Why does life become so boring, meaningless and dreadful the older you get???

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
Yup.

I remember when I was pregnant with my first kid, and asked the Lamaze lady a question: "I'm worried about my baby....does that ever go away?" And she looked me in the eye and said,
"NOPE."

You have about 10 years to go before he's settled - hang in there. The ride gets really bumpy, but the love for them never goes away.

It's like part of your heart walking around outside of your body. You can't always be there.
A wise grandma once told me to be glad I knew where my preschoolers were (as we all trooped up to dance class), because in another ten years, I wouldn't.....and that's when you really worry.........

no matter - they have to do their own thing. Learn in their own way. Just - be there for them......when they need it, they'll come to you

I hear you! I had my first real taste of this last summer, he went with Scouts overseas for twelve nights. I had, initially, thought that it would be bliss to have so much time to myself, but spent the entire time like a cat on a hot tin roof. He was totally fine, better than fine, it was my baby that got on the ferry, but rather a lovely mature young man that disembarked.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
Meanwhile, they are engaging in the developmental tasks of adolescence.
Ten Tasks of Adolescent Development

In order to help parents influence healthy adolescent growth, the Raising Teens Project identified 10 critical developmental tasks that teenagers need to undertake to make a successful transition to adulthood:

Adjust to sexually maturing bodies and feelings »

Develop and apply abstract thinking skills »

Develop and apply new perspective on human relationships »

Develop and apply new coping skills in areas such as decision making,
problem solving, and conflict resolution »

Identify meaningful moral standards, values, and belief systems »

Understand and express more complex emotional experiences »

Form friendships that are mutually close and supportive »

Establish key aspects of identity »

Meet the demands of increasingly mature roles and responsibilities »

Renegotiate relationships with adults in parenting roles »

Perfectly normal.
Very hard for all of us to endure (including them and us parents), but still - necessary. ......

Just hanging out with him yesterday was so very cool. His hugs are precious things.....his laugh, his smile.....
just like when I'm with his big sister.

You know, I have said it at every stage, and I hope that I keep doing so, but this is my favourite so far. My second pregnancy ended in miscarriage and I couldn't face that happening again, so I decided to be happy with what I had already got - and by golly, am I!

Thanks for the words of experience, much appreciated, always.

Very best to you and yours.

Well I just find that I have so many problems to try and deal with that it seems pointless. Oddly enough all the result of the nazi dictatorship I live under up hear north of the US. Like 80% of my major problmes are from big brother. I'm just hoping I can get out of this insane country somehow, and never come back. Like I actually have a good understanding of that the jews went through in WW2. They lived under tyranny. That's essencially what it's like up here. But that's just one issue. I still sort of feel that even if I moved id still be facing a lot of the same old challenges of life. Like what's the point anymore. But life just goes on. Just got to try and make the best of things I guess.

a reply to: lavatrance

Hey lavatrance!

I think the climate has changed, and I don't mean global warming.

I don't know about you, but the society I lived in during my 20's is not the same as the one I'm living in now (50's). The opportunities are gone. A lot of hope has gone.
Cars, houses, better jobs, holidays, education, entertainment...they all used to be attainable/affordable.
My status has slipped from middle-class to poor.


I'm now not raising kids, I'm caring for an elderly mother-in-law with dementia. Twice a day, every day. (6 years now)
Seeing what she is going through is horrifying.

It's nice that some people are hitting their middle years with money and good health, but that's not the case for all of us. Perspective is everything.
Chronic pain/illness, elderly parents, kids & grandkids...NO MONEY!...in your 50's...it gets rough.
Sense of humour is required.

jacy

originally posted by: lavatrance
Just got to try and make the best of things I guess.

I'm walking through treacle a lot just lately myself, but it could be a darn sight worse, and there are other benefits to moving slowly and there is a triumph to be felt from every successful step forward.

Stop focusing on what you haven't got, appreciate what you have got, but most importantly...

Life is always Groundhog Day.

It's just that you don't realise it till you hit 40 or 45.

originally posted by: lavatrance
Well I just find that I have so many problems to try and deal with that it seems pointless. Oddly enough all the result of the nazi dictatorship I live under up hear north of the US. Like 80% of my major problmes are from big brother. I'm just hoping I can get out of this insane country somehow, and never come back. Like I actually have a good understanding of that the jews went through in WW2. They lived under tyranny. That's essencially what it's like up here. But that's just one issue. I still sort of feel that even if I moved id still be facing a lot of the same old challenges of life. Like what's the point anymore. But life just goes on. Just got to try and make the best of things I guess.

Oh yah? Please let us know what things are similar between America currently and what it was like to be Jewish during WW II..

Nothing is holding you back from leaving. Get your passport and go find your Utopia.

originally posted by: Anaana

originally posted by: lavatrance
Just got to try and make the best of things I guess.

I'm walking through treacle a lot just lately myself, but it could be a darn sight worse, and there are other benefits to moving slowly and there is a triumph to be felt from every successful step forward.

Thank you for the reminder.

I sometimes waste my time resenting the struggle and the discomfort that each step brings, instead of rejoicing in the triumph that I succeeded in my attempt to make it.

It was been a bad week. Constant rain, dark, cold, all the ingredients for pain and misery, I was starting to lag under the weight, but your words were just what I needed to get my second wind.

Thanks.

Because you're faced with more and more evil, and more and more idiocy and inevitably it affects you. It both changes you (For the worse. People say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but i say "What doesn't kill you makes you less human". In a way, it does kill you indeed, just slowly and not too obviously, not literally too, with some exceptions when it does lead to you physical death, one way or another) and makes you realize the world is indeed a nasty place.

a reply to: jacygirl

Cars, houses, better jobs, holidays, education, entertainment...they all used to be attainable/affordable. 
My status has slipped from middle-class to poor. 

You took me back a few steps in time.
I believe I had a very happy childhood. I would go so far as to say, looking back, even with everything I know now, that I was very lucky.

We were poorer than church mice but I never knew it. I always had food when I was hungry, I didn't know there was good food and bad food, I ate what was in the house and there was always food in the house. I remember being ashamed of my sandwiches made from homemade bread when the other kids had "Wonder Bread", and homemade snacks and candies, instead of Suzie Q, and Hershey's.

I have to share this little tid bit. At the time of this event there were 8 of us kids. I was hungry, my mom was at work. I took a can of tuna fish out of the cupboard, and I ate the tuna fish with some crackers. No big deal, so I thought. I will never forget the look on my mother's face when she asked me about the can of tuna fish in the trash and I told her what I had done. She seemed a bit puzzled and shocked at the same time, when she said that can of tuna fish could have fed me and my three siblings. She said she could have gotten 4 sandwiches and maybe a little more out of that one can.Even then I didn't realize her distress was because we were poor, but I did learn that food stores were important.

We lived in the country and I remember my dad building our house from scratch, on family land, with the help of family and friends. It started small and grew with additions, as our family grew and enough money had been saved. In the beginning we had no inside plumming, running water and inside toilets were added with time. Still I didn't know I was poor.

I was the first child in our neighborhood and family to go to college, it was paid for with academic scholarships and commitment. We were the first family to have a color TV, our home was like the neighborhood country club. Since my dear Catholic mother felt it was too much to ask of our neighbors to take in her brood, everyone always came to our house.

There was plenty of land and things for the children to do. The adults had their music, they played cards, talked, laughed and then they watched TV. We kids grouped off according to age and found p!enty to keep ourselves entertained, and I still had no clue that we were poor.

My parents both were civil servants so their combined incomes and living close to the water is what saved us. I think that is why fish is not one of my favorite foods. We had very little, my mother shared generously, and our neighbors shared what they could, so we all got by happily, and us kids were none the wiser.

Today looking back, I have to say that growing up poor was a blessing. Of course, I am talking about at different time, a different society, and a different world. But being poor is a hardship, it can also be be a motivator. It took me almost 18 years to learn that I was poor. I spent about 30 years believing the !ie that I was fair to well off. It has taken me almost another 30 years to realize that I was born poor, I have always been poor, and will die poor.

Yet in all those years of poverty, struggles, desires, pains, and disappointment, lies my life, my joys, my accomplishments, my failures, my hopes and dreams. And I wouldn't change a thing if I could.

originally posted by: mkpetrov
Because you're faced with more and more evil, and more and more idiocy and inevitably it affects you. It both changes you (For the worse. People say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but i say "What doesn't kill you makes you less human". In a way, it does kill you indeed, just slowly and not too obviously, not literally too, with some exceptions when it does lead to you physical death, one way or another) and makes you realize the world is indeed a nasty place.

The world is much less evil today than it has ever been.

Before you just didn't see and hear about every nasty, evil, thing that anyone has done, or thought about.

You are now entangled in a web that transmits every nasty, evi!, mean, thought, or act, directly to you, in real time, with pictures and HD video.

There is not more of it. It is just that now it is up close, personal, and in your face 24/7.

The genie is out of the bottle. Good look reining that monster back in.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

originally posted by: mkpetrov
Because you're faced with more and more evil, and more and more idiocy and inevitably it affects you. It both changes you (For the worse. People say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but i say "What doesn't kill you makes you less human". In a way, it does kill you indeed, just slowly and not too obviously, not literally too, with some exceptions when it does lead to you physical death, one way or another) and makes you realize the world is indeed a nasty place.

The world is much less evil today than it has ever been.

Before you just didn't see and hear about every nasty, evil, thing that anyone has done, or thought about.

You are now entangled in a web that transmits every nasty, evi!, mean, thought, or act, directly to you, in real time, with pictures and HD video.

There is not more of it. It is just that now it is up close, personal, and in your face 24/7.

The genie is out of the bottle. Good look reining that monster back in.

It may be (I'm not convinced), but it's s still too twisted and the point is, when you grow older, you've encountered too much. And not just in media/internet, but in real life too.

a reply to: jacygirl

Well I know a little about making money. I've read countless business books, and they can all be summerized into 1 sentence which is: "rich people sell something." So you could find something to sell and go for it. But ya I know what you mean. Houses in my area sell for 3 times what they did in the early 2000's. But I don't think I'd ever buy a house in this country again, I don't want to live on the grid at all in my country (the one north of the US). TPTB area totally and completely insane. There's no way to even have a life in this nazi control grid.

a reply to: opethPA

I said north of the us, that british slave colony which is exactly what it is.

originally posted by: mkpetrov
Because you're faced with more and more evil, and more and more idiocy and inevitably it affects you. It both changes you (For the worse. People say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but i say "What doesn't kill you makes you less human". In a way, it does kill you indeed, just slowly and not too obviously, not literally too, with some exceptions when it does lead to you physical death, one way or another) and makes you realize the world is indeed a nasty place.

I will disagree with this too.
I don't know if any definitive and object assessment of "amount of evil in the world" can be made, but I am pretty darn sure that at any point in time individuals experience differing levels of pain and negativity, so that it become a subjective measure.

When I was a kid, adults were doing a lot of drugs, which were causing breaks in their inhibitions of all sorts. It was a time of chaotic societal change, in which experimentation and rejection of previous limits was happening.

That meant people were having sex with anything that moved, including children.
It means people were doing drugs, and giving drugs to anything that moved.. including children.
It meant people were losing all self restraint when it came to strong emotions, like anger or violence, and expressing that towards anything that moved... including children.
It was Helter Skelter time in Southern California, and not a good time to be a child there.

I know what it is like to be hungry and have to steal food, I know what it is like to try to treat your wounds and hide them from other adults who might take away your parents.

I find life now is much easier and better. I am free to leave anyplace and any person that is hurting me. I have power over my life that I didn't have as a kid. I can make my life better, safer, more pleasurable.
For me? The world has a lot less evil in it now.

I guess people who had a pleasurable experience with the powerlessness of childhood would say it got worse as they grew up.

In the end, the relative nature of this reality makes it possible to see anything as better or worse, depending upon what you contrast it with. Like in eastern thought, where yin and yang are relative.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Hey NightSkye!
Thank you for such a lovely reply. You know what? I didn't really realize I had a crumby childhood until I became a mother. I knew that I wanted so much more for my own kids.
I do remember powdered skim milk and huge plastic bags of puffed wheat cereal, 2nd hand or homemade clothes, and simple meals. My parents grew up during WW2 in England, with food rations. We were never 'foodies' and the logic was, "eat to live, don't live to eat".
While my school friends lived in houses, my parents never owned a home. Sometimes it was a 1-bedroom apartment, with me in the bedroom & them on a sofa bed in the living room.

I'm grateful that I got to spend 16 years as a stay-at-home mom who volunteered almost full time at their school. How things have changed. One of my daughters had to work 3 jobs, 1 full-time...to rent a small apt. & run a car. (Yeah, cars are luxuries now but geez they used to be SO affordable!)
THAT in itself is enough to depress me these days. Things that used to be affordable aren't now.

I can't believe that in 1976 I got my first after school job, earning $2.15/hour (student wage).
A lot of shifts could get me close to $50/week, and with that I....smoked, paid room & board to parents, bought my own clothes, saw bands like Rush for a $7/ticket....and still saved a little.

lavatrance...You're in Canada too, eh? I swear, ever since the Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the U.S.A. and Mexico (in 1994)...things here have really 'gone south'...literally. Way too many jobs gone...factories closed.

Some of us are definitely miserable these days, remembering how things used to be.

jacy

a reply to: jacygirl

ya things have changed on all fronts. Life wasn't like this growing up. It started in the 90s's then excellerated in the 2000's. Now we're really feeling it. When I go out of my house I'm kinda on edge watching my back. Like that's nuts. One shouldn't have to live this way. I just want to get out and never come back. And no I don't want to play the blame game either, but I'm just calling a spade a spade. We now know what living in stallinistic soviet russia , or nazi germany must have been like.

a reply to: ketsuko

I was a hell-raiser right through kindergarten and my husband didn't settle out until 3rd grade.

I can tell.

For my part, I'm still a hell-raiser, so are both of my younger brothers, and I'm 52 years past kindergarten. It doesn't 'go away' - it doesn't get 'tamed' by authoritative or punitive attitudes. No amount of "you'll burn in hell" or "you'll get expelled" or "you'll get fired" stops a personality like that......
you do what it is right, and everything else be damned.

I'm high IQ/gifted and he's only a few pointed shy of Mensa.

Congratulations. So am I. So are both of my kids.

If that stuff is heritable, then we've got a handful to look forward to.

Uh....yeah - it's heritable. And don't forget that he's paying attention to EVERYTHING that you, his dad, and his teachers do.
You can't squelch brains.

Just like you can't fix stupid.

But you never want to be the parent that goes into the school and says, "I think our kid is gifted and that might be why you could be having some of these behaviors ..."

Yes, actually, you do want to be the parent who goes in there and says that.


If your kid needs extra, you sit down with the teachers and the administrators. You tell them what works with your son-----

Every parent thinks their kid is gifted.

"Thinking" is not the same as "knowing" they are gifted. My kids were both 'tested' for gifted before they were five......


What are you so afraid of?
Your kid needs an IEP. He needs 'extra' attention.
If his teacher - or any other crap in his life, like what's going on at home - is freaking him out and causing him to spit on people (or throw a pencil at an SRO from the bus, like my kid did) you have to find out what the hell is going on....

when my son was in middle school, his math teacher was all about what a craphead he was......how he refused to engage or to do the work.....
She made my son and his father cry at that conference meeting (in the gym - open house type of thing).

His dad called me and said, "Yeah, so - the conference thing in the gym - the math teacher made him cry ----- could you go tomorrow and meet with her?"

And so I did.
When I told her who I was, and said that she'd made my kid and his dad cry, she said "I'm not going to talk about this with you. I'm going to get an administrator".......
and I said,
"GOOD! Let's go then!" All of the blood drained out of her face....................

Ten minutes later I was in the principal's office with her (the math teacher), a social worker, and the principal.....

I asked the math teacher if she ever used humor in her classroom....because relating to the kids involves using humor and talking to them as if they are actual people.........


The match teacher said, "We don't do humor in my classroom."

Now, having worked with kids in the Special Ed program for 6 years, I knew better.....so I replied, "Well, then, he needs to be in a different class with a teacher who knows how to reach kids......even recalcitrant kids."

The principal winked at me, and the next day she called me and said that he'd been transferred to a different teacher.




Gah.
But, you certainly don't want me (of all people!! )

- to help you navigate this.

So - carry on.
Good luck.

The match teacher said, "We don't do humor in my classroom."

Yeah - not the 'match' teacher....
the math teacher.

sorry for the typo.

a reply to: opethPA

Oddly enough all the result of the nazi dictatorship I live under up hear north of the US. Like 80% of my major problmes are from big brother. I'm just hoping I can get out of this insane country somehow, and never come back.

Wow. Well, if you want to swap houses, PM me. I'm in the center of the US. Brownback is the governor here. Total Dominionist Right-Wing kind of guy. Look him up if you have questions.......


No matter what you find out and decide, I'd like to know: How is "big brother" ruining your life?

You have no idea, really, what it is like here.....and you should look into it. If you like conservative austerity and God stuff.....and our Government being turned into that theocracy.......you'd be happy here.......
Right?

Just know this: you have it good.

originally posted by: lavatrance
a reply to: opethPA

I said north of the us, that british slave colony which is exactly what it is.

The same question applies..

What about living in Canada is comparable to what was experienced during WW II?