Further Things That Are Wrong (Part 2)

There’s a catch 22 at play here however. We have the situation where we are in danger of raising snowflakes and then the danger of exposing them to too much, the need to protect them as you have said. Where do we draw the line?

I truly have no idea. Parenting is hard.

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My 4-year old’s crèche pal wasn’t in for a few days a while back and he came in one evening telling us it was because her grandad went to the sky. My life partner has become friendly with the kid’s mam and she subsequently told her that her Dad had passed away. Now my little fella regularly asks about going to the sky and he brings it up out of nowhere. He was eating his breakfast on Saturday and just blurted out…what will happen to me & Conor if you & Mammy go to the sky? I tell him not to worry about that, as people usually go to the sky when they’re very old. It’s probably the wrong response but I don’t know what to say to him. That leads onto his number obsession. What age will you be when you go to the sky? Oh 100. What age will I be when you’re 100? What age will Mammy be when you’re 100? What age will Conor be? How many people live in the sky? And off we go.

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I thought you said this lad was a maths genius? That’s some fairly basic addition and subtraction right there. You’ll have to tell him he’ll never realise his dream of being an actuary if he doesn’t up his game.

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They will forget about it soon. Its a phase

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You’d be surprised. They are sponges at that age. If you dont give a clear and cogent answer a further cross examination awaits.

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He had the etch a sketch yokey out later on doing the maths. But you’re right, he really needs to working these sums out in his head.

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We’re heading into fucking Mumsnet territory I’d say.

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Just get the little shits doing pushups and fuck off with all this airy fairy feelings chatter.

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Teenagers have had to deal with a deadly pandemic where 1000s were being killed, scientists warning them that the future they have is bleak due to catastrophic climate change & then a war breaking out in Europe where there is a small chance that nuclear war might break out

but hey - they are snowflakes

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I was talking a wee bit younger, but I do see your point.

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Do you even lift bro?

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Maybe their parents should tone down on the whole climate change thing, eh mate

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And 90% of that is lies. No wonder they’re fucked up.

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I have asked my teenage children to put you on mute. Their stress levels are much more normal as a result.

:grinning:

Admins??

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Unfortunately it isn’t though. These three problems are examples of needing collective responsibility.

Believe me nobody is more sorry than me that the pandemic ever happened. But it was a problem that required collective responsibility, individual responsibility simply wasn’t enough.

Neither is it with the other two problems. We have to deal with reality.

I grew up in what I consider to be a golden age to grow up in in Ireland. The years 1985 to 1995 and probably a few years after that saw a lot of good news or what we perceived as good news on so many fronts both in Ireland and internationally. It was on balance a very happy time.

We were informed but not overwhelmed.

The perception of joy of that time nearly makes it harder to deal with the constant negativity of the last eight years or so. The feeling of ever more pervasive negativity the western world has felt really goes back as far as September 11th, 2001.

Since 1945 things had largely been on an upward curve, with peaks and troughs here and there.

But there was a belief in the progress of humanity in general that was constant throughout that time. On September 11th that belief was shaken and has declined seemingly irrevocably ever since in favour of suspicion and deep cynicism and negativity. Our information age has helped to enable that.

We as a species have overreached and are pushing the natural world to its limits. We have to deal with this reality.

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A neighbour said she is going to tell her girls, one is 6 and the other is 8, that there is no Santa and that she has to buy the presents because the girls have asked for some presents. All this because she doesn’t want to spend the money.

There’s an awful lot to be said for making a joke of it, then changing the subject. I usually say something along the lines of “I’m faaar too good looking to die” and then ask something else. You don’t want them staring into the abyss. Not even glancing into it really. I do think it’s been brought so far out that suicide is almost like a genuine life choice. This may well just be my perception. I think @fenwaypark had it right though. I’d rather back off than put too much pressure on. Herself thinks she (we) are failing as parents because we don’t have the Facebook didsbury lifestyle. I just tell her they are warm, dry, fed, safe and loved, and they see us going out to work every day. We may be too tired of an evening to sit on them doing their homework, or check their grades, or make them practice piano or what have you, and we get about two emails a week from Hopper’s form teacher about stuff not handed in or missed, but he seems happy.
Always aware it only takes a few minutes though. It’d make you feel sick. I don’t know how you’d go on as a parent. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.

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The santa story is getting harder and harder to preserve. Our 8 year old is in a class with a girl who family don’t do the santa thing so the tale that ‘santa brings presents to all kids’ is shot out of the sky and I can see her thinking hard about the whole thing.

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