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Everlane is one of my favorites for great basics. This tee has a ruched neckline and blousy sleeves to make it just a little bit special. I would wear it with jeans for a comfy work-from-home look, or tucked into a pair of ankle pants with a sweater blazer for a casual office look.
This saturated indigo color is beautiful, but it also comes in a sage green, burnt orange, sandstone, and black. It’s 100% cotton and machine-washable, but do note that the company recommends laying it flat to dry.
The top is $35 and comes in sizes XXS–XL. The Air Poet Tee
Sales of note for 9.10.24
- Nordstrom – Summer Sale, save up to 60%
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Bergdorf Goodman – Save up to 40% on new markdowns
- Boden – 15% off new styles
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; up to 50% off everything else
- J.Crew – Up to 50% off wear-to-work styles; extra 30% off sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything; extra 60% off clearance
- Lo & Sons – Warehouse sale, up to 70% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Save 25% sitewide
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- White House Black Market – 30% off new arrivals
Sales of note for 9.10.24
- Nordstrom – Summer Sale, save up to 60%
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Bergdorf Goodman – Save up to 40% on new markdowns
- Boden – 15% off new styles
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; up to 50% off everything else
- J.Crew – Up to 50% off wear-to-work styles; extra 30% off sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything; extra 60% off clearance
- Lo & Sons – Warehouse sale, up to 70% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Save 25% sitewide
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- White House Black Market – 30% off new arrivals
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- What small steps can I take today to get myself a little more “together” and not feel so frazzled all of the time?
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Apple Paltrow
Grateful for any help on this niggling tech question that I’ve spent hours googling with no result.
I have a iPhone and a iPad for which I use the same ICloud account. I’m having problems with unwanted syncing of websites on Safari like YouTube (web browser, not app, and unsigned) and LinkedIn (browser version, signed in). I followed all instructions on tech forums to turn the iCloud sync and handoff toggles off to prevent syncing of history between devices. And yet, several websites including Youtube and LinkedIn keep sharing browser history!
What am I missing? Aren’t cookies supposed to be local to the device? Finally, if anyone has any tips on de-linking browser history, that would be much appreciated!
Anonymous
That sounds like an individual website problem, not an iCloud/handoff issue. I don’t know how to deal with it. My family uses YouTube on separate devices without logging in, and we all get videos suggested on the basis of the others’ viewing. I have had gift surprises ruined by targeted advertising. Private browsing mode doesn’t seem to help.
Anonymous
In the settings for YouTube you can clear past watch and search history. It’s a pain because you have to remember to do it each time, but at least it stops the targeted advertising (also have had surprises ruined).
Anonymous
Are you signed into gmail on both?
Apple Paltrow
OP here – yes, I do have the Gmail app signed in on both devices! Does it really sync browser history on Safari on a non-Google device?
Anon
Sign out of gmail on one device. You probably use gmail to log into youtube and linkedin. Or just log out of those apps when you’re not using them.
Anonymous
Yes
Anonymous
In my experience, to some extent it seems too. There must be some settings in your gmail account that you can adjust.
Anon
It’s syncing it’s services’ history, at least with Youtube. You’ve logged in to Youtube with your google account, so anywhere else that you use Youtube with your google account you’ll see the history.
Apple Paltrow
Bingo! It was the Gmail app and what I just uncovered now – the sneaky Google Usage ID that collects information across all devices for any Google product or service. I’ll definitely log out of Gmail when not using or just add to my Mail app if I need the push notifications.
Thanks, my amazing ‘rettes!
Anon
It’s not just Gmail. It’s the Google account. I’m guessing you’re still logged into Youtube with your google account.
Panda Bear
Anyone have a Roomba (or other brand robot vacuum)? I’m thinking about getting one and am curious to hear user pros and cons. I have a mix of hardwood and tile floors, with a couple area rugs. Major sources of dirt are a fluffy dog, fluffy cat, and a crumb-dropping, dirt-tracking spouse.
AnonATL
We have one that was given to us as a wedding gift years ago. Honestly, we don’t use it all that often.
We have primarily hardwood floors, tile, plus a couple rugs. It does a good enough job when I’m feeling extra lazy. We have two dogs plus baby worth of filth.
It is very loud on hardwoods imo.
It also tends to get stuck in this one spot under our coffee table.
I have to make sure to pick up dog and baby toys so it doesn’t get sucked up or stuck on them.
So long story short, I like it fine, but I wouldn’t have purchased it for myself given the price.
fallen
my parents have it and absolutely love it! they say it saves them a lot of time.
NY CPA
I have a Coredy brand one. It’s great. I have it set on a timer to run every day and it does a good job of generally keeping the floors pretty clean. We do a deep vacuum session once or twice a month, but otherwise, this keeps the floors looking and feeling clean.
When I only had hardwood and tile floors, it was amazing. I have 2 area rugs now and it’s fine on the one with short fringe, but there is one with long fringe that it gets stuck on every. single. time. and I have to go rescue it. So that’s something to be aware of for sure. Also, any cords have to be up off the ground or it will inevitably eat them. It especially likes the thin cords for the iphone and macbook.
The first couple of times you run it, you’ll likely have to clean the bin out daily, but after that, I usually clean it out once or twice a week.
NY CPA
This is the exact one I have. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L2YB8NW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Flats Only
I have a Roomba i7, and it is great. We have a mix of Pergo and area rugs. I run it a few times a week and it really makes a difference in the level of day-to-day dirt lying around. It doesn’t do a deep clean, and misses deep corners, but I no longer have to personally deal with crumbs, tracked in grass, etc. Plus it’s the type with the docking station that empties itself, so I only have to empty the bag from the docking station every couple of months, and that bag slides out cleanly without my hands getting dirty.
Anon
I just got one (the entry level Roomba 675) and didn’t have high expectations but I AM IMPRESSED. The little whisker-brush-thingy does an amazing job at dealing with edges. Better than I can do by hand. It’s quieter than a regular vaccuum cleaner. When it bumps into something, it’s not hard enough to hurt anything…. though it pushes the dogs’ empty bowls around the floor. The dogs are not impressed, but they are getting over it. It’s handled my dogs’ hair just fine. The only challenge I’ve encountered is that my house is small and it was tough to find a spot to put the dock that had enough room on 3 sides for the Roomba to find its way back easily. I think I’ve got that sorted out, though.
My ex had an early Roomba that his parents gave him. It didn’t work well at all. I think I have a video of it pushing a dust-bunny around the floor. This new one has come a long, long, long way and I’m glad I got it!
asdf
Another Roomba lover here. I run it every day on our first floor, about 800 square feet of hardwood and one area rug. It is loud (and takes much longer than vacuuming) so I run it when we’re either not at home or on the second floor. In non-WFH times it was programmed to run about 30 minutes after we left the house in the morning. Every morning we would do a quick tidy to make sure the floors were clear right before leaving (we have kids), so there was some effort there. Our fluffy dog has pretty much gotten used to it. When I only had a vacuum cleaner I would use it about once a week. It took me a while to figure out the best way to use a Roomba. For us, that means running it daily (or near daily) when we’re not there. I love not having crumbs hidden underneath the kitchen cabinet overhang and not having dog hair tumbleweed.
asdf
FYI, the 960 is on sale today at woot.com for $250. https://www.woot.com/
Anon
Not op but wow, that is a deal.
Anonymous
How big is your space? We debated Roomba but ended up getting a cordless Dyson instead. I LOVE it. So much easier than using the big vacuum. But we have a small duplex and really only use it in a few small rooms— and mostly just in the dining room.
Anon
My house is 1000sf. I don’t really use one bedroom, so it covers a bit less than 900sf. I got the Roomba while waiting for a new battery to arrive for my cordless Dyson. Note – replacing the battery in a cordless Dyson is a matter of two screws. When your old battery bites the dust, don’t buy whole new vacuum!
The Dyson makes quicker work of carpeted areas. The Roomba does better (not a little bit better – a LOT better) on edges and hard surfaces. The little bin on the Roomba is easier to empty completely, too. I keep an old knife next to the trash can for emptying out the Dyson. As much as I do like how well the Dyson works at certain things, emptying it has always sucked.
Betsy
I adore mine. Mostly wood floors, and I run it basically every day. If it misses a spot one day, it will get it the next. It does a great job keeping floors clean and getting rid of the cat hair floofs that otherwise would take over. Corners and areas it can’t reach obviously still need periodic attention, but the roomba keeps all the high traffic areas that used to stress me out in good condition.
The other benefit is that it indirectly has led to a much tidier main floor of our house. If shoes are left out, it will suck up their laces and drag them around. Dog toys, power cords, etc have the same problem. After a few mishaps, it got me trained to spend 2 or 3 minutes doing a really quick tidy before setting it to run each day. I’ve seen reviews complaining about that, but in my mind it’s a positive feature.
Anon
I have one of the 600 series that I bought ~2017. We used it all the time for the first two years, but the little whisker brush attachment wore out, and we haven’t used it since we moved.
It was great for daily maintenance – large dog, outdoor cat, bike-commuting spouse – but not as effective as the Dyson Animal.
Betsy
One thing that is nice about the roomba is that most of the parts are replaceable. I used a third party replacement brush that stripped the screw hole for the side brush. Super annoying, but I was able to buy a new motor for the side brush (I think it was about $25) that was fairly easy to install. Now I stick to official roomba parts!
Anon
+1 on easy to replace parts. I’ve replaced all the brushes and regularly replace filters on mine. Super easy. I love how they visually label everything in yellow so you know which things you’re supposed to open and what goes where. Smart design.
Anon
Thanks! I sent a link to the iRobot parts website to my husband two weeks ago, so this is incentive to actually order it.
Anon
I have two kids, two cats and and two roombas – one for upstairs and one for downstairs. They’re both great. One is a 600 series, the other is a 900 series. They’re both great. I really think I prefer the 600 bump and turn model. The 900 series maps the floor space and cleans more intelligently. The reason I got the 900 for downstairs is that we have a lot of doorways/separate rooms (old house) so the 600 didn’t always clean every room.
My house is so much cleaner now than it used to be! I will never be roomba-less again.
Anon
I have one of the older versions of Roomba but ended up rarely using it. For some reason, the timer function didn’t work on my phone, so I only use it whenever I happen to remember. Also, the older version seemed to take forever to clean a room because it couldn’t figure out the space/got trapped going in circles. I would recommend the new version with the automatic trash dispenser over the older versions. With that one, you can program cleaning time so you never have to think about turning it on everyday. It also uses spatial mapping so it’s more efficient. That said, you probably still have to scramble to clear random stuff from the floor once it starts running.
Anon
I got the Roborock S4 for its ability to map the space and do zoned cleaning. It allows me to keep it out of the kids dress up things when they’re piled all over the living room floor and still have the kitchen floor clean. I can set a zone to keep it out of the cords under the desks if I don’t feel like moving those but the dog hair is getting annoying. It does a really good job. My only gripe is how quickly the bin fills up but at least half of that are stray lego bits and pieces of crayon so who can blame it, at least I’m not stepping on them now.
Anon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TXGQS3H/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Anonymous
I have one, and I love it. I have hardwood floors.
Mine is a “dumb” Roomba – no wifi, no app, no camera, no timer – I have to start it myself, and it putters around and smashes into things and very slowly vacuums.
I love it because it’s so easy to put on and have it putter around while I’m having a coffee or on a video call. I don’t care that it’s slow and dumb – my effort is zero, and still I have no dustbunnies under my bed or sofa if I send the Roomba around a few times a week. If I had pets it would be every day.
It’s not perfect, and it’s not a full substitute for a traditional vacuum, but the job is 90 % done with no effort other than picking up cords, clothes and other stuff that mysteriously end up on the floor.
Highly recommended. I made sure to measure the places I wanted mine to go under, to make sure it was low enough.
Anon
I’m the poster who was struggling with anxiety yesterday and I just want to thank you all for your tips and support. Sticking my head out the window and doing legs up the wall helped. I also did a longer restorative yoga practice as soon as I could stop working for the day, and I’m feeling much calmer this morning.
PNW
Cheers to a better day today!
Anon
I wish you inner calm today! Also, you’re not alone. I’m really struggling with anxiety these days too. Hugs.
I’m intrigued by the suggestion of legs up on the wall and want to try. What is the mechanism for this as an anxiety reducer?! I will attempt.
Monday
Lowering the heart rate, and encouraging slower breathing. That’s why it’s also often done toward the end of a fitness class.
Anisa
What’s your ideal morning routine? I’m getting into a time when I’ll be less busy with work and will have much more time to myself, and tbh I think I could do mental health wise with a better morning routine. Single, no kids, live in a suburb.
Anon
Start the night before by going to bed at a reasonable hour and relaxed enough to fall asleep easily. Wake up with no alarm around 7, go to the kitchen and make coffee, return to bed with coffee and read in bed (book or paper magazine) until 8. Take a shower and put on leggings and a T, then make breakfast. Wander over to my desk and check email and headlines around 9. Check corporette at like 9:10 to see if there’s anything interesting happening yet. Then try to work.
Anonymous
You will get the most bang for your buck with a workout, including light workouts like yoga. All the other things that I have tried, like savoring a cup of coffee, just don’t really do it for me on weekdays.
Anonymous
Good mornings start with a thoughtful plan the night before. I get coffee set up on a timer for 6 AM, lay out exercise and work clothes, and am in bed with a book by 10.
Next morning, alarm hits 6:05, and I have coffee and yogurt with berries ready by 6:15. Spouse and I trade off on who prepares it. Read news and chat with breakfast and coffee until 6:50, when I put on workout heat and do 30 to 60 minutes exercise. Shower at 8, online for work by 8:30 (9 when I drove to the office).
Anon
You guys. Thank you for helping me with my anxiety Weds when I was on a filing deadline, the world was blowing up and I realized I had blown a discovery deadline. Well, I finally was able to address that discovery deadline yesterday afternoon and luckily I went through my emails before reaching out to OC.
What I realized is I had wanted to take a depo in early 2020 but they wanted to wait to see if in-person was going to resume soon. Then on multiple other occasions we discussed booking stuff but then it just fell by the wayside. We had debated order of depositions. On the day of the deadline in Aug I had emailed acknowledging the deadline and all we both still had to do and suggesting we re-structure. We just never did it.
Yes, I still dragged my feet on getting out paper discovery that I needed but that’s because we kept punting everything. I was so so so relieved to read that. In 2021 I’m working to be more proactive and less reactive but the situation turned out to be so much better than I first realized.
I’ve since reached out suggesting new deadlines and got a response back that seems positive.
So to anyone else that finds themselves in a similar situation, don’t completely freak out about things. The year has been crazy and you may have completely forgotten conversations you have had.
I appreciate all the advice I received.
Anon
Gah! Nesting fail. Don’t reply here. I will repost.
anonymous
I like to workout first thing and then take a nice, relaxing shower. Then I use the Bible app on my phone to do a daily devotional. I also make it a point to get dressed and do my hair every day, even if it means just brushing it and putting it into a ponytail. I WFH so the getting ready part helps me be more productive during the day.
Anon 2.0
I am amazed at these morning routines! I have no kids and live in the suburbs and my morning goal is to get out the door on time with matching shoes. I am just not a morning person!
Anon
I feel you! I’m nearer the end of my objectively successful career, and I never did it any other way than what you describe!
anonymous
Does anyone else feel like strength work has made them bulkier? I have been doing BBG for the last 6 months or so and I feel like I am getting too bulky. Trying to figure out whether there are strength workouts that won’t make me as bulky but still toned.
Anonymous
generally, less weight and more reps
anon
From my experience, with strength workouts, you develop muscles. The extra muscle beneath my fat looks bulkier, but over time, the muscles burn more calories and fat and once the fat layer is thinner, you are left with leaner, firmer muscles. So my reco is to stick with your strength training, watch your calories (we tend to underestimate our “in” and overestimate our “outs”) and stay patient.
Sunshine71
+1. Fat loss is the key to looking leaner.
OP
My BMI is 19-20.. but I still feel bulky. I don’t know that I have much fat to lose.
Anonymous
You probably don’t have much muscle to lose either. Is your goal to look like a ballerina?
Anon
If you’re a BMI 19-20 and feel bulky, I think you should look into body dysmorphia.
Anon
Agreed. Unless you’re power lifting and eating like a power lifter, you’re not going to get bulky.
Senior Attorney
Yup. Adjust your eye, not your body.
Kitten
I just want to say that having a low BMI doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have fat to lose. I’m very tall with a slight frame and had a BMI of 19 when I was very skinny fat. I looked ok in clothes bc my body is still slimmer than average even with a pretty solid layer of fat. I could literally gain a 35 lb gut and still be considered a healthy BMI.
I’ve been lifting heavy and eating healthy for a few years now. My BMI has stayed in the 19-20 range but my body fat percentage is much lower and I am much more toned.
Obviously someone with a 19-20 BMI, regardless of body composition, probably isn’t on the verge of death from obesity, and body dysmorphia is a possibility, but I wouldn’t assume so.
Anonymous
Some of this is just genetics. I can life 3-5 lb weights in barre 3 times a week and still bulk some. Some people just develop muscle. Plenty of people lift far heavier weights and don’t have this problem. I’ve just come to terms with it being a trade off to be healthy and look strong.
LaurenB
I think it’s genetic. I develop muscle quickly and have a straight up and down build. I’ll never look like a ballet dancer.
getting bulky
If you feel like you’re getting bulky all over, you might need to focus on fat loss. To another poster’s point, if you build up the muscles beneath a layer of fat, then you’ll look “bigger”, so take a look at some cutting programs to shred down a little. This is not to say you need to go full chicken, rice, asparagus diet, but tweaking your macros a bit might help. I like Ashley Conrad’s Clutch Cut program for a break from my usual routine.
If you find that you’re getting bulky in only a specific muscle group, you should tweak your routine. I find that I build muscle very easily in my shoulders and upper back. I used to have a day dedicated to shoulders and a day dedicated to back, but I literally couldn’t fit into my shirts and jackets. I combined back and shoulder day and took out some of the exercises that focus on specific areas. For example, no more upright rows and should shrugs because my traps were getting ridiculous, and changing the angle of various cable pulls to focus less on my lats. Some women find that adding weighted ab work causes their waist to get bulky or more square (think of a cross-fitter look vs. a bodybuilding look). You can either stop using weights and switch to exercises like planks to keep the strength without building bigger muscle, or build your lats, glutes, and quads to give the appearance of a relatively smaller waist. Finally, one aspect of looking “toned” is developing the shape of the muscle so that you have definition around the entire mass, if that makes sense. Building the biceps AND the triceps, working the front, side, and back of the shoulders to get a “capped” shoulder that is distinct from the rest of the arm, making sure that you work your hamstrings and the quads, etc. This is a very bodybuilder-centric style of working out and developing the muscles, but it would help address the sense that you’re just getting bulky, especially when combined with fat loss.
NYCer
I find that barre type classes don’t cause bulk, though like someone else mentioned, I think a lot of this is genetic.
Monday
I’m a barre instructor and definitely developed some “bulk” when I first got into it (which I still have). You can’t always hack your own body / get exactly what you ordered. I went up 1-2 sizes permanently, but am also at a stable weight for the first time, and far healthier and stronger. I used to more or less have the body ideal for women, and now I’m too big for it. It’s a tradeoff I’d recommend to anyone.
I went through some body image problems along the way, for sure. OP, you sound like I did toward the beginning of the transition. But I remember reading some interview in a fashion magazine where the woman said “I stopped exercising because it made me gain weight.” I was determined not to be that person.
Bonnie Kate
I never had bulk in my butt or thighs before I did the barre program from Beachbody last year. I’m not mad about it, it’s muscle and it’s fine, but my pant size definitely went up 1-2 sizes which has been annoying because now I don’t really know what pant size I am and my old pants don’t fit.
Anon
I’ve posted here before. I was a DI athlete for 4 years on a team that never finished less than third in the country. My whole team did quite similar weight routines (and, obviously attended sport-specific workouts too). We lifted 3x a week, year round.
It was amazing to see how the same workout gave different results on different bodies. Some people got very lean, some bulked. We all ate a billion calories because we worked out so much. None of us were “fat”. It really is genetics, to some extent.
However, you certainly can adjust _which_ strength training you’re doing to target specific muscle groups more and less.
Anon
Pilates
pugsnbourbon
There’s a couple TikToks I’ve seen of women lifting against audio that says:
“I don’t work out like man, to be pretty. I work out to be strong, like b!tch who fight bears in forest.”
Obviously it’s meant to be humorous, but it rings true to me.
I’ve been recovered from anorexia for close to ten years and have been lifting weights for those ten years. (I am in no way suggesting that you have an eating disorder.) At the start I still really struggled with the feeling of being much larger. But now I embrace being a brick shithouse. I’ve lost a couple button-downs to my shoulders, but damn I love taking up space. I deserve it and so do you.
Kitten
No. It’s not that easy to build muscle and you won’t all of a sudden become bulky. Before covid I was going to a weight lifting class 3xs a week. The programming is designed to build muscle and the clientele is 80% men. Despite our best efforts none of the women were “bulky”, although a few were overweight. Strength training isn’t a magic bullet; depending on your diet you can end up adding both fat and muscle. Some of the women were just there to increase their strength, not to look like swimsuit models. Others are there for aesthetic reasons and carefully plan their diet so as to decrease body fat and increase muscle. It depends on your goals.
anon
So I went through a really bad relationship a few years ago (he cheated on me, fun times). The sad aftermath of this is that I met someone who I really like at work, but this past relationship is impacting things. We have been good friends for a while, and just recently started dating – but I feel constant doubt and being super-critical of him. I will go from really liking him to thinking he is an asshole constantly (for something minor he says or does that irritates me). Everything makes me question whether I should end it, whether he is a “nice” guy, etc.. Help?
Anon
Gently, therapy. Sounds like you have some underlying issues that you could use some professional help with. (No judgment here, been to therapy twice and will go again for sure). I just don’t think anyone here will be able to “fix” this for you.
Anonymous
This is what therapy is for! Go to it!
Ellen
Yes, I was allowed to go to the playground as a 8 year old child and use the swings and the other climbing things, but the boys often dominated there and would not share with me and Rosa. We also were allowed to go into town together when we were 15 (me) and 13 (Rosa). It was safe then, but if we did it today, our parents would be looked at as not caring enough for us b/c of the weirdos (men over 30) in Nassau County that hang around in their cars all day reading and leering at girls. So you are right. Times change. But mabye things are different elsewhere in the country, tho I doubt it. Look at DC. Those wack-a-doodles came from all over the country, so good luck trying to find a place w/o them. PTOOEY! It is society that is causing this.
anon
Therapy, yes, but also what examples of “minor” things are you talking about? The nice guy label can really be misleading, and you may be valid in your assessment of his not being quite as nice as you once thought. It could be your paranoid from past trauma, but honestly sometimes we have gut feelings that are right too. Deconstruct the dynamic with your therapist, to see which case it is.
Senior Attorney
Agree with every word of this.
Emma
I was in a bad relationship too (cheater and narcissist) and when I met my current partner I had MASSIVE trust issues and hadn’t been able to date seriously since. I basically didn’t trust anything he said (because my ex lied 24/7) and whenever he didn’t call or text right back, or wasn’t as affectionate, I completely panicked and shut down and actually considered breaking it off several times. It took a lot of time, patience and therapy (for me) to understand that he was a kind person who loved me and not a jerk who was going to play with my feelings the second I let him into my life, and also that I was a good person who deserved to be loved the right way. My current BF is not a perfect person by any means, but he had such a calm, honest and unwavering expression of love and commitment to me that eventually I calmed down and started to trust again. It’s hard, but it can happen. Also, how people react to minor things (“hey, you said this and it kind of hurt my feelings”) is very telling of what kind of person they are. My ex would erupt in fits of rage and gaslight me into thinking whatever I said was actually my fault. BF and I are almost always able to talk things through pretty amicably, and its been life-changing.
Anon
Therapy! I 100% wouldn’t have been able to be in the great relationship I am now without therapy.
Clementine
Overthinking a brief social interaction this morning. A friendly acquaintance (but with whom we have multiple points of contact so I run into this person with fair regularity in Normal times) told me they were getting divorced.
It took me a second to remember how to respond to that. I went with ‘Best wishes for your next chapter.’ It… feels like what I would write in a graduation card.
So Please. Help remind me how to small talk again. How would you respond to somebody saying, ‘Oh, BTW – I don’t know if you had heard but spouse and I are divorcing’.
Anon
When I was getting divorced I was so in my head that I had no idea what anyone else was doing or saying. I have literally no recollection of what anyone’s reactions were (good bad or awkward), except one coworker who immediately made it about her, but she’s always like that. I think there’s a 99% chance this person could not have remembered what you said 5 minutes after the fact, and that it made no impact on their life whatsoever.
Clementine
Thank you.
I know it’s really dumb but I literally walked away thinking ‘oh my god. have I forgotten how to have spontaneous, semi-casual social interactions since March??’
I mostly was trying to communicate some level of sensitivity while also being ‘not weird’ about it.
Curious
I have indeed forgotten how to have these, and my colleagues and I were discussing that it’s a common feeling. So you probably also get some grace there.
ELS
I agree with this, as someone who is currently divorcing.
Anonymous
You did fine. Neutral response is good.
Lily
I’ve been wondering this, too. The only thing I’ve come up with (haven’t used it yet) is “that sounds difficult, how are you holding up?” That way they are free to say that it’s actually amazing or whatever (but I’m guessing it’s difficult for 99% of people even if it’s amicable/for the best).
Clementine
How are you holding up! That’s what normal me used to use. I literally couldn’t pull that sentence out of anywhere.
Vicky Austin
I would probably have said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” when my instincts were firing on all cylinders.
In case it makes you feel better, here’s my small-talk fail from recently: My husband hired a new doctor for the hospital we both work at. They spoke on the phone an awful lot straightening out details and so on, and DH conducted some of these conversations at home/in my hearing. The day the new doc arrived, someone else pulled me over in the hallway to introduce me, and I went, “Oh, Dr. Jones! I’ve heard you on the phone so often, it’s nice to finally meet you.” And poor Dr. Jones went, “Oh, we’ve spoken on the phone?!” and then I had to confess that no, I was just eavesdropping on my husband’s phone calls. Don’t be me.
Clementine
I love this. I would totally do this.
Anonymous
This made me laugh out loud. Soooo something I would do.
asdf
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” And especially now I would add “I’m sorry you’re dealing with this on top of everything else.”
Anon
No advice but commiseration. I’m awkward with people even when I’m in constant practice. My post-pandemic re-entry into socialization will be rough.
Anonymous
“Oh I’m so sorry to hear that”
Clementine
Thank you. That and ‘Sorry you’re dealing with that’ are the two like – normal/generic phrases I somehow blanked on pre-coffee.
Lilau
I honestly think you were fine. It’s (almost?) never wrong to wish someone well. I feel like I say 100 more awkward conversations daily.
Eager Beaver
You did fine! When I was getting a divorce, my only goal was to get through those conversations as quickly as possible.
Clementine
Thank you all. This is somebody that (eventually) I know I’ll run into frequently and… I just don’t want to make the loose relationship awkward because of saying something dumb in the moment.
I’m glad that I can still look this person in the eye without my anxiety brain screaming ‘YOU SAID SUCH A WEIRD THING.’
ELS
Presently divorcing. I agree with the above commenter who said that this person likely didn’t even really register your response, which I think was totally fine, and supportive.
My favorite that I’ve gotten has been, “Congratulations and I’m sorry.” But that was from a friend who knew that I was the one to leave and was very unhappy. I think the other commenters here have had excellent advice, and I also think you did nothing wrong at all.
Senior Attorney
That’s a good one. When I was divorcing I also kind of liked “Congratulations or condolences?” or similar.
OP, I think you did just fine.
Anon
I think what you said was perfect. My friend hated the pity and the “sorry you are dealing with this” type statements because she felt better than ever once she pulled off the bandaid, told her husband they were getting a divorce, and moved out.
I think she would have loved to hear “good luck on your next chapter.”
Daffodil
You’re totally fine. I’m going through a divorce now after my soon to be ex husband cheated on me, and most responses are ones of support (is there anything I can do for you?), sympathy (I’m so sorry, it must be really hard for you), or encouragement (you are awesome and you are so much better off without him). Yours would fall in that third category, and I would have appreciated it.
From my perspective, telling someone I’m getting divorced is awkward and I just want to get it over with – and honestly, I couldn’t tell you what anyone said to me specifically.
What I have appreciated, though, are the people who have followed up a week or two later, with just a little text saying that they’re thinking of me and hope I’m doing ok. Depends on your relationship with the person, but it’s been nice to hear from friends as you’re going through a divorce, especially with everything else going on in the world right now.
Maudie Atkinson
Seconding this. What you said in that immediate moment is less important than what you say, and whether you say anything, the next time you interact with them.
Monday
+1. Basically any show of compassion will do fine. Sometimes married friends act like divorce is contagious and distance themselves, so just don’t do that (if you’re married).
face palm....
I also have difficulty in this specific situation, and what I have blurted out more times than not was…
“Congratulations! I wish you the best with your new life. I’m sorry this part is so hard…..”
Or something like that.
And honestly, every time the person is a little surprised, and then they smile or even laugh, and say thank you. I’ve even had people come to me later and thank me again for saying that and for helping them realize that sometimes bad transitions can lead to better things. And sometimes they admit they are relieved to be getting divorced, or it is so nice to have something say something that doesn’t make them feel like they are a failure.
Z
I once accidentally said “Oh, nice” when someone told me they are getting divorced. It just came out before I even registered what they said. They replied “Huh, yeah it is nice!”
Anon
Hey, I’m divorced (and now remarried) and what you said was far, far, far from the weirdest thing anyone ever said to me upon finding out I was getting divorced. I’m sure I wouldn’t even have remembered someone saying that to me.
The weird things were mostly unsolicited advice about how we just should have worked harder on our marriage, or about how marriage before god is forever and shame on me. Compared to those things, a best wishes seems like a kind thought to me, and I’m sure it was kindly meant.
Anonymous
I feel your second paragraph so hard. I canceled my wedding because my ex hit me. One of my vendors sent me a long email telling me to work it out and chastising me for giving up.
To OP – I actually think your response was perfect. You don’t know the circumstances of the divorce. Maybe he’s an asshole, and congratulations is the right sentiment. Maybe he up and left her with no word, and I’m so sorry would be the right sentiment. No matter what the circumstances, though, I wish you the best for the future is always a welcome sentiment.
pugsnbourbon
My eyes got SO big when I read that sentence about your vendor. Holy moly, if there’s ever a time for a 1-star review…
Anon
That is terrible. I’m so sorry you went though that!
Jules
This response was fine! When I told people my ex and I had split (after more than 25 years), I got some ver emotional reactions from some people who didn’t see how this could happen and maybe felt shaken up for themselves and their own relationships, and different reactions from those who knew us better. (When my dad told my stepmother I had moved out, she said, “what took her so long?”)
But the weirdest was when I ran into a friend (male, about my age, happily married but who my ex always said had a little thing for me) outside the apartment I was living in after moving out. When I told him why I was there, he burst out laughing. I think he just didn’t know how to react, but it was weird. You were not weird.
Anonymous
If it makes you feel better, I had not one but TWO people tell me to “enjoy my vacation” after I was put on a month or so of medical leave following a brain hemorrhage. I think that was more of a testament to how miserable our jobs were. Or maybe they didn’t realize it was life-threatening? But most likely it’s s just one of those awkward moments of catching someone off guard with news. I didn’t hold it against either person negatively. I actually thought it was kind of funny and my husband and I would make jokes about being ready for my pina colada. ( And I DID enjoy finally having some time off, even if I wouldn’t have wanted it under those circumstances.)
Maudie Atkinson
When I told one of the partners in my office I was getting divorced, he started weeping and said something to the effect of, “A lot of other lawyers at this firm have sat in that chair,” across from his desk, “and told [him] the same thing.” He was and is not divorced. I was tempted to suggest there was perhaps something wrong with the firm if there was such an epidemic of divorce, but mostly I ended up comforting him. It was the strangest response I got.
What you said actually a lovely sentiment, and I guarantee it’s not remotely the weirdest thing your friendly acquaintance has heard when sharing this news.
Anonymous
I started dating a guy 2 months ago. When things got physical we became the only people in each other’s bubbles, so in that sense it’s exclusive. I’m so much happier with this in my life (both general human companionship and the potential of a relationship with someone I really like).
When with him I feel great, he’s warm/present/caring. But when I’m alone I worry a bit, because now I’ve become emotionally invested. I want to know whether he sees longterm potential but am scared to ask because I don’t want to lose the only bright spot in my Covid life by getting the “wrong” answer.
Stepping outside myself, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to be unsure about longterm dating after knowing someone 2 months, only being able to see/interact with them in limited ways and limited times due to the pandemic. Yet, if he told me he wasn’t sure yet…I don’t know how I’d react, if I’d still have the same level of happiness when I see him and not feel insecure and sad. So maybe I should wait to ask so I can keep enjoying our time together…after all, I wouldn’t be trying to meet someone else right now by going on dates outside in the freezing winter with spiking Covid cases, so I’m not even sure I’d be “wasting time” as I’d ordinarily think of it.
But he once mentioned a past multi-year relationship between casual and exclusive, and I definitely don’t want that (not that I think I’m in that ballpark now). But I think that history makes me insecure, despite that he also had a decently long marriage a while back.
Would appreciate thoughts. It would obviously be a relief if I asked and we were on the same page, but a huge source of misery/pandora’s box if not. I don’t even know what words to use. I guess I’m not sure if this is a me problem and I need to chill or if this is an appropriate concern about that deserves a conversation now.
Anonymous
Reasonable conversation to have. And if he makes you feel weird about asking/wanting to discuss – that’s not a great sign for his potential as a long term partner.
you’ve framed this as a lot about if he will stay with you; it’s just as much about if you want to stay with him.
Anonymous
Thanks. I don’t think he would say/do anything to make me feel weird about asking, I think it’s just that if he says he’s not sure yet, I’d be upset (even though again, stepping outside of myself I don’t think it’s the end of the world if someone needs more time to know than 2 months under such weird conditions).
Anon
So I’ve been with my boyfriend a bit over a year and love him very much and hope we’re together forever. After 2 months of dating we were exclusive, or even 3 months when we were “officially BF/GF”, I could not have told you with any certainty that I saw a future with him. I had had a number of promising 6ish month involvements in the years prior and had grown skittish about thinking too long term that early on, and I was also previously married, so 2 months seems like a drop in the bucket in relationship time. A question like that at 2 months from him would have totally scared me off because it was too early for me, even though I liked him and there was definitely potential there. I think if you are enjoying your time with him, give this more time. And spend some more time figuring out if YOU want a future with this particular person.
Anonymous
Thank you. I know it is different in every case, but is there a time frame when you would’ve found the conversation reasonable?
I have a tendency to make up my mind pretty soon in relationships but I think you’re right that I should still be considering that carefully, too.
Anon
In my case, around 5 months I was pretty sure in my head but I was still kind of skittish until around 7. Now at 13ish months, we’re living together and just waiting for signs that the pandemic is ending so we can get married with extended family present. Part of this had to do with what happened in our lives during that time — I really needed to see how BF handled bad events in our lives and disagreements before feeling really confident in the relationship. Relationships are a lot easier when everything is going well for everyone!
Anon
I think 2 months is too soon to ask about long term potential. I would wait until 5 months so that you don’t scare him off or make him feel like you are putting too much pressure on him. Definitely try to just enjoy the time together and have fun! It seems too early to ask for more. Good luck!
Anonymous
Thanks, I appreciate the perspective a lot. I was asking the question at least partially to make sure I wasn’t doing something dumb/just being scared and avoiding risk by waiting.
Anon
Hopefully he will drop some clues as your time together progresses to give you an idea of what he is thinking. Like if he talks about future plans, introduces you to his family (I guess maybe over Zoom??) and generally makes you a part of his life. I know it can be so hard in the early time of a relationship not wanting to get your hopes up. Wishing you the best!!
Anonymous
Thanks. We did Zoom with his family on Thanksgiving and we’ve talked about stuff we’d like to do after the pandemic…so I do think the observable signs are promising, I just get antsy! But I’ll try to control that…
Anonymous
I think you should wait, for two reasons. First, two months is early and it is especially early when you and he really aren’t faced with normal circumstances with the usual smorgasboard of choices. Second, you are enjoying the time and don’t want to end the relationship even if it won’t be long-term so why create a potential problem unnecessarily. That said, it sounds like it is going well and he quickly agreed to be your pod, so try to relax and enjoy it. You never know- he may just offer up the information you are looking for if you wait a bit.
Anonymous
Thank you, I think this will be my strategy! Though trying to relax is easier said than done sometimes…
Senior Attorney
Right? I think part of it is just the nature of new relationships! Good luck, OP!
Law Skoool
Does anyone have any suggestions for jobs for recent law grads (besides clerkships) that require only a JD? Looking for opportunities (preferably w/ the government) on the east coast. the higher the salary, the better!
Anonymous
Government jobs are highly competitive (typically thousands of applications where I am) and at the entry levels not great pay. If you want to make big law money you gotta sell your soul.
Anon
Many city agencies in NYC hire new grads with JDs who are not yet admitted — the jobs are usually labeled “Agency Attorney Interne” (yes, with an e at the end), and the expectation is that the person gets promoted to “Agency Attorney” after admission. I don’t think they allow people to stay too long without passing the bar/getting admitted, and they are not permanent “JD only” positions. Starting salaries are in the 50s, give or take, depending on the agency. In my experiences most people make in the 80s-90s after about 5-7 years of practice in this field.
An acquaintance who failed the bar multiple times works in electronic discovery at a major law firm. Not sure exactly what their job entails, but they landed there because they did this work during law school and were able to turn it into a full time gig after graduating. They’ve been doing this for a few years now and it’s reasonably lucrative, though probably not as lucrative as being a licensed attorney at the same firm would be.
Lilau
+1
Many of my classmates went to corporation council and ACS after law school. They ended up with great experience, most went to private practice (but not big law) eventually.
Anonymous
Do you mean without bar membership? Public policy is an option, although working with nonprofits wouldn’t likely meet your salary expectations
Anonymous
Look into presidential management fellowships! Wish I had done this right after law school.
Anon in HR
Look at large companies to do compliance work. In the corporate would there are all kinds of “compliance” – HR, Safety (think OSHA), SEC filings, even real estate, and since the pandemic there’s a lot of interpreting CDC and state guidelines. I work for a Fortune 50 company doing HR Compliance – I have a JD and a law license. My position was posted as “JD Preferred.” I love my job and I make more money that most of my law school classmates who didn’t go into big law. Good luck!
Anon
Contract management or compliance. If you want a higher salary, pass the bar; however, I think it would be hard to get a well-paid law firm job if you have not already been a summer.
Anon
The pre-trial investigation side of federal probation. Those probation officers research and write pre-sentence reports. They serve in almost a clerk-like function to the judges. This is different from the supervision side of probation which is more what you typically think of when you think probation officer.
The investigation side gives hiring preference to people with JDs though they are not required. They also give preference to prior law enforcement/military experience. I’m not sure which they value more. Lastly, there are niche roles there too. Like if you have an undergrad in finance they might assign you to financial cases because you will understand the accounting reports.
My husband is a federal PO, no JD and he started on the investigations side. He had a background in disability insurance, tax and local PD before that. They appreciated that he’d understand a lot of the medical lingo for pre-sentence reports that involved people with serious medical conditions and that they could also use him for the financial crimes side.
He started around $80k and is now making just under $100k. Will probably cross the threshold within a year.
You do have to go to an academy but it is much more classroom work than physical work. You will have to pass firearms and unarmed self defense but you don’t have to do group runs and pushups and the type of stuff you’d see in a traditional police or military academy.
You are an employee of the federal court too. Judiciary is great with their budget and more protected from shut downs.
InHouse Anon
My company (F100) hires JD-only grads for contracts negotiation and procurement positions. Pay would likely be in the mid to high five figures.
Anon
Vendor reps for the companies selling legal research platforms. The Fastcase (based in DC) reps always look happy. I am not affiliated with the company.
Getting on a product manager track with one of those companies would put you on track to earn over $100K.
mascara
I’m blonde with sparse, pale eyelashes. I’m low maintenance and wear almost no makeup, but when I want to look good I wear mascara. I have two consistent problems though:
1) annoying clumps when I apply, especially on my almost nonexistent lower lashes
2) it ends up visibly under my eyes after a while. I don’t rub my eyes and I’m not aware of sweating, but like, after gardening, mascara is somehow alllll under my eyes looking awful.
I’ve tried at least three brands (drugstore + cheap sephora) and the problems seem the same each time.
I don’t have high expectations or expect amazing lashes–I just want them to look darker and better defined. Sure, longer or thicker would be a plus, but not if the tradeoff is clumpiness or running under my eyes. Would super appreciate recommendations. Ideally something not terribly expensive and cruelty free.
PS I’ve thought about lash serum instead but I have blue eyes and I’m concerned about eye color changing (also it seems annoying to have to apply every day forever). But I’d consider if someone recommends it…
anon
I switched to waterproof mascaras – in my experience, they apply a bit less product, clump less and don’t smear. I prefer Lancome (any of their waterproof formulas) and tried recently YSL and it was good as well. Just remember you will need a dedicated eye makeup removing product (esp the YSL one needs a bit oilier makeup remover).
Anonymous
Thanks. I’ve never tried waterproof (or even used a special eye makeup remover) but if that’s the secret to not smearing, then maybe that’s what I need going forward.
Anonymous
What mascaras have you tried? Have you used waterproof formulas?
Anonymous
I don’t even remember what I’ve tried, I think Cover Girl and Clinique are two, and a Laura Mercier sample! I have not tried waterproof so I’ll look into those!
Editor
I’ve used Latisse off and on for years. You don’t use it forever, just for a certain number of weeks, then a couple of days a week for maintenance.
Reports of eye color change were in SOME glaucoma patients using it in therapeutic doses (not the same as cosmetic) who had a CERTAIN eye color to begin with. I also have blue eyes and had no color change. But the main thing is, it’s NOT the therapeutic dose used in glaucoma treatment. (I just looked it up: it’s 12 times the amount used in Latisse.) (I also just looked THIS up: the eye color change requires the presence of melanin, and blue eyes don’t have any. So it was a tiny percentage of hazel-eyed glaucoma patients who experienced this change.) I would imagine if one had glaucoma that an eye-color change would be the least of your worries.
Anyway, I loved it. I’ve also bought lash enhancers which cost almost as much as Latisse, to use on my brows, and they were mostly “meh.” So I won’t say “go for it”, but you can do your own research and find the same results.
Oh — and I have found increased undereye smudging these days; it’s from masks rubbing against my eyes. I just carry Q-tips with me.
Anonymous
Thanks for the Latisse info…that makes me feel better about exploring it.
Anonymous
Also blonde and blue eyed and have used Revitalash and the R&F product (which sadly works well, but I just can’t with the MLM part of it) and my lashes are awesome now, but my eyes are still blue.
Anon in Dallas
I couldn’t stomach paying for Latisse so I order Careprost from AllDayChemist. It’s cheap and it works the exact same way
Anonymous
Blue eyed former Latisse user here (I got tired of eyelashes hitting my glasses and just sort of stopped using over time). Just an FYI that CVS Minute Clinic will write a prescription and was super convenient. (Although now with COVID, maybe a derm’s office is the better place to be anyway.)
Now I just use Thrive mascara. It is waterproof and doesn’t budge but super easy to remove. I also like tube mascaras (though I found the removal kind of messy).
busybee
I had the same problems for years. I switched to Chanel mascara and haven’t had a problem. I feel far too bougie saying that, but it’s the only brand that worked for me. I am also blonde with blue eyes and sparse lashes.
Anonymous
Thanks! Is this true even of the non-waterproof kind for you?
busybee
Yep! The specific kind I use is called Inimitable Intense and it is not waterproof. It comes in brown and black.
Panda Bear
As others have said, waterproof mascaras will help with the smudging and smearing. I also find that a tubing mascara does the trick. I use a maybelline tubing one in a red and white tube – half the tube is primer, the other half is mascara. And to manage clumping, I wipe the wand off on a tissue before applying. It feels wasteful, but it is the only that seems to help. The amount of mascara that comes out on the wand right from the tube is just waaayyy too much for me.
Curious
+1. Tubing mascara is awesome. Wardrobe Oxygen has a recent review of 10 with a clear favorite.
nom
Yes, this! I also have super blond eyelashes, and get lots of smudging & tiny flakes by the end of the day with regular mascara. But tubing mascara fixes the problem. The trade-off is that it’s slightly more annoying to remove, but for me it’s worth it.
I like L’oreal Paris Double Extend Beauty Tubes Mascara, which is also a red & white tube. Cheap and amazing. I’ve also tried the tubing mascara from Thrive Causemetics but IMO the L’oreal is easier to use and its primer is better for building volume.
Also, if I’m having trouble with clumping, I’ve found use a separate, clean mascara applicator brush to separate my lashes. I just re-use a disposable one (and periodically clean is with makeup remover + rubbing alcohol to sanitize). If you try to do the same thing with the same mascara wand you’re using to apply, instead of separating it adds another layer of product and just makes the clumping worse.
Anon
This isn’t what you asked, but you sound like a good candidate for tinting. (I love tinting; it makes my lashes look exactly the way I want for weeks.)
But if mascara, then tubular.
Anonymous
Thanks, I am pretty ignorant of all things makeuppy so wouldn’t have known of this but will check it out…
Go for it
I’m team L’Oréal telescopic in gold tube.
Also bougie favorite is Dior.
stopped lower lashes except for big events. I do not use waterproof as it’s been to difficult to remove.
Cat
I would try a “tubing” style mascara.
I’ve tried several brands of waterproof mascara because I’m vain at the beach, but failed – each one would irritate my eyes. (Eyes are fine at the beach otherwise, so it’s definitely the waterproofing ingredients.)
Anon
Maybelline waterproof mascara gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of good mascara and not super expensive. They have a version for any kind of need. You will need to remove with a makeup remover, gentle oil and cotton ball, or vaseline.
As far as clumping, a simple solution: comb your eyelashes before and after application. For lower lash, apply with a barrier of some sort between skin and lash, a credit card or flash card works
NY CPA
If you have oily skin, the mascara may be smearing on your lower lashes because of that. Waterproof likely won’t help you there unfortunately, because it’s oil soluble. I just don’t do my lower lashes because they always look clumpy, and because of the oil issue.
Anonymous
Aha, I do (though less so the older I get), so that seems like a likely culprit. Thanks.
Anon
The mascara under the eyes, that can be solved with tube type mascara. You can also cut down on your eye cream during the day or keep it further from your lashes, because that’s usually what’s causing mascara to run.
I also personally find tube type mascaras less clumpy, but the big things are – 1) wipe the wand thoroughly on the rim of the tube before you apply, and 2) use a new tube every three months. That will help a lot.
As far as latisse, I did it. I’m not doing it now. I have blue eyes and no issues with iris color change (and that is really rare, so not expected). What I did have was pink eyelids the entire time. I covered them with eyeshadow but it was pretty unattractive when not covered up. They didn’t itch or burn or hurt or anything. They were just discolored. I did absolutely 100% love my lashes – they were almost too long – but for me in the long run it wasn’t worth it. This is a really common side effect.
If you do go the latisse route, just know that the lashes you have will grow longer, but you wont grow new eyelashes exactly, so they won’t be thicker. I still needed mascara. And when you stop Latisse, there is a period where they sort of all shed at once so you have fewer lashes than normal for a while. The effects of Latisse definitely only happen while you’re actively using it.
Savannah
Revelon double extend, and use it only on upper lashes.
MissK
I’d suggest a lash comb for the slumping problem. It removes access product and aligns the lashes, I use it no matter the brand of mascara I’m on.
For lower eyelid definition – how about a several shade darker than nude eyeliner?
Anonymous
How do you deal with mismatched libidos, particularly when TTC? DH would be happy with once a week or less. I would prefer daily, time permitting. We’ve had a lot of discussions about this over time and things have improved a bit, though I accept that it will never be at the level I would prefer.
We just started TTC. The doctor told me to LGP every other day; DH couldnt go to the appointment because of COVID precautions, but I told him what the dr said. This cycle, we only LGPed once during my fertile window – the day I got a positive ovulation test. I tried to initiate in the ~5 days before and after the test, but no dice. Well I just got my period. I know there’s no guarantee it would’ve worked, but I’m feeling frustrated with DH. This is such a sensitive subject, and at my age TTC might be a long row to hoe, I don’t want to pressure him. I’m so sad to feel this way, I imagine this being a fun sexy time where we would feel even more connected but instead I feel very alone. Has anyone else been through this?
Anonymous
My point of you is that you always have to default to the person with the lower libido. Otherwise you are pressuring someone to have sex they do not want to have, which is never never OK, including in a marriage. The problem though is that sometimes you will end up with mismatches. As you are seeing, it can be really hard and frustrating on both sides. You are going to need to decide if you can stay in this marriage having sex once a week. That’s the “price of admission” as so many here like to say. Cajoling, pressuring, or guilting your husband wouldn’t be ok and wouldn’t even work. You literally cannot magic someone into wanting more sex.
Anonymous
I think this is nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with first trying “Jason, we need to talk. We’ve discussed this a bunch, but we both want a baby. We aren’t going to make one if we only get together once during my fertile window. Do you understand that?” Before jumping to divorcing him.
Anonymous
So you think talking down to your husband and dictating the terms is a good way to resolve this? I guess we both think the other person is full of “nonsense.”
Anon
I hear Anonymous at 9:44 am’s point for normal life, I don’t know if I 100% agree, but something that could be up for a debate with probably no right or wrong answer for sure.
However, with the making-a-baby aspect of this particular scenario that changes this and I do not agree with this sentiment. Assuming this guy wants to be a dad, depending on his age etc. it could be difficult to get someone pregnant with once a week or less sex, and he needs to face that biological reality. He either wants to be a dad, or he wants to have not a lot of sex. He can’t have it both ways unless they get lucky.
Anonymous
This.
anon
Yep. Also tons of couples TTC go through feeling like gardening is a bit of a chore. The reality of biology means if you want to have a baby gardening tends to be less spontaneous and feels more like a to do for a bit. It’s normal. Lots of people go through this and return to a normal gardening life after. Speaking from experience.
Anon
I disagree that this is a basic compatibility issue; it changes so much over time for so many people. How are his testosterone levels? Upper end of “normal range” is light years away from lower end of “normal range” for a lot of guys.
OP
I mean, libido fluctuations are a price of admission in any long term sexual relationship. I’m sure at some point my drive will dip and he’ll be the primary initiator. Things change over a lifetime together. I think the core is communicating and being respectful of each other.
AnonATL
My husband and I are not every day people, so that advice has always seemed unreasonable to me. I know some people think that’s a less stressful way to conceive but it is more pressure for us. Having a couple of targeted days was way better
We used ovulation kits and it took a few months, but I have a 5 month old now.
TTC is generally stressful no matter what. I think you should have a frank conversation with your partner that you don’t have to try every single day, but you need him to buckle down around the few days leading up to ovulation. It’s not fun especially after a few months of trying.
Good luck and baby wishes to you!
Anonymous
Agreed. Accept that it’s not going to be fun. But if he wants a baby he’s gotta do it. Literally.
Anon
The recommendation is every other day, not every day. And really only for like 10 days between when your period stops and when you can confirm you’ve ovulated.
Anon
You need to talk to your doctor about another strategy. I haven’t been in this position yet, but I heard from my friend who just had her baby that she was advised just to have sex in the 2 to 3 days around the ovulation window, not every other day. You are setting yourself up to fail if you expect it to happen every day and if you were bugging your husband for five days in a row. That’s the turbo-charged fast track to marital issues. Did you even talk to him to see if he had any ideas or preferences about how best to go about this?
Anon
And to note, I’m sorry for the frustration you are experiencing, but I just think you need to come out this a different way. The current way won’t work. Maybe you could try for less often but in the fertile window and revisit in a few months if you still have not conceived and see if DH would consent to stepping things up then?
Anonymous
Every other day is standard advice and works very well for most couples.
Anonymous
But it’s not working for OP’s husband. They will have to figure out a new plan. Rigidity –> resentment.
Anonymous
It’s not a rigid prescription – it’s a rough guideline that works.
OP is right that gardening once during her fertile period could get her pregnant but isn’t very likely too.
Anon
Resentment goes both ways though. Trying to get pregnant is a huge emotional thing, and I think the women’s right to resentment over it continuously not working because her husband doesn’t seem to be willing to do the basic task with the right timing to get it done is something to consider here for sure.
Anonymous
I could see OP getting resentful after months, but she just they JUST started TTC. Now is the time to focus on a strategy that could work for both of them. It’s not like they’re 2 years in with no results.
Doodles
+1. This is standard. You don’t need a doctor’s permission to do it more or less often… the doctor doesn’t care. You’re the one trying for a baby. If you’re not pregnant after 6 months or a year (depending on age), then the doctor will obviously ask how you’ve been trying. And will probably again tell you to do it every other day for a few months before moving on to treatment options.
Anon
It seems unscientific though? It’s not that hard to pinpoint the ovulation window.
Anon
If you have an extremely irregular cycle like I do it was that hard, and every other day worked for us. But I didn’t go down the path of buying ovulation kits or anything, and maybe there are better ones now than would have been available then.
Anonymous
It’s not unscientific. It’s been shown to work and studied. Ovulation kits are not as effective/reliable for every woman as manufacturers would have us believe. Sperm can remain there for 72 hours so waiting for the day of ovulation misses an opportunity to have sperm there and waiting. Aiming for every other day means that life can happen and you can miss a day here or there but still have a decent shot at getting pregnant.
Every day doesn’t work as well because it lowers sperm count per emission.
Anonymous
Careful how hard you push. Too much pressure and men aren’t able to perform at all. Ask me how I know.
Anon
+1, this happened to me. We eventually were able to conceive but it was stressful (his issue was not low libido, just the pressure to perform). Not to to worry you, but have you thought about trying IUIs if traditional TTC is not working for you? A friend of mine ended up doing this because her husband had really low drive. It ended up working and she got pregnant the third month. It sounds crazy but I thought I’d throw it out there as a last resort.
face palm....
Actually, it doesn’t seem crazy to bring this up. It might really make your husband stop and think.
Anon
Yes, this. I’m not even TTC and my husband is easily satisfied with a handful of times a year while I’m an everyday-er. Attempts to make it happen more have resulted in an inability to perform in the moment and it has been quite the disaster.
Anon
Can we get a separate TTC board? TTC is apparently the new IF around here.
Anonymous
What you’re looking for it the ‘collapse replies’ button at the top of this post.
Anon
Go away.
Vicky Austin
What? I haven’t seen a TTC question in ages.
Anon
the new fleece tights
OP
Sorry no there’s nothing new about these posts here. I’ve been reading other folks’ TTC posts for more than 10 years on this blog – before there was a collapse button! – y’all can read (or collapse!) one of mine :) <3
Anonymous
How serious is he about TTC? When you are TTC, it’s a job, not a recreational activity. Not that you should pressure him, but he needs to understand that if he wants a baby they don’t just get dropped down the chimney by the stork.
Outside of TTC, I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to pressure anyone else to do something they’re not into, even if that pressure is just subtle guilt-tripping (e.g., you aren’t meeting my needs). Does he have the physical and mental space he needs, and are you connecting in other ways? If you are both WFH and are in each other’s presence 24/7, some alone time may actually help him.
Beta Mom
You’re definitely not the only person who feels lonely when T2C; even on different sets of facts, T2C can be very isolating — not something you can always share the details of with family or friends, and a situation where you and your partner may have very different stressors and baggage. Ultimately, you need to talk to your husband. Ideally once the ovulation window has passed and you aren’t under time pressure. Explain your feelings, ask how he feels, proceed from there.
As a data point, my relationship is the opposite. I would be happy to do it basically never, and my husband would like it every other day. That said, when we were T2C (which took seven miserable months during which it seemed like all my friends and cousins and colleagues got pregnant), I was assertive about being regular ahead of ovulation (you’re a lot more likely to get pregnant if the sperm is in you before the egg drops, but not more than a few days beforehand). So I would monitor cervical fluid and basal body temp daily, on top of the ovulation tests during the middle of the month. When I was approaching ovulation (starting 4 or 5 days before the likely date), I would try to get my husband to perform every 36-48 hours, through the day after ovulation; if it didn’t work at night, then we did it the next morning, or at least tried to. It wasn’t at all fun (much less se xy) for either of us, but he came to understand the importance to me — not automatically from Day 1, but as time went by, and I took the effort to really explain to him the importance of timing around conception, and as he saw how much the process upset me. FYI, pregnancy can also be very stressful and isolating, as can the prospect of becoming a parent, so it’s a good idea to start normalizing these kinds of awkward, feelings-based conversations if they don’t come naturally to you guys.
Anonymous
DH and I used EOD and got pregnant quickly both times. We are weekly people after three kids but were up to three times a day early on. Basically, libidos/time available can ebb and flow but you both need to be committing to having fun with a higher frequency if you want to increase your chances. Don’t stress about EXACTLY every other day – like Tuesday night and Friday morning is basically every other day. Does putting it as ‘about 3 times a week’ seem more realistic to him?
Maybe try to look at the fun side of it? Change up location/time of day. Once you have kids, you can’t really easily garden on Saturday morning in the living room or in the shower after work on a weekday. Have him pick out a few cute new gardening outfits/clothes for you to wear and you can surprise him.
Not sure if it made a difference but I also stayed on my back with a pillow under my hips for 20 minutes after each session.
HTH and that you and DH find a way to have fun with it that works for your relationship!
Anon
Are you seeing a fertility doctor? If not, I highly recommend that. They can help you figure out timing and also give you a trigger shot the day that you want to try and that may help make it happen. A trigger shot plus clomid was what helped in my situation. Good luck!!
Anon
No time to read all the replies but having LGPs just to make a baby is the absolute worst feeling. I get that you want it to be sweet connected time. I think it can be if you are doing it just for a few months. If you have infertility issues and you are doing it for years though it is unsustainable. It was killing our sex life and our marriage.
We are pretty matched at about once per week and trying to “do it” multiple times per week when neither of us felt like it was the worst.
I don’t know how the ladies of years past would just sit back and think of England.
From reading the TTC forums back then, some people with this issue would have their partner solo garden into a soft cup and then they would insert it. For the days he doesn’t want to LGP, would that work?
AnonMPH
My libido is much lower than it was earlier in my relationship. I’m always happy if we do it, but I don’t find myself just spontaneously craving it and I especially find it difficult to mentally switch from “not turned on” to “turned on”. My husband can deal, but if I wanted to get it on every day he’d be right there with me. But now that we are TTC, if it’s during the fertile week, I know the exact dates, I have a plan, we schedule a time if we know the day is going to be busy. We shoot for every other day starting about 5 days out from my normal ovulation, and once I get a positive ovulation test we try to do it every day until I can confirm ovulation through a temperature shift, probably works out to about 5 times total for TTC in a normal month. I just-psych myself up, watch or read something sexy, and then make sure it happens. And honestly, the s*x is great, and I appreciate that we’re having more of it. So I think it’s about talking to your husband about a strategy for next month, ahead of time, and giving him mental space to get ready each day its going to happen.
On the other hand, there’s no evidence that having s*x more than once during your fertile week gives you better odds than just doing it on the day of your positive ovulation test. So maybe find some sort of balance. The every other day rec from your doctor is supposed to make it easier in terms of tracking/confirming ovulation. You don’t have to worry about knowing exactly when you are fertile if you are doing it every other day all month. But if you track (and I suggest adding in temping with a TempDrop to get more precise information) then you can figure out which period is your fertile period and just do every other day for that period. There’s absolutely no reason you have to do every other day for the entire month, unless you are really struggling to figure out when you are ovulating, so I don’t think you should push your husband to achieve that.
Anonymous
This. Your doctor is just trying to take away the tracking burden from you, but since your DH has less drive, talk to him and see if you can both commit to tracking instead.
Anon
My husband takes medication that lowers his libido and causes performance problems, so the three years we spent TTC were so, so lonely and difficult. I didn’t want to feel like I was pressuring him but every month before ovulation I felt like I was ‘nagging’ him, and whenever he said no or couldn’t perform I felt so rejected but also angry – I was in my late 30s and every month that he didn’t even want to try pushed me further and further away from being able to conceive naturally. The resentment I felt every month when I got my period was all consuming, but I didn’t feel like I could talk to him about it because it’s not like he chose the medical issues / medication that presented challenges to him.
Eventually we went to an RE once I was in my 40s and conception would have been unlikely even if we had been more actively trying. We had a baby via IVF and love her to death … but even now, several years removed from those long and lonely years I can acutely remember how difficult it was to have your hopes raised and dashed like clockwork, every 28 days.
Anonymous
We had the same issue when we first started TTC, but it turned out he had basically no knowledge of anything fertility related. We resolved our fight when I found some powerpoint presentation about how TTC works (ovulating timing, ovulation kits, etc.) with all kinds of data in it (I think someone on Reddit’s TryingForABabyForum shared it). We sat through, we went through it together, and then we made a joint plan about how we could use the scientific data/tools we had available to us to maximize our chances of having a baby without the EOD plan.
We ended up using ovulation strips (I bought a box on Amazon for like 15-20) and I also charted my temperature in an app. My cycle was regular so I knew when to start using them. For the 5 days prior to and 5 days following expected ovulation, we aimed for every 2-3 days. We usually ended up with 4x/month. We got pregnant within 3 months. Timing is way more important than frequency!
OP
This is great, do you have a link for that presentation? I definitely want this to be his idea too!
Curious
No link, but the charts in Taking Charge of Your Fertility helped us :)
OP
Thank you!
Senior Attorney
Generally, on the topic of mismatched libidos, the writings of the late and unfortunately-named Dr. David Schnarch are about 20 years old but still good, I think. Try Passionate Marriage for starters. His thesis is that “low desire partner” and “high desire partner” are states that exist in every marriage and need to be dealt with openly.
Anon
I had a coworker who was quite open about all of this and her situation was similar to yours – her husband’s libido didn’t match up with what was required for babymaking. They ended up getting IUI – so he provided some swimmers in a cup and she had them inserted in the doctor’s office. I think she got both of her kids this way. Something to consider.
Anonymous
I don’t understand how a guy who doesn’t want to do it with his wife would be OK with providing swimmers in a cup.
Anonymous
a lot of guys spend too much time jacking to p0rn and find it easier to use a cup than be intimate with their wife.
Anon
It doesn’t even have to do with p0rn.
I’m sure you realize there is a difference between the efforts involved in solo gardening and gardening together. The two aren’t comparable. I can get it done with a gardening tool in under 2 minutes. It takes a lot longer to get there when engaging with a partner.
Anonymous
If guys actually preferred DIY to the real thing, there would be far fewer problems in relationships and society.
Anon
Hitting your ovulation window can be so tricky, especially if your cycle is irregular. Mine was so inconsistent in 2020 due to stress that even when we TTC during what I thought was my window, we were not having any luck, so maybe I was missing it. What I did that really narrowed things down was buy an ovulation kit off amazon with strips that you pee on to show when you have the hormone in your urine spiking that indicates you will be ovulating in the next 36 hours. DH does not have huge drive either, but this shorter window with the best possible chance for success seemed to take the pressure off. I wish you so much luck and gently remind you to be kind to yourself and your husband. TTC can be stressful, especially when you are feeling under pressure.
Not sure what testing you are already doing, so this may not be helpful, but just in case, below I will link the strips I used. I also also downloaded the premom app, which allowed me take take pictures of the strip (took the guess work out for me) and it would tell me if I was at “peak” and charted my levels. Whether it was due to this strategy or just good luck/timing, I do not know, but I was pregnant within 2 months of using this tracking and TTC within the 36-hour window.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYDNC0M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Anonymous
I had a similar concern when my husband and I were trying. Not as mismatched, but both closer to once a week or less. I ended up tracking my dates via a free menstruation app, to know when the best window was, and then reminding my husband a few days or a week in advance. We kind of bunched all the sex up each month and then took a breather. I don’t know if that will work for you, my husband wasn’t thrilled about the schedule, but he never reported feeling pressured to me, haha.
I also reiterate, like other posters, that every other day should be fine, and my personal feeling was that it was better to take time off if there was a lot of bad sh*t going on (there was a month with some very bad news with very bad timing) than push it from “mostly enjoyable” to “completely obligatory”. It took us an average amount of time, given my age, per my doctor.
Anonymous
Does he really want a baby?
Anon
This is a very good question, and I say this as someone who “mostly” wanted a baby and is the much lower libido spouse. I didn’t mess around with TTC because that wasn’t fair to my husband.
Raindrop
Hi OP, I hope my reply isn’t too late. I have been in exactly your shoes; I went of birth control in August in order for us to TTC. I am seven weeks pregnant now. So, some technical tools first: I strongly suggest temping along with using OPKs, so that you can be really confident about your most fertile window. Specifically, I recommend getting a tempdrop; it’s an armband device that records your basal body temp while you sleep. Plenty of info online but it WORKS and it helped me know when the best times were to pester my partner. Using that plus OPKs will help you target the best window so that you are maximizing your chances and not wasting “pestering” on days that won’t be helpful.
I also strongly recommend joining the ttc30 subreddit (if you are over the age of 30). The TryingForABaby subreddit is not as good but will do the trick if needed. What I learned on those subreddits is that . . . you and I are not alone in this! Lots of commiseration and advice.
Interpersonally in your relationship, I’ll operate from the assumption that he truly wants to TTC as well. I don’t think this type of issue has to indicate that he doesn’t want to. I know how hard it is to feel like you’re pressuring your partner, which isn’t fun, and also being let down. I suggest talking about it at a time well-divorced from a “trying” period; like, talk about it during your non-fertile week, and see if you can come up with a game plan for getting a couple more tries in during the fertile week. Also, it helped for me to NOT tell my partner when it was fertile week. It was better he was in the dark about it.
This is a subject I’m passionate about because I have been through a LOT of trials and tribulations here. If you want to talk offline, post a burner email. Wishing you tons of luck!
Anonymous
Vegan leather is…just pleather, right? Did we decide “vegan leather” sounds better? ?
anonshmanon
Absolutely.
Anon
You can charge more that way and ppl get to feel good :)
Great branding, imho
Betsy
And pleather is just plastic, so it’s applying “ethical” branding to something that is pretty bad for the environment! I would much rather buy real leather (or even, frankly, fur that comes from animals raised for meat) than man-made materials like that.
nona
+1 – vegan leather is plastic. Made from petroleum. It’s not actually better for the environment. Give me real leather any day.
Anon
In the same vein, isn’t a lot of the ‘velvet’ that we’re seeing today (e.g. stretch velvet sweatpants from Anthro) actually ‘velour’? It seems brands are just using ‘velvet’ because of the negative (class?) connotations of velour.
Anon
YES. This drives me nuts. As a child of the 70s-80, I know the difference, and am really really disappointed to receive velour when I order velvet.
Anonymous
Some vegan leathers are made from different materials than plastic, e.g. apples or other fruits or plant materials.
Anonymous
My much-beloved roommate is moving out here in a few weeks. On the one hand, sad. On the other hand, I FINALLY WILL HAVE AN OFFICE AT HOME YESSSSS!!!!! I’m looking to pick up a few pieces to make it feel more put together and am on the hunt for wall hangings – quotes, prints, etc. Can anyone recommend a shop or etsy seller they particularly love? I love all things books, plants, and empowering women.
Anon
I like obvious state! They have a website, not on etsy.
Anon
I’ve found some great illustrators on Instagram who have online stores. I’ve bought a couple of prints by Anisa Makhoul.
Anon
Society6
Anonymous
I just bought a print from Society 6 and was seriously disappointed. The quality of the print is low, and the “wood” frame is metal with wood-grain contact paper and the “glass” is thin flexible plastic that doesn’t fit into the frame right. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Anonymous
I’m in an invite only membership group and we’re trying to rethink our membership process with inclusion/diversity in mind. Can anyone point me to some good reading on it? What good changes have you seen in similar groups?
Anonymous
I think we need a few more details What kind of group is this? Civic, professional, social? What are the general barriers to membership? Can people self-solicit membership? If people need to be sponsored for membership and don’t otherwise know a lot of members, will you provide them with a sponsor if they ask?
Anonymous
Do old-fashioned childhoods still exist? Are there still neighborhoods/families where the kids go out the front door after breakfast in the summer and don’t return until dinner and the parents don’t really know where they are or what they’re doing? I’m feeling a little nostalgic after seeing a photo of my grandfather in the 1920s after he came in from a day of playing outside, age 4 or so, absolutely covered in dirt and with a pistol in his hand (I assume it was shooting BBs, but who knows)? That got me reminiscing about my own childhood and experiences that my parents told me about, including endless summer days where almost no time was spent with adults and the kids rode fast on their bikes, played with hammers and nails, rode ponies bareback (without asking anyone for permission, including the owners), and made up their own games/adventures. We were a little more supervised in my childhood, but we played on dangerous spinning metal playground equipment and in the creek and among animals and we climbed trees and it was glorious. Even though there were issues in those days (not the least of which is bullying), I can’t help thinking that there were so many benefits for child development to have that independence, to take those risks, to form the social bonds with peers – rather than having a 12-year-old stay home on the iPad until it’s time to go to a heavily supervised soccer practice and then have Mom order from the waiter for him and then cut his steak into bite-size pieces. Does this idyllic-sounding old-fashioned childhood still exist or is it fully, completely gone by now? I am trying to decide if I can picture kids in my future but it just looks so all-consuming now.
Anonymous
Sure. Loads of inner city children do this. We call it neglect.
Anon
There is always someone who comes in for the negative take right away…
Anon
And dog whistle racist!
Anonymous
Actually she has a point. When low-income families do this, we call it neglect. When white suburban people do it, we applaud them.
Anon
A lot of people look down their noses at poor rural white kids who are raised this way, so it’s not so much racist as classist.
Anon
Well that escalated quickly.
I don’t have kids, but my sense from friends that do is yes, it does, if you live in a more rural area. My riding instructor’s kids and the younger barn rats run around the farm without constant supervision. Is it perfectly safe, no, but I’ve never felt the need to call CPS.
Anonymous
OP here and I definitely do still see glimpses of this among horse people too. There are times when it’s not super safe, but nothing in life is and there are a lot of rewards. Plus even the bad stuff (falling off, getting stepped on by a horse) builds skill, awareness, confidence, etc. over time as you overcome and learn.
Anon in Dallas
I’m 32 and I grew up this way. I lived in a rural town of less than 10,000 people on 2 acres on a dirt road. I had friends on other houses on the road so we road bikes and 4 wheelers to each other’s houses, played in the creek (carefully because of the cottonmouths), rode horses bareback, etc. We had real chores too. I learned how to operate a tractor for mowing when I was like 8 or 9. There were about 20 kids all around the same age on the road and we played an almost-nightly game of hide and seek across about 10 acres until I was like 13 or 14. I have a bunch of friends who still live in that town and not much has changed so yes I think it still exists.
Emma
Hanging out at the barn is one of my favorite childhood memories and definitely something I hope to pass onto my (not yet existing) children. It wasn’t 100% safe, but there were a lot of people around and everyone knew each other so I think my parents were OK with me hanging out without much supervision.
Anonymous
They can if you choose to encourage it. I know families like that.
I know I’ll invariably start a huge thing, but those families choose to involve their kids in local school/rec league sports and not competitive teams where kids are traveling across the state/region every weekend. It’s one thing if your kid has a genuine gift, but so many kids I see exhausted from drills and twice-daily practices and traveling every weekend are just normal kids. (Cue arguments about learning teamwork, discipline, commitment, etc, on the traveling teams. All of which junior can learn on a local team.)
Anonymous
No arguments from me!
Anon
No, I totally understand what you are saying. Travel teams are so time consuming there is really no time for freedom to knock around the neighborhoods. My kids are pretty athletic, but my husband and I came to the conclusion they couldn’t do travel teams and competitive leagues unless one of us stayed home. I think a lot of families make that decision, but neither one of us have any interest in sacrificing our careers for our kids’ hobbies. (I got my current, lucrative job because the other candidate in the running dropped out because she travels all over the country for her kids sport.) I know this sounds judgey but I cannot imagine abandoning my career for a child’s sport. On top of that, the message to your kid is…your hobby is more important than my life’s work.
ANYWAY, there is a lot of pressure to baby your kids. My house is right next door to the bus stop and I just open the door and tell my kids to get out. But a lot of parents walk (or drive a block) their kids to the bus stop in a neighborhood that is practically built for kids to walk to it. On top of that are the parents that don’t think the bus is good enough for their kids, so they drive their kids to the school (which is less than half a mile away). Our kids whine from time to time about the relative lack of coddling we offer them, compared to their school friends. We definitely feel like outliers, even though our kids are still pretty coddled. It’s just the ante keeps going up.
Anon
But to answer the OP’s question – you can absolutely drop out of the stuff you don’t want to do. None of it is compulsory. I wouldn’t let it determine your decision as to whether you have kids or not.
Pompom
My parents drew a hard line for us: no travel teams. They both worked full time and didn’t want to spend nights, weekends, whenevers schlepping around to soccer and softball fields and spending their time and money in Motel 8s when they’d rather be home, or on a real vacation.
No arguments from me or my sister at the time…or now! We had rich and fulfilling independent childhoods as a byproduct of this.
Anon
Back in the ’90s, my travel basketball team travelled a half hour each way or thereabouts, once a week, to play other teams in other towns. Hotels and overnights and out of state trips and such were definitely not the norm.
Pompom
They were where I grew up, thus the decision.
anon
Oh, the highest of fives to this. We are not on board with that culture at all. We have fallen out of touch with fringe friends who are, just because they’re never really around to hang out with. Secretly, I think most travel teams are more about the parents’ social lives and belonging than any kid’s love of the game. (There are exceptions of course.)
You will have to work a lot harder and more deliberately to give your kids freedom in childhood, TBH. In some ways, I feel like we’ve nailed it — lots of neighbor kids to play with — and in other ways my kids are not as wild and free as I was growing up on a farm. There’s just a lot to consider, from where you live, to your kids’ personalities (here to tell you from experience that some do not excel with a free-range existence), to your own work situation, etc. I will say I think it’s a lot easier for families with one SAH parent to provide that type of childhood. Until this year of working from home, my kids were in an afterschool program every day because we needed child care. Meanwhile, my friend who is a SAHM has always been able to give her kids the freedom to run amuck outdoors after school.
Anonymous
My childhood was like that in a Canadian suburb in the late 90s/early 2000s. My neighbours and I would meet up in the morning and go on adventures all day. Its one of the things I credit to being a well adjusted adult. But tbh my parents didn’t make a conscious choice to raise me that way, my parents had kids because it’s a societal expectation, they would have been happier child free, so their compromise was just to send me out of the house all day.
Anonymous
This. We bought in a neighbourhood built in the 1990s because it had more open green spaces which created natural gathering spots for kids. It’s walking distance to the local school and many parents walk their kids. It’s so popular it’s almost impossible to get a house here as most sell off market. My kids are mid elementary age and regularly play outside with the neighbourhood kids for hours. Main difference is most of the parents are on a group text so we know roughly where they (whose backyard or in the green space) are most of the day.
Ironically one of my childhood neighbors lives down the street. The neighbourhood attracts people looking for this experience. Took us 7 years to find a house here. Look for older residential neighborhoods close to hospitals/universities. In my experience, people educated about psychology/education/child health etc tend to value the free play outdoor time.
Anonymous
This is interesting. Do the kids walk to school alone too? That’s one thing that I (OP) have wondered about. I live in a safe area right across from an elementary school where there is a walking path with an overpass (so no cars) and yet kids on my street are still walked the 3 minutes to school with a chaperone. I’m just wondering how parents can even coordinate that and still catch the bus that most of the people in my neighborhood take to get downtown (in regular times, of course).
Anonymous
I’m the Canadian from above and I walked 5 blocks alone starting in second grade, before that I was chaperoned on the walk.
Anonymous
Yes from around 4th grade (8-9 years old) most commonly. DH still walks ours as we have younger kids too. But oldest kid is allowed to run ahead and catch up with her friends if the younger kids are being slow. Almost all kids in the class have working professional moms and being close to govt/hosp/uni means it’s easier to pop out for an hour to attend a school event. We’re not house poor but we definitely chose to spend on a house in this neighbourhood vs fancy cars. I drive a Dodge minivan much to the horror of my younger self.
Io
That may be a legal issue. In NYC kids can’t walk themselves to school until age 8, with a signed consent form. Age 10 without. You should check your local laws.
Also, the way people do it is have to combine with another family, trading days or pay for before school activities/care, or to have one parent do pick-up and one do drop off or have one parent with a part-time or flexible job, or have family help.
Seventh Sister
I didn’t feel comfortable letting my kid walk to school on her own until fourth grade, so around 9. And even then, I wanted her to walk with other kids. There were also school rules about this stuff, though they were pretty loosely enforced since it’s a pretty economically diverse school so not every kid has a parent who can walk them over.
Ellen
Yes, I was allowed to go to the playground as a 8 year old child and use the swings and the other climbing things, but the boys often dominated there and would not share with me and Rosa. We also were allowed to go into town together when we were 15 (me) and 13 (Rosa). It was safe then, but if we did it today, our parents would be looked at as not caring enough for us b/c of the weirdos (men over 30) in Nassau County that hang around in their cars all day reading and leering at girls. So you are right. Times change. But mabye things are different elsewhere in the country, tho I doubt it. Look at DC. Those wack-a-doodles came from all over the country, so good luck trying to find a place w/o them. PTOOEY! It is society that is causing this.
Anon
I had this childhood in rural Russia in the 80s, and have several scars to show for it. My own kid does not have this childhood because we live in a major city, but she’s been ordering for herself in restaurants since she could talk (I used to have to translate her toddler babble though) and when we go to the park, she plays with other kids with minimal supervision while I either talk to other adults or read (since she was 3.5 or so). Pre-covid we had a lot of at-home playdates and dinners where the kids played in their rooms while the adults drank coffee/wine in the living room and didn’t get involved unless there was a loud thud followed by wailing. At 7, my kid can make chocolate chip cookies by herself in the stand mixer, which she has known how to operate since age 4 (but I still have to turn on and supervise the oven part). Here in outer-borough NYC, it’s normal for middle schoolers to take city busses to school and back (after a few practice runs with parents).
There is a middle ground!
Anonymous
Scars are a sign of a childhood well-lived! Your middle ground with your daughter sounds nice too.
Senior Attorney
Ha, I never thought of it this way, but yes. I have a big scar on my knee that I got when playing unsupervised with friends in an empty field near where we lived. There was a lot of tall grass and we were throwing ourselves on the tround to make indentations in the grass. I landed on a broken bottle and my friends had to run and get a parent to come and take me to the doctor for (many) stitches!
Good times, man. Good times.
Anonymous
And you survived and became a successful and hopefully well-adjusted adult. It’s just not a big deal! Better to get hurt playing with friends than to be isolated and sedentary and dependent on parents.
Anon
Not to be a killjoy, but my friend’s little brother drowned in a creek while out playing. Bad things don’t often happen but they do happen.
Senior Attorney
I agree, anon at 1:32. As my mom used to say, “it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.”
Anon
Yes! All of my scars are from fun childhood things
Anon
As long as you live sure – but I fear we romanticize childhood in the “old days” when we were “allowed” to take risks.
I have a friend whose brother died in a skateboarding accident (head injury; not wearing a helmet). I have a friend who literally broke his back falling off a jungle gym onto concrete. He is not paralyzed but faces life-long issues.
As a parent there is a fine line between taking reasonable precautions and making children feel that the world is a dangerous place they are not qualified to navigate.
Anon
Yep, it exists in my neighborhood (first ring suburb of a medium size city) and it’s certainly not neglect. I don’t have kids, but am glad to see the ones in the neighborhood out and about.
Anonymous
Yup, it does exist, but you have to prioritize it when looking for a place to live. And then, if you are moving from somewhere else, you have to habituate your children to it!
Lilau
Ok- Slow down.
You’re conflating your own childhood with others you heard about, that may or may not have been accurately represented.
The short answer is yes, children tend to be more supervised these days. It’s still a spectrum. There are parents monitoring their kids’ every breath and parents who’ll come over for a playdate and grab a drink while the kids play mostly by themselves. My kid is too young for roaming around the neighborhood but I don’t imagine that happens too much pre-middle school or so these days. I see plenty of 12 year olds not on iPads.
It seems like at the core of this, you’re asking whether or not you’re cut out for modern parenting. I had the same questions (though no romantic notions about preschoolers with firearms). Whether or not you’ll need to cut your kid’s steak is up to you. I found the book “bringing up Bebe” to be super helpful in imagining myself in a parenting role that didn’t fit the way I saw my friends approach parenting. Now that I am a parent, my little daycare tribe assures me that I’m not the only one who takes a less helicopter approach. Good luck.
Anon
Not to be the second negative Nancy, but I’m not sure the idyllic version of that ever existed. I mean, I’m glad your grandparents and you survived, but the reality is that lots of kids died or suffered permanent injuries because they played with guns and dangerous equipment and were unsupervised. It’s not like the only alternative to “a 4-year old with a gun” is a “12-year old who can’t do anything for himself.” You can have age-appropriate supervision and let your kids take age-appropriate risks.
Anon
This + a million
Anonymous
This. The kids on our street run free in a pack, but they are always breaking bones and cutting themselves and one of them deliberately shot out the window of my house with a BB gun while my daughter was sitting right there. The kids dart out from between parked cars at all hours of the day and night. I am terrified every time I drive down the street that I will run over one of them. The parents sit together around a fire pit drinking and ignoring their kids from 5:00 p.m. to the wee hours every single night. They clearly haven’t taught their kids how to cross the street or handle a firearm safely. It will be a miracle if they all live to adulthood.
We have managed to raise our daughter to be self-sufficient and resourceful by providing age-appropriate supervision, responsibilities, and developmental opportunities, such as summer camp, chores, and putting herself on the bus in the morning. She knew how to cross the street and handle a firearm safely at an early age, two things the neighborhood hooligans have never learned.
Anonymous
Well, there’s still a difference between offering a free-range childhood and neglect. I don’t think most decent parents in the 1940s would have allowed their kids to shoot out neighbors’ windows without severe consequences, even if they did let kids run around and ride bikes all day.
LaurenB
As an amateur genealogist, I come across plenty of newspaper articles where 8 yo Tommy drowned in the creek or 10 yo Mary fell through the ice on a pond or 5 yo Billy was run over by a delivery truck. I just saw one where a 4 yo lost his leg on a railroad track. Don’t romanticize the past.
Anonymous
Those are the sad negative consequences of living life. NOTHING is without risk. If you want to find the worst possible outcomes in history, it’s easy to do so – but how many kids who grew up with great independence, strength, and resilience are you overlooking in that quest?
Anonymous
I mean surely you can prevent a 4 year old from getting run over by a train though?
Anonymous
I think parents tolerated the risks back in those days because there was no expectation that children would live to adulthood. If they didn’t get run over by a train, they might die of diphtheria or pneumonia, so people were just used to losing children. Parents’ own lives were also riskier. Nowadays, we have fewer children and expect them all to live to adulthood.
Anon
They also tolerated the risk because they didn’t have money and baby-proofing gear and luxurious machines that do stuff for you. There was no choice.
Anon
I know children who have drowned or been hit by cars now. Even with the best supervision, accidents happen, unfortunately.
Anonymous
They do and the answer isn’t to wrap your child in bubble wrap. If you could do that and it wouldn’t have any negative consequences, fine, but projecting anxiety onto kids and babyproofing them for their whole lives is incredibly damaging.
Anonymous
You don’t bubble-wrap them, but you do take common-sense precautions like watching them at all times around water and teach them to watch for cars. Accidents still happen, but because some parents actually care about protecting their kids there are far fewer than there were in the Darwinian old days.
My husband was one of several children allowed to run free on a farm. It was absolutely because the parents didn’t care about their kids the way parents do these days. If one of them had been killed in an accident, they would have shrugged their shoulders and said, welp, guess he had it coming because of whatever stupid thing he did.
Anonymous
Maybe it makes me a helicopter mom but the thought of a 4 year old being out all day on their own is horrifying to me. And don’t get me started on the gun (whether fake or real). I don’t buy into the idea that just because we did something one way 30 or 40 or 50 years ago means it’s for the best.
PNW
Every time I hear this brought up (and my childhood was exactly like this, I loved it and miss it) I remember the time we were going through an old photo box and found a picture of my dad, around 8 years old, sitting on a pile of scrap metal in the back of an old pickup truck with about 5 other neighborhood boys, that was being collected for a WWII scrap metal drive. Like rusty, sharp-edged sheet metal and wire just piled in the back of a truck. This was horrifying enough, but he told us that the truck was being driven by a guy they all called, honest to god, Eddie the Pervert.
Now THAT is a free-range childhood.
Anon
Yeah I hated that part of childhood was knowing the local offenders list in small town USA. I honestly really disagree with the choice to release predators with a warning. Everyone knows kids who are neglected or vulnerable will be targeted, but it’s like other parents are willing to tolerate that sacrifice so that their own kids will be safe.
Seventh Sister
Having gone through child safety training for church and Scouts, the terrible thing about that kind of abuse is that 9 times out of 10, it’s a relative or the coach everyone loves, not the weirdo in a murder van.
KW
Some form of it can exist. We live in a cul-de-sac that has 11 kids between the ages of 6 and 11. My 9 year old will be outside playing with the neighbor kids pretty much all day on the weekends and when not in school. They ride bikes/scooters, make up games, play in the snow in the winter, etc. and know not to go past the stop sign at the end of our street. She will stop into our house periodically to use the bathroom or eat or just because I ask her to check in once in a while, but for the most part, they are outside running around. It’s awesome.
anonymous
This is exactly what I had when I was a kid in the 90s. It was great. We had so many wonderful make believe games! Lots of factors came together to make this possible and positive — safe space (low traffic cul de sac in safe neighborhood), kind, well-behaved kids with involved parents who were also willing to help in checking in/periodically supervising/feeding other neighborhood kids who weren’t theirs, and reasonable boundaries set and obeyed by parents. Our parents were all generally around so it’s not like an adult was inaccessible if there was an issue. Were we playing with dangerous items/toys unsupervised? Nope. Did we know not to talk to strangers/watch for cars/use our brains? Yes. We were all involved in extra curriculars but at a reasonable level. FWIW, everyone in the group graduated from college and supports themselves, several of us have advanced degrees from prestigious schools, and to the extent we needed therapy it’s not because of this :)
Anon
It exists but you have to look for it/ nurture it. I grew up in the early 00s with a bit of this – we played local sports but my parents were anti-travel sports (I have mixed feelings on this – of the several sports I played I would have LOVED to play one year round, have actually seen time playing in high school, had a chance to play in college, etc.).
In the summer / on weekends my brother and I were turned out to go play outside, and as long as we were in a yard or a friend’s yard, they didn’t care where we were (we had to get permission to leave the neighborhood, but had free reign of the neighborhood). There were some kids in our neighborhood, but very, very few our ages. In 4th grade, a girl my age moved to the neighborhood and she is still my best friend (I went to private school so different schools our entire lives). Likewise for my brother and our cousin and their neighborhood friend. T In the summer we belonged to the township pool and played there for hours (with supervision… pool didn’t let unaccompanied kids in), we could walk to 7-11 to get a slurpee. here were groups of kids older and younger than us though, and they seemed to have a good neighborhood crew.
I think living in a smaller town/school district is key. The town next to my parents is small, despite being in the first ring suburb of a major city. Like, the town is 1.5 miles big AND it has its own school district and its own parochial school. As an adult, I have several friends who grew up in that town. The school district is so small (50ish kids per grade) that it has a private school vibe, so few families go elsewhere. Most kids play several sports (and can make the team without playing club) because the school is so small – if kids don’t participate there aren’t teams. The town is so small that there’s no bus – every kid walks or rides a bike to school. The town is walkable – kids can all walk/ride bikes to their friends, to the park, to the school to play on the school’s fields or playground, to main street to buy ice cream or whatever. A lot of families have more children, which easily lends itself to kids running around and playing because both more kids and the parents are a little more hands off. I”m pretty convinced that when I move to the suburbs, that’s where I want to settle down (for an adult it also has a train station to downtown – only 20 minutes on the train, restaurants/bars on main street, a major grocery store on the edge of town, and a 5 minute drive to Target/Trader Joes/a department store, and the town next door has a hospital)
anonymous
I’m 43 and I remember spending summer days riding my bike to the local pool and then coming back home in the evening. I think this type of childhood could still exist if kids are given the freedom to be bored and not have every minute of their day scheduled with activities.
Anonymous
Same age, similar experience. I could go anywhere “in the neighborhood” from age 6-7 or so on, but I’d have to ask to leave the neighborhood for a bike ride or walk to the convenience store (through the woods and by the creek), or to go into someone’s house. Home by dark. There were always lots of kids around.
BeenThatGuy
This. I will not be my 12 year old’s social director. In the summers, he usually putzes around the house in the morning and by lunchtime is coordinating with a group of friends to meet up for bike riding and hanging out. Usually that involves biking from park to park to see who’s out and about and there’s always a stop for a slice of pizza somewhere. He knows he needs to be back by dinner, or scheduled sport event, and we keep in contact via text if he’s going outside of our town (we are in North Jersey so the next town is literally 2 blocks away, for perspective).
Anonymous
How were you at home during the summer, though? Now that most moms have to work, that kind of childhood is out of reach for most families.
Anon
At 12 they can stay home alone
Anon
Ditto here. We stopped summer camps as soon as we could. The kids hated them all and the camps were expensive. I worked from home at least one day per week in the summer but otherwise my kids were home alone in the summer from about 6th grade on, and they loved it. My husband and I staggered out hours as best as we could to maximize at least one parent at home time, but there were core hours with no adults, and the kids did fine.
Anonymous
So how do you get teenagers to actually do anything other than play video games and watch YouTube when they are home alone? Mine could totally ride her bike to the pool or a friend’s house but is too lazy to get up off the couch or arrange to meet up with a friend. Which is why she ends up getting sent off to expensive summer programs or to visit relatives for much of the summer.
Anonymous
You set the wifi to be off when you are not home.
Anon
Late response, but I take the view that having a break over the summer is a totally appropriate thing for kids to have. I had a list of items that needed to be done by the time I got home, which they more or less did (with lots of reminders from me during the day ) and as long as they got those done, I didn’t care. Daughter is now in college, son just got early acceptance to two colleges and is waiting to hear on several more – they’re fine. Everyone needs down time, especially kids. They’ll be part of the rat race soon enough.
Anon
Sort of related:
This 14-Year-Old Ski Daredevil Is Already a Pro, and Trying Not to Scare His Parents
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/sports/skiing/kai-jones-skiing-tricks.html)
Anon
Also, please think that your “free range” may actually be really disruptive to others. I lived in an area with an enclosed “parklet” in a “safe” suburb so as a result of the pandemic and quarantine, there were hoards of feral children constantly running amuck outside our living room windows, right next to our dining room, in the alley outside our bedroom, etc. The din was incredible and really made it difficult to WFH or even sleep at times. Parents were nowhere to be found. I had to even put up a sign between our townhome and the one next door and then had those kids ask me why I put up the sign to keep them off of our private property. It was so bad we moved. So please, think of your neighbors before letting your kids be free range.
Anonymous
Free range doesn’t include going onto other people’s property. That’s just rude neighbor behavior.
Anon
Okay, agree it was rude neighbor behavior to be on my private property but organizing 20+ kids soccer games in the parklet (that fronts to people’s living rooms (!!!) was a) both against the quarantine rules where I live and b) also freaking rude. But perhaps this is more of a PSA that folks, your kids impact your neighbors, so PLEASE teach them to be respectful even when they are outside (i.e. don’t scream unless you are being abducted, etc). I know it’s hard right now with the pandemic, but your kids going outside may make your pandemic experience better but may make your neighbors’ experience much worse. (The more you know).
Anonymous
I’ll second the “teach your kids not to scream unless being abducted” point. We have a pool in our apartment complex and there were at least 6+ incidents this summer where a kid yelled “help!” while swimming despite being completely fine. We rushed over to the window each time and it was always nothing.
Anonymous
I don’t think asking kids not to play soccer outside in a park and to not use ‘outside voices’ when outside is going to be seen as a reasonable ask. If you don’t want to hear outside noise, you need a high rise condo or an acreage in the country.
Anonymous
Screaming ‘help’ seems kinda different from screaming in excitement because you just scored a goal or something.
Anon
@ Anonymous at 11:37, we did move, and felt we were forced to. We’d lived there several years and didn’t have issues until the pandemic. It was more than “outside voices”–it was literal screaming. See also all the trespassing. Our neighbors moved too. It was bad. Part of it was a bad setup, but bad/negligent parenting/neighboring made a bad setup unlivable.
Anon
If you live by a parklet, you should expect kids to play there. Kids are loud while they play. It happens.
Anon
Also, these kids were out at all hours of the day or night–even 11 p.m. plus in the summer (with flashlights, natch). Outdoor screaming isn’t just annoying to those without kids, but those with smaller children (infants, toddlers, etc.) were also disturbed because their younger kids were sleeping. I am probably not doing the noise justice.
Anon
Also, I am learning a lot of you feel personally attacked by my request that you teach your kids to be good neighbors. Good to know.
Anon
Screaming help, sure that should be reserved for emergencies.
Screaming because you’re playing a game or you scored a goal or something funny happened or whatever is totally totally normal for kids
My friends and I used to have ice fights in the summer. We’d fill up cups of ice cubes and throw them at each other. We made forts for defense. A great way to attack would be to sneak into someone else’s fort and pour your ice down the back of someone’s shirt. People would shriek if they had ice stuck in their shirt.
Anonymous
Don’t feel personally attacked. Do disagree on what being a ‘good neighbor’ means. A number of posters are telling you that your personal standards are not reasonable.
Anon
Anon at 11:47, are you missing the detail of the kids screaming at 11 p.m. or later at night? Were you having ice fights at midnight? Why would you think that is reasonable behavior?
Anonymous
I think there needs to be a middle ground. I personally like hearing kids run around aside (with the exception of the screaming “help” in the pool like I mentioned above), but parents do need to teach their kids some basic neighborly respect as well. We often have kids careening around the walking path (to get into the complex) on Rollerblades, nearly knocking people over after coming around blind corners, and that wasn’t great. I also think parents need to teach their kids how to speak to adults. I have seen more than one ten-year-old in my neighborhood mumble and shuffle away looking at the ground instead of saying “excuse me, I didn’t mean to almost hit you” during the crazy Rollerblading.
Anon
ANon 11:47 here – posts got crossed. No, we were not having ice fights at midnight. We were playing ghost in the graveyard or dark tag across several yards until about 9pm or so on non-school nights.
Yes – screaming at 11pm is absurd, I’m not disagreeing about that. My parents were very, very strict about bedtime so that was not an issue for us. I would be more upset that young kids are allowed to be up and running around that late than anything.
I just think that there is ZERO things wrong with kids playing soccer and being loud during the day and that this thread’s OP has unreasonable expectations for living in a neighborhood.
Would I be upset about late night noise? Sure. Would I be concerned about COVID precautions? Yes. But, she started her post being mad that kids were playing soccer in a parklet by her house.
Anon
+1 most neighbors in my neighborhood were fine with kids running through their yard. Those who weren’t made it clear and we stayed away (though we probably had a mean nickname about them)
Anon
Anon at 12–OP here, and did you ever think I wouldn’t have been mad about kids playing in parklet without the trespassing (mentioned in the ORIGINAL post) and the 11 p.m. screaming? Just think on that for a second. If you are sick of kids trespassing and also sleep deprived from same kids, yes, everything they do is going to be annoying. At the end of the day, the kids weren’t really at fault–their parents were to blame.
Anon
Wow, I don’t want to live near a lot of you, apparently. I love too that the commenters on this board who are totally covid conservative are JUST fine with huge gangs of kids in violation of the quarantine rules in my state.
Anonymous
20 kids playing outside isn’t banned in many places. Especially if they are masked.
Anon
Banned in my state, and kids weren’t masked (of course).
Anon
For a group of adult women who are constantly posting about their mental health, it’s amazing to see such a dismissal of small children coping through a pandemic.
Anon
what about my mental health? There’s such a culture here that lets kids do what ever they want and screw everyone else. That’s the problem/
Anon
Yes small children playing together will cause the downfall of our society.
Won’t anybody think of the fully grown adults?!
Anonymous
the culture is literally the opposite of that here. Have you travelled anywhere else in the world where they have actual child friendly cultures like France or Greece?
Anonymous
That is how it is where I live. People complain about being exposed to risk at work, then they turn around and let their kids run wild in giant packs with no supervision.
Anonymous
You realize inside risk and outdoors risk are two totally different risk levels right? Like not even same ballpark.
Anonymous
They are running in and out of each other’s homes.
Anon
Oh God, people who tell kids to stay off their lawn are petty and small. I’m glad you moved…away from other people.
Anon
I love all the casual acceptance of trespassing here. Great values you all are instilling in your children. Please use condoms folks. And keep your kids off my lawn! (not even joking)
Anon
Horse is out on the barn on that one. I’m teaching my kids not to be neurotic.
Anon
You sound fun…
Anon
You can call me petty names all you want, but it’s not unreasonable to ask your kids not to trespass. How inconsiderate and selfish you are.
Anon
No, you’re right. You were obviously raised right and are the paragon of good manners. I can tell by your directive to internet strangers to use condoms. You’re doing amazing, sweetie!
Anonymous
I’m not the previous commenter but I also tell people to stay off my lawn/fence/garden etc because you know damn will the parents will never pay for damages yet will be quick to sue if little Jimmy hurts himself scaling my tree.
Anon
Anon at 1:07, guess the old chestnut is true, you can’t fix stupid.
Anon
You also can’t fix overly paranoid, anxious and irritable, either.
Aunt Jamesina
The book Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear is a great read related to this topic!
Greensleeves
I think this kind of childhood is still possible to some degree, but it requires some planning and some luck. My kids were able to experience much of this. We live in a suburb outside a mid-size city. We’re in a neighborhood where there were 20+ school age kids on our short cul de sac street at one point. The kids would run in a group, from house to house, playing and hanging out. They would tell us where they were going when they left, but we wouldn’t always know where they ended up. When you needed them home, there was a group text among the parents and you’d ask them to send your kid home if their house was the current hangout. Generally, if the kids were at your house/yard, you’d keep an eye on them by checking occasionally but definitely not supervise them minute to minute. This didn’t start at age 4, but by mid-elementary school age it was pretty common. (Younger ages involved a lot of parents and kids hanging out together in the cul de sac evenings and weekends, chatting together while we watched the little ones play.). We set limits on how far our kids could go without asking, and expanded the limits as they got older. It was not quite as free as my childhood, but similar enough to build independence. The planning came in choosing a suburb and neighborhood where there were likely to be lots of families with kids. The luck came in ending up with neighbors who had kids that were very well matched in age to ours. We also kept sports and other activities fairly low key until the kids got older and found something they really felt passionate about – and even then, we’ve set limits. With multiple kids, we were and are not willing to have every spare minute be taken up running kids to practices and spend every weekend juggling travel games.
Anonymous
You might enjoy reading “The Overprotected Kid” from The Atlantic in 2014. It talks about risk and play in child rearing.
My google search suggests The Atlantuc has also published other articles about raising children since, including one about anxiety during the pandemic, which I have not read. Together, they might provide some interesting perspectives and insight.
Anon
There are so many replies here I’m not sure you need another but here’s what we did with our now teens.
They played in our own backyard unsupervised, or very lightly/negligently supervised from about age 4-5ish? We had a swing set and some ride on toys and things like that (thought their favorite things were the water hose and garden trowels, RIP my garden). When they were more early elementary school ages, the two kids two houses down became their acquaintances, and one or the other set of siblings would climb a short fence in our yard, streak through the in between neighbor’s yard, and use the fence gate to get into the other family’s yard. The other family had a trampoline. So our swingset and their trampoline were sort of the main attractions.
This wasn’t a play date situation. I didn’t always know when my kids were going over there, and sometimes I was surprised to see the other kids in my backyard. It was totally spontaneous.
Then my backyard neighbor’s grandson in the same age group started cloning the back fence to join them whenever he was visiting. So a pack of 5 kids of ages within a few years of each other just being kids.
That seems pretty free-range by today’s standards, but they weren’t on public sidewalks or riding bikes in heavy traffic like my siblings and I did.
Since then, we have consistently allowed a little more freedom than it seems like our kids’ friends were allowed. 6th grade and a phone was the threshold for walking home from school. When my daughter was in 6th, my son was in 4th, and she could walk to his elementary school and spring him from the after school program, which she did pretty much every day. My kids were home alone for an hour ish before my husband got home from work.
We also have never gotten involved in their friendship dramas. We’ve had a wide variety of friends in and out of their lives over the years, but we don’t direct any of this or try to manage it with the friends parents in any way, and sometimes it takes some pushing back on other parents about this. Our kids decide who their friends are, not us, and when they have conflict, we trust them to work it out. We give advice when asked for it, but I would never, ever call another parent and say “your kid was mean to my kid.” I just think that is ridiculous, and it never stops. One of the moms of my now 19 year old daughter’s former friends, (the former friend is a classic mean girl frankly) tried to involve me in the friend group breakup and I declined. I advised my daughter one on one, but that’s where I draw the line.
Anonymous
I appreciated your reply too! It sounds like you’re doing great.
Anon
Thank you! I will add for your amusement that I recently found out my daughters first kiss was from one of the trampoline house kids, behind a tree in our backyard. It sounds like a pretty chaste experience, never repeated. :)
Anonymous
Ah, that’s so cute! Reminds me of my own (second) kiss on the trampoline in my boyfriend’s barn all those years ago.
Seventh Sister
In some ways, my big-city 12yo has more freedom that I did in my white-flight exurb in the 1980s as a latchkey kid. She can bike to school, call and text her friends whenever, buy a coke at the shop down the street (in normal times obviously). My 9yo can do similar stuff. Sure, both of them went to daycare and daycamp, but a lot of that supervision was pretty loose and they are both more social and sociable than I was as a lonely, painfully shy little girl.
There ARE people who spend all of their time watching their kids like hawks. You don’t have to be like those people. And from the vantage point of middle school parenting, the helicoptered kids are not any more impressive than the rest of the kids.
Coach Laura
I don’t know if it’s fully, completely gone or not. I had that kind of childhood where we were on bikes, in the woods, playing baseball and tennis, finding rattlesnakes and copperheads, p@rno magazines. Out dawn to dusk. There weren’t any horses but we went through people’s yards and acreage without asking. We’d ride bikes or walk to the 7-11 to buy candy and slurpees.
We live outside Seattle and have two acres. We live where most of the houses are on horse-acre lots, so not a normal suburban neighborhood. We had horses when my kids were growing up and so did 5+ neighbor families but no kids ever rode horses without adult presence/knowledge.
My kids and the neighbor kids would roam our property and the properties in our little neighborhood. Many times it was the four or five of them together. They knew not to leave those areas. We would walk on the trails so they knew their way around.
When they got to be eight or so, we’d give them our cell phones and let them walk on the horse trails around the neighborhood. Eventually, they could walk to the drug store about a mile away, via horse trails and sidewalks, and buy candy and slurpees. They had to call us when they got to the store and when they were ready to leave and they were absolutely forbidden from separating. I had to convince one or two of the neighboring parents that it was “relatively” safe for them to do this but they had a great time. I think their whole childhood helped them be independent.
They didn’t ride bikes as much due to the terrain more than not letting them do it.
We tried to give them a free and easy childhood while still being safe in the modern world.
Anonymous
Where is this neighborhood if you don’t mind sharing? I’m curious where you can get horse-acre lots close to Seattle.
Anonymous
Hi all, I’m a bad person but I am just now getting around to holiday tips for the doorman and staff in my building (in NYC). There are 16 staff members, some whom I interact with more than others how much should I be giving each of them? I was going to do 50 but that seemed like it added up quickly… And I’ve only lived in the building since July. Any insight here would be much appreciated.
Lily
Could you swing $50 for the ones you help you the most and/or work the most hours, and $25 for the others?
Anonymous
Thanks. This is what I did.
Anonymous
I do $20 in a similar sized building.
Cat
It might be too late for this year, but when I lived in buildings, residents all contributed to one ‘pot’ that management split evenly among the staff — the theory being that some staff were way less visible but no less important (like overnight cleaning or the maintenance folks in the basement).
Anon
It depends also on the size of your building and how fancy it is. We live in a non-luxury, but nice building on the UWS and definitely spend ~$2k a year on building tips. Particularly this year when they’ve done a lot of extra stuff for the building and don’t have the option to work from home.
Anon
Reposting because of my nesting fail above:
You guys. Thank you for helping me with my anxiety Weds when I was on a filing deadline, the world was blowing up and I realized I had blown a discovery deadline. Well, I finally was able to address that discovery deadline yesterday afternoon and luckily I went through my emails before reaching out to OC.
What I realized is I had wanted to take a depo in early 2020 but they wanted to wait to see if in-person was going to resume soon. Then on multiple other occasions we discussed booking stuff but then it just fell by the wayside. We had debated order of depositions. On the day of the deadline in Aug I had emailed acknowledging the deadline and all we both still had to do and suggesting we re-structure. We just never did it.
Yes, I still dragged my feet on getting out paper discovery that I needed but that’s because we kept punting everything. I was so so so relieved to read that. In 2021 I’m working to be more proactive and less reactive but the situation turned out to be so much better than I first realized.
I’ve since reached out suggesting new deadlines and got a response back that seems positive.
So to anyone else that finds themselves in a similar situation, don’t completely freak out about things. The year has been crazy and you may have completely forgotten conversations you have had.
I appreciate all the advice I received.
Senior Attorney
Thanks for the update! Hang in there!
Anon
I’m glad you feel better today. I had chimed in that I had a client presentation that I could barely focus on preparing for. The presentation was this morning and went really well, and most importantly, is over.
Anon
For those w/high ceilings…particularly post and beam…How do you clean/dust those high areas (esp if they are textured?
Also, if you have high hanging plants, is there a special type of watering tool for those?
Anon
those extendable poles with microfiber duster on the end
Senior Attorney
Wait… what? We’re supposed to be dusting up there?
Walnut
If by “dusting” you mean my kids lob a stuffie up there while playing keep away, then that’s how I dust.
Anon
Has anyone here gone to Cooper Union (or have annecdata regarding it)? It is a very small art/architecture/engineering school in NYC. My HS junior had been really wanting to check it out and possibly attend a summer program there, but 2020 happened. We live nowhere near NYC and don’t know anyone who went there. Our State U is good for STEM (kiddo is a rare creature who loves science and art and architecture) and SCAD is nearby (but I fear that this for jobs as most of my art friends have to teach, etc. to make ends meet and is not really viable for non-art fields) and Cooper Union might be a great unicorn school for this kid (not to mention — access to NYC museums). I feel like we need to kick the tires on this but can’t (and all schools look great on their websites).
I feel bad for all kids these days, especially high school kids who are basically getting told to go to State U and get the basics out of the way right away and transfer if they hate it, but in many science programs, we are also getting told that things are so sequential that you should start at the school you want to finish at and that transferring is better for kids who want to be history majors, etc. State U is so competitive to get into that it’s not a sure thing, so the odds might really be better somewhere with a regional or national applicant pool.
Anon
A HS friend went to Cooper Union and loved it. Is it still free? It has an incredible reputation in the art/architecture community, and many people considered it the top school in the country for these fields, at least 15 years ago. It was incredibly competitive to get in — friend who went there had a near-perfect SAT school and a mind-blowing portfolio. Not as sure about today. Based on its reputation, I would not hesitate to send my kid there if the could get in. I’m from NYC and still live here and I really did use the museums constantly from middle school (I was that 8th grader alone on the subway on Saturday morning on the way to the Met… not for a school project) until COVID.
Anon
I looked at it when I was applying to schools because I briefly thought I wanted to be an architect. I think even then in the early 2000s it was very hard to get in to. I can’t imagine that’s gotten any better. It sounds like it would be a great place if your kid’s interests align.
Anonymous
Can you call the admissions or alumni office and say you are trying to find alumni in your area to talk to your student about their (or better, yet, have your student reach out to set something up)?
Is the state option GaTech?
Cat
My BIL attended (like 20 years ago though) and had a great experience – got him a good start in his engineering career.
Neef
Cooper Union does charge tuition now, or at least room and board. My HS friend who went to school there for engineering got employed by NASA directly after graduating. Years later he’s worked all over the country and can pretty much command whatever he wants in terms of position and salary.
Anon
I didn’t go there, but I lived around the corner from it when I lived in NYC. It’s in a fantastic location–straddles the East and West Villages. I have met two Cooper Union alums in my life. They were both exceptional folks, and the fact that they found and attended Cooper Union made me think even more highly of them. I would wholly support my son if he were interested. I know NYC can seem scary and overwhelming if you’ve never spent time there, but it’s also a vibrant and electric city with so much do to, so much art, culture, theater, green space (if you get out of lower manhattan) and so much possibility. I am definitely a “not that much City, please” girl, but I loved my time in NYC in my early 20s and would not change it. I say–look into it!
Anonymous
It was a vibrant place with much to do…
Anon
I have family members (my grandparents’ generation), high school friends, and coworkers who went to Cooper Union, and they’ve all gone on to incredible careers. I think it’s an incredible institution. The thing I’d want to know, if I were your kid, would be whether the three programs (art/architecture/engineering) are silo’d, or whether there’s ample opportunity to take classes across courses/departments. The people I know who went there and thrived are amazing but also pretty single-minded. If your kid is more interested in studying all of it, rather than one part of it intensely, it might be good to find out more about how things are arranged these days.
Anon
If you’re in GA, you also have UGA in-state, and then UF, Auburn and maybe FSU/FAM to consider if he doesn’t get into Tech. Any of them would set him up well for good education and employment in the southeast. Is he more interested in engineering or architecture? He can always do undergrad in engineering and then an mArch elsewhere (but I don’t think it’s as simple to do the reverse).
Anon
Why is everyone assuming that this is a boy?
Cat
? I see one reply that says “he” that’s referring to the OP’s kid. All the other posts that mention s-x are referring to the person they knew who attended…
My Bad!
I’m one of the previous posters who made this assumption. Thanks for pointing it out!
Lilau
+ 1
Good point! Sorry!
Anonymous
I assumed it was a boy because the mom is doing the work.
Lilau
I think cooper union is the kind of place where if you get in, you would have to do some real soul searching NOT to go. It’s both free and incredibly prestigious and in a fantastic nyc neighborhood. I’d encourage him to apply unless nyc is a dealbreaker. In my experience, having gone to a small town undergrad and an urban law school, the “campus feel” mattered much more in the small town, if that makes sense.
emeralds
I have a friend who applied and didn’t get in, and from what I heard from him–and then later from working at a different university with a high-profile arts and design program–Cooper Union is legit. It’s also very, very difficult to get into.
Thanks, it has pockets!
Old Navy recently released a high-waisted version of their Pixie pants, and I ordered some while they were on sale. I have to say, I’m in love! They’re very flattering and comfortable. My only issue with them is the petite full-length is still too long on me, and I should stick to the ankle-length pants because they’re *not* ankle pants on me (they just didn’t have black, high-waisted ankle pants in my size when I placed the order), but a hem ain’t hard to fix! Either way, I definitely recommend them.
Anon
Huh, I might give those a try. The quality of the Pixie pants declined so much that I’d sworn them off forever. What’s the fabric like?
Anon
Did anyone else read “air poet” and think of the Air Jordans logo, but with Shakespeare holding a quill or was that just me?
anon
First, let me say that I know this is an extremely sensitive issue and people react strongly to it. Please consider – if you’re about to have one of those strong reactions – that I’m a real person and this is a real situation that my husband and I are struggling with.
My husband was previously married. He started dating his former wife in college, and she got pregnant. She had an abortion – her decision ultimately, but he supported her choice and felt like it was the right one at the time. They were later married, but divorced within 2 years. That was about 10 years ago. We’ve been married for about 3 years and have a young baby. My husband feels enormous guilt and grief about the abortion, as well as enormous anxiety that our baby will die as some form of karmic punishment for what he did.
He never talked to anybody about the abortion other than one attempt in therapy, which ended disastrously because he felt like the therapist was trying to minimize his feelings and tell him abortion isn’t a big deal and his grief was abnormal rather than meeting him where he was (which is that regardless of how others might feel, it’s a big deal to him). As a result, he is really gunshy about going back to therapy on this, but I don’t know what else to do. I have tried to be as supportive as I can but I don’t have any personal experience with abortion.
Is anyone aware of orgs that have resources or groups or anything to support men who are grieving after abortion? The few things that I have found have a lot of political baggage associated with them or are extremely religious, and neither of those will go over well with him (he’s quite liberal, and not very religious; this isn’t about the pro-life/pro-choice debate but rather about his own grief).
DoesntBelongHere
If he hasn’t met with a therapist who specializes in grief, that could help a lot. They would not minimize his pain.
Anonymous
Any organization is going to have an agenda, which is in direct opposition to the individualized support your husband needs. He needs to understand that the therapist he visited was bad, that most therapists are bad, and that there are a few good ones out there worth hunting for but it may take several tries.
Walnut
If it’s helpful, Project Rachel and Project Joseph are programs from the catholic church helping with post-abortion grief. If you can find a rather liberal, often inner-city resource through one of these programs, it is likely that the counseling can be adjusted to not be faith-based.
As an anecdotal example, the priest at my inner-city church in a very conservative state was happy to adjust the pre-marriage counseling and wedding ceremony wording to respect that my husband is atheist and will never be catholic or religious in any way. There’s a good chance your husband can find a similar experience through Project Joseph while working with a counselor experienced in post-abortion grief.
Anon
I’m sorry I don’t have any resources, but DH and I do know someone (a man) who never had children because his first wife had an abortion while they were in college and he feared that the spirit of the aborted child would either harm a subsequent child or inhabit the subsequent child and induce it to harm him or his first wife. So for what it’s worth please know that apparently your husband’s reaction isn’t unique.
If your husband wasn’t scared for a potential future baby prior to your pregnancy and the arrival of your baby, I wonder if what’s he’s feeling could be considered a post-partum reaction. I have heard of women with post partum depression who are terrified that they themselves will hurt the baby (deliberately, not inadvertently), and I wonder if this is along the same lines. The natural anxiety of wanting to keep the baby safe coming up against subconscious feelings about the abortion. Maybe start with your own doctor and see if they have guidance.
pugsnbourbon
I’m sorry your husband is grieving and that he had such a poor experience with his previous therapist.
Exhale offers a talk and text support line and from what I can tell, they stay out of the pro- and anti-choice debate as much as possible and instead focus on the emotional well-being of those who have had an abortion or who cared for someone who did. Their resources page also lists the All- Options Talkline, which I’m more familiar with and is great.
baby spirits
Not sure if you’re see this, but maybe you will:-) I have had a lot of sadness related to similar things, as well. One thing that really helped is a book called Spirit Babies by Walter Makinchin, who (yes, this might sound hokey) is a medium who can communicate with baby spirits. I started reading feeling a bit woowoo, but, a lot of what he wrote just felt…deeply right to me. What he said was super super healing for me, and maybe your husband would find it healing to read, as well. Regarding abortion, he says that if babies feel they are wanted, but that the timing just wasn’t right, they often come back in a later pregnancy. So it’s actually possible that your child, or a child of his ex, has the soul of the first pregnancy. (Or, that soul may have found other parents that were able to care for a child at that time. Some souls are linked to one parent, some are not linked to a particular person to have as their parent). In general, I highly recommend this book for anyone suffering as a result of ttc, miscarriage, adoption, or abortion.
I don’t think it’s at all surprising that the love your husband has for your child is bringing up issues about this prior pregnancy…now he understands more fully what was passed up at that time. I think reading Spirit Babies could really let him let go of fears about karmic punishment, though. And for your sake, too – there’s no karmic punishment here. All the best to you both!
Anon
I’m sorry I don’t have any resources, but DH and I do know someone (a man) who never had children because his first wife had an abortion while they were in college and he feared that the spirit of the aborted child would either harm a subsequent child or inhabit the subsequent child and induce it to harm him or his first wife. So for what it’s worth please know that apparently your husband’s reaction isn’t unique.
If your husband wasn’t scared for a potential future baby prior to your pregnancy and the arrival of your baby, I wonder if what’s he’s feeling could be considered a post-partum reaction. I have heard of women with post partum depression who are terrified that they themselves will hurt the baby (deliberately, not inadvertently), and I wonder if this is along the same lines. The natural anxiety of wanting to keep the baby safe coming up against subconscious feelings about the abortion. Maybe start with your own doctor and see if they have guidance.