As many of you are aware I was laid off from my job a few months ago. While the financial uncertainty has been stressful, this time away from work has been invaluable. What I have learned has fundamentally reshaped the way I see the world and myself. Most importantly, I’ve learned that I’m not a bad mom, I’ve been a mom in a system that was never designed for me to succeed.

I thought I was too anxious, maybe little kids just aren’t my forte, maybe I’m just one optimization away from doing this right. But when I think of the most successful parents I’ve worked with—the ones at the top who make the most money— they all have one thing in common: wives.

So what happens when the wife is climbing the ranks herself?

In looking back, I’m almost embarrassed at how close to the edge I let myself teeter— big feminist me, with all my resources, couldn’t even figure out how to better divide housework and childcare? Even though I was a senior leader at work and significantly contributing to our finances, there was always a voice in the back of my head saying I need to do more, I need to take care of everything at home so my husband can be successful.

Maybe it’s the Bible belt Evangelical upbringing or maybe it’s coming of age during the Whole30 and P90X and SoulCycle and Lean In of it all that told us it doesn’t count unless you go all in, ignore your pain and discomfort, and you can’t earn anything unless you're deprived.

This is by no means on my husband either. I was so deep in it I was determined to prove to myself that I could do it all. It felt like a failure if I couldn’t handle it all given the help we had at the time. And deep down I felt inadequate because so many moms do so much more with so much less.

The data shows I’m not alone. In Fair Play, Eve Rodsky shares that even in households in which both parents are in the same profession they consider the mom’s schedule more flexible. Another study found that in dual-physician households, the mom is more likely to reduce hours after kids. Other studies have coined the traditionalizing effect of parenthood, where even the most egalitarian couples fall into traditional gender roles after a baby is born. The Pew Research Center found that wives who out-earn their husbands do more housework and caregiving than those who don’t.

I keep going back to the night I was at rock bottom. My husband was being sworn in for a new [volunteer] role and wanted the family at the event. I was incredibly bitter because he was in week 10 of a 12 week travel period in which he was away two to five nights each week, and I myself had just written a letter of resignation for my volunteer board position that I loved because I couldn’t commit the time.

I had to leave work early during an insanely busy time to do all the things to get the kids ready and to the event. Both kids refused to eat dinner (sizzling stress beneath the surface) and then my three year old threw a massive tantrum, ripping my earring out of my ear, and I reacted BIG (volcano eruption). I snapped. I felt immediate shame for my reaction to his age-appropriate episode that, if we’re being honest, was probably a result of my palpable stress. I shoved both crying kids into their shoes (which took forever), threw everyone in the car, and by the time we got to the event even the line for valet parking felt insurmountable.

The venue was beautiful and entirely unsuitable for a two and three year old. My parents and mother in law were both there for the event, but I couldn’t relax while they watched the kids because we all know when a kid misbehaves it’s a poor reflection on the mom and only the mom. And in my headspace at the time I cared. Today, after taking breathing room, IDGAF but in that moment it mattered to me.

My brain was so mushy I couldn’t hold conversations with the people there, I was so out of sorts I was afraid I was having a stroke. The event finally started (late which had me calculating just how late bedtime would be pushed and just how bad the next morning would be) and, as three year olds do my son got restless and loud. I rushed him out of the room, and in the hallway the event planner who is also a mom and friend squeezed my arm and said “I know”.

That small moment of solidarity made me realize how alone I felt in that room of 150 people, and in that season of life. So many people wanting to help, but I couldn’t figure out how to let them because I was just so overwhelmed.

The thing about rock bottom as a mom is, you stay there. Until something drastic happens, like a layoff.

I can never go back to who I was at that event, full of bitterness, stress, and loneliness. So underwater I couldn’t grab the hands trying to pull me up. The layoff didn’t just take my job, it revealed that the system wasn’t designed for me. Instead of looking at how I can fit myself back into that system, I’m asking what I can build for myself and for other moms.

I don’t have the full answer yet, but I’m done pretending the old one worked.

P.S. I was so disoriented during that time frame that I forgot to send my resignation letter and am still on the board.

P.S.S. If you want to support an amazing, local, mom-owned business whose owner will squeeze your arm when you’re flailing, Elle Events is it. Hire them, follow them on social.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

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Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

Unlike Lindsay Clancy, Latarsha Sanders did not seek help prior to killing her children. Because of this her mental health records from her time awaiting trial weren’t allowed to be used in her defense. These records include diagnoses of paranoia and schizophrenia among other illnesses and deemed her psychotic at the time of the incident.

While even the wealthiest and whitest moms (see: Hayden Panettierre and Lindsay herself) face risks when seeking mental healthcare, Black moms face significantly higher stakes. The system punished Latarsha for its own failings.

Black Americans are more likely to be misdiagnosed, and they are three to five times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia or a psychotic disorder than white Americans, even when exhibiting the same symptoms. Clinicians are more likely to perceive Black patients as dishonest, and Black patients are more likely to report poor clinical relationships.

Now combine this with the data that show child welfare systems are more likely to intervene with Black families, Black children get placed in foster homes at higher rates than white children even with identical risk of maltreatment at home, Black parents are more likely to have their parental rights terminated— imagine what would happen if a Black mom said she was hearing voices telling her to kill her children. There’s a high chance that an entire family generation would be completely dissolved.

Experts often cite the “cultural stigma” around mental healthcare in the Black community, which puts the onus on the wrong people. Calling it a stigma makes it sound like there’s a lack of education or an ignorance, when in reality the history of our healthcare system and psychiatry point to this being less of a stigma and more of an appropriate reaction.

In the 1800s, medical professionals claimed Black people were biologically inferior to white to justify slavery. They invented a psychiatric diagnosis to explain why enslaved people attempted to escape, and another to explain why they resisted forced labor. American psychiatry believed Black people weren’t capable of complex emotions, and often relegated Black mental health patients to labor instead of treatment.

Many of these diagnoses and ideals weren’t challenged until the 1960s. The 1960s!!! That was not that long ago! My dad was alive!

During desegregation (throughout the ‘70s even) investigators reported that Black mental hospitals had extreme crowding, forced labor, unsanitary conditions, and unlicensed practitioners among other things.

What reasons have the system given to trust it?

This is one among many reasons that diversity is so incredibly important in healthcare and mental health. We need culturally competent practitioners, and patients need to be able to see themselves in their clinicians. Although there is such a need for diversity, our federal government is slashing DEI programs, capping borrower limits for MSW and nursing degrees (pathways to licensure in therapy and healthcare), and eliminating the public loans that many rely on to practice in these fields. It’s almost like they’re actively working against the people who need support the most…

Conversations about access and affordability and insurance are all crucial steps on the road to better maternal mental health, but we can’t have these conversations until we dismantle the systems that make it unsafe for people to even attempt to access. We can’t stop until ALL moms are cared for.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

Share

Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

Trigger warning: this includes mentions of suicide, suicidal ideation, death of children, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. Please read with care <3

If you are having thoughts of suicide please call 988 or head to your nearest emergency room. If you are in need of postpartum support visit https://postpartum.net/get-help/ or call their hotline at 1-800-944-4773. Mental health challenges in pregnancy and postpartum are medical conditions that are treatable.

The murder trial for Lindsay Clancy started last week and it has shone a light on the consequences of our country’s refusal to provide any level of support to parents. It starts at the trying-to-conceive phase in which almost half of Americans lack the education on how fertility works and goes through college.

Throughout 2022 Lindsay reported suicidal ideation, told her family she heard voices telling her to kill her three children, and suffered from severe insomnia. She was prescribed 13 medications over 4 months, visited the emergency room multiple times, and voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric facility. 19 days after checking out of the psychiatric facility, her husband came home from running errands to find his three children dead and his wife bleeding and paralyzed from three suicide attempts.

This is an incredibly tragic situation, especially given how preventable it is on so many levels.

The system that doesn’t exist

The refrain echoing across social media is “the system failed Lindsay and her kids”, and I’m curious what system they’re referring to. From my personal experience, even with the ability to pay out of pocket, getting treatment for postpartum complications is next to impossible because there is actually not a system.

While other countries send parents to facilities with chefs and nurses after the baby is born, have midwives that conduct home visits within the first week, provide professional-led support groups, and give paid leave, the US sends parents home after two nights with instructions to come back after six weeks (at which time most moms have to return to work) where we are given a verbal four question Cosmo quiz to assess if we’re ok.

At 34 weeks pregnant with my first child, I told my OBGYN that I was in fact not okay mentally. My doctor referred me to a support group that cost $500/week, didn’t accept insurance, and had a months long waitlist. After six weeks of fighting with insurance, waiting on workplace benefits, and being met with multiple months-long waitlists or unresponsiveness from providers, a friend finally referred me to https://postpartum.net/get-help/ where I finally found a therapist (if you’re in the DMV here is who I saw) with certifications to manage perinatal complications and had availability.

I had the financial means to pay out of pocket which isn’t accessible to most Americans, especially those who are preparing for the financial strain of unpaid maternity leave and birth costs.

This wasn’t a system. This was a game of wack-a-mole. It was no one in the system that referred me to the eventual site, it was a friend.

Later as postpartum hormones went crazy and I couldn’t find time to meet with my therapist and there was an antibiotic shortage and a supply chain shortage and a formula shortage, it was once again other moms and not a system that helped me find medication for my son’s ear infection and mailed me the hypoallergenic formula they were able to find across the country—not a system.

What happens when there is no system

When there is no system, things like the Lindsay Clancy case happen. When there is no system, we end up with a generation of parents that is so overwhelmed it impacts children’s well-being.

Without a system, I leaned heavily on other moms. In fact, in the isolation of COVID postpartum I started to feel like the other moms were the only ones who cared, and started questioning if the “system” actually didn’t want our kids to survive. So when those same moms who were sending me formula and providing me support I couldn’t find anywhere else, started questioning vaccines I listened. I questioned. I disregarded medical advice. Until one of my best friends who is an emergency room doctor intervened. But most moms don’t have a best doctor friend paying close enough attention to rescue them from the MAHA pipeline.

The expectation on moms

A lot of testimony centers around how normal Lindsay seemed. The husband claims she seemed so normal that he left her alone with the kids for two nights (even though she had previously told him about suicidal ideation and was on multiple medications and suffering from such severe insomnia that they slept separately) and went to brunch with his friends while she cared for the kids. People are perplexed at how someone who seemed so normal could actually be suffering from as severe of a mental health crisis as the defense claims Lindsay was.

While I wasn’t dealing with anything as severe as Lindsay and was able to get treatment, people are always surprised to hear how much I struggled. I was throwing parties, I was hanging out with friends, heck I got promoted at work! Because when women do anything less than power through, it’s seen as a massive failure. So we power through. We do everything we can to appear normal on the surface.

While we’re on this topic, let’s also discuss the bar for dads which this trial has shown us is on the ground. Below the ground. I don’t know what was going on in that house, but him very publicly living his regular old life (brunch, ski trips, work trips) while his wife begged for help tells us something.

And I have a confession here. When the lawyer read about how grateful Lindsay was that her husband got up with the kids so she could sleep and get well I thought “wow what a devoted dad and husband”. I was applauding this man for doing the most minimum thing as a father! It’s so deeply engrained that even I’m over here with heart eyes for a man who is willing to get up at night with his own baby!

What happens when the expectations on moms are crushing

When the expectations on moms are this heavy moms lose. We white knuckle our way through postpartum and returning to work and sleep training so we can perform at work and debilitating anxiety and unhealed bodies. We get crushed. We lose faith in the “systems” that exist.

And then people wonder why moms are leading the MAHA movement.

The real villain

The villains in my story are not the doctors or my husband who had less expectations on him. The villains to me are as follows:

1. Insurance companies that make it so my doctors could only spend 15 minutes at a time with me. Who refused to cover mental health. Who have created a system that makes it next to impossible for practitioners to provide quality care during pregnancy and postpartum.

2. The policy makers who hold power to actually do something about this such as: regulate the insurance companies, fund healthcare, fund mental healthcare, create government funded programs that exist literally everywhere else, fund paid leave.

So, let’s get out there and support the hell out of each other because no one is coming to save us.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

Share

Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

I need to start this off with a rant and a few disclaimers.

Nolan Wells’ death is devastating, and watching his parents publicly grieve while fighting for justice is heartbreaking.

To anyone criticizing Nolan’s parents right now, you’re immediately blocked by me.

This case exposes painful truths about how the justice system serves different populations, and it highlights our shared responsibility to teach our children about accountability, racism, and protection. I have seen numerous comments from parents all over the US begging for media attention on their own Black children’s deaths—cases like this aren’t limited to Mississippi and our kids aren’t “safe” just because we parent in a different state.

This post has sat in my drafts for weeks. I hesitated to publish it because this is a sensitive topic, and I never want my commentary to diminish or sound like an excuse for what happened.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

How could boys just leave someone behind?

This is one of the most common comments I hear around Nolan Wells’ suspicious death, and I have a confession to make. My thought was: what 19 year old boy WOULDN’T leave someone behind? Especially if there are potential girls or free drinks at the next destination?

Let me first define what this essay is NOT:

• This is not an excuse for what happened

• This is not a reason for what happened

• This is not any fact of what happened.

This is a post about the disconnect between me (boys don’t care about anyone especially when they drink) and many of the comments I see on Tik Tok on mostly Black creators’ pages I follow (you would never leave a friend behind).

Like I do any time there’s a disconnect, I looked at the data.

The data told quite a story that explains why there’s such a disconnect between me, who spent my formative years at a PWI* in the south with boys much like the ones at the center of this story, and the commenters on the mostly Black creators’ pages I follow.

The data show that I’m looking at the situation through a white individualistic lens, while many commenters I see are commenting under a deeply collectivist lens.

So pull up a chair and let’s dig into the data.

The History: Shared Survival vs. Private Isolation

Black Americans led the biggest self liberation movement in world history and continued the fight for centuries. This liberation could only happen as a collectivist movement—there’s no room for individualism when fighting for the freedom of an entire race. Throughout American history we can find so many collectivist examples in the Black community.

After the Tulsa race massacre, while the state blocked aid from the Greenwood community they supported themselves with tent communities and churches sheltering the newly 10,000 homeless citizens, running support services out of tents, and raising the money to rebuild together.

In the early 1900s Maggie Walker used her wealth to fund emergency cash for the Black community in sickness and death, and to expand access to mortgages and other financial services (among many many other things).

The Black Panthers ran free lunch and breakfast programs, free clinics, programming for seniors. These movements were so powerful that they created entire economies and drew FBI attention.

Denied support from the USDA and other national programs, Black farmers created co-ops to keep each other in business in the 1960s that still exist today.

While the Black community was repeatedly forced to rely on collective action to survive, mainstream white culture moved in the opposite direction. Post WWII with access to FHA loans and GI mortgages (of which the Black community was systematically denied access), white people moved out of multi-generational housing and dense neighborhoods to sprawling suburbs.

As the Civil Rights movement gained traction through successful Black collective action, white folks actually did the opposite. They privatized public services ensuring only a select (white) few could have access, they fled further to the suburbs, and emphasized “individual freedom” over everything. They turned services like pensions, insurance, and subsidies into private programs.

American history is full of these examples in which the Black community leans into collectivism while white Americans lean further into hyper-individualism.

A collectivist focus says “we take care of all of us” while an individualist focus says “I take care of me”.

When a culture’s default is hyper-individualism, leaving a peer behind gets written off as “reckless teenage behavior.” But when a culture’s default is collectivism, leaving a peer behind is a betrayal of group survival.

The Data

Pew Research shows that 78% of Black Americans feel a responsibility for other Black people often or sometimes, while the majority of white Americans believe individuals are mostly responsible for their own conditions.

This is closely tied to the concept of linked fate, in which people believe what happens to one person in the group affects themselves, Black Americans are far more likely than white to say that what happens to people from their racial group affects them personally.

Then we have the topic of fictive kin, or “play cousins”. Black Americans are more likely to have multiple friends elevated to a family status than other racial groups in the US. Friendships and community ties are central to Black family networks.

A culture built on linked fate and fictive kin doesn’t leave anyone behind.

Conclusion

What I originally thought was a generational divide in understanding of teenage behavior and internal bias turned out to be a profound cultural divide.

The history and the data show us that the things people are pointing out about this case, about their observations, and about their fears are actually data-based. Understanding this dynamic explains why when Black parents urge caution when kids hang out with majority white groups of friends, it isn’t divisive rhetoric, it’s a protective strategy grounded in history and data.

*Predominately White Institution

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

Share

Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

And didn’t just see a Tik Tok about! (no shade in that either. Tik Tok research matters too).

⚽️ US Soccer’s Pay-to-Play Problem (NYT): It’s almost like making everything capitalism doesn’t make us great? The way other countries approach sports seems not that hard.

In other countries, youth soccer is often subsidized by governments or professional soccer clubs. But in the U.S., under the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, the federal government does not fund any Olympic sports. And until the 2000s, there were no stable professional clubs with youth arms.

🏀 Letting trans players into sports isn’t scaring girls away from sports (The 74): Data is my love language, proving transphobics wrong is my love language, this is a great article.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 The deal with teen takeovers (The Atlantic): This explains what teen takeovers are and why they’ve taken over the media recently. One super interesting takeaway for me is how the structure and sources of crime reporting has changed so much that it’s harder to tell what’s going on.

🚸 What happens to parentified children when they become adults (Substack): This is a must-read for anyone who has people in their lives who were parentified as kids.

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Most popular links

This section contains some affiliate links which means if you buy from them I make a very small commission. Products I talk about are all saved here, my book recs + reviews are all saved here.

📚 Every Summer After was our book club book, thought I would hate it but finished it in 3 days. A lot of feel goods and a little spice.

🎀 I don’t mean to be dramatic but organizing our household’s hair supplies into this is life changing and I ordered a second one for our lifetime supply of Play Doh accessories.

⏲️ Speaking of organizing, this for kids’ water bottles and this for adult bottles has seriously cleaned up my under counter cabinet.

📸 I’m obsessed with my photo wall that only took me three months of unemployment to get around to.

ICYMI

On Instagram:

On Substack:

The food we actually ate

I’m gonna be honest, it’s too damn hot to enjoy food right now. I subsisted on mostly salsa and guac. I tried and failed at a cold noodle salad and I discovered I like dense bean salads for approximately one meal and then cannot even look at them (unfortunate for the 5 serving batch I made).

Please share inspiration for food that you’re enjoying in this heat, I need SOMETHING. Especially if you have a good cold noodle salad.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

Social media is currently filled with people (mostly moms) pondering why the education system doesn’t mirror work hours, which is likely blowing up right now because parents (mostly moms) are doing the impossible juggling act of managing summer camps, kids’ schedules, work schedules, and breathing at the same time. And it sucks.

But y’all, we are asking the wrong question here. And trust, I feel the pain deeply. I feel it in the form $100 speeding tickets trying to get from the office to school pickup on time, in the form of hunger games lotteries and waitlists. The question we need to be asking is why doesn’t the workforce support education? One in three workers are parents, 80% of kids have working parents, and more than half of working parents say their jobs make it hard to be a good parent—parents are a major workforce stakeholder and they’re not doing well. Blaming the education system for a society issue is so uniquely American (stay tuned for that essay coming soon), and when we blame education even without meaning to we are losing trust in the system, directing anger towards it, and losing faith that it has our best interests in mind. When in reality, the working conditions in the US deserve all of this.

So pull up a seat and let’s discuss the issue and solutions.

What we’re actually fighting

There are three big problems I hear the most about from parents with the American work schedule vs. the American education system. Number one is the school day schedule, number two is the days off (the 25 days off plus summer that aren’t aligned with any work schedule), and number three is that school programming that requires parent participation happens during the work day.

There is also the problem that parents’ needs create in the workplace—last minute days off to care for sick kids, leaving during the day to attend school events, and leaving early to pick up kids can place an unfair burden on the other employees. I know pre-kids I felt resentment towards my coworkers who got to leave early, who got to work from home when kids were home, who got to skip a presentation for a sick kids.

There absolutely are solutions that can equally benefit everyone (parents and non-parents) while not creating an unfair workload for one group.

The common solution on social media is longer school days and year round schooling. It’s important to note that only about half of kids have a parent working a “traditional” 9-5 schedule, and almost one in five workers experience a variable, unpredictable schedule, an increasing number that will continue to go up as algorithmic scheduling becomes the norm.

In discussing solutions it’s important to recognize all stakeholders, and to ask if we’re solving the right problem. Is the school schedule the problem or is it society’s expectations on workers? I personally believe stressed out parents and declining education are both symptoms of late stage capitalism, and solving only for the school schedule is equivalent to using Motrin to treat appendicitis— we’ll have pain relief but it’s still going to explode.

The 3 reasons nothing changes

In the search for some relief, let’s explore school schedules. While year round school and extended school days seem like the obvious answer, the hesitancy to change the school schedule relates to three main factors:

1. The multi-billion dollar vacation economy that relies on families to spend and teens on breaks to run it.

2. The costs that would include:

   1. Increased teacher pay in a system that is already struggling to pay fair wages

   2. Facility overhauls in many regions that don’t have HVACs to support the hottest months. This is why summer schedules vary by region — they’re designed to keep kids out of the building during the hottest months. Fun fact: did you know summer break originated because the buildings got so hot that disease and infection spread? It was a public health initiative.

3. The fragmented system. Sweeping changes to school schedules are more complicated for the US compared to other countries given the governance structure of federal, state, district, charter, public, and private schools.

We can look to other countries who shockingly seem to have resolved this problem to a certain extent through policies and changes to both schools and workplaces. A real fix has to address the needs of the shift worker, the non-parent workers picking up the slack, and the 9-5 parents, and the countries getting it right have solved for the system not just one subgroup of workers. It’s almost like if they wanted to they would…

Other countries have already done the math

The School/Work Day Alignment Solution

Germany recently extended the school day until 4PM by law which directly aligns with the work day. Many European (ex1, ex2) and Asian countries heavily subsidize extended day programs, offer sliding scale payments, and require states/regions to offer affordable aftercare by law. The Netherlands and the UK require businesses to allow employees to reasonably flex schedules and reduce hours if it doesn’t impact outcomes. Nordic countries, on top of the legal requirement to provide aftercare, cut off work 4PM —it’s culturally frowned upon to schedule meetings after 3:30PM.

School holidays, sick days, and summer

Having worked at a global company I can verify firsthand the European summer corporate slow down in which employees take extended vacations, offices completely close for weeks, and no one is expected to check emails. While this slow down greatly helps parents, because all work is paused or significantly slowed down during their kids’ break, there isn’t an unfair burden put on non-parents because they are getting the same pause.

France subsidizes 85% of out of school care and requires it be universally available, which includes camps and aftercare. This allows parents to maintain work hours without the overwhelming costs we see in the US.

The UK has Ordinary Parent Leave which gives parents, in addition to parental leave when the child is born, 18 weeks of leave per child until the child is 18. Germany legally requires a separate time off category for caring for sick kids, in which the health insurance companies pay 90% of the parents salary for the missed days. These systems reduce the stigma of taking time off for kids’ sick days and holidays which would help with transparency and advanced planning.

School Events

Many European countries have parents’ role in kids’ schooling governed by law, requiring employers to release parents for school events and programs without retaliation.

The most interesting thing I found was Japan’s extremely well-coordinated parent participation plan. Schools coordinate across the region to schedule days that require parent involvement. These schedules are then widely shared, and employers are expected to work around the schools’ schedules and anticipate staffing shortages on those days. Talk about valuing education.

In Conclusion

It’s time to shift the blame from the education system, and dig deep for some real solutions. Successfully parenting while working is absolutely doable as has been proven by other countries. Picking up our kids after school without speeding tickets, keeping them entertained over the summer without spending our life savings, and being involved in their education without sacrificing work relationships is all doable. We need legislation to catch up with the times, we need to stop blaming education, and most importantly we need to stop blaming ourselves for flailing in a system that was never designed for us to succeed.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

Subscribe for a free Guide to School Tours— a research based guide I created based on my time working in school quality evaluation. It includes how to decide the best school for your family and the questions to ask on a school tour. Once you subscribe you’ll get an email with the link, if you don’t see it check spam and promotions tab!

Subscribe now

Screen time

If your kids are under age five like mine, it’s time to crank up the screen time. Because us millennial parents are giving our young kids less screen time than we got in the 90s (sources: 1, 2, 3).

I know what you’re probably thinking: but aren’t the screens causing the young kids these days to behave badly? Reports are coming in left and right telling us the kids are losing motor skills, the kids are losing social skills, the kids’ IQs are dropping! I’m sure it’s partially the screens, but there’s more going on here.

Behavior challenges related to screens are not new— my mom is a life long teacher who could immediately tell if a kid in her class watched a lot of TV, and therefore she severely limited our screen time (I attribute my superior ability to plan ahead to this as Full House and Home Improvement came on on the same night and I had to make difficult decisions on what to tape vs. watching in real time).

Yes, the technology has changed, the way kids consume screens has changed, the programming has changed. But interestingly, so has the amount of screen time young kids consume.

Feeding

Time to throw out our meal plans, recipes, nutrition tracking, and food made from scratch. We’re going all processed, baby! How we feed our kids has always been tied to “good mothering”, and in the 90s it was measured by how fast a mom could get food on the table to free up her time vs. now (thanks to social media) our “good mothering” is measured by how fresh the food we serve our kids is. Particularly for middle class women, the ideal has shifted to made-from-scratch.

We’re going to need to stop worrying about what our kids eat because in the 90s 77% of children were on “low quality diets” compared to 56% in 2016. The focus in the 90s was low-fat diets which came mostly from processed foods, and parents weren’t monitoring intake like they do now—heck nutrition labels were voluntary and not standardized until 1994!

And we’re saying yes to the sugary drinks because kids these days are drinking half as much of those as they were in the 90s. Also from this study: kids get 1/5 more fresh fruit than in the 90s, and 50% more whole grains.

And if you have a baby you don’t need to breastfeed for a 90s summer as around half of newborns were breastfed in the 90s compared to 86% now. Working moms, forget about pumping at work because one in five moms were still breastfeeding/pumping at six months compared to 60% now. This increase happened as more moms entered the workforce too.

Time spent with kids

Sit those kids in front of the TV or throw them outside because mom and dad are taking a 90s summer! The time parents spend with our kids has increased significantly over the last few decades. Moms’ time spent with kids has risen over the last decades to double the time moms spent with kids in the 70s. Working dads spend almost as much time with their kids today as non-working moms spent in previous generations. Millennial dads’ time spent with kids has increased by seven hours per week in just the last ten years!

This extra time with kids comes out of our leisure time, which means we have way less time for ourselves, our relationships, our hobbies, than previous generations of parents.

Researchers say all this time with our kids is preventing the independent risk-taking they need to develop. Yes, I get it, but I need someone to tell me where exactly I’m supposed to send them instead. The sports and play groups and drop-off classes that provide these opportunities are unaffordable and the third spaces where I grew up taking these risks don’t exist anymore. Independent play time has become a luxury product. I personally don’t choose to give up my leisure time to hover, I’ve just lost every alternative.

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What’s actually going on here

Parenting feels harder because it is harder.

The popularization of childhood development theory in the late 90s transformed parenting from keeping kids fed and rested to more intensive parenting. Then we lost third spaces. Increasing economic pressure has parents under immense pressure to get their kids into a good school so they can get a good job and survive. Plus increasingly late-stage capitalism (workforce pressure on parents), and increasing costs of a village (childcare, playspaces), and we’ve got the most anxious and isolated generation of parents in recent history.

We’re optimizing every second of our kids’ childhoods– every minute of free time is scheduled fun (I literally recently yelled at my kids to HURRY UP SO WE CAN HAVE FUN and, spoiler alert, none of us had any fun because I was so stressed about having all the fun). Our time with our kids is held to a standard set by other people’s social media highlight reels (also notably absent in the 90s), and we are constantly inundated by new research and new products and new best ways to raise our kids to make sure they have the best childhoods ever.

We’ve learned a lot since we were kids in the 90s, and when we know better we should do better. We spend more time on our kids’ early development, we find nutritious food for our kids, we are conscious about their screen time. But I’ve also learned that the pressure on modern parents isn’t sustainable, and that we are blaming ourselves for something that was never our fault in the first place.

Maybe there’s something in the middle for us if we try a taste of 90s parenting. We don’t have to go all in but what if we take the pressure off of ourselves?

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together). Pull up a seat and join the community!

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And didn’t just see a Tik Tok about!

🏕️ Parents are sending their kids to camp abroad to save money (NY Post): Parents sending their kids to swim camps taught by Olympians in Morocco and Lego camps in Switzerland while they tour the country for a fraction of the price of camp in the US. Part of me thinks this is cool, [the former camp director who thinks camp is the best thing ever] for me is pissed that it’s come to this.

🧍‍♀️Parents, consider underachieving (NY Times - gift link): If we all go in on it…

🍕 Scandinavians don’t feed their guests (Independent): I fell into this black hole on Reddit about cultural differences and landed on an article about kids sitting in the other room at a friend’s house while the family eats dinner.

Why the world ignores genocide in Sudan (Vanity Fair): Important read that breaks downt he history and how things got to this point.

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This section contains some affiliate links which means if you buy from them I make a very small commission. Products I talk about are all saved here, my book recs + reviews are all saved here.

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This week we traveled to Alabama to visit family with my two and four year old. Sharing the most important things we always pack that make life easier (not pictured: 100,000 calories worth of snacks). These make great gifts for kids in your life too!

• Packing pods: For clothes I pack one for me and one for each kid. Bedtime stuff (lotions, toiletries, meds, white noise) go in another. All dirty clothes go in the laundry bag and I dump it in when we get home.

• Kids’ headphones: I like ones that plug in because less charging to remember to do. My four year old listens to podcasts on the plane (via) or they both watch something.

• Collapsible tablet stand: set the tablet and let the kids watch on the plane or at the airport during a delay.

• Magnetic animals are the biggest sleeper hit in our family. Idk why but they keep the kids entertained forEVER. ON THE PLANE.

• Magna tiles: we grab a handful and throw them in the bag for restaurants, airport, the plane, etc.

• Mini dry erase board is great for the kids who have outgrown the water color books. The thin magnetic with eraser markers are easy to pack too.

• Portable white noise for the hotel.

• Toddler air mattress with a pump and an insert so sheets are easy to change. Condenses small to fit in the suitcase.

• Zipper storage pouches keep me organized when we travel. One has snacks, one has magna tiles, one has play doh, etc.

• Play doh set: I know I sound like a psycho for this one but Play Doh is high value for us so when we’re delayed or stuck in a hotel room it’s amazing to have.

The food we actually ate

🍤 Shrimp Orzo Green Goddess Salad is the summeriest dinner. I serve it deconstructed to the kids because…kids.

🧇 Waffle sandwiches: For early morning flights, we prep waffles the night before and put peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other, fold, and bag them up. My kids think waffle sandwiches are a special vacation thing, we think they’re an easy portable food.

About the author

Hi! I’m Lindsay, mom of 2 with an MBA who has worked almost 2 decades in education including ed policy, based in Washington, D.C. I research everything to a fault and share it here because my group texts are exhausted by me. I write about education policy (because when we’re informed we’re empowered!) and the realities of modern parenting (because we’re all in this together!). Pull up a seat and join the community!

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Articles I actually read

And didn’t just see a Tik Tok about— no shame in that either.

🍼 No babies? Blame capitalism (Jacobian): This article looks at fertility rate data from East Germany and West Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and finally put into words something I haven’t been able to about having kids:

it takes a [socialist] village to raise a child.

⛪️ Closing a school? Don’t expect to save money (Ed Week): A look at how the budgets do not change when schools close and why. This is so interesting to me given the impact closing schools has on the community…it’s truly a lose-lose.

🤖 A leak revealed info on Peter Thiel’s Dialog Society (Wired): I’ve been screaming about Peter Thiel since 2013 and it got me temporarily banned from Tik Tok but I hope y’all are listening now! This article is worth the read to understand his influence (the list of people who attend his conference) and their AI predictions (the focus is AI). And also for this LMAO:

Raffi Grinberg, who lists himself as Dialog’s executive director on his LinkedIn profile and is the author of the self-help book How to Be a Grown-Up, did not respond to a request for comment.

🧍‍♂️Boys are not falling behind. They’re being kept out of care (The Care Gap): Really sitting on this as a mom of a boy (not a #boymom).

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These are affiliate links, the $ goes to teacher wishlists in D.C. schools— thanks for your support! You can find all my book recs and reviews (and support local bookstores!) here.

💧The water bottle my kids use after obsessive research and testing [my own].

🩱The perfect mom bathing suit because adjustable straps, a neckline that doesn’t show all your stuff when a kid’s foot gets caught in it, a flattering cut, reasonable cheek coverage.

🩳 My favorite workout shorts (as someone with @$$ and thighs): these (size up) and these (regular size).

👖These and these are my go-to linen shorts.

ICYMI

On Substack:

• Being a mom who had it all cost me the best parts of motherhood

• I made an Au Pair Series on the things I wish I had known going into the process. Part 1: is the program right for your family includes a cost breakdown and part 2 is how to find the right au pair (there is a lot they don’t tell you!!)

• I need to tell you how I feel about charter and private school parents

• Free school tours worksheet (please share with anyone this would help, I will not stop until we are all done with GreatSchools ratings!!!)

On Instagram:

• There’s a reason they don’t teach us Black History

• Ending mama-only phases in 10 seconds (we did this tonight lol)

• My husband organized a dads’ hair styling class 🥹

• Privilege is required for a screen free childhood

Food my family ate and liked

Stuff we ate as a family focused on fiber, protein, and not taking it personally when kids refuse to eat.

🧁 My four year old and I made these cinnamon rolls and they were actually not hard?? I don’t own a mixer, I am not a baker, this is actually very doable.

🍤 I can eat this shrimp salad every day. I serve it to my kids deconstructed because…food touching.

🍝 Made this for the third time in 6 weeks. It is Italian au pair approved and kid approved 50% of the time.

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The layoff experience was hurtful, but after some time to reflect I’ve realized it needed to be that way for me. I needed to learn an important lesson while my kids are young— that it doesn’t matter how much hard work I put in, how much time I spend away from my kids for the job, how much of my full self I bring to work leaving little for my family, how hard I smile while enduring the motherhood tax, how many vacation days I don’t take, how many times I show up hanging on by a thread after an all nighter with puking kids while I’m solo parenting, how many times I keep my mouth shut when I see something wrong, how many field trips I miss for the job, how many times I pump on the Amtrak— to a job I’ll always be an expendable number.

I’ve had the privilege of being able to take some time to thaw out, and as my nervous system resets slowly over time I realized how far from myself I had strayed. The whiplash from going from 100 MPH at work to 5 MPH at home with toddlers (that’s generous, it’s more like .5MPH when they’re putting on shoes) and back 100 MPH to get all the household things done had wrecked me. My perfectionism had wrecked me. Parenting and returning to work through two rounds of postpartum depression wrecked me. Returning to work after my second child had wrecked me— it wasn’t the same relief I felt after my first to be interacting with adults and have achievable metrics. The juggle required to be a working mom in a senior leadership role married to a business owner had wrecked me. Without realizing it I had become a version of myself I no longer recognized, but what mom has time to see themselves?

I’m realizing now that for the first few years of my kids’ lives, most of my time with them had been a means to getting back to work. Even though I did my best to not check emails or Slacks while I was with them, work was always lingering in the back of my mind and always waiting for me after bedtime or after the weekend or after the trip, I was always partly with work mentally.

Because of that all of our time together was optimized, my success as a mom was based on how much I could cram into my time with them between work. I’m laughing now remembering a weekend I was so determined to GET OUTSIDE in the short time we all had together that I was yelling at everyone to hurry up and get in the car SO WE CAN HAVE FUN TOGETHER and then huffed in anger the entire time because everyone was moving too slow and we didn’t have time for ALL THE FUN. All this optimization and hurrying and I really hadn’t appreciated my kids.

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The word I chose for 2026 in January is “soft” as in, I’m going to make decisions that lead me to a softer life. Losing my job with a live-in au pair is quite an overcorrection, but I’m taking this time as a gift. I’m trying out hobbies (working in an international office I was always so curious how new employee intro emails for our European offices had so much detail about hobbies — who has those? and how?), I’m learning how to evaluate my worth beyond a dollar value or ROI to shareholders, I’m unpacking a lot of what I thought about myself, I’m figuring out what it looks like for me to be a successful mom, and I’m figuring out what’s next. And hot damn if spending time with my kids isn’t 100x more enjoyable when I don’t have work in the back of my mind.

Oh and I’m going on every. single. field trip.

More to come on what I learn, what I untangle, what the hell we can do about the working mom crisis in America, and as I finally have the space to hit my protein and fiber goals. Thank you for being here.

A lot of people have asked how they can help — while I’m figuring out what’s next I would greatly appreciate any leads or connections for contract opportunities (fractional chief of staff, operations, education and workforce development programming and GTM, professional certification programs, online training program development and management, partnership strategy, in corporate or nonprofit or education— I’ve done it all). Thanks y’all.

Welcome to part 2 of my Au Pair Series where I’m sharing all the information about being a host family that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Part #1: Is an au pair really worth it? covers program requirements, how to determine if the program is a good fit for your family’s needs, a cost breakdown and comparison, finding an agency, and what to expect from the process.

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Finding our au pair was a surprising mix of high stakes sales and modern dating. Once we got through the initial screenings with the agency, our local counselor shared with us a one-pager of interview questions, recommended we set up our profile and “request to connect” with any au pairs we like, and use Whatsapp to connect with them. Easy enough!

A process note: host families review au pair profiles and make the first contact with au pairs. Once the family makes contact, the au pair can see the family profile. Before that point, au pairs can’t see family profiles, they’re not browsing families. Families can contact multiple au pairs at one time, and au pairs can be in touch with multiple families at a time— everyone is always interviewing everyone.

How to quickly narrow down apps

After setting up a bare minimum profile (because I assumed they’ll get to know us in the interview) and sifting through hundreds of candidates, I had a 50% response rate. And the ones who did respond turned out to be very available for a reason (usually their English or their lack of understanding of the job). This was starting to not feel quite as easy as it sounded at the jump.

After my first few interviews I realized I needed to be using filters for our non-negotiables: strong swimmer, over 21, a certain level of English proficiency, and countries with shorter visa timelines and high approval rates (the local counselor can share this information).

Making a standout profile

Next I gave our host family profile a makeover. We added pictures of the au pair’s spaces with descriptions like “this is the au pair’s private bathroom” and “this is the au pair’s bedroom which is located in the basement with a separate entrance to the home”. We added pictures of our house from the inside and outside, and a video of our family talking about why we wanted to host an au pair— for a reason I can’t remember we filmed it sitting on the kitchen floor and I posted the best version we could get with a two and three year old and figured the video would at least prepare people for the chaos in our home.

After these updates I was working with a significantly smaller pool and my response rate went up to 85%. And at this point I interviewed someone I really rocked with. I took my time, I reflected, I talked to my husband, I had him schedule an interview a few days later, I sat on his feedback for a few days. I reached back out and found out, to my surprise, she had already matched with another family! Even though we really connected! We liked each other! And that’s when I realized I was running a sales funnel where the lead to conversion time is minimal and needed to treat it as so. So I tightened up the interview process.

Interview cheat codes

I treated interview one as a 10-15 minute screening with just me. This where I assessed language, childcare experience or at least willingness to learn, and a vibe check. And I’m sorry, I absolutely hate when people say to “trust your gut” or "find what vibes with you” but in this case, it’s the only way. For example, my family requires an unserious person in this role. We are kind of a disaster. It’s two little kids. Plans change constantly. There’s a lot of poop. You can read if someone is going to be able to laugh things off and not be too serious in a few minutes.

For round one I asked them to tell me about themselves, reviewed our schedule, asked what they know about Washington, D.C. (if you were following our live adventure you know one poor candidate thought they were interviewing for a job in their dream location of Seattle, WA), asked about time they have lived away from family, and then questions around our non-negotiables (how long have you been a swimmer? How often do you drive?).

If round one went well, I told them on the spot I would like to schedule an interview with my husband, and that I would follow up with our house rules, sample schedule, and availability for the next round. I found sending the schedule was really helpful because some au pairs are looking for specific schedules and they are usually nervous in the interview and might miss the details. I immediately sent the house rules and schedule after hanging up and asked for their availability for round two in the next two days.

If I knew it wasn’t going to work out, I told them on the call that I would follow up shortly with next steps and handled the rejection via whatsapp message (“thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today, you will be a great au pair! Unfortunately we are moving forward with someone else whose skillset is more aligned with our family’s needs”). I didn’t want to reject them on the call because a) these are young people and b) there are so many cultural differences that make a conversation like this challenging (speaking as someone who worked at a global company and had to figure out how to deliver feedback to people from many different countries) and I want to be as respectful as possible with this.

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I conducted 12 first round interviews. Five made it to round two, some self-selected out after receiving our schedule and house rules and some I didn’t offer a second round interview to. In this round they talked to my husband and got more into the particularity questions that matter to us (how well do you adjust to chaos? how would you rate your cleanliness? what do you like to do on the weekends? how do you spend your downtime? how do you handle feedback?). If that went well, he offered a facetime with the kids on the spot and we scheduled it for the next 24 hours. Only two people made it to this round.

Round three was with the kids and was a general check to make sure they weren’t weird with or overwhelmed by kids, and a facetime house tour with a heavy focus on the au pair’s living space—we didn’t want anyone showing up surprised. Our current au pair lit up when the kids got on, she asked them questions, she laughed. It was good. We offered her the job on the spot.

The timing can be a bit jarring, the time from first interview to offer with our current au pair was five days which I learned is pretty standard. Once we agreed to the match, I updated the portal and the process kicked off from there—a counselor in Italy worked with our au pair on the visa process and we got the home ready!

Next week I’ll share how we prepared for the au pair’s arrival: a family manual, welcome gifts, house stuff, and admin to take care of for a smooth transition. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss week 3!

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I get asked all the time (even by friends! even by strangers!) if I hate them because they send their kids to private or charter schools. I also hear from parents who carry guilt for not being able to make it work in their public school system and sending their kids to a private or charter school, which happens for all kinds of reasons from resources to bullying to special needs to screen time —none of which is in a parent’s control, all of which are policy failures.

Let me be very clear: I have zero problem with charter and private school parents!! I don’t hate charter schools! I just want parents to have accurate information (because a lot of it isn’t) to make their decisions, and to understand that attending your local public school may not be the death sentence many are led to believe it is. I want parents to have resources to make the best decision for their families, not that have been advertised to them by a billionaire backed marketing machine.

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And look, when parents turn on each other we’re right where they want us. Infighting instead of applying pressure on the policy makers who can actually make the changes. It makes me think of a quote I hear thrown around about not being able to keep our eyes on the shooter when we’re focused on the target.

Making decisions for our kids is incredibly vulnerable and the exploitation of this starts at pregnancy when we’re inundated with ads for the best, safest products and feeding methods and lifestyles and books and family policies. Every decision as a parent has been marketed to us as high stakes, and it’s not just the big companies weaponizing this, it’s political groups.

Which leads me to my list of the people I am mad at:

1. The billionaires who have pushed education privatization for their own financial gain

2. The policymakers who got us into this mess in the first place by systematically defunding public education, making some public schools untenable for students, which is actually a lot less common than people think which brings me to #3

3. The people behind the well-funded flawlessly executed anti-public education marketing campaign (propaganda).

For example, did you know the Heritage Foundation trains grassroots organizers to activate movements in their own communities, and one of their 9 pillars is “Expand Educational Freedom” which is code for school choice with heavy emphasis on private school vouchers which relies on the dismantling of our current public education system?

Which reminds me! I’m also pissed at the Democratic party who has stood by idly as more than half of local government offices and school board seats have run uncontested, stacked with candidates placed by the right’s extremely organized and intentional strategy in which they run their own candidates uncontested to push their agenda at the local level. I learned about this at a meeting with DNC Chair Ken Martin (eyeroll, I know) last year where he promised the Dems are going to start running in these races because the right’s strategy has been ongoing for years and is actually having a major impact (oops!).

My city has some amazing charter schools that are doing incredible things in the community, as are many of our traditional public schools, and we have one of the more transparent school lottery processes. But the whole point is, if anyone had paid proper attention to my city’s [majority Black] public schools and families over the years, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. We wouldn’t be fighting each other over budget allocations, transparency accusations, and equity arguments. We would be fighting for more resources for all students, and there would be more equity across the board. But instead we’re all paying the price for racism.

TL;DR: all are welcome here. Let’s learn together. We’re stronger together.

One of my highest engagement Instagram story series has been my Au Pair Series, but there’s a lot I can’t cover in rapid fire screen shots so I want to share more information here. Also because I had a hard time finding host family experiences outside of the few people I know who have hosted, and our babysitter who was a former au pair. At this point our au pair has been with us for four months so I feel somewhat qualified to talk through what has worked and what hasn’t worked.

So strap in for some details— this week we’re talking about the decision to bring on an au pair.

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The cost of having an au pair

The first factor we considered is cost — does it make sense for our family? I’m someone who, even if I had $1 billion in my bank account, would be upset to find I could have saved five dollars by picking another option. It’s innate and I can’t help it.

The cost of having an au pair looks like this:

Agency fee + weekly stipend + living expenses + perks + family outing expenses = total cost.

The components:

• Agency fees vary, our’s was about $10,000 and they offer payment plans.

• The program requires a minimum $190 weekly stipend which people adjust for higher cost of living areas or workload (usually more kids = more $).

• Living expenses are groceries (host families are required to pay for au pair’s food) and the basic costs of having an extra person in the house. I usually cook enough for all of us, and our’s mostly eats what the family eats so it’s mostly the cost of adding a serving and a few items here and there.

• Perks are the extras. Some people cover gym memberships, Lyft stipends, travel stipends, etc. If the au pair drives, this includes adding au pair to car insurance and gas. We do a set travel stipend that we pay at the beginning of each month, and our au pair will be added to our car insurance this summer.

• Family outing expenses are the cost of adding an extra person to things like family trips, meals out, etc. When traveling with the au pair they need to have their own private room, plane ticket, meals (editor’s note: traveling with our au pair has been an absolute game changer, especially a recent very emotionally hard trip).

I haven’t done this for the full year, but my friends in the area (we’re a high cost of living area) estimate the total cost to come out around $25,000. My spreadsheets estimate we will come out closer to $27,000, which includes the additional vacation and travel costs, meals out, food— all of it.

The cost comparison

For us, the cost of an au pair is slightly more than one kid in daycare, so when our oldest hit elementary school this year we viewed it as transferring the cost. These are the costs with one in elementary school which requires summer camp and significantly more coverage for days off.

Planned Expenses: 1 child in elementary school, no au pair

Planned Expenses: 1 child in elementary school, with au pair

The main takeaway here is that the bottom line cost is pretty much a wash for us, but what we’re paying for what we get is wild. Same weekly cost but for an average of 17 hours compared to 45.

Au Pair Program Requirements

Once we decided the cost made sense for us, we explored program requirements. The host families have to follow a pretty basic set of requirements:

• Both parents must be US citizens

• Au pair must have their own room in the house

• Au pair must have their own room on vacations

• It’s a cultural exchange so families need to be willing to include au pair in family outings, dinners, etc.

As far as the program goes, with my agency au pairs can work 45 hours per week no more than 10 hours per day. They need to have one full weekend off each month, and they get two weeks of vacation time. Any time the au pair can’t leave the house counts as hours, which means if there’s an overnight those sleeping hours count towards their hours. This is worth flagging for anyone who needs solutions while they travel!

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Personality Requirements

Not enough people talk about the personality requirements because the dynamic is so hard to explain. It’s like having a younger cousin move in to help for a year, but they’re also an employee so there needs to be a level of professionalism and organization that doesn’t stand with family.

For one, having someone live in your home is not for everyone and that is ok! My husband and I both love having people at the house, we host all the time and constantly have overnight guests or people stay for extended periods of time. And, we were very desperate for help.

Second, this is a person you will manage. My husband and I have both managed people and the onboarding, expectation setting, discussing norms, open communication, feedback loops, scheduling have been run like a corporate setting in our house. There is a local counselor who can help mediate issues, but it’s really important to be confident in our management and expectations and organization.

Third, open mindedness is crucial. There are a lot of cultural differences we never would have anticipated (on both sides), and we have been able to approach them with curiosity and are fortunate to have an au pair who gives us the same grace.

The final decision and next steps

Once your family decides the au pair program is right for you, you join an agency. The agency is essentially the go-between. The most important part of choosing an agency is finding the predominate one in your area. This is because the agencies facilitate social activities, and I would say an au pair’s social life is as important of a success factor as the quality of the host family. You can ask around, ask in neighborhood facebook and text groups and list serves— people really come out of the woodwork, once I started talking about hosting an au pair I found so many people who had one that I had never known about!

Once you identify the agency you’ll fill out an interest form online. A local counselor will do an initial call explaining the program and making sure you understand the requirements. They then schedule a screening call, and you submit background check information and references. Once that all checks out, you set up a profile on the site and essentially swipe left and right on au pairs until you find the right one (I will cover what we learned about this process and how we found the right au pair for us next week in part 2).

The agency has a whole pool of candidates, and they can also help make recommendations. Once matched, they handle the visa process (I had zero visibility into this).

And that takes us to next week: finding the right au pair for your family. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss the series!

And didn’t just see a tik tok about! no shame in that though! 🎁 = gift link, no need for a subscription.

💆‍♀️ Move over tiger moms, the beta mom is in (WSJ): The history, data, and outcomes of tiger momming and the resulting beta mom persona. And this makes sense:

WOMEN HAVE always shouldered the bulk of household and child-rearing responsibilities. But it's only recently that mothers were also expected to be project managers for their kids' futures. That began around the 1990s, economists say, as widening inequality and a shift toward a knowledge-based economy made parents fear their children would fall behind without a competitive edge.

🎁 The phrase I texted my kids 133 times (The Atlantic): BRB crying.

📌Why effective leaders get branded as problems (HBR): This should be required reading for all managers. I can pinpoint two of the examples in the articles that have been problems for me personally, and a few that I have held against people as well.

Summer dresses

I sent out the bat signal on my IG stories last week as I’m struggling to find a flattering dress that doesn’t make me look like a trad wife but also isn’t body con but also has some color?? Y’all came through and here are the top recs I got:

👗 Boden (I ordered this and this and am waiting for this to go on sale in my size). I have also had success finding them on Poshmark and ThredUp but not this season.

👗 ASTR the Label has lots of great dresses on sale - love this pleated one.

👗 I was tipped off to London Times dresses that are available at most department stores (including Kohl’s - #TBT!!). Available in plus size.

👗 Petal & Pup has this gorgeous maxi dress in lots of colors.

👗 My stylist Q who overhauled my closet last year tipped me off to Express dresses. Love a matching set, and POCKETS!

ICYMI

Recently on Substack:

• GreatSchools is funded by billionaires who have a massive financial stake in privatizing education

• The daycare bill never went away

• Free download - parents’ guide to school tours

Recently on IG

• [shareable] GreatSchools is funded by billionaires who gain from privatizing education

• [reel] Rank choice voting explained with wine

• [reel] The policy failures that have led to our youth violence problem

📚 All my book reviews and recs are here.

🛍️ Shopping recs are here.

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Food we actually ate this week

🍚 Dinner: sunshine curry with cilantro rice

🥞 Kids’ breakfast prep for the week: Sheet pancakes

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With almost two decades in education, including years in ed policy where I worked specifically in school quality evaluation, I completely disregarded GreatSchools rankings when choosing a school for my kids (because of this and this). I instead gathered information that the research tells us actually makes a quality school, and created a research-based guide for parents who want to find the best fit for their kids you can download here.

The worksheet includes the research you can do ahead of time, how to set family priorities for your search, how to schedule a school tour, the questions no one tells you to ask on school tours, and what to do if you still don’t feel sure about your decision.

I truly hope this helps and please continue to share your feedback and experiences — it takes a village to raise these kids!

“We are going to save a whole mortgage once our kid graduates daycare!” is something we’ve all said as we sign that weekly daycare tuition check.

But if life changes so drastically when they go to elementary school, why are those of us with elementary age kids still stressed out of our minds and not feeling the benefit of that extra mortgage? Did the bill, and the stress that came with it, in fact go away?

The hours spent in the line to get into the aftercare lottery, the summer camps hunger games that start in February, scrambling to find childcare for a new 25 school closure/holidays (who’s counting of course) that we don’t have off of work, and the random unaccounted for weeks during the summer where there are no camps and no school…finding coverage for my son’s first year of elementary school started to feel like a full time job.

And it also started to feel like instead of one big tuition check my money for childcare was just seeping out in the forms of babysitter venmos and camp registration fees.

So, as one does when they have a feeling, I verified with a spreadsheet. Here’s what I found:

Here’s how I built the spreadsheet:

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• Aftercare: this is the average cost of aftercare in my city. Because my son is in public school we don’t have to pay, but I think it is important to illustrate the average.

• Sick Day / Holiday Coverage: I counted every holiday that my son’s school has that I don’t have off work for, excluding spring break since they have camps that week, and added in padding for snow days and sick days.

• Babysitter week between school and camp: this is the cost of my babysitter for one child for 8 hours/day for that week where they have no school but camps haven’t yet started.

• Summer camp: I did an unnecessarily complicated formula (I used to be an analyst, lay off me!!) that assumes a few weeks at a mid-price camp, a few at a cheaper camp, a few at the expensive camp, and for the weeks at the cheaper and mid price camps I added the cost of babysitter and pickup/drop off help since most of those end at 3PM unlike my work day.

• Babysitter week between camp and school: this is the cost of my babysitter for one child for 8 hours/day for that week where they have no school but camps have ended.

• Spring break camp: This is the average cost of spring break camp for my son’s age.

• Spring break pick up/aftercare sitter: since the spring break camps end around 3PM, I add the cost of the babysitter to pick him up and babysit.

• My billable hours: these are the hours that I spent (usually during the work day) researching, waiting in the online registration queues, coordinating with other parents, texting/calling/begging babysitters, and doing all the other invisible labor that mostly moms are responsible for that is rarely considered in the equation.

Since we’re here I decided to add another line— lost income. This is my rough estimate of the past promotions or the lower paying jobs I took because I didn’t have the capacity or time to go for it over the last few years. And this hit me hard.

Oof.

What the data tell us

Something you’ll notice is that the money spent on childcare for an elementary schooler isn’t that different from daycare. $4,800 isn’t nothing but it’s not a mortgage either. And this is a problem.

Realistically, most families aren’t paying this much when their kids go to elementary school because it’s unattainable (we blew all our money paying for daycare!). Realistically, most moms are filling in the gaps left by 40 school closures/sick days/no camp weeks throughout the year that we don’t get off work. Realistically, it’s moms using our limited PTO to cover (instead of, God forbid, taking time to ourselves), it’s moms who are balancing work from home with kids at home, and it’s moms doing the mental gymnastics on top of everything else to figure out where the hell to put our kids.

It’s moms who are sending a subtle “unprofessional” signal to our workplace when our kids pop up in Zoom meetings. It’s moms missing the promotions because they don’t have the time or the mental capacity to take on any more than the minimum. I estimate the income my family is missing out on by me not going for a promotion or a better paying job is roughly $50,000. This is actually wild.

Almost all of my mom friends are on the edge of sanity at any given moment, and I even hear from some of the most professionally accomplished people I know that (similar to me) they are opting for lower paying jobs with less expectations so they can manage the home too. We are in the midst of what researchers are calling a Working Mom Crisis and this is why.

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The solutions

If our government is so “family first”, let’s see the policies. We need policies that provide actual support to parents (universal childcare, paid leave) and we need workplace structures that value families. We need an economy that allows parents to spend time with their kids. We need a cultural shift in which it’s not the norm to live in fear of losing our jobs when we need to get our own kids from school.

And right now we need to stop shaming parents for doing the best they can under a structure that is built against them —I’m talking screentime, kids being out after curfew, moms leaving the workforce. We need to keep our eyes on the people who can actually change this, not the targets.

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Next week I’m starting a series on the childcare solutions real families are actually using while our government refuses to step in — including the one my family landed on. First up is au pairs including the full cost breakdown (you know I have a spreadsheet) and all the how-to’s.

I’ve spent almost two decades in public education, including a stint in education policy. I’ve seen a lot of education fads come and go, but GreatSchools ratings are what keep me up at night. Unlike a lot of the fads we’ve seen come and go, this one has the backing of a network of billionaires with billions of dollars to gain from the privatization of education, a real estate pipeline, no public school roots, and the trust of millions of parents.

Come take a walk with me while we dive into the actual illegitimacy of GreatSchools ratings, who benefits, and the active harm it causes.

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Rapid fire history and terminology

Before we get started I want to make sure we’re all on the same page here. If you’re familiar with the terminology and history skip down to the next section.

Definitions:

• Private school vouchers: tax payer funded coupons that provide a private school tuition discount of 30-60% on average. Some notes:

  • The average private school tuition in the US is $14,879/year, meaning even with a voucher a family would need to have a significant amount of disposable income for education.

  • Private schools are on average whiter than their communities, have selective admissions, and are not required to provide special education.

  • The majority of vouchers issued in states with large voucher programs fund tuition for students who were already enrolled in the schools.

  • Private schools are held to 0 transparency standards so it is impossible to know if they actually do a better job at education.

• Charter schools: Independent, tax payer funded, public schools. Some notes:

  • Some states have murky complex enrollment processes that systematically exclude English language learners and people who don’t already know someone in the school.

  • Nationally charter schools have higher post-enrollment push-out rates (kids who get kicked out of school after enrollment).

  • Most do not provide transportation, many do not provide free lunch/breakfast programs.

  • Many do not have the resources to provide high levels of special education.

  • Many are doing great things, and they still promote segregation.

• Traditional public schools: Neighborhood in-bounds schools

  • Required to serve all students and provide robust legal protections for students with special needs.

  • Are funded on a per student basis, so when students leave the system they lose funding.

In case you do not see the trend: private and charter schools drive school segregation.

Additional cliff notes:

• GreatSchools, and most other school ratings, base ratings on standardized test scores. Test scores, and their growth, tell us how wealthy, white, nuero typical, and native English speaking a school is. That’s all. It’s been proven over and over and over again over the last few decades.

  • Ironically socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and ability diversity have an outsized positive impact on early childhood development.

• Things were not this complicated when we were kids because school ratings became a thing with the signing of No Child Left Behind in the early 00s which required standardized testing and test score transparency.

GreatSchools board and funders

If you take one thing from me today, let it be that GreatSchools is funded by and benefits billionaires. Their biggest donors are a who’s who of the biggest billionaire players in the education privatization movement.

The Money Trail

Greatschools’ largest funder is the Walton Family Foundation ($25 million+) whose primary focus is the privatization of the US education system through private school vouchers and ‘school choice’. Aside from hiring their own private school voucher and school choice lobbyists from prominent conservative think tanks and firms, the Walton Family Foundation provides significant funding to private school voucher lobbyists, charter schools, school choice lobbyists, and private school voucher think tanks. Their stake in this is many fold and well documented with links to anti-union ideology (teachers have some of the strongest unions), corporate tax burden, the dependence of economically stratified communities on low-cost retail, and political power.

Another funder and “strategic partner” of GreatSchools is Stand Together Trust whose founder is Charles Koch, one of the biggest drivers in the private school voucher movement. Besides education privatization aligning with his ideological view for America, Koch stands to gain financially from a privatized education sector: among his investment portfolio companies are edtech companies, consultancies, and real estate firms that work within the private and charter school networks (not public school districts). As education systems become more fragmented, there is more opportunity for ventures like these (as in: districts, states, and school boards would not approve partnerships with these entities, but an independent charter or private school could opt to become a client because they don’t require the district/state/school board approval).

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is another major funder listed prominently on GreatSchools’ website. CZI’s focus on personalized learning is edtech. They have major investments in or are part owners of multiple edtech companies and lobby for more technology in classrooms. Their portfolio companies benefit greatly from a fragmented system where individual schools, not large districts, become the decision makers about technology in their classrooms. Also worth noting is that CZI is an LLC not a nonprofit, meaning they aren’t subject to the same disclosures and information sharing as many of the other donors.

Next up is the Gates Foundation, aka the money behind the standardized test movement in the US. Technocrat Bill Gates is also one of the biggest financiers of major charter management organizations, and with the money comes a tech first (also) requirement. The pushing of technology into schools requires … you guessed it! Technology that his company provides. Of course it would be illegal to require the schools use Microsoft, but Microsoft is one of the biggest providers of the software and hardware required to implement these requirements.

Another notable funder is the Bradley Family, known as a private school voucher pioneer who provides local GreatSchools grants, and named in Senate reports as one of the few billionaires controlling education in the US.

A Board With No Public School Roots

Eight members comprise GreatSchools’ governing board, six of whom have explicit ties to the school choice movement (and most who gain financially from a privatized education market), zero with ties to traditional public schools.

GreatSchools CEO Jon Deane has an extensive on the ground charter experience, as well as an employment history that includes time at the Gates Foundation and most recently working on Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s personalized learning technology.

Their vice chair is the co-founder of a think tank that partners with the aforementioned Stand Together Trust founded by Charles Koch.

Director Chris Stewart is the CEO of BrightBeam, an activist network for charter schools funded by billionaire education privatization advocates Bloomberg, the Walton Family, Laurene Jobs Powell, and Mark Zuckerberg.

The board of directors also has a Charter Management Organization (CMO) consultant, and a venture funder with major stakes in edtech products which, as described above, benefits from a fragmented education landscape.

Why the Math is Rigged

First off, GreatSchools has changed their methodology twice (July 2025, April 2026) in the last year, resulting in multi point swings for many schools. Twice. In a year. Just given that, should we be making decisions based on this score?

GreatSchools primarily uses standardized test scores (proficiency rates and/or growth rates), compares to performance across the states, assigns a percentile, assigns a weight, and makes it into a score. The research has told us time and time and time again that standardized test scores tell us how white, wealthy, ability/neuro typical, and native English speaking a school is— so much so that researchers can accurately predict test scores based on census data.

Nationally, charter and private schools are less diverse, more neuro and ability typical, and more English speaking due to the factors listed above that systemically exclude non-white, lower income, immigrant populations. All of which generally leads to higher test scores.

GreatSchools has access to the nation’s top education research and still continues to push ratings based on test scores. Perhaps because one of their top donors invested heavily in standardized testing, perhaps because their board and donors benefit from a privatized education system, perhaps other reasons.

But GreatSchools is focusing more on growth now! Yes, the recent shift focuses more on growth for schools where that is a better score than their proficiency rates. We know ability to answer test questions correctly is based on life experience and unless kids are changing income brackets over the course of a school year they’re not going to see the same gains as the kids who are adding life experiences.

Even with the new components, GreatSchools ratings are still telling me mostly how white, wealthy, and Native English speaking a school is. So much so that fair housing advocates warn GreatSchools is being used as a tool to steer home buyers away from Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

What does it all mean?

Let’s put the pieces together:

Billionaire/technocrat funders who very publicly push for a privatized education system + a governing board with no ties to traditional public schools that mostly benefits from privatized education + a methodology that favors majority white wealthy schools = GreatSchool Rating. This starts to feel more like a tool to influence than one for equity and transparency.

This means when choosing a school based on a GreatSchools score, we’re not choosing based on teacher quality, curriculum, school climate, community, and other factors that actually contribute to a positive learning environment and successful academic outcomes.

Think about a family moving to a new city. They base their home purchase on a GreatSchools rating— a 10! They sacrifice their budget for the school district and forego the neighborhoods they really like and end up in a whiter, wealthier, more expensive neighborhood. They never even visited the lower rated schools where they originally wanted to live, so they don’t know that those schools are delivering top notch education with the most effective teachers in the city and absolutely incredible community. The ratings did their job.

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What to do instead of relying on GreatSchools Ratings

Deciding where to send our kids to school is a huge decision and puts so much pressure on parents, and oftentimes, given the above information, the “best rated” school isn’t the best option for our kids. Look, my kids started school this year, I’ve been there with you! I had the advantage of almost two decades of education experience so I knew what to prioritize. I knew what my family needed, I knew what makes a successful learning environment, and I knew how to identify that in a school.

If you’re trying to find a school for your kids without a billionaire’s influence, I created a worksheet that outlines a research based three step framework for choosing the right school for your family. It includes priority setting, what to look for in a school visit, and the questions no one tells you to ask. You can download it for free here.

Raising kids is a team effort, and we’re in this together!

Sunday Reading List

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All the articles I actually read and didn’t just see a Tik Tok about (no shame in that though). 🎁 = gift link (I mostly get these through the library).

🤖 This scammer created an AI ✨MAGA hotgirl✨ to grift super dumb men (Wired): Slightly hilarious, slightly terrifying. Deep dive into the creation and success of AI-generated MAGA women on social media and why it works on the right but not the left. Dying at the comment “Not a democrat lib in the world looks like this folks!!!” —yes because these are AI generated accounts.

🎁 The best leaders embrace supporting character energy (HBR): Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by a main character manager! This is an interesting take on why main character energy is toxic in leadership, and not going to last:

[In the age of AI] Increasingly, leadership will be defined not by teaching information or skills. The irreplaceable parts of our job will lie in our ability to connect deeply, inspire, and motivate others—exactly what supporting-character energy is for.

🎁 How Everest has changed since Into Thin Air (The Atlantic): Yes I’m still obsessed with the Mount Everest obsession (not Mount Everest itself, the cultural phenomenon). This article outlines how the business of climbing changed as well as the respect for the Nepalese who risk their lives to allow people to achieve their climbing goals.

🙏 Can MAGA survive the Evanglical breakup? (MotherJones): If you’ve ever wondered “how can people who claim to love Jesus support this administration?!” this is the read for you.

This Week’s Links

Note: you can see all products from the month in my storefront here.

👡 Crocs finally came out with some new sandals and I ordered these —I pick them over sneakers all summer. So comfortable and they are NOT ugly! I repeat: they are NOT UGLY!

👗 Recently ordered a lot of clothes for the summer in my quest for breathable clothes as your resident sweaty friend. Sent most back, here’s what made the cut:

• High waisted linen blend pants and super soft scoop neck tank from Old Navy (on sale).

• Linen blend pull on pants and matching linen blend tank (IBTCs, we can go braless in this!) from A&F.

• Loft vacation maxi dress (50% off)

• Quince silk camis in forest green and paprika (note: if they don’t have the color you want listed, chat customer service to ask if/when it’s coming back. They told me the date for the paprika color and I logged in that morning and purchased before it disappeared again).

  »while we’re talking Quince, their stuff is really hit or miss, so FYI this linen dress is a hit for me—3rd summer wearing it. Their linen pants are not a hit for me, nor are many of their tops.

📚 Just finished reading Stay With Me. It was a really tough topic, really really good book. TW: infant loss and infertility. Currently reading Yesteryear with my book club and the rest of the world. (reminder: all my books with reviews and categorized are here)

🥗 Obsessed with this cookbook. The recipes are super straightforward, the time estimates to make them are on point for people who haven’t aced the kitchen, and my husband even approves them. The white chicken chili is my go-to comfort food drop off, blackened salmon and sweet potato flautas are on heavy rotation, we bring the collards or cripy greens to every potluck and they’re always a hit.

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ICYMI

Here are my posts across platforms you may have missed.

On Substack

The youth curfew isn’t for the kids committing crimes. It’s for the one’s preventing it. I taught the kids this law targets, here’s what I know about what actually works.

The three most unhinged strategies that actually reduced tantrums in our home. Formerly a person who stayed up late reading policy, currently a person who binge reads parenting books late night out of desperation.

On IG

Claude is a woman.

Reel on strategy #1 mentioned in the above Substack. I got the comment below on Tik Tok…should I be…expecting something?

Stuff We Ate

New feature: stuff we ate and actually liked! I focus on protein and fiber as much as possible.

Breakfast prep: Starbucks copy cat egg white wraps: 9 g fiber, 41 g protein! I subbed the sun dried tomatoes with Asparagus. Got the lavash at Trader Joe’s. Actually enjoyed them for multiple days.

Dinner hits:

Salsa verde chicken bake: the kids helped make this and actually ate it. I upped the fiber for mine by adding half an avocado.

Honey soy glazed cod: subbed kale with the bok choy we scored at the farmer’s market, made the rice in the instant pot to reduce stuff I have to pay attention to. Added a baked sweet potato (I cut them in half, slather with olive oil + S&P, bake at 400 degrees for 30 mins. I just throw them in when I start dinner) to up the fiber. Delicious.

Easy baked salmon: mix 3 TBS melted butter with 1/3 cup bread crumbs and whatever seasoning we’re in the mood for— this week was Italian seasoning. Top the salmon with the mixture and bake. I bake for seven minutes at 400 degrees and add time as needed until my salmon is at temperature. Add whatever veggies are on hand.

Have a great week y’all!

DC’s city council recently voted to extend a city-wide youth curfew in response to the recent teen takeovers. I am absolutely, ten toes down, against this curfew extension. Not only do I live in a neighborhood that has been impacted by the teens, but I used to teach the kids this law targets, and I spent years working on research-based alternative programming designed to keep kids off the streets and reduce youth violence. My direct experience with reactive punitive policies is what drove me into the education policy world, meaning BS like this is what I came here for. If you thought I was obnoxious about education policy, strap in because we will not stand by while the kids are punished for performative political nonsense.

Read on for actual proven solutions, how we can fund it, and my current beef with commercial landlords and our city council.

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Curfews make communities less safe

Let’s start with what we know about curfews, which is a lot because major cities have been trying them for decades and they draw the attention of not only child advocates but economists, city planners, law enforcement, and governments.

At first glance my thought on D.C.’s recent legislation is: this is an extension of a rule that has been in place for a year, and we’re extending it to address a spike in violence over the last few months…I would conclude that this isn’t actually addressing the problem. But is it possible that the violence could be worse without it? Let’s dig.

A study right here in Washington, D.C. looked at the impact moving up the curfew by one hour had on gun violence in the city. One would think gun violence would decrease with less people on the street right? Wrong. When the city moved the curfew up an hour, researchers found gun violence increased by 150% in just that hour. This is attributed to a fact that will surprise zero educators: the kids who follow the curfew are not the kids committing the crimes, but they are the kids who have the deterring power of a bystander and of peer pressure.

On top of this point-in-time increase in violence, curfews’ ripple effects have long term costly public consequences. Curfews give young people more interactions with law enforcement (regardless of if they are violating the law), a system with which young Black folks (especially boys) experience higher rates of adultification and violence. These early interactions with law enforcement are associated with poorer public health outcomes, poor mental health, increased substance use, and riskier sexual behavior. These outcomes drive up the need for social safety net program, paid for by tax payers. The curfew costs us.

What works to reduce youth violence

Decades of research tell us that there are plenty of things that DO work, the most effective being: access to mental healthcare, programming like extracurriculars and sports and youth employment programs and community wraparound services, and safe spaces for youth to gather. The research is aligned with what teens shared at a recent town hall focused on the D.C. teen takeovers…it’s almost like the research is…right?

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Why aren’t we doing what works?

Safe Spaces

What was your favorite thing to do growing up? The bowling alley? Hang out at the mall? Skating rink? Ice skating? Laser tag? Well, those things don’t exist for teens in D.C. and it’s a policy failure. Let me explain.

Here in D.C. a small group of landlords own the commercial real estate and their role in this is two fold.

One: The cost of rent is so astronomically high and above market rate that businesses must maximize every second they are open in order to cover rent and have any profit margin (source: me based on my experience trying to open a small business in D.C.). Teens don’t buy alcohol, they don’t buy much food, they don’t go for upsells—they’re loss leaders. When the rent is this high, businesses are forced to cater to higher spending groups, which means we can’t have teen skate nights or a restaurant where the kids hang out or an event space dedicated to younger audiences, especially on the weekends.

Two: Instead of charging fair rent, commercial landlords benefit by sitting on empty spaces. This has resulted in abandoned neighborhood commercial strips which invite violence and costs tax payers. The teens said it themselves: they come to Navy Yard (a bustling commercial area) because there are people out and it feels safer than their neighborhoods.

We need incentives for landlords to solve the problem, but instead of taking on the greedy landlords our city council is engaging in this performative policy-making, probably because most of their campaigns are funded by said landlords.

Programming

Despite the extensive research and cost benefits of investing in programs listed above, only 5% of juvenile offenders have access to research-based, outcomes driven program.

D.C. spends more per pupil than other major cities on out of school care, and we have the highest funded (per capita) youth employment program in the country. So why do we still have so much violence?

For one, the funding is fragmented and it is declining over time. On top of local funding, most out of school program providers rely on federal grants that the current administration has defunded, resulting in the shutdown of valuable after school programming. Almost half of D.C. kids don’t have access to after school programming— this goes to show how low the bar is nationally.

And look, I pay hundreds of dollars a month for my son to play sports (and we don’t do travel) which is not attainable for most people. If families can’t afford it, their kids don’t get to do sports.

And while our youth employment program is highly funded and highly impactful, it doesn’t reach our city’s most vulnerable youth, because for the majority of our youth this program is the only option for employment. This is in large part thanks to our economy, which has been hit harder than most cities thanks to DOGE. The entry level hourly jobs that most of us had as kids are taken by ex-feds and other people pushed out of their employment with the spending cuts. There are no jobs for kids here.

While mental health services are one of the most effective crime prevention tools, this administration made significant cuts to resources, forcing schools to pull back.

We need to Fund (with a capital F) extracurriculars, sports, and youth employment programs that reach our city’s most vulnerable youth, and community wraparound services.

What about the parents?

If we left public policy up to the social media commenters, at least half of D.C. parents would be incarcerated right now. This is convenient rhetoric for our city because when we have our eye on the target, we can’t focus on the shooter, and as someone who worked with the families I take these comments extremely personally. Let’s talk about the parents for a minute.

Our local economy has been hit harder than most thanks to DOGE. The worsening economy means parents are working over-time and multiple jobs, and most can’t afford off-hours care for their kids. Many are attending night school and vocational programs. Many are affected by poverty and doing the best they can with the limited resources they have. The violence is a systemic problem brought on by our performative government, not a parenting problem.

We need to create jobs.

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Where would all this money come from?

D.C. is down bad right now. DOGE has completely rocked our economy, and Congress is playing with our budgets in detrimental ways, there is no money to play around with. Despite our funding challenges, we have maintained the highest police spending per capita in the country, and found the money to deploy even more police to enforce the curfew. Why not re-allocate that money spent on enforcing the curfew to actual research-based, proven measures? Unlike police investment, investing in programs like I’ve mentioned here can have a 6-10 fold return on the dollar over time.

When my son turned three, as my husband and I high-fived each other for absolutely dominating the terrible twos (it was barely a blip on the radar! Look how great we are at parenting!), something major shifted. Our sweet, people-pleasing angel was suddenly filled with the biggest emotions I have ever witnessed (and I taught middle school!!), tantrums became a part of our morning and evening routine, testing boundaries and defiance was suddenly the name of the game.

In a moment of desperation, we both downloaded the audio book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen on Libby because I saw it on Tik Tok. By the end of chapter one I ordered a hard copy to highlight and dog-ear the shit out of. Because our daughter was turning two and seemed to be entering the phase our son hit at three and it felt like we hadn’t taken a deep breath in 10 months, we also signed up for the author’s little kids specific workshop which was absolutely worth every penny.

I can’t recommend the book (or the workshops if you have the time and money) enough, and want to share the top three strategies that completely turned our lives around. Ok and I know I’m prone to drama but I am not exaggerating — these approaches helped SO much.

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Strategy 1: Give in Fantasy

The book describes this as giving the kids in fantasy what you can’t give them in reality. When I read it I was like ok sure this SOUNDS like a fantasy—I can just talk my kids into not wanting something? But we were desperate so we tried it and it stopped (some) tantrums before they started. I can’t explain how but it just worked. The first two times I used it looked like this:

Morning Scene: Breakfast

Dramatic context: My son has two pancakes on his plate because that’s how much he eats every morning, but he NEEDS more. We do not have more. Plus he isn’t going to eat more than two! Plus we have tried giving him as many as he wants and we still have a tantrum! We have tried reasoning (ok just eat what is on your plate and if you’re still hungry we’ll give you more!) and we still have tantrums!

Son (at the top of his lungs): I NEED MORE PANCAKES!!!! I NEED THEM!!!

Me (excitedly): ohhh I bet you could eat SO many pancakes! Do you think you could eat TEN?

Son: ten pancakes?? yes!!!!

Me (even more excited): Do you think you could eat ONE HUNDRED PANCAKES?

Son: One hundred? YES! I could eat 67 one hundred! (director’s note: we’re ignoring the fact that 67 one hundred is not a real number. He’ll learn later.)

Me: oh my gosh where would you even put 67 100 pancakes???

Son (laughing): they would have their own house for all my pancakes!!!!!

Son: digs into his pancakes, laughing, talking about pancakes with their own houses, seemingly forgetting he needed a plate full of pancakes.

Evening Scene: Finishing up dinner, about to start bedtime

Dramatic context: He’s recently started saying he needs to stay up late and has a massive tantrum when we say no and take him to bed. We’ve tried explaining (“you will be too tired!”), we’ve tried choices (“do you want bubbles in the bath or glowsticks?” “what song do you want while we brush teeth?”) but the tantrums still go crazy.

Son: I need to stay up very late tonight!

Me: Oh really? How late?

Son: Very very very late!

Me (extremely dramatically): WHAT!?!?!? What would you DO all night??

Son: Puzzles! Look at stars! Watch movies!

Me: Oh my GOSH that sounds SO FUN!!!

Son: IT IS!!!!

Me: Do you know anyone who has EVER stayed up that late before?

Son: no one has ever stayed up as late as I will stay up!!! (Director’s note: we will ignore the fact that his parents used to be very cool and did in fact stayed up this late for most of their 20s.)

Me (guiding him upstairs to start bath time): this sounds so fun and SO crazy, what else would you do all night?

Son (through the entire bedtime routine): laughing and telling me all the crazy things he would do if he stayed up all night. Climbs into bed, still talking about all the things he’s going to do when he stays up later than anyone has ever stayed up. Passes out immediately.

Strategy 2: Making Things Fun

The book lists tons of strategies to make things fun for our kids to get things done, one suggestion is making it a competition against the adults (never pit kids against kids— we learned this first hand), and making inanimate objects talk. In the workshop, my husband asked the author “isn’t it important that my kid learns to do things because adults tell them to?” and she responded “do you think blind obedience is more important than learning the skill of making mundane tasks you don’t want to do fun?” Dunk.

Scene 1: Getting out of the house for school.

Dramatic context: Everything has become a fight. We chase kids all over the house trying to put on shoes. Somehow shirts come off while we’re putting on shoes. Then shoes come off while we’re putting shirts back on. There is screaming all the way to the school. Everyone is late to everything in the mornings because we cannot get out the door. We’ve tried the classics: choices (“which shoes do you want to wear today?”), we’ve tried timers, we’ve lost our minds.

Me: Oh wow we still have to get shoes and jackets on, do you think you can BEAT DADA TO THE CAR?!?!

Son: AHHHHH (sprints to put on shoes, sprints to put on jacket, runs outside as fast as possible).

Daughter: caught up in the excitement, screaming, puts her jacket on backwards and shoes on her hands but we are out the door.

Us: completely baffled. We didn’t even know he could put his jacket on by himself.

Scene 2: Putting dishes in the sink after meals.

Dramatic context: We ask nicely, we do it with our own plates, we try walking with them to the sink (sooo slowly), we tried reasoning, and for some reason it turns into a tantrum every time we ask.

Me (in a deep voice): I’m soooo hungry! Feed me plates!!! — (regular voice): oh my gosh was that the SINK talking?

Both kids: THE SINK IS HUNGRY FOR OUR PLATES??!!!

Both kids: sprint to the sink to put their plates in.

The next morning:

My son to his sister when she finishes eating: you better feed that hungry sink before you get up!

Little sister: OH yeah!!! (runs to sink to throw her plate in)

Son: runs to the sink and throws his plate in

Husband and me: that’s literally all it took???

Strategy 3: Managing Meal Times

This was a big discussion in the workshop, every parent was struggling with meal times, and at times I have thought meal time might end our marriage (ok that is dramatic— but it’s really stressful!). In the workshop my husband and I agreed to a new plan with so much less pressure thanks to this conversation:

Me: my son is such a picky eater and it turns into a tantrum when we make him try food! But he needs to try food!

Instructor: I can tell you care a lot and are very concerned about his eating. Is this something his pediatrician flagged?

Us: No

Instructor: so his health is fine? He’s growing normally? His weight is fine?

Us: Yes

Instructor: were either of you a picky eater as children?

Me: oh yeah I was so picky!

Instructor: how would you describe your eating now?

Me: oh I eat everything! Heck I ate crickets on our last vacation!

Instructor: oh, interesting.

Husband and me: Oh, ha , interesting yes.

Instructor: Ok so you were a picky eater as a child and that hasn’t impacted your adult eating habits. Did it help when people forced you to eat foods as a child?

Me: Oh no that always made it worse. There are still foods I can’t touch because I was forced to eat them as a kid.

Instructor: Oh, interesting.

Us: Oh, yeah, interesting.

Instructor: hm ok so it sounds like picky eating didn’t impact your habits as an adult but what did impact you was being forced to eat foods you didn’t want to try, and your son is perfectly healthy.

Us: Ok yes. LOL

Armed with a much calmer attitude we made the plan that includes:

1. Serving dinner family style, let the kids pick their food and serve themselves

2. If they don’t like something they say “no thank you” not “this is disgusting!!!!” because we worked hard to prepare the meal and it hurts our feelings when people talk that way about it.

3. If there is nothing they can handle eating, there is always an option 2. Option 2 is a safe food that is very very easy (string cheese + pepperoni or guacamole with crackers etc).

4. If they don’t want to eat at all we say “you’re old enough to know when your body isn’t hungry. I trust you” and we let it go.

5. We have extra very boring snacks (apples, string cheese) available if they get hungry after the kitchen closes.

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I know not everything works for everyone, but we found this book incredibly helpful and I hope these tips help!