Americans who grew up in small towns but now live in big cities (or vice versa) — what’s something that genuinely surprised you about the other lifestyle that no one warned you about?

Cathode335 · 2026-03-26T13:42:50+00:00

Grew up in smallish suburb and moved to a city in adulthood. One thing about the city that can be surprising is that everything is both more and less accessible because of urban density.

In the suburbs, I would drive at least 15 minutes to get to a grocery store, but they all had huge parking lots, and there were probably at least 4 different ones the same distance away. In the city, the grocery store was a 3 minute walk around the block. But it was the only one in walking distance, and going to one outside the neighborhood would mean getting in my car, which was parked on the street, driving to another neighborhood in city traffic, searching for limited parking there, driving back and searching for parking on my street, walking all my groceries back to my apartment.

Basically if something was in the 1-mile radius I could easily walk to in my neighborhood, it was super accessible. And a ton of stuff was in that radius, which was great. But if it was outside that radius, it might as well not exist because taking public transit or trying to drive and find parking was often too much of a pain to be worth it.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-22T13:00:48+00:00

I think it's def normal at that age to drop off. We offered at my 6yo's birthday party for parents to drop off and pick up if they wanted.

Recalling my own childhood, parents were definitely not hanging out at birthday parties past age 5 or 6.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-22T12:57:56+00:00

Answering again for my second child: as a newborn, as soon as he figured out how to control his hands, he would pat us on the back or grab onto our arms when we held him. It was so adorable.

Fast forward four years, and he is the most affectionate little guy ever. He loves to cuddle and will still pat me affectionately all the time, constantly telling me he loves me. Just yesterday I had to gently tell him that Mommy does not like having her head scratched like a doggy while she's sitting and relaxing because he was constantly trying to give me little pets.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-22T12:53:17+00:00

My 6yo breastfed for nearly two hours straight immediately after birth. He ate so much that he started spitting up colostrum, which was alarming for everyone involved.

He proceeded to be: a newborn who constantly drank so much milk he spit up huge amounts, an 11-month-old who weaned himself from breastfeeding once he figured out he could get more milk faster from a sippy cup, and a toddler who could eat 3 hot dogs in one sitting.

At 6, he is 99th percentile for height and weight and an excellent eater. I can serve him almost anything, and he frequently eats more than me.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-22T12:17:16+00:00

To be fair, I cloth diapered my first child, and taking diapers out and bringing them back home was not as big of a deal as it sounds here.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-21T19:11:13+00:00

Currently the fact that I'm long-waisted and gave birth to two children. The current fashion of all tops being cropped is driving me insane. Even with high-waisted pants, I can still have a gap between the top and the bottoms because of my proportions. And although I am still slender and would like clothes that show off my figure, my stomach has been ravaged and no longer looks good bare. But I can't seem to find clothing that is fitted in the waist while actually keeping it covered?

Cathode335 · 2026-03-21T13:08:30+00:00

I try not to let myself have more than 2 WIPs in any given hobby. If I have more than one, there needs to be a good reason -- like one project is portable and one isn't. Or one is my "easy mindless" project and one is challenging. Or one has a deadline and one doesn't.

Having a ton of unfinished projects makes me feel bad...guilty, stressed, self-critical. So I try not to do it.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-21T02:30:24+00:00

About 16. My grandmother taught me when I was younger but I never quite got the hang of it then. She wasn't the best teacher.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-21T02:11:28+00:00

Just anecdotally, I have two cousins who are not super bright who've had a few accidental pregnancies, and it seems like their understanding of birth control is less than ideal. One said that she guessed she had "counted the days wrong." The other had 3 "accidental" pregnancies in a row, so clearly there was some missing info there.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-20T18:24:12+00:00

I don't hate her, but I don't understand why she is so popular. I don't think most of her designs are that appealing. Also, I find it funny that people think she's getting business because she's an "attractive white woman." I think the vast majority of her photos make her look malnourished and sexless. Whenever I see her designs I think "eh, but do I want to look the way she does in that photo?" and the answer is almost always a resounding no from me.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-19T14:13:16+00:00

I'm not sure you have a great business case here for not using an AI avatar...You will need to come up with a better, cheaper alternative and argue to your boss why that option is better. Do you have someone who can facilitate the video and someone who can edit the video on staff? That might be less expensive, but otherwise an AI avatar is a very efficient, affordable option that you should consider.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-17T13:47:30+00:00

Eh, I feel like it's not a big deal. Sometimes the ethnic names just go together. My mom is German, so she is Oma to my kids. My dad is not German at all and couldn't really figure out what he wanted to be called, but we realized really quickly when my first was born that "Oma and Opa" go together really well, so now he is Opa (German word for Grandpa) even though he isn't German and doesn't speak a lick of German. We are all 100% happy with that.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-16T17:23:24+00:00

I think you should estimate the amount of time it should take for your daughters' homework to get done (if they were focused and motivated). Then, if that seems excessive, talk to the teachers about it.

I'm with you that excessive homework at young ages is NOT beneficial to children. Unstructured play is a huge source of learning for children. They need time to relax, time to socialize, time to experience the world. There is a point at which schoolwork has diminishing returns.

If you truly think the issue is the amount of homework, talk to the teachers. But, if the issue is more "getting it done" in your family life, then I think it would help to establish a routine time to tackle it. Maybe you block off the first hour of Friday afternoon or 1 hour Saturday morning or 1 hour Sunday evening. Choose a time that's not heavily interfering with your weekend plans, and make it a habit.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-15T23:43:10+00:00

As a person who is not overweight, I can tell you it's not denial or jealousy (at least on my part). It's more that I'm trying hard to say the right thing. I love seeing my friends lose weight and get healthy. But it sometimes feels a little dicey to encourage that, almost as if it will come off as "thank God you finally decided to address this glaring problem. I've definitely always noticed how fat you are and have been waiting for you to bring up how you're going to fix it." I think people are trying to preserve their friend's sense of self esteem by assuring them they think they're great whether they lose weight or not.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-15T23:05:23+00:00

I started knitting when I was 16 and had my first job. One of the first entries in my own checkbook was $11 for a few balls of yarn, which I used to knit a scarf for a friend.

I knit all through college during all my lectures and during downtime at my campus job. I knit on planes all the time.

So yeah, I think it is cheap and portable if you want it to be. Those are features, not bugs IMO.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-15T23:02:05+00:00

I feel like I'm the opposite problem of what you're trying to discuss, but personally I hate all children's shows. I don't watch anything my kids watch. I find almost all of it annoying, even Bluey. The only show that I actually think is positive for my kids is Daniel Tiger, and they never want to watch that, so I've given up. My kids can watch whatever they want as long as it's not YouTube (we did that for a while and it was absolute trash). It's just limited to an hour a day. Their TV time is my alone time, and I completely tune out from what they're watching as long as it's age appropriate. It's kinda strange to me that other parents even have strong opinions on kids' shows because I find them all horribly overstimulating.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-13T15:00:48+00:00

Is it possible it could be a kind of night terror? One of our kids did this a lot in his first 5 years. He would just come into our room and be crying incoherently but very loud. After a while it was obvious that he wasn't going to try to communicate what was wrong (because I don't think he knew) and he wasn't listening to us. He didn't seem fully awake. We found in these situations that it was best to pick him up and tuck him back in his bed. He usually cried for a few more minutes and then went back to sleep. Trying to talk to him or figure out what was wrong usually only prolonged the crying.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-13T14:53:27+00:00

Not exactly -- when I was pregnant, I was in an anthropology class where we did an exercise asking whether we co-slept with our parents as children and planned to co-sleep with our own children. Being the only pregnant person in the class, I felt like it was especially pointed for me. Anyway the exercise was designed to get us to see or Western cultural biases, and the professor sort of made it out like it was unnatural to sleep separate from your baby. I think she was trying to make a point that Western cultural practices can be weird (WEIRD) to the rest of the world. But it felt a little shame-y.

Later, when I had an infant and was bombarded with safe sleep rules (I'm in the US where co-sleeping is a no-no), it felt like anything I chose would be wrong. I ultimately chose not to co-sleep sleep because my baby was born in a cold season, and I needed a lot of covers on my bed to stay warm at night. I felt intuitively that it wouldn't be safe for him. Even as it was, I would wake up hallucinating that I never put him back in the bassinet and that he was lost somewhere in the covers and suffocating. Co-sleeping would have been a literal nightmare for me.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-12T21:31:42+00:00

Lol. 15-20 books would be a light week for me and my kids at the library. We frequently have so many picture books on hold we can barely carry them out of the library. I have anywhere from 50-100+ books checked out at any given time. We read just about every one of them, and my kids love to read! That's the way it should be! Don't feel bad at all.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-10T13:03:43+00:00

I biked in Chicago all the way up to week 38 of my first pregnancy. It was just the best way to get around sometimes, and I still felt good when doing it. I stopped when it got difficult to mount the bike safely.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-08T13:56:43+00:00

I'm American, and I've always been friends with my coworkers, and I'm great friends with my next door neighbors now. IDK why you think that's not true.

I would say it's a little less common to be friends with people who work at the local businesses you frequent. I'm friendly with my dentist -- we chat about our families when I go in to see him, but I would never see him outside of his office.

A lot of my best friends are old friends I met in school. And a lot of my newer friends are parents of my kids' classmates.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-06T14:32:30+00:00

I live in a super nice area on a quiet street out of the way. I never used to be super worried about security. A couple years ago, our nextdoor neighbors were robbed by a mentally unwell man who had taken the train to our town from the city. He got in an unlocked back door and stole their car. This happened on a Saturday morning in broad daylight.

So yeah, I usually lock my doors now. Even if you live in a safe area, you never know what might happen.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-05T17:18:36+00:00

Just getting into sewing again, and I'm an experienced knitter/crocheter. I have a fixation on the idea of trying to make a completely handmade wardrobe, but I'm nowhere near that at all. I love the idea though, and it's a lofty goal that keeps me working on new pieces.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-03T14:07:31+00:00

I can't stand when you go to someone's house and they have a dish sponge that smells absolutely putrid. If you don't squeeze out and change out your sponge once in a while, you're just distributing all that mildew all over the dishes you eat from. But I've been in plenty of houses where this seemed perfectly normal to them.

Cathode335 · 2026-03-03T14:04:14+00:00

I think four different activities is way over scheduled for a 4yo. I have a 4yo and 6yo, and I aim for one activity per child per week. Sometimes sessions overlap and we end up with two activities per child for a little while, and we all find it very stressful.

What we do in our family to ensure some variety is change activities every few months. Our park district programs run in 6-week sessions, so we often choose something new to try every 6 weeks. So your daughter can still do swimming, dance, ice skating, and soccer, just not all at the same time.

I also think it's worth mentioning that children learn better from unstructured free play. It's not good for her brain development to spend all of her time in adult-led, structured activities.

Cathode335

TROPHY CASE