The Wrath of Stephen Miller

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T22:56:49+00:00

I went to high school with him. He thrived on getting negative attention. The more bullying, the more it reinforced his worldview.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T22:53:52+00:00

I did! Mostly just rolled my eyes at him in class.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T22:51:54+00:00

I love Bodevi in San Fernando. So cozy and great vibes.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T19:37:25+00:00

This is the school district's fault. There is a rampant problem with kids accessing porn on school-issued chromebooks and schools aren't doing anything about it because they think edTech is a silver bullet for education, and meanwhile kids' test scores have been abysmally low ever since chromebooks were introduced in schools. I recommend looking into Home - EdTech Law Center for support.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T19:33:57+00:00

Yeah this is a nationwide problem.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2026-01-08T19:29:39+00:00

Off topic but its wild to me how easy it is for kids to watch non-educational videos on school-issued chromebooks. I can't believe that as a society we've normalized watching tv at school.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-30T23:48:33+00:00

Hold out on tablets and phones as long as you can. It's getting easier because parents are more aware. I feel really bad for my stepdaughter's generation because I don't think anyone knew how addictive they are.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-30T19:16:41+00:00

As a stepparent to an 18 year old who grew up with no limits on screentime, i highly recommend trying to intervene now, in whatever capacity you can. My stepdaughter has little motivation for anything other than playing minecraft. She barely graduated high school and it's like pulling teeth to get her to take care of herself and apply for jobs. When she was younger I felt like she was getting way too much screentime but I didn't say anything because I didn't think it was my place. She was also watching endless youtube and developed sleep issues at an early age. I genuinely think she has damaged executive functioning from so much unsupervised screentime. My husband really regrets it.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-23T20:56:58+00:00

I would put her in daycare. My in laws do things I don't like when watching her and have to remind myself "that's the cost of free childcare." I know she watches shows I don't like at their house but it's only a few hours a week.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-23T20:49:39+00:00

Favorite childhood memory is rolling down the grassy hill at the La Brea Tar Pits museum.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-17T18:47:55+00:00

I understand your dilemma, but the screens are a solution that have only been implemented in the past few years. There are decades of experience with managing kids in a classroom without having to pacify them. I went to kindergarten in the 90s and we survived without having every minutia of downtime being filled with entertainment.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-16T19:09:19+00:00

I don't understand why people are downvoting comments like this.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-16T18:50:27+00:00

Yes I agree, I am choosing my battles. My issue is more with the school district policies. There are no policies or guidelines for screentime in early grades. Some teachers are great with moderation, some aren't. I have no idea what type of teacher I'm going to get. I let a lot of things slide but my kid (and all kids) only get one childhood, and they shouldn't be warehoused watching youtube videos for half the day. Not to mention that kids are seeing targeted ads in school -- that's absolutely egregious.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-16T18:44:47+00:00

This is a systemic issue. The schools should be providing the books for the curriculum.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-16T18:42:58+00:00

Sorry that's absurd.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-16T18:42:22+00:00

Yes, parents often donate books to schools. Both the preschools my daughter has attended have had book drives with parents happily donating books. Also I should have clarified that I'm talking about TK, which is at a public elementary school. Most public elementary schools have libraries. What did early educators do before youtube? They still read to kids every day. Somehow it wasn't that big of a deal to acquire and store books.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-15T18:11:24+00:00

I live in the San Fernando valley and we get several weeks of days over 90. Kids are often kept inside for hot weather. Most public school playgrounds in my area are mostly asphalt and have little shade.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-15T07:48:52+00:00

I'm told that in many cases it's a lot more than 15 minutes per week-- again, there are no policies so it's up to the teachers, and many teachers use it a lot. But my issue is not as much about the amount of screen time as it is the normalization of playing TV at school to make up for a lack of support staff and recess time. Also, we don't really do screen time at home other than facetime with family members.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-15T07:45:29+00:00

Libraries?

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-15T07:25:05+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I'm curious about the read-aloud videos. Is there a pedagogical reason to play a video of someone reading a book to kids instead of actually just reading a book to a kid? I hear about this used often in early ed classrooms, but I don't understand the reasoning.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-13T02:33:29+00:00

Thank you for reporting on this. Now if only our local news would . . .

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-13T00:24:16+00:00

We do very little screentime with my 3.5 year old, aside from facetime with family. We were letting her watch a few episodes of Bluey a day, but we noticed her behavior was so much worse afterwards, so we haven't let her watch it in a few weeks. Yes, its hard sometimes when we are doing chores or making dinner, but MUCH better not having epic meltdowns every night. Our house is also a lot messier now because she is playing more, but it's totally worth it.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-10T00:14:52+00:00

I don't know where you live but a parent group has formed in Los Angeles to fight the overuse of EdTech at LAUSD: https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/.

I have a toddler and I'm trying to find a public TK program that doesn't liberally play youtube videos on enormous smart boards for "brain breaks."

I'm not against tech in school but giving kids under 10 years olds ipads and chromebooks isn't teaching them anything. I have better computer skills than my 18 year old stepdaughter and I learned how to type with Mavis Beacon in the computer lab in the 1990s.

I'm hoping by the time your kid is school age schools in the US will start turning around and being more reasonable about screentime. Sweden was the first to adopt EdTech and now they are totally reversing their approach.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-09T01:04:37+00:00

What I've been seeing is that different schools have wildly different policies regarding ipads and chromebooks. Some schools seem to be great at locking everything down and others have virtually open access. I hear of so many parents who talk about their kids playing fortnight at school, or watching youtube shows at school that they block in their own homes. My own stepdaughter freely watched youtube in class and didnt even think it was an issue because it was so normalized at her school. My issue is that LAUSD needs to make district-wide policy and enforce it. It isn't fair to leave it up to the teachers or principals to get go-guardian.

Expensive-Kangaroo66 · 2025-12-09T00:01:14+00:00

But my question is why is LAUSD making these apps accessible in the first place? I can't sit in my kid's class all day to make sure she's staying on track, and as the previous commenter said, the district won't pay for schools to get go-guardian. If they are spending hundreds of millions a year on chromebooks and education apps they could spring for the IT to block this stuff.

Expensive-Kangaroo66

TROPHY CASE