OldManChris

Super late response to this, but I wanted to weigh in bit. The writer seems to believe that parents are too permissive, and all of her advice is predicated on how not to be manipulated or controlled by the child. For example, the first "reason" you have a bratty child is that parents negotiate: While I won't say that overall her advice is bad, she clearly takes the completely opposite extreme, i.e. her attitude of (to paraphrase) "boo hoo your backpack is heavy suck it up." Or "I'll just clean up his room because he'll never do it." It's as if she doesn't see the possibility of having reasonable boundaries and expectations for a child while still having the respect and flexibility to accommodate their preferences.

Did anything ever happen with this meetup/group? I'm in the Western suburbs (Roselle), but would be happy to work on getting something going in/around the city!

I'm sure most people here can relate to dealing with all the absurdity too. For example, I've suggested that I don't think that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, misogynist, etc, and then I got attacked for "defending Trump supporters." The polarizing of the left/right scares me a little. If everybody on the other side is nazi/fascist/whatever and there is no way to have a dialogue with the other side, then this won't end well, and I think the shooting of Scalise demonstrates that escalation quite well.

Yeah, I saw a post about the posting requirements somewhere on here after making my initial post, so now it's just a matter of being active enough! Thanks for the warm welcome!

I grew up in Minnesota, but moved here around 2010 for grad school, and now I'm in Roselle. It's great to another person in the state at least!

Hi everybody! I figured it was time to introduce myself and actually start trying to post and be active in the community here. I typically just lurk in online forums, but I'm hoping to change that somewhat. I first found the podcast and started listening back in 2005 or 2006, during my freshman and sophomore year of college. I even donated a paltry monthly amount back then and even spoke to the great Stefan on a podcast back in 2009 or 2010, which I'm pretty sure was one of the biggest highlights of the year for me! Since then I've listened on and off, with several years-long off periods when life, work, grad-school, marriage, and more work got in the way. Most recently I started listening again a little over a year ago when I started to hear more about the whole Donald Trump versus Hillary thing, and wanted a more coherent perspective than I felt like I was getting in more mainstream media sources. I didn't vote for Trump, partly because up until now I've subscribed to an apolitical libertarian philosophy, not having voted since 2008 when I was 100 percent in support of Ron Paul, and partly because I've tended to be nonconfrontational and didn't want to deal with the social consequences of admitting to have voted for someone other than Hillary when I live in Chicagoland. That being said, I've gotten enough flak from friends for questioning the "racist sexist misogynistic" line, and for suggesting that I don't think it's the end of the world that Donald Trump was elected. Anyway, I've been feeling a bit more introspective recently. Despite my username I'm not that old; I turned 31 in February, got married last month, and literally just yesterday learned that I'm going to be a father nine months from now if everything goes well (congratulations FDR forumgoers, I think you are the absolute first to know this other than my wife and I)! And that last bit there, it really put things in perspective for me. To think about what kind of world I want. What kind of person I want to be. And how I can overcome my numerous shortcomings to try to become a more positive influence for myself, others, and my children. So, I'm hoping we can have some good discussions here, that I can learn and grow, and most importantly get rid of that daunting "your content will need to be approved by a moderator" banner. Seriously! I don't particularly have a lot of social anxiety, but that makes me a little nervous to know that the all powerful mods will be reviewing anything I say! I promise I'm not a troll! Anyway, like I said just wanted to introduce myself briefly and share a little bit of my experiences leading up to joining the forums here! Thanks for your time!