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The day I accidentally killed a little boy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#641

Post by kerrsclyde »

avh02 wrote: post #377
samch wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to your comment about time spent with your child, I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago: I was weighing the implications of taking a new job that came with a significant salary increase, but aslo had the massive downside of having to be in the office and away from my family most days / evenings (60hrs per 5-day workweek). I vividly recall a conversation I had with my father who said something to…

>“You know, you’ll never hear somebody on their deathbed saying, ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office.’ I personally agree with this sentiment and am striving towards a better work life balance, but there is at least one person who has apparently said that: "I have only one regret... that I have not worked harder." - Henry Royce (of Rolls-Royce) - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Royce edit: yes yes, harder !…

Royce was a renowned perfectionist & workaholic, working so hard that he skipped meals and made himself ill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Royce#Development_of_Rol...]

We could speculate that nothing was enough, he was never satisfied and never happy (despite all he achieved).

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#642

Post by alien_at_work »

darkerside wrote: post #607
alien_at_work wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being careful is fine and understandable but over-protective "helicoptor" parenting is bad for the kids: it destroys their self confidence. I know a helicoptor family where their youngest daughter couldn't properly walk down stairs until she was 12. She's already broke more bones than all my kids combined.

You know them and I don't, but there's often a good but hidden reason for odd behavior. Maybe their youngest daughter is so, so, so clumsy on a daily basis that they constantly need to tell her to be careful. Maybe she's so clumsy she's constantly falling and breaking bones performing typical childhood activities.

The father's mother is exactly the same (i.e. helicoptor) so there could have been some trauma but it's probably multiple generations in the past.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#643

Post by alien_at_work »

newfoundglory wrote: post #598
alien_at_work wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble seeing your argument for all the straw people. I don't care what you believe, I watched her walk down my steps one step at a time, both feet stable on that step before taking the next one. Why? Because her whole life she's hearing "NO! BE CAREFUL! STEPS ARE DANGEROUS!" so of course she's terrified and has no confidence that she can do it. >meanwhile other anti-helicoptering activists argue that bre…

I'm guessing that their argument is "it is likely that child has underlying medical problems that caused the movement issues and made it easier to break her bones".

No the child is perfectly healthy. Their argument is "see! I look away for a second and look what happens!"

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#644

Post by dm319 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #505
dsnuh wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child - 1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play with other children. I know it sounds strange, but adults used to have adult lives and people would just go visit each other. Their kids would play together while the adults did their thing. 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one r…

> 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly. For many people, social media is how you send things to parents and friends. It's more straightforward than managing an email list, and needn't be any less real a connection. I don't deny that ubiquitous social media is deforming our interactions, but I think a lot of…

Yes,I have three kids, and I'm rarely on Facebook because I find it a toxic place.

But I was recently at a wedding, and was prompted to post a few photos up (more to share the photos with the bride/groom in a way that can also be seen by their friends too). It surprised me the number of messages I got saying how people loved seeing pictures of the kids and how they'd grown etc etc.

I don't have time to keep up with a lot of these old friends (many live far away) so I count this as a positive interaction on facebook.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#645

Post by icc97 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #572
dsnuh wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use whatever app or medium you choose, my advice was simply that sending directly to specific people is a better than flooding your IG or FB with photos of junior every day.

How is emailing photos to specific people materially different than posting photos to a Facebook account followed by the same people? (Particularly if the account is otherwise private.)

I personally think there is a significant difference. The birthday messages I get on FB are worthless, but if someone sends me an email or a card that is worth something.

The connection via Facebook is so trivial and transient but it is better than no connection to people I'd have no contact with otherwise.

The people I email photos too will probably look at them a few times and may want to print them and will send an email response. Via FB it's all seen and then forgotten in 30s

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#646

Post by icc97 »

drewm1980 wrote: post #473
androck1 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson of this article is that unfortunate things, that come with a lifetime of grief, happen to good people. And perhaps more importantly, that empathy and understanding are incredibly powerful. It is true that we should take "the responsibility of driving a lot more seriously, and treating driving as something risky" but treating this as a story about driving less broadly misses the point.

I agree with you about how the article is written, but "bad things happen to good people" isn't an idea that will save lives. "Find a way to stop driving, because it IS your fault if you kill someone with your automobile" is. She chose to drive, killed someone as a direct result of her decision, and then chose to continue driving. She was surround by car culture enablers (her dad immediately fixing the car instead of…

I fully agree. We amateur drivers choose to drive 1000kg metal boxes at speeds that kill for convenience.

We do not accept how dangerous this is. This is severe carelessness. We should all recognise that driving more than 30 mph when there's houses around has the real possibility of killing someone. We shouldn't need the Government to tell us, we should be aware every time we step in our car that it can kill.

Plus the woman makes no indication of how close she was to the other cars. I will never believe that she is completely blameless.

The people killed by cars are the most cruel, because in every other way they were healthy.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#647

Post by icc97 »

petters wrote: post #309
samch wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to your comment about time spent with your child, I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago: I was weighing the implications of taking a new job that came with a significant salary increase, but aslo had the massive downside of having to be in the office and away from my family most days / evenings (60hrs per 5-day workweek). I vividly recall a conversation I had with my father who said something to…

Of course no one says that on their deathbed. Many people on their deathbeds have been retired for more than 20 years. People in their 20s often care about their career. People in their 80s often do not. Who's right? It's often a trade-off. The goal is not to be happy on your deathbed; it's to be happy throughout life.

People in their 20s typically don't have kids

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#648

Post by paulryanrogers »

dsnuh wrote: post #534
5ilv3r wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is notorious for making those connections impossible when they are truly needed most. It's a marketing tool with aggressive filtering, not a family message board.

Agreed. I wish that I could get my family and close friends to join a Mattermost server I host, but so far, FB has a stranglehold on everyone it seems.

XMPP had federation. Sadly it didn't last long at the big providers.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#649

Post by bryanlarsen »

jessaustin wrote: post #363
cobbzilla wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason the 9/11 comparison is not so great: from a mass-social-psychology POV it was (a) very easy to blame an out-group (terrorists), and (b) the singular nature of the event represented a tremendous opportunity for a huge power-grab by the government. With traffic fatalities (a) we largely have only ourselves to blame, and (b) there is no big power-grab to be found.

Maybe it wasn't a "big" power-grab, but the lives of the rural poor have certainly been made worse by all of our egregious drunk driving laws, and the cops and courts dedicated to their zealous persecution.

You've been downvoted for saying so, but you're right, impaired driving laws has drastically altered rural culture. The center of that culture was the house party, and the only way to get to those is to drive.

But what really killed that culture was the internet. The expression was: "There are only two types of entertainment in a small town: drinking and fucking". Now teenagers just spend all day playing Call of Duty.

At least they're not regularly dying in drunken car accidents like they used to: in my high school we lost well over 1% of our students to it.

Not worse. Better.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#650

Post by icc97 »

BearGoesChirp wrote: post #155

All the people talking about being unable to handle/comprehend the death of their child, and especially the one line of conversations about the impact of losing one child when you have many more, made me think about something. For most of human history, losing some children was expected. Child mortality rates for most of our history have been abysmal. As species, what impact did that have on us? Child abuse has a lon…

Having less children is a factor. I only have one child with no chance of a second. If I lose the one there is no concept of a future.

If you have more than one child there is a future because you have to carry on for your other children.

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