Instead of covering subjects and topics in-depth as I have in the past, I’m trying something different. These are my observations from each week last month. It makes me pay attention, and ponder even more…

Ah, to NOT be a kid again…
Week 1: I realized this week that, although youth may rule here in the West, I am grateful to be an adult and have already gone through many life experiences. My daughter had a lunch meeting with her school principal to discuss the drama club and its needs (she was invited by an upper classman). She fretted over what to wear, what to say, what to eat. In essence, she was nervous and intimidated by authority (which, thankfully, still has some influence). She got through it all fine, as I knew she would, but it made me appreciate not having to been a teen or young adult worrying about dealing with older people or authority figures. I’m well into adulthood, phew!

Who are the meanest commenters? ADULTS
Week 2: As it turns out, the age group that should act the most “adult” – doesn’t. Surprised? Recently, I was listening to a younger podcaster interviewing an even younger food blogger (both considered Instagram “influencers”). They agreed that, when receiving comments/feedback from their posts, TikTok users are the least mean, IG is second, and Facebook and Twitter have the meanest and nastiest commenters. Who typically has accounts to these two outlets? ADULTS. Come on, FB and Twitter adults, grow up and be mature (or maybe that’s not a thing anymore).

Your idea of what’s best for your kid versus what is truly best for your kid…
Week 3: As parents, we often think “we know best,” but do we always? If you’re living in Ukraine and your city is actively being bombed and you decide to leave, then yes, you do know best. But if you have an idea in your head about what your kid’s life is “supposed to be like,” but your kid disagrees (or worse, is too afraid to tell you), is that the best thing for him or her? It’s a fine line that we walk all the time. To think that we, as parents, know everything about our kids’ lives and can control them until they’re eighteen then set them free to make their own sound decisions is setting us up for disappointment. The first question to ask when making decisions for your kid is, who is this serving? If it’s you and you have no idea what your kid wants, I would re-think it, or better yet, ask your kid.

Nukes and more nukes
Week 4: Did you ever find out information that you wish you didn’t know? Ignorantly, I did not know how many nuclear weapons were out in the world (13,000). I had a vague idea about which countries had them, but found out that Russia and the U.S possess 90% of them. The other countries are China, France, U.K, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea (that’s in order of the most to the fewest). The more startling fact is that scientists think it would only take about 100 of these nukes to make life on Earth unsustainable (due to air quality, lack of sunlight to grow food, etc). That’s it, 100! And yet, being the ridiculous Earthlings that we are, we have 12,900 more than necessary. Surprising and yet not surprising, no? Let’s hope they stay un-detonated.

That was the month of March in a nutshell.