When Michigan made weed legal they put no restrictions on billboard advertising, and hence all the billboards that weren't already taken by personal injury lawyers are now weed shops. The worst one I've seen features a woman slumped down on the floor in front of her couch, head in hands, hair draped over her face. The giant sized font simply reads: "Adulting is Hard". Goddam fucking right adulting is hard, and we shouldn't have that word in our lexicon, because its very existence is an affront to everything that has come before. I am aware of the drastic changes that have taken place in society since I was a kid, but as an undergrad I literally worked as a night janitor in my friend's restaurant, because that was the only time I had to work. It sucked. I was always fearful that someone I knew passing on the busy street outside might see me inside swabbing the floor and think that this is my life. Never even told my parents that's what I was doing for money. But I did it. Swallowed my pride hard and did it. That's how I want my kids to think, independent of how the other kids think. I want my kid at age 4 to feel confident enough to ride his bike to the neighbor's house down the street and around the corner. I want them to feel like they can solve simple problems without resorting to asking for help as a first reaction. There's nothing more liberating that making your own way in the world, and to the extent my kids don't do that, I will feel like a failure.Can you imagine going through life where "adulting" is a stretch goal?
My daughter's favorite thing about class right now is "market" whereby the teacher gave them fake money and access to the craft supplies so they could make things to sell to their classmates. The fakeness of the money is utterly not an issue to this kid as most of her allowance-bait comes from JoAnn Fabrics, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. "It would have cost this much but you have five coupons and it's a Thursday so..." I will admit to interfering - hearkening back to my childhood I observed that "random shit" plus "googly eyes" equals "cute giveaway thing" so she went batshit making "pinecone pets" that absolutely swept the marketplace. But she's got classmates whose parents bought them stuff off Amazon. Fake money for real Chinese slime? Hells yeah. How 'bout some cute beanie baby rip-offs? And the math is the point, right? Not the crafting? I mean yeah you could go to the dollar store, buy some googly eyes and hot-melt-glue them to a bunch of crap you found at the park... or, and I'm just spitballing here, Amazon Prime. SORTED! So i mean... she's learning capitalism. So are they. We instituted a rule for my daughter when she was seven - no crossing roads with traffic lights without a parent present. We did this because one fine Saturday morning she decided to go collect flowers at 6:30AM and was back by 8. It was... disconcerting. We also emphasized that we need to know where she is. She pointed out that she'd written a (cryptic) note. She has friends that don't know their own addresses. She's in third grade. Dunno. Kid digs art. Kid digs sales. She's not quite ready for an Etsy shop but I'm waiting in the wings I tell you what. Considering how much she enjoys coloring and drawing? Yer damn skippy she's got a house in which she can do grand feu.