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Post by Honeybee on Jun 2, 2014 19:44:46 GMT -5
^I agreed. That is nuts. (What book, was that in?) Here's another one. Mr. & Mrs. Pike leaving Mallory and her friend, Jessi at the mall. Do shopping. Anyone can kidnap those girls. My mom would never let me go to the mall alone, if it was just me and other friend. It was in Dawn and the Impossible Three. Oh, okay.
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scrounge
Sitter-In-Training
Boo and bullfrogs!
Posts: 414
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Post by scrounge on Jun 3, 2014 0:31:09 GMT -5
I was actually not even so much thinking about Shea, but the book (Stacey the Math Whiz?) where Stacey is supposed to be tutoring Lindsay DeWitt (funny how the Barrett/DeWitts always show up in this type of discussion) but Stacey gets busy with Mathletes so they just send Claudia to be the tutor instead and of course she's instantly amazing and Lindsay can add and subtract three-digit numbers within an hour. Even Franklin DeWitt is a bit disbelieving in the text, but he just decides to let Claudia tutor his kid cause, well, she showed up. There's no way I would let that happen. If the actual good-at-math teenager had other commitments, I wouldn't be happy if she sent her friend who had been sent back a grade. Sorry.
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Post by Sideshowjazz1 on Jun 4, 2014 0:50:35 GMT -5
The one that sticks in my mind is the Addisons dumping their kids on babysitters all the time in book #26. Corrie even gives her Nancy Drew puppet to Claudia after her mother fails to pick her up at the right time. And although this is less about parenting and more about people, in book #56, Mrs Lowell makes me so mad, especially because her racist attitudes obviously rub off on her kids. She doesn't let them be in the band with the other kids because of kids like Becca being in it and the fact that they're singing stuff from "Fiddler On The Roof". That is conditioning her kids to be discriminatory in the future, and you can especially see it with Caitlin. And that brings me back to book #14 when another mother showed that kind of attitude when her daughter saw Becca with her bubble-maker and wanted to ask her about it. Sorry, racism just annoys me. Things are supposed to be getting better, but it's not. And as for the Addisons...emotional child neglect can do awful things to a kid. Just watch "Hey Arnold" if you don't believe me. Emotional child neglect leads to said child becoming highly defensive, depressed and obsessive, with her emotional center relying entirely on one boy.
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Post by sparklymouse on Jun 11, 2014 21:24:45 GMT -5
I was actually not even so much thinking about Shea, but the book (Stacey the Math Whiz?) where Stacey is supposed to be tutoring Lindsay DeWitt (funny how the Barrett/DeWitts always show up in this type of discussion) but Stacey gets busy with Mathletes so they just send Claudia to be the tutor instead and of course she's instantly amazing and Lindsay can add and subtract three-digit numbers within an hour. Even Franklin DeWitt is a bit disbelieving in the text, but he just decides to let Claudia tutor his kid cause, well, she showed up. There's no way I would let that happen. If the actual good-at-math teenager had other commitments, I wouldn't be happy if she sent her friend who had been sent back a grade. Sorry. Do you guys think the client parents actually knew much about the sitters' personal and school lives? I don't see how they would know things like Claudia was nearly flunking out. I wonder how close their adult perceptions of each girl was to how she really was. Oh, or Kristy's Book, the chapter where Mrs. Thomas gets a new job and just lets her 6, 8, and 10 year olds be home alone after school for several hours a day, and then when she realizes things are out of control, she gives them all a ton of chores, including making one of them (Charlie?) responsible for bathing infant David Michael every night. I know a lot of people were bothered by that chapter, but I didn't see too much wrong or unreasonable. It wasn't a ton of chores. I believe one kid did breakfast dishes, one did dinner dishes, and they had to vacuum and clean up the bathroom once a week. Isn't that a normal chore load for kids? The bathing David Michael thing was the only eyebrow raiser for me. (I should mention that my siblings and I had a very similar after school arrangement at 6, 9, and 11, so reading that felt "normal".) I thought of another one. The parents letting Charlie, a teenage driver who hadn't had his license long, drive all the girls around, including in some books where it was described that some of them had to sit on each other's laps, so obviously no seatbelts for the lap sitter. (First example I found was in #42, Charlie drives 6 of the club members all the way to Stamford and Mallory has to sit on Claudia's lap the whole way.) I think this is the only thing that they ever did that my mother would have had a fit over. Apparently scrounge said a lot of interesting stuff in this thread because I quoted her three times.
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Post by wenonah4th on Jun 24, 2014 12:57:14 GMT -5
That sort of thing wasn't too strange in the 80s or even into the early 90s. n I recall specifically being no more than 5 when the next-door neighbors took a crowd of kids, including me, out for ice cream and we were crammed two to a seatbelt in their van. In 2014, taking anyone else's children someplace in the car is a royal pain because any kids under about 8 or 9 have to have some form of car seat.
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Post by Honeybee on Jun 25, 2014 2:37:27 GMT -5
I remember going to Vacation Bible School. One of the neighbor's mom, took us to VB. In her station wagon. Kids, even ride in the back of the trunk. Now, theirs booster seat for kids up to 8. Where did we go from no booster seat in the 80's to must have a booster seat for kids ages 2-7? My two older nieces, didn't had use the booster, when they were 8 or 9 years old. Then, if your going to get ice cream, from the ice cream place. Child under 8, needs booster seat. It's only 5 minutes away. They even want tweens in booster seat. Just no. This has gone too far. 8-12 years old don't need a booster seat. What's next, bubble your kids?
Back to topic. Mr. & Mrs. Wilder. Having Rosie doing all those talents. When did Rosie had fun?
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Post by greer on Jun 25, 2014 11:39:37 GMT -5
It's dependent on height/weight, I believe. I think my mom had us in boosters until we didn't fit in them anymore.
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Post by wenonah4th on Jun 26, 2014 12:38:05 GMT -5
Which is a pain if your kids are petite, like my daughter and older son are. My younger son is average size.
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wanderingfrog
Sitting For The Arnolds
Official BSC Archivist
Posts: 2,552
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Post by wanderingfrog on Jul 5, 2014 20:16:25 GMT -5
Yeah, I had to ride in a car seat until I was 8, in the late '80s, because I was so small. And I know that nowadays you have to be even taller and weigh even more until you can stop using a car seat around here, unless the kid is at least 10 years old.
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Post by sparklymouse on Jul 5, 2014 21:27:56 GMT -5
This is a new concept for me. Granted, I don't hang out with kids ever, but I never see anyone over the age of like 4 in a car seat.
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starrynight
Sitting For The Kuhns
The Royal Diner of Pizza Express
Posts: 4,004
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Post by starrynight on Jul 5, 2014 21:51:25 GMT -5
I have no memories of riding in a car seat, and I'm pretty sure my siblings stopped riding in them long before what's now the legal age (which, IMHO, is ridiculously old).
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Post by wenonah4th on Jul 12, 2014 8:19:24 GMT -5
I recall it up through about 3.
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Post by Honeybee on Jul 12, 2014 23:19:54 GMT -5
I remember riding in the front seat, when I was 4 years old. My dad took me to my speech therapist. When the session was over with. We went home. I had use the restroom. My dad told me to wait, until we got home. Well, I didn't make it. I peed all over the front seat of the car. My mom wasn't happy about it. She told my dad, why didn't he took me to the bathroom? But, it was that time, I had accident. When we car pool. We'll take turns riding in front. didn't matter what age you were. When, we picked up dad. Like one of us ride in front, when he got off at work, my older sister or I, will go in the back seat. Mostly were in the backseat, if all four of us, were going shopping or out of town.
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Post by wenonah4th on Aug 28, 2014 6:29:43 GMT -5
It was definitely easier.
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mallorypike
Sitting For The Papadakis's
If I were thirteen instead of eleven, life would be a picnic...
Posts: 1,636
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Post by mallorypike on Oct 27, 2014 14:09:40 GMT -5
I swear the parents in the BSC books made the worst parenting decisions in history. There are so many that they made. The first one that comes to mind was when Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey left Jessi take care of an 8 and 1 year old for an entire weekend. The second was when parents actually let Dawn and Claudia in charge of several young kids under the age of 10 w/o adult supervision on a boating trip (and they were new at boating). Then there was the time when Mr. Barrett taking Buddy off to California w/o Mrs. Barrett's consent; that was very irresponsible, IMO. Also, there was the time when Richard and Sharon left MA, and Dawn home alone overnight when they went on their honeymoon. Most teenaged girls would have thrown a wild party, or invite boys over, etc. That was pretty irresponsible, too. Plus, one of the babysitting charges (the one in book #26, I think) named Corey, and she had a mom who always dropped her kids off at places because she is plain selfish who doesn't care a crap about her kids, and was always late. That was pathetic. Oh, yeah, there were the times at Sea City, the mother's helpers (MA and Stacey, right?) were allowed to go on dates with random boys by the Pike parents who doesn't even meet them! That really gets me. Gosh...there are some pretty foolish parents in Stoneybrook.
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