My now 3yr old loved mashed potatoes when he was an infant eating only pureed food and it was Thanksgiving. Since that first Thanksgiving he has never touched them and claimed they're terrible until I gave them to his baby brother who is now starting pureed food. Suddenly because his brother was eating them, they're delicious again (and we had already tried the mom is eating them, it must be good route and even that had failed, baby brother trumps mom apparently).
My son is almost 32 and still won’t eat mashed potatoes! He says it is a texture thing. I still think he’s weird but there are a hundred other reasons why. And weird is good.
You once again remind me of the challenges of parenthood! Just a glimpse of a warning: letting your eldest babysit her younger siblings so much is giving her too good a look at the reality of child rearing, and likely will result in her deciding to never have children of her own. You probably are fine with that, since you have 3 more possible grandchild providers. Good luck.
I didn’t quite learn my lesson, but I only had one of my own. I got two bonus kids when I remarried and I couldn’t live them more that if they were biological. And there are some scary similarities even though we share no biology.
I'm really glad AI wasn't a thing for my parents, because I've read about a study where AI was doing court judgement, and in most if not all cases it was a harsher jury than the human one, so I think in our house it would penalise similarly, if of course it could've sort through the neverending "revenge for revenge" cycle.
Loved the book (I’m a book on tape girl) and I’m thrilled you’re going to do a follow up. I hope it becomes a series, you get to quit your day job, and spend ALL your time at home...with the girls. Nah, I like you too much for that. ANYWAY, AI. My hubby works in tech and yesterday he sent me a text of an AI writing a story about me in my favorite long time show, Stargate Atlantas. He typed in a few known things about me and the the AI wrote the story. Apparently it’s what’s driving teachers mad these days, how kids can get an AI to write their papers. Anyway, I read it and I swear to God it was like reading fanfic!! Except without the sex which, in a way, saddens me. Really, it did a great job. Good luck on your future of book writing...the machines are one step behind you.
AIs will never take over child rearing or teaching children. However, that doesn’t mean humans won’t make a whole lot of trouble for the world trying to make it so!
1 - My younger son, who needs to choose his college within the next month, wants to be a software developer / engineer-sort. I ask panicked questions at every college we meet with about whether he'll be able to get a job in roughly 5 years. They're not worried. But maybe that's because they're not actually IN the industry, they're tenured professors. What a great gig if he could get that, I guess!
2 - Thanks for yet again making me LLOL a few times. Snorted out loud at the AI would delete itself line, because it's 💯.
For what it's worth, the English professors I met with before I picked a college and a major assured me I'd be able to find a job. And they're defense, they never said It would be a good one.
Loved this newsletter! My sister and I would have been in so much trouble if we were raised today. Cameras everywhere, hearing everything that’s said. ( we never did our chores until the last minute ) We were on our own most of our childhood and now I’m glad. Too creepy nowadays.
I'm also glad I grew up before everything was recorded. I have cameras everywhere, but I don't actually watch them. Sometimes. I'm happier not to know.
It doesn't seem to matter if software engineers are programming themselves into mass layoffs. Silicone Valley seems to lay them off by the thousands every time Wall Street sneezes. 🙄
Could you just imagine if each one of your kids was programmed into her own AI? 😆
AIs are supposed to make us more productive, but the only thing my kids are productive at is causing chaos. I'm praying that silicon valley doesn't help make them better at that.
Our daughter wouldn't eat much of anything but mac & cheese, cottage cheese, and mashed potatoes for several years. Oh, and anything green was an automatic out. Good thing our son would eat anything and everything, no problem. It balanced out, I guess. We used to tease her that the way they each ate was why she grew up to be only 5'4" and her brother grew to 6'3".
Also, I had flashbacks to numerous moments in my own childhood, with a sister a year younger constantly tempting me to squabble. And vice versa, I know. I bit my nails and she didn’t so for a very long time I had quarter moon shaped scabs and then white scars where she’d dug her nails in, probably to keep me from all the other forms of fighting you listed.
Our mom would lament, “I can’t believe my two little girls are fighting! You are sisters! How I longed for a sister growing up as an only child!”
I’d mutter to myself about the fact I had no choice.
Now this is the poignant part. She grew up in a small town in Maine, and her parents did finagle a sister of sorts for her, a girl from a distant farm who came to live with them during school years from 12 years of age--till she ran away to get married at 15.
It seems kids are the same in all time everywhere. Except for the running away to get married part. Let's hope that was exclusive to your mom's sort of sister. That's scenario is my nightmare.
Halfway through, I shared the paragraph about the way the girls torment each other with my daughter, the mother of 3. She replied
“I had a very “gentle parenting” moment this afternoon. They were bickering and hitting and throwing shit in the backseat so I calmly pulled over and we talked it out etc etc. Felt like such a win. Everyone got re-buckled and not 10 SECONDS into the drive they started all over again so I slammed on the brakes and I turned in my seat and I screamed “THATS ENOUGH!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!! WHAT DOES IT TAKE?!? ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING UNTIL WE GET HOME!!!!!!!!!”
You might want to consider watching a sci-fi horror movie called "Mother." The theme is both an AI acting as a mother, and let's-try-this from-scratch.
Jajajaja there you were all proud of finally having written a work catalogued as fiction just to be soon re-catalogued as fortunetelling/future parenting
I have a kid who wouldn’t eat mashed potatoes. I feel your pain.
That is the greatest of all possible foods. It is amazing how wrong kids can be about everything.
My now 3yr old loved mashed potatoes when he was an infant eating only pureed food and it was Thanksgiving. Since that first Thanksgiving he has never touched them and claimed they're terrible until I gave them to his baby brother who is now starting pureed food. Suddenly because his brother was eating them, they're delicious again (and we had already tried the mom is eating them, it must be good route and even that had failed, baby brother trumps mom apparently).
My son is almost 32 and still won’t eat mashed potatoes! He says it is a texture thing. I still think he’s weird but there are a hundred other reasons why. And weird is good.
You once again remind me of the challenges of parenthood! Just a glimpse of a warning: letting your eldest babysit her younger siblings so much is giving her too good a look at the reality of child rearing, and likely will result in her deciding to never have children of her own. You probably are fine with that, since you have 3 more possible grandchild providers. Good luck.
I babysat my siblings all the time growing up and ended up with four kids of my own. Clearly some of us don't learn our lesson.
I didn’t quite learn my lesson, but I only had one of my own. I got two bonus kids when I remarried and I couldn’t live them more that if they were biological. And there are some scary similarities even though we share no biology.
I'm really glad AI wasn't a thing for my parents, because I've read about a study where AI was doing court judgement, and in most if not all cases it was a harsher jury than the human one, so I think in our house it would penalise similarly, if of course it could've sort through the neverending "revenge for revenge" cycle.
I'm confident my children's constant tattling would get the AI stuck in an infinite loop.
Loved the book (I’m a book on tape girl) and I’m thrilled you’re going to do a follow up. I hope it becomes a series, you get to quit your day job, and spend ALL your time at home...with the girls. Nah, I like you too much for that. ANYWAY, AI. My hubby works in tech and yesterday he sent me a text of an AI writing a story about me in my favorite long time show, Stargate Atlantas. He typed in a few known things about me and the the AI wrote the story. Apparently it’s what’s driving teachers mad these days, how kids can get an AI to write their papers. Anyway, I read it and I swear to God it was like reading fanfic!! Except without the sex which, in a way, saddens me. Really, it did a great job. Good luck on your future of book writing...the machines are one step behind you.
I didn't even think of fanfic. Tumblr is going to be wild in a few weeks.
Bloody AI - I'm really hoping it doesn't learn how to have a sense of humour!
“my personal favorite—aggressive breathing)”🤣😂😂😂😂
AIs will never take over child rearing or teaching children. However, that doesn’t mean humans won’t make a whole lot of trouble for the world trying to make it so!
I suspect humans and AIs are in a race for who can cause the most problems. Right now, people have a commanding lead.
1 - My younger son, who needs to choose his college within the next month, wants to be a software developer / engineer-sort. I ask panicked questions at every college we meet with about whether he'll be able to get a job in roughly 5 years. They're not worried. But maybe that's because they're not actually IN the industry, they're tenured professors. What a great gig if he could get that, I guess!
2 - Thanks for yet again making me LLOL a few times. Snorted out loud at the AI would delete itself line, because it's 💯.
For what it's worth, the English professors I met with before I picked a college and a major assured me I'd be able to find a job. And they're defense, they never said It would be a good one.
Loved this newsletter! My sister and I would have been in so much trouble if we were raised today. Cameras everywhere, hearing everything that’s said. ( we never did our chores until the last minute ) We were on our own most of our childhood and now I’m glad. Too creepy nowadays.
I need to get your book!
I'm also glad I grew up before everything was recorded. I have cameras everywhere, but I don't actually watch them. Sometimes. I'm happier not to know.
It doesn't seem to matter if software engineers are programming themselves into mass layoffs. Silicone Valley seems to lay them off by the thousands every time Wall Street sneezes. 🙄
Could you just imagine if each one of your kids was programmed into her own AI? 😆
AIs are supposed to make us more productive, but the only thing my kids are productive at is causing chaos. I'm praying that silicon valley doesn't help make them better at that.
Our daughter wouldn't eat much of anything but mac & cheese, cottage cheese, and mashed potatoes for several years. Oh, and anything green was an automatic out. Good thing our son would eat anything and everything, no problem. It balanced out, I guess. We used to tease her that the way they each ate was why she grew up to be only 5'4" and her brother grew to 6'3".
I ended up taller than all of my brothers, I suspect for the same reason. He who eats fastest gets seconds.
Also, I had flashbacks to numerous moments in my own childhood, with a sister a year younger constantly tempting me to squabble. And vice versa, I know. I bit my nails and she didn’t so for a very long time I had quarter moon shaped scabs and then white scars where she’d dug her nails in, probably to keep me from all the other forms of fighting you listed.
Our mom would lament, “I can’t believe my two little girls are fighting! You are sisters! How I longed for a sister growing up as an only child!”
I’d mutter to myself about the fact I had no choice.
Now this is the poignant part. She grew up in a small town in Maine, and her parents did finagle a sister of sorts for her, a girl from a distant farm who came to live with them during school years from 12 years of age--till she ran away to get married at 15.
It seems kids are the same in all time everywhere. Except for the running away to get married part. Let's hope that was exclusive to your mom's sort of sister. That's scenario is my nightmare.
Halfway through, I shared the paragraph about the way the girls torment each other with my daughter, the mother of 3. She replied
“I had a very “gentle parenting” moment this afternoon. They were bickering and hitting and throwing shit in the backseat so I calmly pulled over and we talked it out etc etc. Felt like such a win. Everyone got re-buckled and not 10 SECONDS into the drive they started all over again so I slammed on the brakes and I turned in my seat and I screamed “THATS ENOUGH!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!! WHAT DOES IT TAKE?!? ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING UNTIL WE GET HOME!!!!!!!!!”
“So yes, unfair and quiet for the win”
I feel like you summarized my entire parenting experience in one post.
You might want to consider watching a sci-fi horror movie called "Mother." The theme is both an AI acting as a mother, and let's-try-this from-scratch.
Not going to lie, just your description creeps me out. I'm probably going to have to pass on that one.
I love the noises heard on the background while you record. They confirm all your writings.
Jajajaja there you were all proud of finally having written a work catalogued as fiction just to be soon re-catalogued as fortunetelling/future parenting
Is there a test to determine on which side of the line between thoughtful introvert and dangerous loner? Asking for a friend...