kind of personal space they wanted to live in.  Other than insisting that plates and utensils and glasses make their way to the dishwasher, I didn't care if they made their beds, or their rooms looked like a disaster area.  It was their space - the one room in the house that was theirs, where they were free to be.  They needed autonomy over something, so why not their bedrooms?  However, when they started putting clean and folded clothes back in the hamper rather than put them away, I introduced them to the washer and dryer and stopped providing laundry service.

    With my daughter now a new mom, I am hoping I can give her the support she and her husband need to be normal parents, able to love their children, not smother them.  It's a challenge when, all around are parents who are so far up their kids' asses they might as well be party hats and not people.

    Parent

    I agree (5.00 / 2) (#24)
    by Ga6thDem on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 11:05:49 AM EST
    100%. In my experience all of this is driven by fear---fear of child abductions, pedophiles etc. My two cents is that a lot of it is the product of growing up during the cold war where fear, fear and more fear was served up daily to the general population.

    Parent
    It was a wildly fear driven culture (5.00 / 1) (#27)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 11:24:09 AM EST
    To grow up in.  I remember doubting I would see 30 with the constant feeding of terror that was done.  But we do witness child abductions in real time though, it used to just be stories and rumors but the latest abduction is in your living room now.  Even on post children under the age of 12 can't play outside their homes in the playgrounds alone, they must have constant parent supervision or the MPs are at your door.

    Parent
    Not saying that (5.00 / 3) (#28)
    by Ga6thDem on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 11:44:23 AM EST
    child abductions don't happen but that maybe our sense of fear of them is out of proportion to the reality of the situation and yet we are supposed to worry about child abductions and pedophiles but we absolutely cannot interfere with the rights of those people who want to shoot and mass murder our children.

    Parent
    We are a mess (none / 0) (#29)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 12:06:08 PM EST
    What are our priorities?  Another thing I noticed in Korea was how important the whole culture thought their children were.  My daughter used to take Josh when he was a baby into the ville to buy fruit water and those chocolate dipped cookies.  I used to run around the ville in the mornings and all the neighbors would tell me what my kids did the day before.  It was just a report.  After awhile I realized they did that for each other, all children were important, the ville worked to make sure all children were safe.

    I'm lucky if I know the kids living down the street now.  And American culture doesn't seem to value children much, certainly not as the only real asset we have come rain or shine.  Look what we have allowed to happen to college educations now?

    Surprisingly I am not unhappy with Josh's Jr High education here.  The curriculum is exceptional, I do doubt that the average two income family has the time to support their child in it though.  He just took his first midterms and did very well.  When I was helping him study though I was a bit blown away by his capacity to soak it all in.  Told my husband that at this rate, by next year testing will show he is "smarter" than both of us.  My husband said that makes him feel funny about all this education, maybe it is time to homeschool :)

    Parent

    Yes I recall the abduction (none / 0) (#31)
    by brodie on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 02:36:05 PM EST
    hysteria, with the milk cartons to constantly remind us parents, along with the preschool sexual/ritual witchcraft abuse witch hunts of the 80s, as some of us were beginning parenting.

    Plenty of nonsense and overblown fears spread by the media to make even the most reasonable of us plenty scared.  The occasional actual stranger abduction story would only confirm there had to be some there there.

    It was also a period when, at least in certain coastal elite cities, the public schools began to be abandoned in favor of private schools -- better quality instruction and safety being the main motivating factors. Thus the notion of sending our kids an extra few hours for instruction on weekends, even had it been available, would not have been that attractive.  

    And the resulting competition to get into the good schools -- absolute insanity.  Three-hour SAT-like entrance exams for 11 year olds -- just crazy, and the pressure on kids and parents to succeed was ridiculous.

    Parent

    What do you do though when the rest of (none / 0) (#35)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 04:05:16 PM EST
    The world is seeing to it that they are graduating the exceptional engineers?  Other nations are kicking our butts.

    One of my family members is a military contractor working IT.  He wants to know what happened to vocational training and why is the military the biggest vo-tech educator in his field?  He says they are being swamped by demand for the best IT people and nobody can produce them.

    People in my country used to hunger for education and the opportunities it provided, now parents complain when homework gets in the way of little guy football practice.

    The chances of me being persuaded that American children are over educated and working too hard is zero.

    And in a recent study of who is getting to college and graduating, having the funding was one thing but also having parents who advocate for you got you to completion as well.

    Parent

    for 20 years at least (5.00 / 3) (#36)
    by TeresaInPa on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 04:43:55 PM EST
    what I have seen happen is this:  people get educated in a field that is supposed to be a great field to go in to and it is for a while.  Then all those people start getting laid off and the jobs either go out of the country or the companies start importing temp workers from overseas.  I saw it happen in IT and now we are seeing it happen in Scientific research and development in NJ.  Corporations are claiming they can not find the people to fill the jobs here in the states.  But the truth is they don't want to pay the health care costs.
    Right now in NE PA there is a natural gas boom going on.  You see new motels going up all over the place and they are all full of people from other states who are experienced in the oil and gas industry.  Most of them are highly educated engineers and they are Americans. They are also well paid.  Soon I expect to see that the companies have figured out how to rotate crews of foreign engineers through here, each for a few months at a time so that they don't have to pay for their benefits either. Then they will claim there is a shortage of American geological engineers too.  It's BS.  
    15 years ago, all the IT people I know gave up and moved in to lower paying hospital tech work.  Now in NJ where most of the pharma industry has their R&D scientists, they have laid off thousands and are claiming they can't find qualified scientists to do the work.  So they have asked MA for funding to move a small percentage of the jobs there.  The rest of the jobs have gone out of the country.
    Tell your husband he is being scammed. But then, the military industrial complex is really just the same thing as the corporations when it comes to greed and somebody getting rich at the highest levels.

    Parent
    I was mostly describing some (5.00 / 1) (#37)
    by brodie on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 05:02:08 PM EST
    parenting experiences in the 80s, not so much prescribing.

    Solid public school instruction, good teachers and facilities, I'm all in favor of, including boosting teacher salaries to make the field more attractive.  If schools are improved, the way they are in many Euro countries, I see no reason why we couldn't at that point also offer Sat morning classes for, say, middle schoolers and older.

    Homework -- at least the regular kind of heavy portions I seem to recall from my youth, much of it of dubious educational value -- should probably be deemphasized.  Instead I would concentrate on making classroom time count for more, while for high schoolers longer projects or term papers as we called them, can be appropriate for English, History/Govt, and Science.

    Generally, once we begin making improving public schools a high national priority, and back it up with bucks, many lagging indicators of student performance will fall away to a considerable degree.  Of course, compared to some more socially homogeneous countries like Korea, the more diverse melting pot US will always be a little behind, but not dangerously so.

    Parent

    not true (none / 0) (#34)
    by TeresaInPa on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 02:59:08 PM EST
    you can absolutely interfere with the rights of someone who wants to mass murder our children.  You just can't stomp all over the rights of all other law abiding citizens on the miniscule percentage of a chance that they might be someone who someday want to mass murder our children.

    Parent
    I grew up during WWII and (5.00 / 3) (#38)
    by the capstan on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 05:32:56 PM EST
    had my first 3 kids during the cold war--lived near a nuclear site and had to be prepared to evacuate at any time.  I recall during WWII wondering if the US would see Hirohito riding his white horse down Penn. Ave.  And after the babies came, having to keep stores of water and food.

    So how did my kids turn out?  One was a teen hippy  for awhile.  Motherhood seems to have turned two of them a bit helocopterish  in comparison to me.  I'd trace the difference in attitude to: BIRTH CONTROL! Three babies in 5 years do not encourage being able to devote that much attention to any one child (one of mine is special needs, so that probably figures in too).  My girls had babies late (each now with one living child), and they certainly have had more money to spend on their offspring and more time to manage their affairs.

    Parent

    I did think of the fear factor, but not of the (none / 0) (#39)
    by ruffian on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 06:11:23 PM EST
    numbers factor. And as one of 7, I should have thought of that. My parents would have had a hard time hovering.

    Parent
    You're probably (none / 0) (#41)
    by Ga6thDem on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 07:46:08 PM EST
    right. My mother did not watch my brother or I very much, sent us outside all day, had no idea where we were when we were like 2 and 4. Today she probably would be hauled off for child neglect for this. I remember making my 2 year old brother stand in the middle of the street (residential) and make him stop cars. My mother had NO idea.

    Parent
    The ability to open the door and go out for (5.00 / 4) (#42)
    by Anne on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 08:09:06 PM EST
    hours of free play  - something both my husband and I remembered doing as kids - was one of the reasons we wanted to live out in the country.  Both my husband and I lived in suburban neighborhoods, with lots of kids, so we skated and built forts and held jacks tournaments and jumped rope and rode our bikes and climbed trees.  When we moved to the country, we didn't have neighbors, per se, or sidewalks to skate on, but the girls had swings and a mini-cabin in the woods, and trees to climb - and it wasn't that hard to import kids to share in the fun.

    Yeah, it could be a little lonely at times, especially in the middle of winter! - but the upside was that we got to make more choices about who our kids were hanging out with - it wasn't like we had to worry that they had gone down the street to so-and-so's house, whose parents were never home - or that they were going to get snatched off the street.

    Both girls decided they wanted the same kind of life when it was time for them to buy homes - and they were fortunate to get what they were looking for.

    We're just firm believers that kids - all of us, really - need time to just be, to have time that's not scheduled for this or that, time to use one's imagination, to decompress from the rest of life.  I actually get very cranky when I don't get enough time without all the hustle-bustle.

    This life would bore a lot of people to death, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

    Parent

    They can also get in trouble in the woods. (none / 0) (#45)
    by cpresley on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 08:50:42 PM EST
    We live in the woods in the Santa Cruz Mt. at the base of a 500ft. Mt.. One day, after a storm, I look out of my kitchen at the culvert coming down the mountain and there is a big wall of soap suds coming down the mountain. To this day I can't get any of them to cop to being part of this stunt but I'm sure they weren't that innocent.

    Parent
    Oh, there's all kinds of things kids can (none / 0) (#46)
    by Anne on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 09:17:54 PM EST
    get up to...

    Remember the awful winter of 1993?  Here in MD we had almost non-stop snow from just before Christmas until well after - the kids didn't go back to school after Christmas break, even.  And then we had the ice and sub-zero temps, and on and on.

    Well, on a day the kids were off from school, again, I was trying to work from home, and was downstairs in the office where it was relatively quiet.  One of my daughters came in to tell me that her sister had slipped on the snow outside and hurt her hip...well, eventually, I ended up taking her to the ER for an x-ray, on what were, at that point, perpetually icy roads.  Good news - a couple hours later - was that it was just a bad bruise.  

    The bad news?  Well, I didn't find that out til much later - like months - but it turns out my daughter didn't "slip" on the snow after all.  She and her younger sister got the brilliant idea that, since the snow was so deep, they could jump off the deck into the snow banks!  Younger daughter did it successfully, but older one didn't.

    When I think of what could have happened...well, I feel like the world's worst mother.

    Parent

    Probably true. Even knowing the odds are (none / 0) (#40)
    by ruffian on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 06:14:53 PM EST
    strongly in your favor, bad things do happen, and no one wants to be the one that looked away for that fateful instant.  

    Parent
    There is also the blame factor. (5.00 / 1) (#43)
    by cpresley on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 08:28:32 PM EST
    Accidents don't seem to happen anymore. There always has to be someone to blame. A child falls off a bike and hits their head it was the fault of the parents, or the sidewalk, or the bike manufacturer. It is no longer an accident, so parents don't let their children out of their sight, because if something was to happen people will point the finger and you are now a bad parent.

    Parent
    My family on either side were not hoverers (none / 0) (#20)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 09:08:20 AM EST
    My parents came of age in the 60's, they could have been hippies but weren't.  My cousins don't hover over their kids either.  Some of the people I went to school with hover like I can't believe.  One family has invaded the two children at college lives to the same degree that these parents did but they get away with it by telling the kids that not playing by their rules means cars and college funds will disappear.  The daughter is in her second year of college and is secretly dating because she isn't really allowed to date, her brother who is a year older dates and has always been allowed to date since high school.  At college he spies on his sister for his parents in order to keep her in her place and out of trouble.  It disgusts me.  The families of both parents were always messed up though, very religious and dysfunctional.

    One of these days the daughter is going to explode though, and they will disown her too if she does.  That was another thing one side of the family loved to do, disown family members for the craziest reasons I'd ever heard.

    Parent

    I haven't viewed Boomer parents (none / 0) (#22)
    by brodie on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 10:10:15 AM EST
    as hoverers so much as over-regulators, over-schedulers, trying to give their kids too much in the way of programmed "learning" or "enrichment" activities, at the expense of just letting kids have free time to explore.

    That might be more true of the later Boomers, the ones who had kids starting in the early-mid 80s, when there seemed to be a social trend to emphasize early learning in formal settings.

    The other set of Boomer parents, as I see it, might have been the early ones who ended up with hippie parenting sensibilities -- folks like yours truly.  Parents who set few if any rules, in part a reaction to their own overly controlling and too conservative parents of the post-war years..

    Parent

    This is just me and only arrived at after (none / 0) (#23)
    by Militarytracy on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 10:58:44 AM EST
    Spending time in South Korea and witnessing their parenting approach to education, but in this house we are all about education.  I can't force my child to learn but I can do everything in my power to incentivize it and prioritize it. Children in South Korea go to school 2 hours more a day than mine do, they have fewer breaks, and nothing in their family is more important than their homework.  If it's about globalization, my children are going to have to take education as seriously as the rest of the world does.

    Parent
    It's not about the boomers, believe me (none / 0) (#32)
    by Towanda on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 02:43:19 PM EST
    as this behavior by some parents is not new.  

    The turn to the spying technologies of our time is new -- as is the ease of the communication technologies that allow parents to track down profs and email incessantly.

    We used to be able to just ignore the phone calls, claim to lose the messages left with the chair, etc.  That absent-minded professor myth works well. . . .

    There is a newer mindset, though, that also feeds the copter parents: the fear of government control of children, fed by FERPA that works in parents' favor through K12 but then in students' favor, as adults, in college.  

    Note that the parents are from Kansas.  And they are called "ardent Catholics."  I looked up their parish, looked at its newsletter, and wonder how the daughter ever got away to a godless public campus in the godless East aka Ohio (the East to Kansans).  

    I predict -- I hope for her sake -- graduate school in another country.

    Parent

    Agreed. (none / 0) (#18)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 06:38:20 AM EST
    When we first become parents, none of us hereby pledge that our child will grow up to be a self-loathing neurotic doormat with codependency issues. You really have to wonder how people can go so totally off the rails like this with their own children, despite their best intentions.

    Parent
    These aren't "helicopter parents" (5.00 / 3) (#44)
    by shoephone on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 08:36:52 PM EST
    These are abusers. Essentially, they stalked her, slandered her, and then they threatened teachers at her school. They are dangerous people. I'm glad she got the restraining order, but these two control freaks should be charged.

    And, BTW, "helicopter parents" simply irritate the living daylights out of me. I see them everyday in Seattle. Sometimes I just want to yell at them, "Leave your kid alone! She doesn't need you running over to the play area every five minutes, asking her, "Are you okay? You sure? Do you need anything? Are you cold? Where's your jacket? Don't stack those Legos so high! Be careful when you're braiding that girl's hair! Do you need me to read that book to you?..." and on and on and on.

    Jeebus, people. How did we ever survive our  Depression/WWII era parents? How could they have let us play with the family dog in the backyard for fifteen minutes without constant supervision???

    Parent

    It probably helped that (5.00 / 2) (#47)
    by the capstan on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 09:52:35 PM EST
    the mothers had their hours filled with household tasks that are no longer done.   Victory gardens had to be tended.  Vegetables and fruit had to be canned (not frozen).  Laundry had to be wrung out and hung out to dry (if you were lucky enough to have a washer with a mangle).  "Make it do or do without" meant baskets of mending.  (Grocery staples like flour  sometimes came in sacks that could be stitched by hand or treadle machine into dresses or shirts.)   And those groceries might well have been carried home on foot or by bus, hardly by car.  Dishes were washed and dried by hand.  All the house was dusted and mopped each day if the family was lucky enough to have a nice home.  Those extra kids that arrived came in handy helping with all the chores, including tending to the youngest of the children.

    Parent
    I forgot the (5.00 / 1) (#48)
    by the capstan on Sat Dec 29, 2012 at 10:05:41 PM EST
    never-ending ironing!

    Parent
    Friday Afternoon Open Thread | 49 comments (49 topical)

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