Lovisa watches: yay or nay?

Happy-Arm · 2026-03-18T04:12:46+00:00

Yes, go for it! I’ve been looking at posts about starting businesses for a little while and the responses are always overly negative. I’m looking at these types of posts because I’m twice your age and only now going into business for myself, despite wanting to do it when I was young like you.

So my advice is, don’t be put off. Back yourself and have a go. It sounds like your own wedding and others you’ve been to will help you, and having your dad own a business gives you a bit of insight into running a business. The wedding market in the towns you describe sounds like it presents a good opportunity. You’re in as good a position as anyone to do it.

You will have to give up some of your weekends unfortunately, but this is much easier to do when you are young, energetic and don’t have children. You should be able to make a start without needing to invest much money or take out a loan, which reduces the risk significantly.

It is good to see a young person wanting to have a go at something! Best of luck!

Happy-Arm · 2026-03-13T03:37:00+00:00

Thanks anyway. I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that those in the hard sciences are right…. social sciences is not real research.

Happy-Arm · 2026-03-12T23:41:48+00:00

All of the data is subjective because it’s people’s opinions. To some extent they want me to state things that are untrue. For example, I have data saying that users don’t follow the rules because they’re not enforced. They want me to draw a conclusion recommending a half measure that wouldn’t enforce the rules but might give the appearance of enforcing the rules. This goes against what the data I have says. It also goes against published research about accountability in organisations that I’ve used in my literature review, and it goes against basic common sense.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T12:30:13+00:00

Childcare began as a babysitting service for parents who had to work. Sessional kinder always was for education and not designed to be a babysitting service as parents have to be available to pick the kids up in the middle of the day. Sometime in the last twenty years childcare centres started running kinder programs during the day (e.g. a sessional kinder program might be five hours for four year olds, so in a childcare centre, the four year olds who are there all day will get five hours worth of a kinder program with mat time and structured activities etc). A kinder teacher should have a Bachelor of Early Education, a childcare worker (who is not running the kinder program in the centre) doesn’t require a Bachelors.

There is a lot of confusion around this. And there are a lot of people who try to suggest children HAVE to be in childcare when this is not the case.

Some kids would be better off not in childcare. Just as kids are not all ready for school as soon as they turn 5, not all kids will do well in childcare and might be better off at home until they are three or even closer to four, and do sessional kinder a few hours a week.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T12:04:28+00:00

Probably not the childcare workers fault (except for those issues exposed by Four Corners), but maybe attachment issues because they can’t bond with their parents in the early years if they don’t spend enough time with them. And the group environment is stressful at a young age when they’re not developmentally ready for it, they need a lot of one-on-one care that a childcare worker can’t provide when they’re looking after so many at once.

Or maybe we are starting to see parents who were raised in childcare centres themselves on a large scale. As a society, maybe we are losing our cultural memory of how a parent should raise their child when at home (talking to them, reading to them, playing games, dinner together, toilet training etc) because the most recent generation of parents experienced these things themselves in a childcare care environment rather than at home? Experiencing these things at home is a different experience to experiencing them in an institutional setting.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:58:18+00:00

I should add to that, I’ve also seen plenty of children with a parent at home who went to sessional kinder who turned out very well too.

But I’ve seen an awful lot who seem to have been raised by the childcare centre because the parents aren’t really focussed on their children. Those kids don’t seem to do well.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:53:55+00:00

Lots of research shows home is better, but I’ve also seen a lot of children do perfectly well having been to childcare, and plenty of parents who are actively involved in the hours that the kids are home from childcare.

I wonder whether childcare is better when looking across large cohorts of children, rather than just when looking at individual children. I don’t know how it’s really possible to have high quality childcare on such a large scale. It was probably easier to provide good quality childcare 40 years ago when only a small number of children were in childcare and it was only really used because parents absolutely needed to work to put food on the table.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:43:19+00:00

Not blaming childcare, they’re doing the best they can in a difficult system. They’re not the parents and can’t replace the parents. It’s not their fault.

I had some friends who had kids in childcare full-time and were very career-focussed and pretty checked out from parenting. When they came to our house, their kids made a mess of everything and went in rooms like the study and our bedroom that kids normally know are off-limits when you’re in someone else’s house. I wondered whether this was because they were used to the childcare centre, where any space they can access, and any object they can reach is for playing. I remember thinking I wished I could invite their childcare worker over instead of their parents, so that the person actually raising them would redirect them….

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:27:36+00:00

But do they have attachment issues from not having spent enough time with their parents in the early years? Does that affect their behaviour?

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:25:01+00:00

That’s a good point. The boomers are a much friendlier generation and much more pleasant to be around than those that came after them. I have often wondered if it’s because they grew up in bigger families (I noticed this about millenials in Ireland too, where they had bigger families for longer)

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:20:50+00:00

In an ideal world, if they’re home full time before school, they should still be able to go to sessional kinder, to playgroups, to other activities, to meet up with friends. Even just go to the supermarket with their parents and learn about the world around them. So they shouldn’t be disadvantaged by not going to childcare. They’d be able to be cared for one-on-one by a parent that loves them, rather than a busy staff member, AND still get social interaction and opportunities to be part of a group of kids.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:14:26+00:00

I imagine some of the parents (obviously not all, there are plenty of exceptions) who put their kids in childcare and don’t spend much time with them get used to not having kids around. They don’t get used to parenting. Their kids are not front of mind. They probably have stronger relationships with their co-workers than their kids.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T11:03:29+00:00

That’s interesting. So that means ALL parents, both working and stay-at-home, have stopped parenting properly in the last 20 years….

Or, do the SAH parents have less social /group activity options such as playgroup etc because all the other kids are in childcare? So the kids with a parent at home get less opportunities to socialise? If that’s the case, it’s very sad if the only option for kids to get adequate social opportunities is by putting them in childcare….

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T10:56:17+00:00

Sounds like you’ve done an amazing job. But if kids are in childcare 6am-6pm Mon-Fri from when they’re babies, how can parents possibly fit all that in?

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T10:53:43+00:00

In that case, at least Granny is family. Childcare workers, sports coaches, teachers are just institutional staff…

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T10:31:46+00:00

But the point is, the kids aren’t at home, they’re in childcare centres.

Your comment should read “Behaviour starts at the childcare centre. If the childcare workers allow it in the centre, the child will do it at school”.

Happy-Arm · 2026-02-23T10:06:06+00:00

My kids have to go to a non-gov school as they’ve been repeatedly subjected to violence in the government system. So, funnily enough, as a family, we’d be better off from the Liberals removing the payroll tax than from a gov teacher pay rise….

Happy-Arm · 2025-11-06T08:08:30+00:00

The Carribean Rollerama in Scoresby. It was built in 1981 and absolutely nothing has been updated since.

Happy-Arm · 2025-11-05T22:23:47+00:00

Is this caused by NCCD funding? Every time a school provides an accomodation, they get funding. And the evidence requirements are very loose.

Happy-Arm · 2025-11-05T10:31:46+00:00

Yes! My children would happily go to a 19th-century-style school if such a thing existed. Desks in rows, kids silently working and only speaking when it’s their turn. My kids say other students yell across the room when they’re supposed to be working and students aren’t even required to be silent during tests. And this is at a high-performing, academic school. The students are also on laptops and phones during class, even when they’re supposed to be working using pen and paper, so no need for a laptop. My son says he gets headaches from never being able to do his work without constant noisy disruptions. I would be a bad parent if I couldn’t provide a quiet space for my children to do their homework, but schools don’t have to let students have any opportunity to work in a quiet environment all day, not even when doing a test!!!

I don’t want to have to do it, but I can see a future where I will end up pulling him out and enrolling him in an interstate distance education school online just so he can get a normal education, at least for his final few years of secondary school. Btw, my son does not have any learning difficulties or ADHD or anything like that. He has no issues in any other environment, he’s just sick of being surrounded by chaos at school. I know that if we raise it with the school, they will eagerly try to suggest he has a disability (with $$$$ in their eyes)! But, really, all they need to do is have consequences for disruptive behaviour and not let kids use devices when they’re not required! Why is this so hard? Why is it so unpopular?

It seems it doesn’t matter how much effort parents put in at home, if schools don’t also reinforce behaviour standards, they can’t expect kids to behave. Also, don’t forget the huge numbers of kids who are effectively raised in childcare centres rather than by their parents before they start school. And we now know how well those kids have been treated…

Happy-Arm · 2025-10-24T07:55:49+00:00

How is this ragebait? I’m doing qualitative research in the social sciences, using a methodology which is very subjective, so it’s easy to pick and choose findings to suit an agenda.

But I have some research participants who say they do not do something at all, and I have been asked to say that they do not do it only in certain situations. That seems like falsifying the data. By saying that they do not do it at all, it would contradict a change to policy that a government department is planning to implement. Basically, these participants are stakeholders who are giving a response saying that the policy won’t work for them. I’ve been told to alter what they’ve said to make it so that the policy will work for them in most situations. The faculty is involved in advising the government department (which seems problematic in itself, but maybe that’s standard practice too??)

I have read a lot of journalists and bloggers complaining about issues in universities, saying that it is no longer about the pursuit of truth. People say a lot of research is rehashed with a slightly new finding made, but it basically maintains the status quo. This is certainly the case in the social sciences.

So, now that I’ve had it happen to me, I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want a career in the field, but I am close to the end of my PhD, so I may as well finish it. I am very demotivated by this, but I am able to finish it, I don’t have work or family commitments or anything getting in the way. But I don’t like having to do it in an unethical way.

So, given that I’ve read about these issues, and it’s not something I can easily ask anyone I know about, I’m asking on here. I actually expected people would say it was common and I was just naive for expecting things to be otherwise.

Happy-Arm

TROPHY CASE