Presumably someone for whom the “low fragrance” Beantown Stomp policy was insufficient would not show up in the Beantown Stomp registration data. They would have opted out of Beantown Stomp. There is no option on the survey for “this policy is insufficient for me and I will not be registering because of it” (and the registration form would be a weird place to capture non-registrants anyway).
EKP
Karma: 97
I’ll add one other thought: contra expects or even requires very close contact with everyone in the room. Experienced dancers can sometimes swap with their partners in real time to avoid certain moves that prolong contact, and in large halls folks can try to stay to lines that avoid folks they prefer to avoid, but barring agreed-upon deals where, say, two folks only dance in different lines after a breakup, you should expect to be touching everyone in the room for potentially multiple minutes a night and have their face within 1-2 feet of yours for multiple minutes a night. I’ve even had a caller come and physically walk me from the line I was in to the line containing someone I had been trying to avoid.
I think this is relatively uncommon in other public situations, even other dance forms. Usually you have more discretion about who touches you or breathes on your face. An exception might be a very crowded bus or subway car, but in my experience skin to skin contact even there is fairly rare.
I think this expectation of universal semi-extended close contact does rightfully change the social norms a bit.
Just an anecdote: I’ve looked with envy at some of the Pinewoods week advertising and wondered if there is a way I could Tetris a Pinewoods week into my life for some future summer. Then this year I read a friend’s post about the steps to replace every product in their routine with an unscented version in the lead-up to Pinewoods and all I could think was that I simply don’t think I will be able to Tetris Pinewoods in for many summers into the future if this additional task is a requirement. I don’t know what a reasonable estimate is of the burden. 5 hours and $200? More? Less?
I’m fortunate to have relatively forgiving skin, hair, etc. If someone handed me a bag of unscented products to start using a week ahead and use through Pinewoods I would not be feeling or looking like my best self (I prefer the feel of the sunscreen and lip balm and lotion I’m used to, I prefer how I look with my normal conditioner, etc.) but I could manage. Maybe I could pay to have this shipped to me? That’s the only way I can imagine making it work for me as a time constrained and slightly budget constrained rule-follower who would be maxing out on spoons and flex time to get to Pinewoods itself at all. But many people would be much more uncomfortable than me committing to using products someone else issued them.
I’m aware of at least one prominent community member (travels for many events a year, well known and well liked, etc.) who is sensitive to fragrances and takes many steps to make things as safe as practical. I don’t think this is founder effect, exactly, but something related.
I’ve shared this post with several friends who are considering smart watches for their kids. I’m curious if your kids have hit the contact limit and if so, how you’ve dealt with that.
The other thing I keep coming back to is: why doesn’t it use T9? As someone who used to wear a 16-button Casio calculator watch daily and who was texting in the T9 era, that seems to me like an obvious improvement.
We did this growing up. We brought sleeping bags to dances and set them up somewhere safe. Under the hall’s piano was a frequent choice if the band had brought a keyboard. No one would step on us there. Bedtime was at the end of break, which was later than normal bedtime. Lots of good memories of falling asleep to contra music and contra feet. I don’t know that we would have fallen asleep at our normal bedtimes in that environment. My kids will, I hope, do the same in a few years.
For the results of a different survey, 10 years ago, asking similar questions: https://reason.com/2014/08/20/helicopter-parenting-run-amok-most-ameri
Nearly half of respondents think it should be illegal for a 12 year old to play solo at a park. It’s over 2⁄3 for a 9 year old. Those are tough numbers.
I’m glad this worked for you, but would your thought be to use unique signs for each kid if each had a multi-month signing phase?
In particular, I would not use this approach too extensively if your kid may want to be able to communicate with others who work with kids—teachers at daycare, speech pathologists, many nannies, other pediatric medical professionals etc. I do agree that straight ASL isn’t quite right either. Our kid’s speech pathologist uses a lot of signs but chooses for example to use “car”—a fairly easy sign—for all vehicles since bus, train, etc. are more abstract or complex. This approach has allowed our kid to communicate with a range of people over the relevant time period, not just our household.
I’m fairly surprised to read this, as I continue to be surprised by the number of my friends and acquaintances who have flown home with COVID despite having the means not to. Every flight I’ve taken since the pandemic started, I’ve taken the time to game plan what would happen if I or someone in my party were to test positive during the trip. Did you not do this? On the scale of the incomes you have posted on your blog previously, $2000 or so is not very much.
And from the JetBlue policy you linked to, I guess you bought Basic Blue fares?
It seems like you chose to be your own insurance policy and then decided not to pay out.
Several airlines, at least as of a few months ago, required me to check a box confirming that I had not tested positive for COVID in some recent amount of time, or had a fever. Is this no longer the case, or did you choose to check that box?
Maybe the risk numbers make sense here, but planes/airports are one of the hardest places to avoid to be able to participate in society normally and I am surprised by your choice given all the other posts in which you seem exceedingly concerned about not spreading COVID.
I think you are maybe also not thinking of the degrees of privacy people value.
For example, I used to have a job where it was valuable to be able to present to new professional acquaintances as politically neutral or at least politically agendaless. I have a very Google-able name. And Google really likes Facebook results. Therefore I kept anything publicly available, including on Facebook, fairly neutral—no tags in public contra pictures, for example. My bar was, if someone were to see they were going to meet with me, search my name, and read whatever struck their interest for a few minutes, they wouldn’t have significant information on my politics.That’s a very different goal than keeping my information private from, say, the law.
I can’t find it right now, but I distinctly remember you posting about BIDA having a similar “kids excluded” policy, I think back when under-5s couldn’t be vaccinated. At the time, you said it was no/low cost, and someone in the comments pointed out that the cost was the entire cost of attending the dance. I didn’t see an explicit revision to your thinking posted. Can you articulate your revised cost-benefit for under 2s, who can’t do basic things like cover a cough or wash their hands after touching their mouth?
Possibly scarier: the federal government and national lab system has not identical, but very similar barriers.
Not wanting your kid to be at minimal age to start school is a totally valid counterargument. Perhaps there’s a middle ground—prioritizing the spring for example.
Had anyone I’d been discussing this with brought up this counterargument I would have had a very different takeaway from the conversation. The point I was trying to make was that even people who are thinking some about the economics of pregnancy and parenthood don’t seem to be thinking about it very comprehensively in my experience.That said, IIRC from your blogs, 2 of your 3 kids have June-ish birthdays, so I take it your concern about being in the youngest quarter of the year wasn’t something important enough to you to actively avoid.
| as you start looking for a house
We’ve been keeping our eye on houses in our area for several years. If the right one showed up on the market we would likely try to buy. I know people who have spent their entire careers in this state. Maybe it’s not the most typical approach, but I don’t expect there will be a concentrated 6 month period of “looking for a house” for us.
For a more concrete example, we nearly lost our housing last year on very short notice (<1 month), and so had to secure a new rental. Most rentals require income to be a certain percentage of the rent (often 300%). We would have ended up living in a hotel.The idea that you should in other circumstances be able to have while choosing to make lest rings as fairly naive and not based in reality to me.
I think means testing goes in a lot of different directions. You may qualify for housing assistance and your kid may qualify for more financial aid in college, and I don’t know that either of those would be questioned. However, my understanding is that court-ordered child/spousal support works differently and is unlikely to be adjusted downward based on a decrease in income, especially in this scenario.
On the other side of the coin, good luck buying a house.
I agree completely, and yet I am also very convinced that very few people enter parenthood having done rational economic calculations.
As an example:
(A) I’ve seen many folks TTC with an explicit intent to get the entire pregnancy + birth on one year’s health insurance deductible, which I’d guess saves $7500 or so on a HDHP versus the worst case of meeting the full deductible in two consecutive years. This often results in a baby born in the fall.
(B) A summer versus fall baby requires ~10 months less childcare before public school (or combined childcare + private school if you want the really long view), a savings of easily $20,000 five years later assuming $2k/mo in childcare expenses. And the first three months of pregnancy with an unassisted conception are realistically going to cost under $1k for the vast majority of people.
When I’ve brought this up with friends and acquaintances considering (A), they often tell me that (B) had not crossed their minds, or that the benefit is simply too far away to think about, or variations on those.
These are all educated, planning-oriented people, and that is still the level of long-range economic consideration they are giving to having a child. They budget for a crib and later on they open a 529 to save for college, but I do not think that they, let alone all the less-planning-oriented people choosing to enter parenthood, can be considered fully aware of the economic contract they are signing.
What is your current approach if a kid wants to call someone just to talk (say, your dad)? Do you do it for them on your phone? Do they do it on your phone? Is this something that they just don’t have interest in doing?
I’m similarly interested in how you are teaching your kid phone skills. Has your kid ever picked up the phone? At what age do you anticipate they will start picking up a phone?
We are considering getting a land line or a family device in a year or two, not sure which yet.
I’m curious if the ceiling fan is reversible, and if so if you tried it blowing up. That would give you something of a pressurized plenum approach and may more evenly mix the air.
We also prioritized sleep pretty heavily. Just as a datapoint, here are some of the ways that has looked for us:
Both parents get 4+ hour chunks of uninterrupted, “both ears closed” sleep from the time the baby comes home. Mom sets alarms to pump and baby gets bottles of breastmilk when Mom is on her sleep shifts.
As baby got older and more settled, taking dedicated shifts whenever we expect a more difficult night—e.g. switching at 2 AM. Parents sleep in different rooms, baby sleeps in room with on-shift parent, the first minute that parent is awake after 2 AM, they move the baby to the other parent’s room. (Sometimes modified to first time they are putting the baby down after 2 AM). On less difficult nights, we did the same thing by switching sides of the bed so that the on-duty parent was close to the baby.
From the beginning, each parent getting periodic off duty nights, sleeping in a room with no baby or monitor all night. Mom sets an alarm to pump if she’s off duty. Our experience was that waking at a pre-determined time to pump and not having to monitor for or judge baby noises, or know which chunks of sleep would be long versus short, was overall much more restful than getting up to nurse, even if the two took the same amount of time.
We have in general lucked out with our baby being a relatively good sleeper and generally easier than average, but the above has been very important to us as well.
I appreciate that this particular issue is one you have to grapple with personally, but it is of a type that I come across nearly daily and I think it’s probably a better use of our time to try to establish a better common understanding of the balance between what is said and what is meant than to advocate fully detailed policies for every social interaction.
Two examples from my life:
A doctor’s office with a sign on the door saying “do not enter if you have a temperature”. I can let this slide at the barber where I know it’s an honest mistake, but at the doctor’s (and this is a doctor who would not be seeing anyone with a fever) they should know they mean fever. I enter anyway. I am mildly uncomfortable the entire time I’m there because I’ve broken the rules, even though I know they meant fever and not temperature.
A nut-free daycare classroom for 6-14 month olds. We are not a nut-free house. These kids put absolutely everything in their mouths. We do not pack anything with nuts as an ingredient. We decided “may contain” is also out, but allow “produced in a facility that also produces...”. We don’t allow our kid to eat any nuts before going to daycare in the morning, but do allow nuts and nut products on weekends and in evenings and there isn’t always a bath between then and daycare. And so on. In short, we’ve developed our own set of rules to interpret the “nut-free” policy, but they do represent some amount of burden and still may not be enough to keep a severely allergic kid safe.
These examples illustrate my point that it is very common in society to be left to interpret the true meaning of a stated rule. In example (1) I could tell they couldn’t mean it as written and could infer what they almost certainly did mean. In (2) I was left to my best judgement.
I think your point is that more places should have detailed, explicit, and reasonable policies, because there exists too many possible interpretations of the current policy some of which are too burdensome and some of which are too permissive. For something like a dance weekend or a daycare, a fuller policy could be provided in a somewhat functional format. For a single dance, a full set of rules (cologne bad, shampoo OK as long as an average person can’t smell it from 3 feet away, etc.) would quickly turn into a waiver type situation that probably 5% of people would read which doesn’t make it a particularly practical solution.
What would be better? A world in which everyone was like you and me and approached every social interaction like a new board game with its own rule book is not the world we live in. In the end it’s probably up to us to learn what we need to in order to make the burden-community wellness tradeoffs that others are perhaps able to make more instinctively.
The problem is that the folks that fail in the “didn’t do enough” direction are easier to identify and correct. The “did too much” or “saw it so big a burden they opted out entirely” direction is harder to correct for. But probably “so burdensome that no reasonable person would attend” is a clue that we’ve gone too far.