Secular Confessions

[girlwonder]

Well, I think I would just avoid that family for a while if you can. There's really not much you can say to the mom beyond what you have already said - you put that out there and she didn't want to pick it up so you can't force her to acknowledge the behavior and if she won't even acknowledge it then she surely won't be addressing it. If you can't avoid them then I would tell your kids to avoid interaction as much as possible and to ignore any mean thing he says because he is being mean and rude and it has nothing to do with them. It sounds like there's something weird going on with him that might blow up in your face if you try to address it.

[Gwenn]

I agree with Katy.

[pepperlru]

I agree with Katy too. The boy sounds like a pill... that whole "I feel threatened" thing just sounds so manipulative. I would say if you can't avoid them, just do your best to monitor what goes on between him and your kids, so you'll know the truth if he whines later about being wronged in some way. And if it continues blatantly, and both you and the mom witness his behavior, maybe there'll be another chance for the two of you to connect on the topic. If it were me and there was another chance to talk to her, I'd probably approach it from the "I just want to make sure my kids haven't done anything they need to apologize for" angle (even though it sounds like you know they haven't -- sometimes being willing to take blame where none exists helps people to feel less defensive). Chances are she has already noticed he's being a pill, unless she's oblivious. And if he keeps being outright mean, you might have to mention something to him or his mom to let them know you won't tolerate your kids being targets. Poor Kai -- it's awful that the kid was saying that stuff. Way to bring somebody down. Did the mom hear that as well, and didn't do or say anything? There's no way I'd let a kid of mine get away with saying something like that, even in a "competitive" arena like karate.

[Bridget]

It struck me as manipulative too. I normally hate using that word to describe children but that moment, him saying that, has been eating away at me a bit! I'm probably being overdramatic. I was trying to imagine if one of my children had said that to me and how I would handle it. That is such a strong accusation, I feel that I would need my child to further explain it to me and try to encourage some resolution between them and the other children.

I can't be sure that she heard the part of him rooting his brother on during the class. She had a lot going on with her other child and chatting with other parents. I did consider coming at it from the angle of making sure my children hadn't done anything to upset him. I mean, it could happen. I certainly do not claim that my children are perfect and I could have missed it. It's just hard for me to imagine the scenario. I did ask my kids if something happened and they both said no. Dbf took Kai tonight and said that H just hung with other buddies and Kai ran over to say hi but otherwise they had no interaction. Maybe he's just sick of being around younger kids? I don't know. We will try playdate on wed and hopefully more families will show. If it continues without any attempt to remedy, we may just skip a few playdates.

[missychrissy]

Remember when I said work was hell? Yeah, that was nothing. If anyone works for a company that's considering migrating to Office 365, don't do it.

[daylilies]

I've never even heard of it. What's wrong with it?

[Suja]

Suja, so sorry about Mira's broken heart! What is the story with the "brothers"? Sorry I missed it.

Been meaning to answer, but editing quotes is a pain on the iPad, so I waited until I was on a real computer with a keyboard.

Mira wants what others have. In this case, she wants siblings. Preferably boys, and definitely older. Since I can't grant her that wish, we've told her that she has lots of brothers and sisters. Her cousins are now her brothers and sisters. So are any near relatives, kids of friends, etc. that are all in the right age group. She loves her "brothers and sisters", which means that she usually has meltdowns when they leave or we leave. This time was worse, because her "brothers" (cousins) stayed from Thursday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. Hopefully, she will soon reach an age where when she asks to go with them, I can pack up her stuff and send her. And then sleep for 24 hours straight.

[Cosmosmom]

Well Suja that is just plain mean of you.....not going back in time to have sons before having Mira. LOL

[demigraf]

Bodhi asks for a big brother too because his bestie has one. Kids!

The story of the kid in karate class made me think: I was always the kid who said obnoxious, inappropriate things. I think I wanted attention, and I was also not shy, so I was willing to let new things I heard (but didn’t really understand) come out of my mouth in order to get attention. The main problem was that the stuff I heard wasn’t always explained to me in context. So, like, when I read in a children’s book about a little girl telling a lady her sagging pantyhose made her look like she had elephant legs, I tried saying that to my teacher – I guess to get any sort of reaction from her, and I got in BIG trouble. I remember that teacher saying something really withering to me in front of the whole class like, “I know you think you’re funny, but you’re really not.” I just… didn’t have anyone to monitor what I was reading or explain to me that women don’t like having their legs compared to elephants’. So, anyway, that’s who this little boy in karate class reminds me of. Me, kinda. He seems to suffer from a combination of inattentive parents and bad behavior models (or at least ones not explained to him in context). Just the fact that he chose the word “threatened” makes me think that it was kind of a big, new word for him and he was trying it on for size. I don’t even know a lot of grown-ups who would use that phrase colloquially. I just hope he soon gets the guidance he seems to really need. Or his teachers, bosses and peers will eventually (painfully) set him straight.

Then again, some obnoxious people never EVER get set straight, waaaaay into adulthood, so maybe I should hope for any sort of reckoning to come to this boy. I just hope he leaves your kids alone, Bridget, or maybe you can even rehearse a few things they could say in response to him the next time they see him. There was this one speaker that came to my old mom’s club, back when I was living closer to L, and she was from “Kidpower, Inc”, and she said one way to empower your children is to actually “act out” different scenes with them where they would be called upon to be assertive. I think what’d be important to me – if Bodhi were in Savana’s shoes – is that he understood that there’s nothing wrong with HIM or what he did, that it’s just that boy who’s being a little weirdo.

It is pretty hard to explain childish behavior to another child, isn’t it? One of the fun challenges of being a mommy. Hmmm… what would I do? … Well, when other (usually younger) kids are being mean or throwing tantrums, and it’s bothering Bodhi in some way, I often explain to him that they’re just younger and more like a “baby” than he is. He understands that babies can’t talk very well and can only scream and cry to ask for things they want, and they aren’t very good at letting you know exactly what they need. Maybe, with this older kid, I would explain to Bodhi that there is a part of him that is still a baby, and when he says “he feels threatened”, he’s really trying to tell his mommy he wants attention.

I dunno, it’s tough! Just thinking out loud here, but on the other hand, I’d hate to turn my kid into armchair psychoanalyst. I’m half afraid that if I were to focus too much on explaining other people’s motives to Bodhi, he’d learn to always make inferences and read between the lines, and worse yet, jump to wrong conclusions about other people’s motives. One would have to balance it out with lessons on the importance of taking people’s words at face value. I’m not exactly sure how I’d break that all down into something digestible to a 4 year old. Why can’t it all be as simple as ABCs and 123s?

[demigraf]

Remember when I said work was hell? Yeah, that was nothing. If anyone works for a company that's considering migrating to Office 365, don't do it.

I can imagine the headaches you’re getting with Office 365, Chrissy. Microsoft has always been in such a hurry to chase the market (cloud computing in this case) that they send their products half-baked out the door. So then the people who pony up the money to buy their new software become their testers who find all the bugs their QA teams missed. It stinks. I try to stay a few years behind on their products, usually after they’ve rolled out a dozen service packs with whatever it is. That’s why I was P.O.’d that my new laptop only came with Win8. Terrible OS. Just awful.

[Suja]

You know, I think that Mira would have a good time if there were a heathen APA ladies get together. She'd have so many new "brothers" (and sisters, but brothers mostly) to acquire. She'd probably annoy the crap out of her "brothers", though. For a couple of days, it was like there was an echo in here. Whatever one of the nephews (the 6 year old one; she worships the ground he walks on) says/does, she does as well.

Myles, I can totally picture you being bratty that way.

Yeah, I stay way behind technologies in general, MS ones in particular. I am not going to do their beta testing for them, for free.

[missychrissy]

I can imagine the headaches you’re getting with Office 365, Chrissy. Microsoft has always been in such a hurry to chase the market (cloud computing in this case) that they send their products half-baked out the door. So then the people who pony up the money to buy their new software become their testers who find all the bugs their QA teams missed. It stinks. I try to stay a few years behind on their products, usually after they’ve rolled out a dozen service packs with whatever it is. That’s why I was P.O.’d that my new laptop only came with Win8. Terrible OS. Just awful.

Cornell was notoriously behind in technology. I was shocked when I started in January 2008 and saw the main email client was Eudora-and pop at that! I was beyond thrilled to move up to the current age and go to Exchange and Outlook. Exchange was (is) a solid email program. This Office 365 project is a money saving venture only. They can get rid of the Exchange server guys...actually, they already did. They slashed CIT by something like 1/3 and they've left very few 'experts' to tackle this huge project. Not only that, but Microsoft is trickling down pertinent information sometimes after the fact and causing a lot of extra work. I've been in constant contact with my former boss. I'm getting somewhat better information down here because I have a direct line with one of the top level email guys at CIT and passing on what I know to him, but it's a huge cluster-fluck all over. And we're just in the prepping stages. We were supposed to migrate Thursday, but we learned on Monday that our Outlook clients were fully patched to Microsoft's newest 'latest' requirements, so we pushed back till the 27th. Poor John didn't get that info and migrated last night and now he's facing rebuilding profiles on 300-some machines. Manually, one at a time, with 2 techs. I can't get our calendars to reflect current data and my admin assists are going ape**** on me.

[demigraf]

Myles, I can totally picture you being bratty that way.

Thanks, er... I think? LOL! Am I still bratty? Wait... don't answer that! ;)

[Suja]

Bratty and precocious. I can totally see that.

[demigraf]

Y'know, hate to say anything nice about MS while we're having our fun vent-fest, but I miss the Outlook/Exchange thing we had going on at my last company. Their calendaring was super easy, and the "LiveMeeting" capability (sharing desktops) was pretty seamless. I even prefer Lotus Notes over the gMail situation happening at my present company. You can't even sort messages by Sender in gMail. You know how fruken annoying that is?!?!? I used to LOVE Google, but now - esp after I worked with them as one of our vendors about 1.5 years ago and they were unhelpful PITAs - I'm rooting for Yahoo! or some other new behemoth to take its place in the market.

Besides that, it's fun to watch the employee buses from my present company race the employee buses from Google on the freeway. I just wish my company gave us free food the way Google does for its peeps.

If I do a search on Google and I see a result up at the top that's in a shaded gray box, that's a paid search result, and I won't click it because Google gets a quarter or something for every one of those clicks. I will either click on the same link below in the "organic" (unpaid) search results, that's not in the gray box, or I will copy the link and paste it into the address bar of a new window. That's how much I don't like Google.

[missychrissy]

Y'know, hate to say anything nice about MS while we're having our fun vent-fest, but I miss the Outlook/Exchange thing we had going on at my last company. Their calendaring was super easy, and the "LiveMeeting" capability (sharing desktops) was pretty seamless. I even prefer Lotus Notes over the gMail situation happening at my present company. You can't even sort messages by Sender in gMail. You know how fruken annoying that is?!?!? I used to LOVE Google, but now - esp after I worked with them as one of our vendors about 1.5 years ago and they were unhelpful PITAs - I'm rooting for Yahoo! or some other new behemoth to take its place in the market. Besides that, it's fun to watch the employee buses from my present company race the employee buses from Google on the freeway. I just wish my company gave us free food the way Google does for its peeps.If I do a search on Google and I see a result up at the top that's in a shaded gray box, that's a paid search result, and I won't click it because Google gets a quarter or something for every one of those clicks. I will either click on the same link below in the "organic" (unpaid) search results, that's not in the gray box, or I will copy the link and paste it into the address bar of a new window. That's how much I don't like Google.

Did I know this about Google and the gray box? I've seen links that say "sponsored" and I do avoid them, but I don't recall any gray box. Could you share a screen shot?I loved Outlook/Exchange. I wanna go back Even though I'm hourly, I can't drop something once I have my teeth in it. I'd already read horrible reviews about Office 365 from when I first heard it was coming down the pike, but last night I really got into it (as well as disappearing calendars, issues with delegates, etc) and in the last 6-8 months, Office 365 has had total 'out of service' periods ranging from 1.5 hours to up to 3 days every.single.month. Who in their right mind would think that's a good service to sign up with? Maybe some day they'll be the next great thing, but right now they're the worst service in 25 years!

[Ky'sMom]

Also checking in for a quick hi.I have had problems logging onto here and Elle decided to squirt hand sanitizer onto my keyboard recently so I can't space and I don't want you ladies to have to figure out what I'matworkandthespacebarisalsoactingupstupidcompute rproblems says. If I weren't cheap, I'd send $10 bucks to anyone who can tell me what I typed in two minutes lol.Yesterday was Ky's birthday. He is now a big 11. I found one of my old journals recently that was from 10 years ago and I wrote a lot about him as a toddler/one year old. It made me tear up to read it because he is so huge and grown up now. Unfortunately it looks like he is sick. He had a fever of 102 this morning and his throat was sore really badly. Hopefully it is just strep. DH is taking him to the doctor this afternoon. Then I got a call that Elle had a temp and threw up at school. Dam sharing room situation always makes germs spread faster. I really hope it is just strep and DH told me I was mean because I told him if it is to have the doctor give them both an antibiotic shot instead of writing perscriptions since I don't have to pay for the shot, my insurance company will pay for that and I don't want to pay $20 a piece for antibiotics. So I am mean, cheap and mean, but so be it IMO.Erin

[Ky'sMom]

PS, I had some paragraphs in that exchange and they didn't show up. I am using IE so not sure what is going on around here.Erin

[daylilies]

I was just thinking about the boy who said he felt threatened. It almost sounds like someone talked to him about stranger danger or bullying and told him if he ever felt threatened that he should call out loudly to someone.

[demigraf]

Awww happy birthday & get better, Ky!!! 11 yrs, huh? I still remember his kindy graduation pic in your siggy, Erin. Time whooshes!

Chrissy, I guess it's a beige box now:



Google makes money when you click the Macys.com link in the beige box. Google makes no money if you click the same link in the white-background search results below it. The white section of your search results are the "organic" results that are located through Google's standard search algorithm. The same place you'd pull up random factoids about pterodactyls and what they do for extracurricular activiites. ;)

Google will also get paid if you click any of the product search results that appear in a long bar on the right of your search result screen too. If you wanna geek out, you can read their specs in the Merchant Center. A lot of big online retailers have armies of employees just to manage their position in organic search results, as well as teams to manage paid AdWord campaigns for different products; it's big business for both Google and the online retailers, and sort of interesting the way the retailers try to game the system as much as possible (e.g. "if I put a trademark symbol next to KitchenAid, it shows up in 4th position of all product listings, but if I don't have the symbol, it'll show up on top." - stuff like that.)

[missychrissy]

Ok, that box I always avoided. I wasn't sure if Google got money or what the deal what, but I instinctively never trusted that box. It must have been the geek in me.

I was familiar with the algorithm (sorta) and the work corporations put into getting into the top results.

Erin, I'm so sorry Kai, Elle, and your space bar are all sick.

[Bridget]

That is all very interesting, Mylah! Hmmm. Very interesting. Stuff that i never have to think about!
I actually think that was mean of your teacher to be rude to you about that! I hope I am not coming across as the type of adult who doesn't "get" that kids say stuff. This boy, for sure got that word from his mom. I think she's a lot like me in that she has really open and frank discussions with her kids about strangers and things like that and I could see her using that word. I am just really, really hoping that tomorrow when we see them that he's friendly to my kids.
Today I took them to that class at the nature center for the 2nd time and Savana rocked it! She cried when we said goodbye, just eyes welling up, but she did great and wasn't ready to go when I came to get her. Plus, another mom I chatted with briefly came up to me as we were leaving and handed me a paper with her email and said she belongs to a secular homeschool group if I'd like to join they'd love to have us. AMEN. lol. I said that sounded like a perfect group for us and she said she figured as much. I wonder what it was about me that screamed secular?

Chrissy, sorry I can't comment on your posts. I know so very little about computer programs.

My parents would have been married 41 years today.

[daylilies]

Oh man, Josh tells the worst jokes these days. All you can do is chuckle. His jokes just make no sense.Bridget, did you talk to your dad today?

[missychrissy]

Bridget, it's fine!

[Bridget]

Yup. He just wants to go home and "lay low" but we're going to have dinner on thursday. My brother got a promotion today so we have that to celebrate as well. I'm super proud of him. Dbf doesn't know this yet but I'm leaving him with all 3 kids when I go. I need some kid free time.

Dbf is talking more and more about moving. Right now he's hooked on florida, oregon, arizona. He wants to open up some pizza stores for the franchise he is doing marketing for right now. Out of those 3, I'd pick Oregon. I don't want to endure these wisconsin winters much longer but the thought of moving away from my dad and brother just makes me heart hurt.

[Bridget]

Bridget, it's fine!

Well dammit, I like chatting with you!

Erin I forgot to wish your sweet Ky a happy bday and hope that both kids are feeling better soon AND that you don't catch it. Can you believe we avoided the flu even though the 3 kids that got it were here for the 3 days preceding? I feel like a freaking immune system guru. lol!

[Gwenn]

Bridget! MOVE TO ARIZONA! Seriously!

Although, all else aside, I can see why you would choose Oregon.

Erin, you missed all the drama! APA's servers crashed and were down for days, and now it's back up but funky. That's why you can't do paragraphs. Several of us can't. Of course, I can, but that's because I'm special.

Aww, happy birthday to Ky!

We have Office/Exchange at work and actually, Mac girl though I may be, I love it. The - erm - calendaring is really very easy.

I was typing up a language sample today and thinking how nice it would be if I had things set up to autocalculate for me - I calculate things myself and I do it in Excel, count utterance length, use the automatic averaging function, etc. but spend ridiculous amounts of time adjusting charts and then when I want to print it I have to add the headers for the charts manually on multiple pages because it just wouldn't line up properly if I had it set up as part of the auto-header. I was wishing I had Chrissy or Myles with my to help make me a fancy spreadsheet that did just what I wanted.

Of course, there IS language sampling software, but it's expensive and doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. But I guess nothing ever does.

[daylilies]

Happy birthday to Ky!We also avoided the flu, although Josh was sick for two months starting at the end of November. DH also got sick. I somehow avoided it all. Congrats to your brother Bridget! I also wouldn't want to move away from family if I were as close as you guys are.

[missychrissy]

Well dammit, I like chatting with you!

And I, you. But work has been overwhelming for me. I spent many hours last night researching. I didn't really learn anything I didn't already know, but I'm astounded that this information was out there and someone at this Ivy league university still thought it would be a good idea. The really sad part is, it's promised that they'll lay off 3 of the CIT exchange server guys once the migration is complete. That was the whole reason for this. Again, the wheels were put in motion by that freaking Bain "re-imaginging Cornell" many years ago. The financial crisis is over (for the university anyway) but they're still doing things that Bain said would be a good idea. F'n idiots.

/rant. I can't do anything about it. It's beyond ridiculous to me.

We have Office/Exchange at work and actually, Mac girl though I may be, I love it. The - erm - calendaring is really very easy.

I was typing up a language sample today and thinking how nice it would be if I had things set up to autocalculate for me - I calculate things myself and I do it in Excel, count utterance length, use the automatic averaging function, etc. but spend ridiculous amounts of time adjusting charts and then when I want to print it I have to add the headers for the charts manually on multiple pages because it just wouldn't line up properly if I had it set up as part of the auto-header. I was wishing I had Chrissy or Myles with my to help make me a fancy spreadsheet that did just what I wanted.

Of course, there IS language sampling software, but it's expensive and doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. But I guess nothing ever does.

Was that painful Mandy? Ironically enough, the Office 365 migration has gone almost seamlessly for our Mac users. Figure that one out...Office 365 is Microsoft. PCs are Microsoft. Logically, you'd think the PCs would be the ones that were a piece of cake!

I'm stopping now!!!

I'd to be your personal computer support person.

[demigraf]

Oregon, Bridget! I can totally see you being happy there. I would totally descend upon you if made that move. One girlfriend is pregnant and has twins and just got a house in Portland. Another one of my fave, crunchy moms from my town is dead-set on moving there near her sister along the Hood River about an hour outside of PDX.

And of course you don't come off as a mom who doesn't understand that kids are just kids. You're a good reminder to moms around you of that fact. Yay to Savana, and I hope you DO hook up with a secular homeschool group that you love.

Speaking of that crunchy mom moving up to PDX... totally random story ... she recommended that I listen to Jillian Michaels podcasts. You might remember that I talk about this mom a bit. Last year when I met her, I joked that she was "too cool" for me. Then we got to really know each other, and have been surfing, cooking, running & biking buddies ever since. I guess she thought I'd like the podcasts because we have an interest in fitness in common. So anyway, I listened to these podcasts on her recommendation, and I just have to say Jillian M. comes off as one chronic bee-yotch. She talks like she thinks she is so much smarter than the people she's supposed to help. I watched her on her show last night, and she was just yelling and harsh all of the time. That's so not motivating to me, and I would NOT respond well to her if she were my trainer. And her sense of humor is just not my cup of tea. I read somewhere that humor usually stems from either a) surprise & reversal of expectation, or b) derogatory humor where you're laughing at something or someone because you feel superior to it. Most of her humor is the 2nd kind. Yuck.

While we're on the topic of this mom, I want to share a story about her I'd been meaning to share with you girls since it happened last summer. (I'll call her Surfer Mom to just make it easier). So, she comes from a background of competitive skiing and downhill bike racing, and she's very blunt and to the point. Not to say that she's not a warm person, it's just that I've pretty much learned to not plan anything with her ahead of time because she will flake. However, she will be the first person to say yes to something spontaneous if you catch her out of the blue. One time, I wrote her, asking her to do me a favor, and said it was no big deal, and I gave her the option to say no. Anyway rather than saying no, she just ignored the request. So maybe that gives you an idea of the way she operates. Then again, she's done me tons of favors with Bodhi, so I don't want to sound like I think she's a selfish person. Anyway, last summer, she & I started trail running on Fridays. Then we invited this other mom to run with us. Then one week, after the other mom got used to running with us, Surfer Mom started texting me early in the week - just me, but not the other mom - that she wanted to go mtn biking instead of running. I agreed (we'd talked about it before), and was very busy that week, so I never got the chance to tell the other mom about the possible change of plans. I guess I figured Surfer Mom would loop her in, since she was the one making the changes. Around midweek, the other mom started e-mailing us about whether or not we were going to run. So that Friday morning, the other mom starts texting me about meeting up to run, and I ended up being the one to tell her that Surfer Mom wanted to bike instead. The other mom didn't have a mtn bike, and was really bothered that we changed the plans on her without looping her in. I know - first and foremost - that I should have passed the bike plans onto the other mom earlier, as soon as I knew it, so the blame isn't squarely on Surfer Mom. But more importantly, I think Surfer Mom should have been communicating with the other mom. It was her agenda afterall. People just get busy, and it's understandable when you have 2 kids and travel for work all the time as Surfer Mom does, but still, if I'd been in her shoes, I would have handled the whole thing differently knowing there was another person in the mix. This was over 6 months ago, and I guess you can tell I'm still not completely over the way that all went down. LOL. I wrote the other mom a huge letter of apology for MY lapse, and tried to pass it off as both me and Surfer Mom just expecting each other to communicate with Other Mom, and Other Mom actually did say that Surfer Mom was the one who should have kept her in the loop. She never ran with us again after that. She coincidentally got a new personal trainer at the same time who told her to stop running, but a part of me wonders if she'd have come with us anymore even if she hadn't changed her workout routine.

OK, and with that overly-detailed story that you didn't need to read, I am leaving the office now.