Wait they planned on getting pregnant? Edit: ok I saw your other comment, this is bonkers

My daughter is 4 too. While I get the worries, and I absolutely don’t want to encourage or downplay teenage pregnancies, I’ve thought about it a lot, and if she ever became pregnant at a young age, I decided that my first reaction needs to be one of joy and congratulations. Because if she ends up keeping the kid, it’s gonna be loved, and I want them to know that people were happy about them existing and being chosen to exist, and not just looked at as a burden and accident. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel if the first reaction from everyone is shock, disgust, “fafo”, anger. That being said, the next thing is I would make sure I’d support her no matter what decision she takes. Abortion, adoption, raising the kid, I’m on board because it is her life, her body, her decision.

Isn’t it the German town with the highest suicide rate?

Absolutely yes.

I’ve dreamt of making movies and theater plays. I got into internships after finishing school and it was going good, I just started hating it. I hated movies, I couldn’t see them without thinking of all the misery behind the scenes. I hated TV. I hated theater.

I stopped after a year and went to university. It ruined something else for me, but at least, after a while, I was able to enjoy movies again.

Unless the same family eats out at that restaurant every day of the week, who are we to judge when we see this? Maybe they went out once in a blue moon and kids went insane but parents wanted to finish their meal. Maybe the kids had a long overstimulating day already and can’t handle a restaurant anymore but are also too hungry to go home at that point. Maybe the parents are scared of everyone around them judging if their kids don’t behave like 1920s kids who are too scared to even breathe in front of their parents. There can be multiple reasons for screens at restaurants and food courts and it’s not up to me or you to judge. Restaurants and going out are usually a special occasion and while I don’t condone putting your child in front of a screen when you are eating out, I don’t want to prematurely extrapolate to screen use at home.

I also want to add, when you say you see kids glued to screens every time you go out, are you sure you don’t see any who aren’t? Because I have this with dogs, I despise dogs and I spot a dog when there is one. While a place could be full of cats or rats or squirrels and I wouldn’t even notice.

Isn’t it already? Or am I living in some kind of parenting bubble? No one I know thinks it is ok to let their kids be glued to the screen. There are some parents (usually understandably exhausted single parents with multiple children under 6) who do put on kids music on youtube just so that they can tackle some acute problem or have a 10 minute break but otherwise no one thinks screens are great or even ok. It’s used as a last resort mostly. Isn’t that the norm? At least this is my experience for kids under 6.

That is in a way correct. Washing cloth diapers was incredibly annoying and single use diapers have been a big relief. Before that, the need/urge/desire to get rid of diapers was a big factor in deciding when to approach potty training.

But maybe it is a good thing that kids aren’t being rushed anymore and are given the time they need to understand their bodies. Child led potty training is an incredible privilege and I can absolutely understand that 50 years ago this would have taken the strongest nerves to practice.

People really seem to think that children are just born with the knowledge inside of them and they will just figure it out cause we as adults know it.

In regards to potty training, that is actually quite the way it is. There is a reason you cannot teach a newborn to be potty trained and a reason why the vast majority of kids age 5 do not use diapers.

The “training” part of potty training - as in, sitting down, pooping/peeing, wiping, flushing, washing your hands - is a social necessity. This should absolutely be taught. But the feeling of “oh, something’s coming, I gotta go” is absolutely something that kids do figure out by themselves and cannot figure out before the right time has come. This is a neurological thing and rushing it won’t do any good and won’t work. You can help guide your child to listen to their bodies once the time comes. But at the end of the day, it is their body and their connection to what is happening in there. You can condition them to use the potty every time after X Y Z happens (after you get up, after you eat before we leave the house,…), but this is not the same as learning to feel their bladder, how full it is, how much time is left before they really gotta go, and so on. And the latter is so much more important - which is why there has been a push for later potty training.

This is to say - it is a good thing that potty training takes place later now as it is now much more child led and child focused. Not out of a societal need to function. As others have pointed out, this article is confusing because it doesn’t clearly state what school/age they are talking about and what “potty trained” entails. It makes you think that elementary school children get their shitty diapers changed. Are they “not potty trained” because they fail to wipe correctly or wash their hands? Do they do their business into diapers? Are we talking poop or pee? Are we talking more frequent accidents? And especially, what age group are we talking about exactly?

Like, believe me, even in a climate where kids are allowed to do this at their own pace, our kindergarten (ages 3-6/7) is not full with kids that have diapers on, especially past 4. Have you seen the reaction of a baby vs toddler vs preschooler when they poop their pants, even in diapers? A baby doesn’t realize it, a toddler might actually enjoy the warmth. A preschooler usually hates the feeling and starts to cry and wants a change immediately. When they are ready, they are ready, they don’t want to run around dirty or wet.

And last but not least - I assume we are talking about kids under 6, i.e. under elementary school age. In that case: What does it matter if a kid is potty trained at 33 or 39 months? We are making a big deal out of a couple of months or maybe a year, while this year might actually be incredibly beneficial for the kids in their bodily autonomy and body feel.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it is now the kindergartens that are advocating for this. While they of course prefer kids to be potty trained there is so much more awareness and understanding from the teachers’ side; every kid has their own pace and is an individual and should lead their own way. And they absolutely do in 99% of the cases.

Framing “late” potty training as some kind of societal failure is simplifying a very complex issue in a grotesque way. In some ways, it is a very big achievement in children’s rights.

Germany here. It is now not expected that your kid is fully potty trained when they start kindergarten at 3 years old anymore - at least not in the majority of kindergartens (“it would be nice, but it is not obligatory”). The reason is that there is a push to not start potty training before the kid shows signs of readiness. And this is often not the case before 2.5-3 years. Not in the majority of cases but some kids don’t have the necessary body feel (which is a neurological development) to do successful potty training.

Now, we also have to discuss how we define “potty training”. Over here, it is normal to keep a potty and offer to try it, but you don’t take away a toddler’s diaper and let it sit on a potty until stuff comes out. So I am talking about child led potty training where they take the incentive, but are offered the access regularly and obviously are then shown how to wipe and wash their hands.

If I remember correctly, research shows that earlier potty training takes longer until the kid is considered potty trained (i.e. few to no accidents during the daytime). Another reason for the push to do it later - besides bodily autonomy - is that potty training that is done too early often uses tactics such as putting the kid on the potty “just in case”, which is now considered not ideal, since the kid doesn’t learn to feel when the bladder is actually full.

Moreover, kids often change from early daycare to kindergarten at age 3, which is considered a major life event that often leads to a regression in potty training. Our kid was almost completely potty trained at 3 years old but when she started kindergarten (without having been to early daycare) she regressed immensely due to the stress and it took a couple of months until she was fully potty trained again. However, it was her teachers who advocated not to rush her and give her the time she needs and who reassured us that this is very normal, and I am grateful they did.

I find the article a bit misleading because it doesn’t clarify what age the kids are and what school we are talking about. Or how exactly they define potty training. It makes it sound like a quarter of seven year olds who are in first grade shit in their diapers. I mean, maybe they do, but it is unclear what they are talking about. Most kids will, at a certain age, absolutely lose it if they happen to poop or pee their pants (even in diapers). Apart from one autistic child I really don’t know any kid that regularly does its business in diapers at age 5. There is also a sense of societal norms and wanting to belong - also something that the teachers told us before we started kindergarten - so usually the diapers go away because the kids don’t want to wear them anymore. They want to be big.

That got deep really fast xD

Anyway, I’ll be happy to share results once I’ll get to it!

As a frequent pee-er myself I think I should talk to my doctor

First and foremost: good! Let them continue to do research. And hint, any new discovery is good and should be followed up. The caveat is that beta amyloid plaques in the brain have started to gain a lot of critique as a target for Alzheimer’s. The problem is that research has focused a lot on stopping or even reversing the accumulation, but even when this works, this usually doesn’t alleviate the symptoms. And obviously it’s research in mice. So take the enthusiams with a grain of salt.

It is weird, and I don’t know if they had something like that. My guess is that getting small change in the first place was rare and it was not worth bothering for most.

Just for context, I am talking about копейки (kopek). Around 2003, the ruble was actually rather strong, with up to 23₽ to 1$. So 23 kopek would be 1 cent.

The last time I was there was in 2019 (for two obvious reasons). Back then the exchange rate was shit, with about 60-80₽ to 1$. The thing was that few places even gave you change in coin form. I remember relatives telling me that pharmacies are basically the only place that had prices with kopeks. The way it would work when shopping - apart from the fact that 99% paid with their phones and not with cash, I was the exception since I didn’t have a Russian bank account and couldn’t get one with my Russian passport - was that they would round prices, usually in your favor. So if you owe 2763 rubles (or 2762.88), and you gave them 3000, they would return either 240 or even 250, depending on how much change they have. They would also get majorly annoyed if you didn’t have “760” on you since they usually didn’t have change. I rarely got change back to the ruble (in this example 237). I definitely never got kopeks in a supermarket and just couldn’t use them there.

So maybe accumulating change would take long time?

Please note that I am not a local, so my knowledge of Russian money culture and habits aren’t the best or most reliable source. It’s my experience but there are surely more qualified people around here to chime in.

Reminds me how I visited relatives in Russia and they were just throwing their change away. Literally in the garbage. There was barely a place that would take them anyway so why keep it. It still feels very weird to toss money like that, even if it is not even a cent.

the rest of the fucking world uses post-tax income, because that’s how much money you can actually plan to take home. The taxes are a consideration, but if a job advertises €50k, it means the employee is taking home €50k.

Looks around confused in German

It’s an interesting overall take still! But I am wondering now how income is handled in other European countries, I actually don’t know.

Honestly I love taxes. I don’t love that billionaires don’t pay enough taxes and the unequal tax burden across different social groups but I love taxes and I love the idea of taxes. My dream would be a society where I work for basically pocket money and everything else - quality staple food and fresh food, education, healthcare, adequate housing, transportation, communication, childcare - is provided to me.

it was started by a guy on his blog with an explicit statement at the start that it wasn’t true and his intent was to demonstrate how easy it was to create a conspiracy theory…

This reminds me of the guy who faked a study that supposedly claimed chocolate could help to lose weight, he put a lot of red flags in it, and it was still not only turned into headlines of numerous magazines, but was actually even published in a scientific journal that claims it does extensive peer review.

Unfortunately, this study is still referred to as of today. People still find claims that chocolate with high cocoa content can work as a weight-loss accelerator.

I am very intrigued

I 100% agree with everything you said. I am very much pro legalisation of weed and decriminalization of all drugs. Unless you are cooking up tons and tons of fentanyl you shouldn’t be in jail.

To me, education and awareness includes not equating marijuana and oregano.

I am making the argument for both, that is exactly the point I am making. I see too many people demonising alcohol and calling marijuana not dangerous in the same sentence, comparing it to oregano. Both substances are dangerous. And of course marijuana is addictive, what are you talking about? You can absolutely become both physically and mentally addicted to it. You can develop a tolerance, and you can trigger psychosis in predisposed younger people. I’ve seen all three cases in university and it wasn’t pretty.

Again, I am not advocating for the criminalisation of possession or consumption. I am only advocating for not downplaying that mj is a drug. Right now, the narrative parallels that “a glass of wine or two won’t hurt”, “let’s have a beer with friends”, “let’s get the champagne to celebrate”, “alcohol is fine at social events” that we used to hear some decades ago about alcohol. It didn’t end well. Why are we doing this again with weed now?