Who Am I?
Kids vary too much to go by standard ages. Generally, a child is ready to take a risk when they show a particular combination of caution and curiosity about the thing they are exploring. For example—a very young child runs into the street because they run everywhere and aren't showing any awareness that the street is special. They can be allowed to enter the street, even run, when they treat the street as being somehow "different" from other environments. Their awareness will allow them to learn safe behaviors. Of course you still have to stay there and watch them.
OMG I am in that phase right now! No is their favorite word. But there are consequences for a refusal to comply, generally lose of some special privileges or a favorite activity. If they won't go to school in the morning then no play, no snacks, no conversation, no activity at all until they do what they are told. It helps that they become unbearably bored after about 5 mins. There are also rewards for doing what you are supposed to do.
I don't understand your last point (perhaps ironically).
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
United Earth
I mean teenagers and college kids who start experimenting with sexy and edgy stuff ("polyamoury?!" "you took what?!''), changing or dropping religion or political affiliation ("God is not Dead, He's immortal!"), have all kinds of alienating newfangled notions ("how can a man be a woman?!"), and listen to music that gives you headaches and is full of reprehensible nonsense.
Basically how to be a parent kids can take their concerns to.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Who Am I?
Havnt got there yet, so cant speak from personal experience, but what I imagine I will do is make a distinction between dangerous behavior and dumb ideas. The behavior I will try to prevent, the ideas I will try to reason them out of. But the bottom line is, there is basically no way to stop a 17 year old from doing whatever they want. At some point you have to start letting them experience their own consequences. Then be around to help them pick up the pieces (while getting in a good "I told you so!").
As for being the old codger, thats already happened. My son loves gangsta rap, I absolutely despise it. So we divide radio time between, esp in the car, and the station changes the first time I hear foul language. It works, for now.
edited 15th Mar '18 7:34:08 AM by DeMarquis
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
United Earth
For me I'd intervene immediately. "What is it that you like about gangsta rap, so much that you don't mind the misogyny, the glorification of drugs and prostitution and stone-hearted capitalism, and the usage of horrible racial slurs?"
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Who Am I?
Hes 12. He doesnt understand the lyrics, which I know because I tested him. What he likes about it is that the other kids at school like it—which I imagine is equally true for them. What he enjoys the most are the bragging rights he gets when he hears a rapper on the radio that he knows is popular with the other kids. Its the audio equivalent of collecting pokimon cards.
And if I forbade it, I would just be turning it into forbidden fruit.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
United Earth
That is both reassuring and very frustrating. Music appreciation reduced to conformity value! I say! What is the world coming to?
Is it good parenting to introduce one's kid to TVT?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Who Am I?
I dont know if its good parenting, but right now this is where I come to be by myself. I can barely contemplate the consequences of my family being here.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Oh, bother.
I think I might have posted this article here before (it's an old one), but since it's summer again (and thanks to climate change we're getting record high temperatures) I think it's worth posting here again.
It's one of the most chilling things I've read.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Mod with the Migraine
So the advocates of smaller government in Arizona have passed a law mandating that unused embryos must be implanted
in somebody, they don't care who, if there's any disagreement from the parents what to do about them.
Those rare cases usually concern embryos locked in “custody” disputes, wherein an estranged couple can’t agree on what to do with them. Typically, one person wants to use the embryos to have children and the other wants them destroyed, donated, or frozen forever. The Thomas More Society, a firm that often files lawsuits relating to anti-abortion issues, has represented several people who belong to the former category of plaintiffs. The group argues that embryos should not be treated as pieces of jointly owned property because they have a right to life that supersedes an adult’s right not to reproduce.
As of a few weeks ago, that viewpoint has been enshrined as state law in Arizona. The legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, mandates that disputed embryos should go to the party most likely to make them “develop to birth.” The law is a major win for anti-abortion groups—not coincidentally, it was inspired by one of the Thomas More Society’s cases—who would like to see embryos and fetuses endowed with legal rights and privileges. The more laws that treat embryos as fully fledged human beings, advocates believe, the more grist courts will have to restrict abortion rights and criminalize women who terminate their pregnancies.
The case that inspired the Arizona law centers on Ruby Torres and John Joseph Terrell, who created seven embryos before Torres went through cancer treatment. Later, during the couple’s divorce proceedings, she said she wanted to keep the embryos for possible use since she probably couldn’t get pregnant without them. Terrell said didn’t want his genetic material to be involved in Torres’ hypothetical pregnancy at all. An Arizona Superior Court judge ruled that Torres couldn’t make a baby with the embryos without Terrell’s consent. But, the judge added, the embryos shouldn’t be destroyed—they must be donated, offered up to infertile people who can’t make embryos themselves.
From the pro-life perspective, this is the second-best outcome: The woman who wants to bring the embryos to life doesn’t get to keep them, but they still stand a chance of becoming children. For pro-choice observers, however, it’s a disturbing decision. Why should a stranger have the right to use Torres and Terrell’s embryos when neither of them approved that option? If Terrell’s argument was compelling enough for the judge to deny Torres possession of the embryos, why wasn’t it enough to keep the embryos out of a mass donation bin, forcing him to have biological children he still doesn’t want?
The Torres–Terrell decision prompted a Republican Arizona legislator to write the law that took effect this month. As the Washington Post explains, state Sen. Nancy Barto put forward what she believed to be a compromise solution, one that gives embryos to aspiring parents like Ruby Torres but stipulates that the party that doesn’t get the embryos will not have to provide financial support for any resulting children.
For infertility advocates, the Arizona law is less a Solomonic decree than a portent of a borderline-dystopian future wherein the government can compel people to become parents long after they decide they don’t want to be. In a letter to the Arizona House of Representatives, Barbara Collura, president and CEO of the infertility organization RESOLVE, imagined a few possible nightmares the law could make real: a set of embryos going to an unfit parent the court has no discretion to refuse; an ex-spouse gaining possession of 20 old frozen embryos and having several future girlfriends gestate them all, while his first wife watches helplessly as her genes make someone else’s children. Collura registered particular dismay over the fact that the law would override the original stated wishes of the two people who made the embryos, who typically sign a pre-IVF document for their medical provider laying out agreed-upon plans for the embryos should the couple ever break up.
In recent years, the thorniness of the frozen-embryo issue has come to light via Sofía Vergara, whose ex-fiancé Nick Loeb has filed several lawsuits to gain possession of the two embryos they created together. Recently, Loeb moved to Louisiana, a state in which embryos created through IVF that haven’t yet been implanted are considered “juridical persons”—nonhuman entities (usually businesses) that are nevertheless able to engage in legal activities as individuals. This means clumps of cells can act as plaintiffs in Louisiana lawsuits, a privilege the embryos Loeb has named “Emma” and “Isabella” employed when they sued Vergara, claiming she “abandoned and chronically neglected” them by leaving them frozen for three years without giving them a chance to be born. Louisiana, though, has no law requiring contested embryos to go to the party that wants to gestate them. If the state had a law like Arizona’s, Vergara would have no right to prevent Loeb from having her biological children. Loeb’s supporters in the anti-abortion community have championed the concept of “a father’s right to choose” to rally others to his side. For them, the Arizona law may act as an equalizing force: A man can’t always forbid his pregnant lover from getting an abortion, but once the couple makes frozen embryos together, he may be able to make her become a biological parent against her will.
Torres has already appealed the judge’s decision in her case, and the new Arizona law will surely be challenged in court. As of now, there is little judicial consensus on the issue of embryo possession, making it difficult for the parties in these emotionally fraught cases to predict whether parenthood is in their futures. A California Superior Court judge ruled in 2015 that a set of embryos be destroyed—the ex-husband’s desired outcome—even though the ex-wife wanted to use them. Cases that came before judges in Illinois and Pennsylvania, both concerning straight couples who created embryos before the women underwent fertility-threatening cancer treatments, ended with the women gaining possession of the embryos over their exes’ objections. Each judge decided that since the embryos represented the woman’s only remaining chance to have biological children, her right to carry them to term trumped her ex-lover’s right to decide not to have children with a former partner.
Though the uncertainty that accompanies these cases is a brutal burden to bear for those who want to be parents and those who don’t, a sweeping one-size-fits-all statute like Arizona’s has far more dire effects. Advocates for people with infertility have reason to believe the Arizona law could scare couples away from IVF, a procedure that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to become biological parents under otherwise unlikely circumstances. If submitting to IVF means surrendering one’s genetic material for possible future hijacking by a disgruntled ex, would-be parents might opt out. In their crusade to save the frozen embryos of today, pro-lifers may be selling out the potential children of tomorrow.
Edited by BlueNinja0 on Jul 20th 2018 at 10:34:13 AM
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Ugh. Is California poisoning their water supply or what?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Oh, bother.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
In reference to what?
A reference to the long disputes about who gets how much water from the Colorado River between California and Arizona and the fact that water rights disputes are - as shown in Chinatown - often fought out with unscrupulous means.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Oh, bother.
And you're bringing this up in the Parenting thread because...?
Or are you seriously insinuating that this decision is due to California poisoning Arizona's water?
Edited by M84 on Jul 21st 2018 at 3:17:12 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
I was being facetious. I think that that law is crack brained but then this wouldn't be the first time politicians over there have come up with crack brained ideas or royally screwed something up (Long story, too much personal information so I won't detail on that last point).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Oh, bother.
California has more than enough of its own idiocy — most of it localized within Silicon Valley and Hollywood. We really don't need to be blamed for Arizona's bullshit too.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Who Am I?
From the article: ...The legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, mandates that disputed embryos should go to the party most likely to make them “develop to birth.”
That clarifies what the law is about. Can someone remind me whether frozen embryoes are fertilized yet or not? Because if tgey are then the issue is that if one person owns them, they are in a position to force the other person to become a biological parent against their wishes.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Embryos by definition are fertilized. Unless they are derived from parthenogenetic/teratoma cells and then you'd have a serious ethics violation on your hand (as well as the discovery of the century).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Who Am I?
Ok, then the implications of the following become clearer:
"An Arizona Superior Court judge ruled that Torres couldn’t make a baby with the embryos without Terrell’s consent. But, the judge added, the embryos shouldn’t be destroyed—they must be donated, offered up to infertile people who can’t make embryos themselves."
Thus, some stranger could end up bearing children biologically descended from them without their permission. The issue is further clouded by a lawsuit in another state where a father wants possession of some embryoes the mother no longer wants, presumably so that some other woman can bear them.
It all comes down to how important one thinks biological descent actually is. The person who helped produce the embryoes is not forced to pay any costs or help raise the resulting children in any way, so the question is how problematic is it that someone else might bear a child biologically related to you without your permission or possibly even your knowledge?
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
The Mod with the Migraine
The world overall is trending towards older mothers, but the West in particular is looking at more first-time moms over 30 than under it when they get pregnant. Which will probably have a very large negative economic effect a few decades down the line.
Why it matters: Already, demographers and economists are concerned about the falling rate of children being born in many countries, which could ultimately cause economic instability. Having kids later in life typically leads to having fewer kids, and women who wait until their 30s and 40s are at greater risk of infertility or pregnancy complications, according according to UNFPA.
In Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Spain, the average age at first birth for women has already surpassed 30, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund.
How we got here: As with many of the recent changes in fertility trends, increased education and empowerment of women has caused the average age of first-time parents to rise. Women are more likely to wait longer to focus on their pursuit of education or careers or increased financial stability before having kids.
- "People really try to make a living first. You try to get more security, finish education. It takes longer and longer," Michael Herrmann, a senior adviser for economics and demography at UNFPA, told Axios.
- He added that in some cases people are worried about the cost of having and caring for children, especially with rising education prices.
- In Korea, for example, the high cost of education and immense pressure on parents to provide expensive tutoring to ensure their child's success has contributed to the decline in fertility rates there, according to Jackson.
- The decline in teen births in places such as the U.S. and Eastern Europe has also been a significant factor in the rising average age of childbearing women.
I don't know, is that really so wrong?
The last time I checked, the world needed fewer children taking fewer resources, not more. Besides, women who have children later are more likely to be financially stable, in healthy relationships, and have their mental states under control. Would it really help the "economy" if more children were born to unprepared, poor parents with unstable relationships?
Hell, I'm almost 26 and there's no way I'm fit to be a parent: I don't make enough money to fully support myself yet, I'm still figuring out my way around dating let alone creating stable relationships, and I have no idea what raising a child would entail or how to deal with common parenting problems.
In the bad old days when one had maybe 8-12 pregnancies make it to a live birth with, maybe, 3 or 4 of the kids making it to adult and maybe 2 of those kids having kids themselves with equally shocking outcomes (if you didn't all get wiped out by bubonic plague)... Those 2 reproducing kids could be as much as 25 years apart.
So... Yeah. Suddenly, later-born kids with a decent chance of survival is... bad? Compared to the later-born kids being patented by their own almost-adult siblings in case of disaster, how?
Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 22nd 2018 at 10:00:28 AM
@Ludlow: You're right about the economic factors, however contrary to popular belief the world isn't overpopulated per se. There are a lot unfed mouths, but it's not precisely because there are too many mouths to feed on a global scale. There is easily enough food for everyone, for example-but getting that food into the mouths of the hungriest people can be a monumental task at the best of times.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
The later you have a baby, less time you have before the parents become too old to have another one. It reduces the birth rate, that's a why it's considered a problem.
A procrastination in of itself
It reduces the birth rate yes, but how much does it reduce the rate of children successfully entering the workforce?
From a workforce perspective that’s the number that matters, how many children being adult workers, not how many are born.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
How much power and self-determination should kids be granted at what ages?
Also, how to deal with the phase where they say no to everything?
And how to avoid being the parents who just don't understand, and to whom therefore the kids don't bother to tell the truth because they don't trust us with it.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.