I sat with a crying second grader today. (The age range is outside my wheelhouse but I was the most convenient adult.) He was crying, the other adults said, because his brother took a phone he was playing on. “Phone addicted,” everybody said. “If he would get up and play games with the other kids he wouldn’t be crying.”
He told me everyone lets his brother take things from him because his brother is younger, and doesn’t know better. He told me he doesn’t want to play because he’s tired, he has too many extracurriculars this summer and can’t get good sleep because “everyone in my camper is so loud when I’m trying to sleep.” He’s exhausted and only eight. His mom’s an acquaintance and told me she and the kid’s father are going through a separation — mom and four kids left the house to stay in a camper.
But people will seriously not listen to kids crying over seemingly minor things because on the surface it looks like a tantrum. If kids are given the space to articulate themselves they often will.
I’ve found that if a child is capable of having a conversation (that is, old enough to speak and express themselves, not injured or upset so badly that they literally cannot stop crying, and not behaving violently), then 90% of the time their reason for being upset is legitimate, or at least understandable.
Please remember that this also applies to teenagers and preteens, they might be acting like a knowitall who doesn’t give a shit, or a first class jerk, but chances are fair they feel like shit for one reason or another and adults just chalk it up to teenage angst instead
Not math, but I just laughed at this until I cried while my best friend was teaching his calculus section. Still not sure why they let me be a faculty member.
What I appreciate about Colin Bridgerton is that he actually listens to the women in his life. Even the ones he doesn’t like.
Cressida really brought him up short when she accused him of being jealous of Lady Whistledown and his knee jerk reaction was “Nuh-uh!” But then, hilariously, he goes to his wife later and is like, “so, upon further reflection, unfortunately, the worst person I know had a good point.”
That picture of Biden looking at a quantum computer and being unable to grasp the true form of what he’s seeing
To be fair that’s how I would I react too
I do sincerely love that Quantum Computers look exactly like what a 1950’s sci-fi movie prop artist would build if they were told to build something called a “quantum computer”
