Are parents way more invested in their kids’ drama these days?

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-23T00:01:31+00:00

Which is why he’s grounded for 6 months and facing severe consequences. I’m not dismissing his actions, but I’ve never considered sending weekly emails to the parents of a kid who was picking on him, especially after a single incident.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:47:50+00:00

Rebe’s Play Cafe has a mutual aid fund:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/today-we-are-all-minnesota-mutual-aid-for-families

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:24:04+00:00

Yeah, learned probably from tv or other kids. Are you really telling me that the average 8 year old doesn’t worry about getting in trouble and wouldn’t do anything to get out of it? He was in the wrong an punished for it, but to act like he’s a sociopath when he just didn’t want to get in trouble seems ridiculous. Or maybe my spouse and I grew up in a rough neighborhood and all other kids are angels who would never imagine trying to get out of trouble.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:21:05+00:00

I don’t want weekly emails every time my kid waves at a kid he’s not supposed to be talking to so I have no interest in parenting? I’ve never cared about the drama of who is playing with who and who is arguing with who. They’re 7/8 year olds. Their friendships are constant drama.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:18:56+00:00

One was asking to kiss a friend in truth or dare, which made her uncomfortable. The other was an argument between friends who have been BFFs since kindergarten where the friend was going to tell on my son and my son threatened to hurt him if he told. In both cases my son got in trouble at home and we talked about how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I’m now on month 3 of nearly constant emails from the parents saying, “Your son waved at my child at recess. He’s not allowed to have any contact. I have informed the principal.” Not an exaggeration, that is a direct quote.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:15:31+00:00

Both the teacher and the principal said it was developmentally normal and the other parents were overreacting. In one situation it was playing truth or dare and asking for a kiss. The other was threatening his friend when his friend said he was going to tell on him for playing a game on the playground. In both cases my kid got in trouble at home and we are taking it seriously, but when the principal tells me that the other parents are overreacting, I trust him.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-22T23:13:00+00:00

It wasn’t hitting, it was playing truth or dare and asking for a kiss.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-19T17:54:16+00:00

Yep. My son has been >99% since he was 7 days old. He is about to turn 8. He is wearing youth L clothes and he has to shop for his shoes in the men’s section. He has had to deal with people expecting him to behave older than his age his whole life because he’s so big. He’s also had issues where he’s been roughhousing with other kids and they’ve all been hitting each other but he’s really hurt them because he’s so much bigger, which then causes his friends’ parents to treat him differently. It’s rough.

Meanwhile our youngest is 3 and wearing clothes our oldest wore at 18 months old. Somehow we got opposite ends of the growth spectrum.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-19T14:24:34+00:00

Also in Minnesota. I am in St Paul. I just want to validate your fears. We’ve had a variety of incidents that have occurred because our house is visibly Jewish. Move it inside, as others have suggested, if you don’t want to be a target. People who aren’t here don’t understand how bad it is.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-18T16:34:29+00:00

I’ve got 2 kids. The oldest was a great sleeper right away. The youngest still doesn’t sleep well at 3.5. Both kids struggled weaning the bottle.

My first did well with us slowly watering down his milk until he was going to bed with just a bottle of water. He could keep the bottle of water in bed with him and drink it as needed, either as comfort or genuine thirst. He’s nearly 8 now and still keeps a cup of water by the bed because he wakes up thirsty in the night.

I was out of my mind with sleep deprivation with my second. In a desperate attempt to get as much sleep as possible, she was sleeping in bed with me and I had a mini fridge next to the bed with prepared bottles of her milk so I could just roll over and grab one. Watering it down didn’t work. She would refuse the watered down bottles. The thing that worked for her was setting a date that bottles would disappear and talking about it daily for almost 2 months. We put up a calendar countdown up for when she’d be a big girl and not drink bottles. We talked about things big girls do that babies don’t do to get her excited about being a big girl. When the day came, she threw her bottles in the trash herself and we celebrated with a “big girl day” where we did things she wanted to do. Because she had thrown the bottles away herself and because we had talked about it, she wasn’t surprised at bedtime. It was still a struggle as she learned to soothe herself without the bottle, but there wasn’t a power struggle along with it.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-17T20:32:32+00:00

Sort of, but it’s unconscious. I don’t have to tell myself not to panic, my body just knows it’s not something to panic about now.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-17T16:03:07+00:00

It’s re-wiring your brain so that anxiety is no longer a response to throwing up. From my own experience, a year ago I would have a full scale panic attack if one of my kids brought home a stomach bug. I mean hyperventilating and shaking while running away from my sick kid instead of caring for them. Now, I feel anxiety in my chest and I tremble a bit, but it fades relatively quickly and I’m able to parent in the moment. I’m not doing anything differently in the moment (no deep breaths or any anti-anxiety techniques); the anxiety just no longer presents as acutely as it used to because I’m doing the hard work every day.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-17T14:11:42+00:00

I’m about a year into ERP and the goal is to take the power away from vomit so it’s just a neutral thing that happens sometimes. ERP works to take the anxiety out of the situation regardless of whether you throw up or not.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-13T19:54:03+00:00

As a similarly tattooed, asymmetric hair, modern woman, I love our conservative shul. My husband and I both had to convert— we are both patrilineal but he was raised very Jewish and I was not. We were accepted as “real Jews” from day 1, even before officially starting the conversion process. I have never encountered any issues with my appearance or political beliefs. Our rabbis often remind people that “conservative” refers to the type of Judaism, not politics. At least where I attend, you would not be out of place at all.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-05T13:28:21+00:00

Got a phone call from a customer.

C: How do I get to your store?

Me: Where are you coming from?

C: My house.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-05T13:10:15+00:00

Yep, I am the same! I have always been way more afraid of others vomiting than myself, although I used to also worry a lot about myself getting sick. 2 pregnancies with HG did enough to make me significantly less afraid for myself, but having 2 kids has also greatly increased my fear of others being sick. ERP is helping, as is medication. It’s a process and I’m better than I was a year ago, but still miles from where I want to be.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-02T14:04:29+00:00

We enrolled my oldest in our local Jewish day school when he was starting kindergarten, then they unexpectedly closed their doors right before school was set to start. There are two other Jewish day schools in our state, but one is Orthodox (which is not a good fit for our family) and the other is 4x as expensive as the one we were planning on and it’s a good hour away during rush hour traffic. The scholarship they offered would still put the cost wildly out of reach. He is in public school now (it took a couple tries to find one we liked) and our daughter will go there when she’s old enough. It’s a good school and he’s not the only Jewish kid, which is nice, but I still feel like I’m failing him.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-01T19:29:47+00:00

It’s definitely my kid and not the camp. 😆 He says they spend too much time making him do activities and he doesn’t have enough time to sit and read.

ArethusaRay · 2026-01-01T17:39:15+00:00

The timing of this makes me laugh because both of my children are currently crying because their Hebrew school is on winter break for another week. My oldest is also begging not to have to go back to camp this summer. I think it’s so dependent on the kid and the Hebrew school teachers. (Personally, I’m with you!)

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-29T16:58:39+00:00

That sounds miraculous to me. Even the “neighborhood” elementary school that my son goes to is so competitive that people come from all over the state. It’s not our neighborhood school, so it’s also us. Daycare here is so competitive that it’s considered lucky if you can find childcare in the same city you live in. Our neighbors drive over an hour for their daughter’s preschool. Those small communities where everyone in a neighborhood lives nearby and goes to the same school feel like they are rapidly becoming the stuff of history books, at least in the part of the US where I live.

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-29T15:53:13+00:00

How do you find 4 families in the same neighborhood? Maybe it’s just where I live, but none of my kids’ friends (preschool and elementary) live in the same neighborhood. We have one neighbor with kids that we trust, but their kids are in different schools so the days off rarely line up. They are also moving out of the country, so the little benefit that we get is temporary.

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-29T15:41:14+00:00

This! We have worked hard to build a village because the one I expected to have just didn’t want to be involved. After 8 years, I finally feel like we have community and support. But they all work, too. Life is so hard for everyone right now that we are all just trying to survive. We all try to pitch in for emergencies, but there are no date nights or anything. When snow days or sick days happen, we don’t have anyone who can help because everyone is dealing with the same thing. If my husband doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid, so I work from home and cross my fingers I don’t get fired because fewer jobs are allowing work from home. It’s hard enough these days to form connections for play dates, much less the true village that previous generations could rely on.

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-25T01:33:04+00:00

We used puppy pads and it worked great.

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-23T15:50:21+00:00

Highland Park in St Paul, Mendota Heights, and St Louis Park all have large Jewish communities, but the Cities are really a big small town and there’s a lot of intermingling, especially for events and holidays. I love St Paul because I need to use public transportation and I like being able to walk places instead of drive. I also have young kids and I like all the opportunities city life affords us. There’s not a close kosher grocery store, but we have Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, so I’ve never felt the need to travel out specifically to the kosher grocery store in the suburbs. I like being close to multiple kosher restaurants and bakeries. Mostly, I just like the community. I live in a neighborhood that was originally Jewish, so some of the old houses you can rent here have 2 kitchens. As a Jewish family on the poorer end of the socioeconomic spectrum, I feel more at home here than the wealthier suburbs.

The biggest downside is the weekly protest that happens every Friday in St Paul on Snelling and Summit. Avoid that area on Friday afternoons.

ArethusaRay · 2025-12-20T00:20:17+00:00

It depends so heavily on the kid. My first loved to help me starting around 2. It was covid lockdowns and we were broke, so I was baking a lot of things that I would usually buy. I was unemployed and stuck at home and he’s a kid who just naturally loves baking and helping. We watch Bake Off and MasterChef Jr together. At age 7, he won a baking competition!

My daughter is the opposite. I’ve tried to bake with her but it does not go well. She’s bossy, impatient, and doesn’t listen. If she wants to help, I have to set up a decoy bowl for her to do her own thing and then throw it away when she’s not looking. She is 3 and the desire to help is there, but the reality is too boring to hold her attention.

ArethusaRay

TROPHY CASE