God, this would be exhausting. Avoiding a topic kids are interested in is hard. I teach second grade and climate change has already come up, incidentally, twice. I teach in Massachusetts so I can go ahead and tell them whatever I want (as long as it’s accurate).

We’ve got a Gulliver that we paid $100 for. It’s very solid and held up well. I’m sort of wondering if the IKEA you went to had someone incompetent putting together the floor models. I don’t know anyone who’s had an issue with IKEA cribs. (The mattresses are crap, though.)

My husband and I were both raised Catholic and are not baptizing our son. My mother-in-law is trying so hard to pretend that she’s not beside herself over it. I told my sisters-in-law that if their mom wants to baptize the baby in the sink so she can sleep at night, we won’t mind, just don’t tell us about it. She…

The author has publicly stated that he pictured the character as Korean. Plausible deniability doesn’t mean it’s not an asshole move.

She’s a terrible friend. She stayed with a rapist and then demanded that you apologize for being raped. That’s all kinds of fucked up.

I had a (mild) case of hyperemesis gravidarum. It sucked. I was continually grateful to Kate Middleton for going public with how sick she was because I was constantly able to say. “I have the thing Kate Middleton had” and most people were like, “OMG, that’s awful.” She really raised the public awareness of it.

We had been discussing 3 but not that I know what pregnancy is like I’m limiting it to 2. And I’m only doing that because I’m delusional and think the next one won’t be as bad.

Preach, Kim. Being pregnant fucking sucks. It’s totally worth the prize at the end but holy shit, I hated being pregnant.

That’s exceptionally shitty. It didn’t occur to her that if she was wearing a coat you might need one, too?!

But they can’t pursue action against her alone, that’s my point. Unless the parent physically assaults someone you never have any recourse. It’s never, ever ok to punish the child for the sins of the parent but I can understand why, in general, that tact may appeal to some administrators. It’s frustrating and scary to…

I know someone who does this. I wish I could. You have to have a principal who is really confident in their place and who’s going to be there for the long haul. It’s great if you can get it but unfortunately, in the current climate, that’s really rare.

I agree that it’s stupid to deprive the kid of her education because of mom’s bad behavior but I recently had a barrage of swear words screamed at me by a parent and I really, really wish I had some recourse to discourage her from doing that again. There’s a difference between being a pain the butt and being abusive.…

This is another area where a national health service would make a huge impact. My mom’s experience in Massachusetts with getting my grandmother into a nursing home was very, very different (my grandparents qualified for coverage from the state) than it would have been almost anywhere else in the US.

Changing the school schedules costs money, lots of money. When was the last time anyone decided to throw a whole bunch of money at public education?

Oh absolutely, and many people would probably retire earlier. My mother-in-law worked for 4 years at the end of her career just for the insurance. It would open up all kinds of job for younger folks who are currently unemployed or under employed. The only people who don’t benefit from a national health service are the…

Ah yes, travel is a bitch. My husband goes to a couple of conferences a year but when we moved for this job part of the appeal was the lack of travel. He does work a pretty irregular schedule, though. Last year he had to work on Thanksgiving and the year before that he worked Christmas. But we knew a year ahead of…

My husband works closely with a part of the company that’s unionized and the engineers definitely benefit some from that. Also, his specific speciality is rare enough that getting competent people in the field is difficult. If those people decided not to work instead of working part time the company would have a…

Every district is different and I think it varies a lot my region. My last school had a part time resource room teacher and a part time math interventionist. That district also offers health insurance at 50%.

Oh, absolutely and there’s plenty of evidence to back that up.

Mr. Aspen is an engineer and there are part time people in his office. I suspect that if it was the norm most places would adapt. I’m a classroom teacher so my job has to be full-time but there are plenty of specialists in education that work 2-4 days a week.