If you’re feeling grumpy this year and irritated by relatives, here are some stories that may make you appreciate them more…
Frozen, a Disney movie that I previewed in order to see if there was anything in there that would upset my 4-year-old. It turned out to be too upsetting for me (85% dead) and my companion (26). A little girl loses both of her parents in a shipwreck and then her older sister won’t talk to her for years. I would be interested to hear from parents who have taken children to this movie. How old is old enough?
Wave
“Where is Your Mother?” a New Yorker story by Rachel Aviv that is sadly behind a paywall. Niveen Ismail, who grew up in Kuwait with Egyptian parents, comes to Orange County without the support of friends or family and makes one bad decision after another. She becomes a single mother, which in California can be a lucrative occupation if the father is chosen correctly (see https://www.cse.ca.gov/ChildSupport/cse/guidelineCalculator and plug in the salary for a plastic surgeon. for example), but her profit from child support in this particular case was apparently not sufficient to pay for full-time day care. One day in 2005 Ismail snaps and leaves her three-year-old son home alone. The police arrive 90 minutes later and take the kid away, but instead of saying “You’re a bad mother and we’re putting your child into foster care” (an immediate tsunami-like loss) they subject Ismail to nearly three years of legal and psychological torture where she (unsuccessfully) tries to demonstrate her competence as a parent to a variety of social workers and psychologists.