we've used sesame street/wiggles/ms rachel/bluey to pacify our almost-2yo when he's sick (assuming reduced physical activity will benefit recovery) but it's way too easy to watch too much and now he asks to watch many times each day and we acquiesce too often idk what to do

@[email protected] I meant to reply to you in last week's chat but never got the chance. You mentioned that your daughter was excited to join the military via mandatory service, but otherwise her politics were good. My kids are much younger than yours, but I obsess (a bit too much) about how they will turn out. If she's got generally good politics, do you have any advice, maybe some things you did that helped point her in the right direction?

I fucking hate all the stupid plastic presents people buy and the ritual of opening them

Baby Beaver unexpectedly sits up on her own this week, which is wonderful.

I'm so sick and tired of the glacial speed everything moves with when you're trying to get professional help for your kid's ADHD but they're not completely fucked up yet. If you do reasonably okay in school and don't cause too much trouble is practically impossible for anything to happen. God forbid we addressed issues before they became problems.

Gearing up for a vacation in a couple of weeks. First time where both kids have their own seat. Traveling is stressful but the kids take to it well. Feeling less great about flying these days... But it's the only efficient way to go see family.

I want to talk about a big news story in Australia that's broken about the childcare sector. I feel like people here will be more understanding of the issue but I can remove this if it's not appropriate.

[CW: CSA] ::: spoiler Some shit going down in Australia A massive news story has broken in Australia that a male childcare worker had sexually abused a bunch of kids, and was putting his bodily fluids in the food when he apparently had a bunch of STIs.

There has been the typical kneejerk reaction from some of the state governments here, but nothing that's going to fix the problem. One state has made it you can't appeal a Working With Children's Check if it gets rejected. This guy was able to get all his certificates without issue, so how will removing the ability to appeal help?

I'm worried it will be an excuse to expand the surveillance state instead of fixing for profit childcare and lack of mental health services. I've seen other stories before of centres hiring unqualified people and ignoring sexual abuse because they need the staff.

Stories like this bring out the typical facebook and TalkBack radio responses, and of course no one wants to look at why this happens and actually focus on stopping the next case of abuse. It just becomes a fantasy about enacting violence on someone that deserves it.

I've thought about it, and the reality is I wouldn't know or be able to stop it if anything happened to my kids. We put a lot of trust into these centres to look after our children because the demands of capital force us to. Harsher punishments and surveillance don't work, we need to get these people support before they offend so it doesn't happen to start with. :::

Death to capitalism, death to the for profit childcare sector and all that have enabled it.