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"Morning dropoff is stressful, to say the least, we are always late, my kids never cooperate,..." I know this is just a throwaway comment in the article but my
by randlet 7y ago
"Morning dropoff is stressful, to say the least, we are always late, my kids never cooperate,..."
I know this is just a throwaway comment in the article but my god does it bug me when parents use their children as an excuse for being late. Yes, kids are sometimes tough to get out the door but it's your fault that this somehow catches you by surprise every morning.
- ktpsns 7y ago+1. And don't use the car to deliver your kids. Use the bike. It is possible: There are children seats and trailers. And there are ebikes. There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere.
- mayank 7y ago> There is little excuse for driving cars. In the case you mention, airbags are a pretty good reason. Also distance. And disabilities.
- the_gastropod 7y agoAirbags are good as... protection from other cars, or from driving your own car too fast, and hitting a large object. You shouldn't live a great distance from places you frequent. And there's no reason a disabled individual requires a multi-ton machine capable of going 100+mph to get around.
- abtinf 7y agoAnd convenience. And warmth. And AC. And comfort. Unless your goal is to exercise, a car is almost always better in every dimension.
- okmokmz 7y agoFor your own comfort and convenience perhaps. For the environment and your health a car is almost always worse in every dimension
- abtinf 7y agoIf your goal is to maximize the well being of some arbitrary “environment”, suicide is the only rational and moral coarse of action. Since you are on this forum, not only have you not done that and, by your own standards, you’ve made the environment worse by using energy and technology made from toxic chemicals. You don’t take your own ideas seriously and are a hypocrite. I adhere a philosophy that holds human flourishing as the standard for all things. Driving a car radically improves the human environment compared to all alternatives, including walking.
- okmokmz 7y ago>I adhere a philosophy that holds human flourishing as the standard for all things Says the guy saying I should kill myself if I really care about the environment... the irony
- jessaustin 7y agoOne speculates that suggestion wasn't made in good faith.
- abtinf 7y agoYou are attempting a transparent deception. It is your moral standard that demands suicide, not mine.
- kelnos 7y agoNow you're just arguing in bad faith and putting words in people's mouths. Please don't do that here.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago> suicide is the only rational and moral coarse of action By that logic the best thing for Gandhi to have done to reduce the influence of British colonialism was to have killed himself. Rosa Parka could have made more seats available by offing herself.
- tapland 7y agoThe US is absolutely screwed and biking these would scare the hell out of me. I would not want to go with a kid on or behind the bike. It's insane how little bikes (or pedestrians) are considered compared to here in Sweden.
- cj 7y ago> There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere. You don't need a truck, but you definitely need a car (with four wheel drive in many parts). There are millions of people who live in places that require traveling on high-traffic busy roads to get from point A to B. These roads almost never have a bike lane (bike lanes do not exist outside of large cities). On many roads I drive on (speed limit 55 mph) there is no shoulder. Combine that with roads that have sharp curves that prevent drivers from seeing more than 25 meters ahead... yea, I would not bike with a kid with me.
- kelnos 7y agoHell, I wouldn't bike, period, on those kinds of roads, kid or not.
- ARandomerDude 7y agoPeople with more than 2 kids should...?
- war1025 7y agoPeople in urban centers, I think, don't realize how spread out much of the US is. Yes, riding your bike in an urban area is often more or less as fast / convenient as driving. However, driving at 70mph vs biking at say 15mph, the time difference adds up very quickly once you are out in open country. Not to mention that there is very well built infrastructure for driving, while biking often means going on that same infrastructure with a 50mph difference between you and the rest of the traffic. Basically if you are riding on a bike on a highway, you need to act as if you were invisible and expect that cars may actively try to kill you.
- mehhh 7y agoQuite the suburban hellscape, eh? Many of these 50+ mph stroads forgo sidewalks and attempt to ban pedestrians (or even bikers sometimes).
- war1025 7y agoWouldn't really call it a suburban hellscape. Seems quite nice all in all. [1] [1] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nevada,+Iowa+50201/Ames,+Iowa/@42.0174038,-93.6858818,11 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Nevada,+Iowa+50201/Ames,+Iow...
- npmaile 7y agoHey, I'm from near there! Go Cyclones! also my two cents: it's dangerous as all heck doing anything but driving on those roads. I almost got hit by a friend of mine who was texting and driving while I was running about 30 miles from there out in the country.
- war1025 7y agoA high school friend's sister killed one of my cousin's friends who was out biking in a similar situation. Cars + people don't mix on highways.
- ryandrake 7y agoThis “I don’t need a car to commute from SF to SF therefore nobody anywhere needs a car for any reason” attitude pops up at least twice a week here and is so tiring. I challenge you to do my 2 hour (each way) commute on a bike for more than a week. Happy to give you the route if you want to try it! And if you want me to just live closer to work, that’s fine too: please double my salary to enable that and I’ll get rid of my car.
- kelnos 7y agoBe careful, the standard response to that is "you should drastically change your lifestyle, uproot your family, and do financially irresponsible things in order to move closer to work so you can bike there". Also so, so tiring.
- noxToken 7y agoI once mapped my commute to work using multiple applications. 11 minutes via car, and 14 minutes via bike. However, there was no way to safely get from my house to my office. Even if I bit the bullet and spent 26 minutes on back roads, there were still major junctions that absolutely were not safe for bike traffic.
- post_break 7y agoOr how about taking time off, or leaving early. Gotta go pick up the kids. Gotta go to my kids function. Why do you need to take a week off? You don't have any kids lol. It's gatekeeping to the max.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- justicezyx 7y agoOh, a comment complains parents being late. Parenting is really a full-time startup CEO type of job. It's not like you can change a kid's behavior without some systematic resolve. It's just hard.
- theabsurdman 7y agoNot sure if you're a parent, but presumably if you were, you'd know there are days when no amount of planning can make things go smoothly. Sometimes kids just refuse to cooperate. Have some empathy.
- quanticle 7y agoI'll have more empathy with parents when parents have more empathy with my choice to not have children.
- phyzome 7y agoYou're probably being downvoted because you're implying that parents can never understand being childfree. If anything, having kids made me have more empathy for parents, but also more likely to support people in being childfree. :-P
- OJFord 7y agoIt's presumably a tongue-in-cheek response to the reverse up thread.
- gbacon 7y agoThat’s not the most mature way to state it, but you have a reasonable point. I try to be careful about monitoring my kids’ behavior in public places. When people go for a meal out, they are paying for a nice time and not to hear screaming kids or dodge little unruly hooligans. Elsewhere in the thread, I noted that parents out of necessity choose their battles due to fatigue, selfishness, or letting small things go (but perhaps after recalibrating on what’s small). It’s as though parents’ tolerance for bad behavior increases. Just like non-parents do not have a full appreciation for what parents go through, we parents forget what it was like before kids. Parents and non-parents tend to self-sort into disjoint social networks. Parents of school-aged kids forget what it was like to have infants and toddlers. Oh, just wait until they’re teenagers, say the helpful, encouraging grandparents. Think about others. Put yourself in their shoes. Stop being selfish. That’s good advice for all of us, no matter where we are in life.
- cptskippy 7y agoThere's no negotiating with a young child, you're constantly anticipating their meltdowns and mitigating them as best you can. Itchy/tight/lose/wrong-color pants/shirt/dresses/socks/shoes, not wanting to eat breakfast, decided they wanted a different breakfast after it's served, deciding they wanted to get the milk out of the fridge after telling you to do it, not wanting to brush their teeth/hair, wanting to use a different bathroom, insisting they don't need to potty while doing the peepee dance, needing to pet the cat before anything else, wanting to eat at the counter or on the porch or at the table. There's no negotiating with terrorists.
- randlet 7y agoExactly right. That's why you leave yourself enough time to deal with the inevitable issues so you're not late.
- zo1 7y agoIt's not that simple. Even adding additional time doesn't always work. E.g. Some things just can't be done till moments/minutes before having to leave. If you want to do those early you have to leave early as well. Then you arrive early, and then what. So you plan from the other side as well, and that means cutting things close with x% of buffer. Sometimes that buffer isn't enough and it throws everything off. Sometimes you're all set to go, slightly early, and something pops up. Or, all the planning goes out the window when one of them is wailing or throwing a tantrum, or is so so so eager to show you this wonderful thing they finished drawing for you. Then you have to adapt that wonderfully planned schedule/plan, so your previously-allotted buffer dwindles and next thing you know you're one new-issue away from being late. But yeah, one of other comments mentioned. There is a difference between being late once in a while vs always.
- randlet 7y ago> Then you arrive early, and then what Yes, being a bit early sometimes is a natural consequence of leaving enough time so that you're not late. Being late is much worse than being early because it is disrespectful of other peoples time. If you're a bit early, then you get a few stress free minutes to hang out with your kid: sit in the car and sing songs together, run around the school yard, take a walk, talk about whats been on their mind lately etc.
- rebuilder 7y agoThat sentence doesn't say it's the kids' fault! It's a list of things that make morning dropouts stressful: being late, kids not being co-operative, last-minute hassles with toys etc.
- kelnos 7y agoI don't think the parent was suggesting it's the kids' fault. In these situations, I think a lot of people go into a sort of "welp, this just can't be helped" mode, without assigning blame to anyone. The parent is saying that, if your lateness is a regular pattern, it is actually the parent's fault, and the parent should own up to it. (Occasional lateness does in general fall under the "welp, this just can't be helped" category.) Put another way, while a parent would probably not actually assign blame for lateness to their child (though oh boy, do I know some that would...), they are nonetheless using their children as an excuse for their own bad behavior, which is rude and dishonest.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI have a two year old. Getting him up and going before 8 is impossible, the earliest I can get him to daycare is 8:45, sometimes much earlier or much later because he is so unpredictable day to day. Thank god I don’t have a set schedule.
- randlet 7y ago> I have a two year old. Getting him up and going before 8 is impossible Forgive me for being blunt but: no it isn't. It might take some work over a few weeks and may mean some tough mornings, but throwing up your hands and saying "well, I guess you're the boss 2 year old!" is silly. Your two year old can't tell time and you can migrate his schedule forward 5-10mins a day if you want too. Yes, his sleeping/waking will fluctuate around a mean and you can't control that, but you can control the mean value.