Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Sooo am I just the best parent ever or are the others complete duds?" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster is very proud of herself because she just completed a 3 hour flight with her preschool and elementary school-aged children. She had packed lots of games and engaged her children constantly during the flight. Meanwhile she noticed that other kids on the airplane were all using iPads while their parents used their phones. The original poster feels she is superior to the other parents because she used the travel time for talking and engaging with her kids while the other parents did not. The original poster did not post again until the 13th page of the thread at which point she criticized DCUM posters as "screen-addicted parents with screen-addicted kids". In terms of the replies, one of the posters responding basically did my job for me by writing a lengthy post that described the types of replies the thread received. I'll just crib some points from that post. As the poster noted, there was not agreement among posters about what constituted "good parenting". Many posters considered that good parenting was determined by how little their children bothered other passengers. In this regard, providing a child with a iPad and headphones is great parenting if it keeps the child quiet and still during the flight. Other posters, including the original poster, based their judgement on what they believed to be best for the child. But members of this group were not in complete agreement with each other because there were differences of opinion about what was best for the child. The original poster believes that engagement with a parent is best while others have different ideas, including the suggestion that using an iPad might be best. Another group of posters prioritized what is best for the parent. Because travelling can be stressful and parents, especially moms, are expected to not only plan and pack for themselves, but the children as well, the plane ride may be the only time parents will have to relex and de-stress. An iPad can help distract the kids while the parents have a break. The bottom line is that almost all posters beyond the original poster and a very few others view children using iPads on airplanes as potentially good parenting, rather than bad as the original poster believes. This includes posters whose families are "screen-free" in most other circumstances, but make allowances for air travel. As you would expect, there are plenty of posts that are critical of the original poster who is considered "judgemental", a "troll", and someone who likely has parenting failures as well and probably shouldn't be so smug. More than one poster noted that for all of her criticism of screens and screen-addicted adults, the original poster was using a screen to post on DCUM and appeared to be quite familiar with the website, suggesting frequent screen use. But, I'm sure the original poster can quit at any time.

Yesterday's next most active thread was one that I've already discussed and will skip today. After that was a thread posted in the "Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities" forum and titled, "Dentist charging a ‘behavioral fee’ for ASD child?" The original poster says that she took her child who has ASD/ADHD to the dentist. When making the appointment, the original poster had discussed her child's diagnosis and proposed accommodations that might make things easier. Her advice appeared to have been ignored. During the dental session, the child got out of the dental chair several times and had to take a number of additional breaks. But, the original poster says, the appointment still ended within the allotted time. After the appointment finished, the dentist asked several questions about the child's diagnosis and then said that the child could not be accepted as a patient. Moreover, the office then attempted to charge a $120 "behavioral fee". That fee was waived after the original poster protested. There are a number of posters who are appalled by the dentist's behavior — which I must emphasize we only have the original poster's word to go by — and fully support the original poster's anger. They agree that the situation appears to have been mishandled and that the office was wrong to attempt to charge the additional fee. But many posters side with the dentist or attempt to take a somewhat middle position. They believe, by the original poster's own admission, that the visit was more challenging than what would be normal. As such, the dentist was correct to suggest that she was not a good match for the child. There also appears to be different perceptions of the length of the appointment. The original poster insists that the session ended within the allotted time. But other posters feel strongly that the multiple interruptions caused the appointment to take longer than it would have without those breaks. Therefore, the dentist has the right to charge extra for the extra time. It is also possible that the dentist had to exert additional effort for the appointment and, in a sense, had to work harder or do more work which might also justify an additional fee. Other parents don't except any of these justifications. They expect health service providers to be able to handle all kinds of patients and strongly disagree that an additional fee is justified. This argument sort of goes around and around for many pages. Many threads have shown that a significant number of parents are increasingly upset by the entire concept of "accommodations". Especially in a school setting, accommodations are often seen as not far removed from cheating. Critics of accommodations argue that kids should adjust to the world rather than having the world adjust to them. A bit of that thinking is evident in this thread with a number of posters suggesting that if the original poster's child is not capable of receiving dental treatment without accommodations, the child should not expect to go to a regular dentist. Instead, the original poster should be prepared to pay more for the accommodations. Obviously, this is completely contrary to the thinking of most parents of kids with special needs. At any rate, this thread devolved to the point that I locked it.

Next was a thread titled, "Rejected by Dartmouth but admitted into Yale, Princeton, Brown, UPenn, Cornell, Duke, and UCLA???" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that a student was rejected by Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Dartmouth but was accepted by several other elite colleges. The original poster asks how it is possible the student was turned down by Dartmouth when it is, in  the original poster's opinion, "the least prestigious" of the schools. When I read this post I immediately thought that the original poster must either be new to the forum or a troll. After looking into it, the answer may be "both". This is the second thread about Dartmouth that the original poster has started this month, suggesting a strange preoccupation with the university. Moreover, throughout the thread, the poster sock puppeted. For instance, at one point asking, "Was the kid going to commit to Dartmouth and turn down Princeton?" and then replying to herself saying, "Well that's the thing. They don't know that." The argument that the original poster is having with herself is a version of the "yield protection" topic that continually comes up in the college forum. This theory is that schools will not accept students that they believe won't end up attending the university. Therefore, students can actually be "too good" for a school. The original poster at one point argues that Dartmouth might not accept a student who will be accepted by Princeton because Dartmouth knows the student will likely choose Princeton in that scenario. But then the original poster argues against her own point, saying that there are valid reasons that a student might indeed turn down Princeton and choose Dartmouth. One example might be that Dartmouth provided a better financial aid package. Other posters join in making some of the same points, but since the original poster posted 38 times over 9 pages, she generally dominated the discussion. The original poster is so all over the place with her sock puppeting that I am not sure whether she is supportive of Dartmouth or opposed to the school. My intuition is that she has a bone to pick with the school, perhaps having been rejected or having a child who was rejected. The poster is particularly fixated on what is fair, suggesting at one point that Dartmouth is discriminating against students who are good enough to be accepted by more prestigious schools. I've said before that a psychologist looking for a case study could do worse than DCUM for finding patients. I would love to see an analysis of this poster's posts.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum and titled, "Do people realize when you’re married with kids that cheating is betraying the kids too?" The original poster is upset about cheating in marriages in which there are kids because she feels that affairs harm the kids. The original poster believes that this is rarely talked about. Perhaps because I've been forced to read so many threads about affairs, many of which I've discussed on this blog, I feel that kids come up quite a bit. It is arguable that a significant number of DCUM posters are pro-affair. While many threads have been started by posters who were personally hurt very deeply by a spouse's affair, there is an endless supply of posters who justify affairs. As such, the responses to the original poster are very much colored by this fact. The reaction by many of those replying is that the original poster is wrong about the harm affairs do to kids and that, in fact, according to them, very little damage is done to the children. Many posters agree that affairs involve lying and betrayal and children can be hurt by that, but some posters argue lies and betrayals involving other topics are also common and that affairs don't do anymore damage than other lies. Some posters point to things like neglect and abuse that they say do real harm to children and argue that, comparably, affairs have little impact on children. Other posters contend exactly the opposite. They concede that most of the negative impact on children is secondary, such as a divorce that may lead to them living in more difficult circumstances or the outcome of unhealthy dynamics between parents. There are also material aspects such as time and money a parent spends in an affair rather than with the children. Many posters in this thread were the children of parents who had affairs and they describe the impact the affairs had on them. In some cases, they became very cynical about marriage. Posters who have or had cheating spouses also described how their children reacted, sometimes becoming disillusioned with the cheating parent for whom they lost respect. One poster described how her divorce from her cheating husband led to split custody and one son feeling neglected. While living with his father, that son developed a drinking problem and continues to struggle with substance abuse today. The poster clearly implies that none of this would have happened without the affair that led to the divorce. A second debate developed about whether divorce harms kids. This is another ongoing dispute in the thread. Most people seem to reflexively assume that divorces does hurt children. But there is a large contigent of posters who argue that it does not, at least doesn't have to.