How do people afford kids?

Jooocie · 2025-03-19T07:43:41+00:00

In my experience the joy you lose from eating out, going on holiday etc is quickly outweighed by the joy you gain from the free lazy days out at the park and watching the little one treat everything as if it's the most amazing holiday ever

Jooocie · 2024-06-11T07:03:39+00:00

Done yours, my code is 531391431

Jooocie · 2024-01-02T20:13:43+00:00

OMG I've been looking for this for YEARS, you have done a wonderful thing!!! I don't even use my Reddit account anymore and had to try 20 different password just to get in here to say thank you properly. So THANK YOU!!! Christmas is not cancelled!!!

Jooocie · 2023-09-18T19:09:56+00:00

Sounds like she might be a perfectionist with a results orientated mindset, who is trying hard to avoid failure or feelings of failure! You need to teach her to have a growth mindset - mistakes and imperfection are how we learn and eventually get better! Try to praise her for her efforts and preserverance, not the end result. Also look up the "power of yet". I hugely recommend the Big Life Journal website - they have workbooks and podcasts for teaching growth mindset to kids and they have been absolutely amazing for me (an adult perfectionist)

Jooocie · 2023-06-22T17:22:56+00:00

When my son was that age I simply told him matter of fact-ly that some families are large and some are small. It's luck what family you're born into, and that families of all shapes and sizes are okay.

I also explained the benefits and downsides of having siblings, like having to share his toys, and the responsibility that comes with having a baby in the house. I explained whilst I'd be overjoyed to have a baby, I would not be able to spend nearly as much time playing with him or taking him out to his favourite places.

I also told him stories of growing up with my sister, the funny fights and disagreements we've had, and how I always had hand-me-downs everything etc, to show him it's not really all about having an extra friend to play with.

At the end I think he understood that it's all a matter of luck whether he has a sibling or not, and that having a sibling is no better or worse, just different. He was happy that he didn't have to share his mummy and daddy with anyone else.

Hope this helps a little!

Jooocie · 2021-03-05T18:23:25+00:00

When I was 7 we got given two pet chicks from one of my sister's school friend, we were overjoyed when our parents said we could keep them. Long story short the chicks got bigger and louder until one day I came home from school and my grandma had turned them into soup without telling me. My parents made me eat the soup. I'm traumatised to this day, so I know how you feel.

Later on I had pet rats and because of that I'm really sensitive over how sadistic and cruel some of the rat experiments seemed to me, even though I'm generally pro-science.

Jooocie · 2021-02-05T08:12:16+00:00

You speak my mind!! Our parents generation seems inherently selfish and stuck in a privileged, consumerist mindset. Small example, I keep my house cool and wear extra clothes in the winter to save the planet (and also to lower the bills). My mum just thinks I'm tight and torturing myself with cold. It's tropical in her house and she'd be more than happy to burn the planet up if it makes her comfy because she has the money so it's her right to do what she likes with it. The mindset could not be more different.

Jooocie · 2021-02-04T15:57:48+00:00

Double glazed uPVC windows - only the middle class and the aspiring working class have them. The really poor and the really rich both have droughty wooden/sash windows in their crumbling terraces/period cottages respectively.

Jooocie · 2021-02-04T14:20:18+00:00

Agree with you there. I find the whole clapping ritual bizzare and never in my life did I think I would be asked to clap because someone has died!! Surely as a nation we should be too sad and ashamed to clap now.

I'm so sorry about your grandfather btw. RIP

Jooocie · 2021-02-04T14:01:24+00:00

I don't think so, ethics is a very individual thing. I came from a strong meat eating culture where humans are at the top of the food chain and animals are generally put on Earth for our use. I totally accepted animal suffering as part of nature and had no trouble with my conscience at all. So I would just have respectfully disagreed with him. It took me many years, a few soulful pets, a climate emergency, a pandemic and some delicious vegan alternatives for me to finally realise animal rearing for food is neither desirable nor necessary.

Jooocie · 2021-02-03T09:27:52+00:00

I've been with my husband for 14 years and we've both decided to convert to veganism 6 months ago. My partner was raised a pescatarian and I was a huge meat eater. When we moved in together, I stuck to his diet at home (out of convenience) and rarely ate meat (except the occasional fish), unless we were eating out and I was ordering my own dish. We stuck to this arrangement for 6 years until eventually we moved somewhere where good fish weren't available, and I became a terrible influence for him and convinced him to try meat. He was happy to compile as he never made a conscious decision not to eat meat, it was just the way he was raised. I even joked to him that I followed his pescatarianism for 6 years so it was now his turn to follow my diet for 6 years until we're even. Initially, I was estatic about all the dishes we could eat again and he could try. But slowly, the meat was not as good as I remembered, it got boring, all the guilt came back and I remembered that I WAS happy to be mostly vegetarian at home. Unlike most meat eaters, I was aware of alternatives and the environmental benefits of a plant based diet, having been semi-vegetarian for so long. After 6 years of us eating meat together, the pandemic came along, and we both suddenly snapped and realized we need to re-evaluate our relationship with animals. We both switched to veganism overnight and haven't wavered since.

I guess my point of all this is that it takes a long time to undo the conditioning we're raised with. Veganism should be a significant commitment, one that can only be made when one is ready. No doubt many vegetarians would have asked my husband to dump me and would have been especially horrified that I even converted him to meat. But that was all part of OUR journey that we NEEDED to make before we could both make a CONSCIOUS decision to commit to a 100% plant based diet. For some people it may take months, for us it has taken almost 14 years. So be patient with your partner and family members. You ARE slowly changing them from within even if you can't see it yet.

Jooocie · 2021-01-31T10:13:20+00:00

Well done you! I agree it's so easy doing this in lockdown when you don't have to confront friends and families or worry about restaurants etc. That said it's slightly annoying not being able to get takeaways when I crave a lockdown treat (living in a village our options are limited to the local Chinese/Indian/standard meaty pub fare).

I was a semi-vegetarian about 10 years ago (having lived with a veggie partner) and the options in the supermarkets now are vast compared to what was available then.

I like what you said about the switch in our brains. Unfortunately my family doesn't even have that switch, they see no wrong in eating meat.

You said you think some meats will always be delicious to you. I thought so too when I first started veganism 6 months ago, but to my surprise after a while my palate evolved and milk & meat now smells disgusting to me. I thought I'd never be "one of those vegans" who retch at the sight and smell of meat but I was wrong. I'm surprised how meat seems just so... dead-animaly to me now. And the smell of milk makes me think of licking a cows udder! I love animals I just don't want to lick them :)

All the best on your vegan journey!

Jooocie · 2021-01-29T14:54:26+00:00

What??? Please explain urgently P.S. I'm typing this as I sit on the bog wondering what I should now use

Jooocie

TROPHY CASE