Adult 'Children' Who Bring Their Parents to Job Interviews Need to Grow Up

vrijdag 13 september 2013

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Lisa Fogarty 4 hours ago

Remember when you turned 18 and the delicious promise of a life unchained from the shackles of your parents was all you could think about? Or maybe your independent streak didn't strike until you graduated college and bought your first Ann Taylor business suit, which you wore once and only once on that job interview where you lied about your Excel skills? 

Now imagine your mom or dad had accompanied you to your interview. And then, a year later, sat in at your professional review as you sheepishly tried to negotiate your salary up from pennies to quarters. Sound like the stuff of adolescent nightmares? 

Not in this day and age of helicopter parenting. 

Some big employers are actually trying to appeal to their working Millennials' strong parental bonds by inviting moms and dads to interviews and salary negotiations and even sending cute notes home when their young workers achieve their sales goals.

Yep, sort of like report cards. 

Companies like Northwestern Mutual claim that involving parents has become a common best practice that boosts morale among workers in their early 20s up to their (get this) early 30s. 

To make matters even more sad, the sending home of progress reports to mommy and daddy actually works. According to Northwestern Mutual, more interns are meeting their sales goals than ever before because of these practices. 

Okay, so first of all: a 22-year-old is not a child and a 30-year-old is -- no room for debate here -- definitely not a child. The fact that so many Millennials have been coddled to the point where they can't venture out into the work world without looking back over their shoulder to see if mom is smiling is depressing. 

If I were to receive a letter from my daughter's employer asking me to sit in on her interview, I would respectfully decline. Then I would hope like hell my daughter doesn't absorb from this message that she is not fully her own woman and is being thought of as incapable of making her own decisions and holding her own as a professional.

Young adults are going to make mistakes. And they should perspire slightly before walking into an office -- alone -- to negotiate their salary. But at the end of the day, when they realize they've held their own before their boss and are solely responsible for improving their careers, the confidence and strength they'll gain is well worth the anxiety and few minutes of discomfort they'll experience.

Would you accompany your child to his or her job interview? 

Image via Ryo FUKAsawa/Flickr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lisa Fogarty

is a former old-timey print journalist who lives in Brooklyn with her husband and toddler girl. She still carries a notebook everywhere and is always on the lookout for tasty vegan food and blouses with collars that will finally put the Peter Pan out on its (adorable) tush.

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Woman Goes to Desperate Lengths to Have Good-Looking Children

woensdag 14 augustus 2013

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Adriana Velez 2 hours ago

All this woman wanted was some beautiful babies. In a scandalous, anonymously-written post, a married mother admits she conceived four babies by different men -- all behind her husband's back. And it wasn't because of the phenomenal sex, so she says. It was for the sake of the children! She just wanted to make sure they had all the advantages life has to offer, including the advantage of being extraordinarily good looking. She wanted "handsome" babies, is all.

Does this story sound totally made-up to you? It should. But you probably want to hear all the details anyway. I know I did.

"Josephine" says became aware of how differently beautiful children (like she was) are treated than homely children from an early age. "And so it was that I silently vowed I would have only handsome and beautiful children at whatever cost." Alas, Josephine failed to marry a handsome man. She married a really great guy who just happened to be too toad-like to sire the beautiful children she desired. So she she did a little outsourcing.

Her adventures in selective breeding began early. Three months after their honeymoon, she hooked up with the intern 10 years her junior. She just happened to bump into the same guy, conveniently two and a half years later, and conceived another baby. Then she had a fruitful fling with the supermarket attendant, followed by a very productive tryst with her trainer at the gym (I mean, you were waiting for that one, right?). And conveniently enough, all the kids look just like her and her husband never suspects a thing. He joyfully raises all these stunning specimens of childhood as if they were his own, which as far as he knows, they are.

So wow, Josephine managed to carry out her plan without a hitch. Well, aside from the massive guilt that squashes her heart like a giant elephant foot.

This story is so ridiculous, it is all I can do to keep writing here. But just for the sake of argument, let's pretend it's true. Is it really so terrible? Look, no one's gotten hurt ... yet. Josephine got her gorgeous gaggle of kids and her husband probably feels like he won the kid lottery. It's like getting away with the perfect murder, only instead of killing someone, she's created life, really attractive life.

Ugh. No. You know what? I can't. I cannot play devil's advocate here. This was a deeply wrong thing to do, and I hope this story truly is fictional. But you just know someone, somewhere out there, is hatching the exact same plan right now.

How often do you think women deliberately conceive a baby by another father?

Image via Lori Ann/Flickr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adriana Velez

is a staff writer who dabbles in food, parenting, news, entertainment, molecular biology, and anything else that that pops into her head. She lives with her elementary school-aged son in Brooklyn, land of urban farms and artisan everything.  

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Nanny Yoselyn Ortega Finally Has to Answer About the Stabbing Deaths of 2 Children Left in Her Care

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Kiri Blakeley 1 hour ago

Yoselyn Ortega, who is accused of killing two little children she was taking care of in her role as nanny for Marina and Kevin Krim, has been found competent to stand trial. Her lawyers had argued that she "heard voices" telling her to kill on the day of the murders, and that she was otherwise mentally unfit to help with her own defense. But the judge wasn't buying it, saying:

I feel there is clear and convincing evidence that this defendant is fit to stand trial.

Some of that evidence was jailhouse phone calls she'd made to her 17-year-old son, in which she lucidly talked about such mundane everyday tasks as his home renovations and visiting Motor Vehicles.

But her defense team argued that she cannot understand the court proceedings and cannot help her defense, saying:

I don't thinks he has the capacity to understand and discuss rationally the impact of any evidence in this case.

But now she will have to. Unless there's a plea deal, this means that Ortega will go to trial. This also means we might finally find out why the nanny, who was considered a part of the family and had even vacationed with the Krims in her native Dominican Republic, allegedly took a knife to 2-year-old Leo and 6-year-old Lucia Krim, butchering them in their own bathtub in their Manhattan home.

Of course, the WHY may never be sufficiently answered. But certainly the prosecution will state its case as to WHY, and it will probably have something to do with Ortega being mad at the Krim family, reportedly having an "epic" argument with mom Marina, and being resentful of her increased household duties.

None of that seems like a reason to murder two innocent children -- but there often isn't a good reason when people kill. And there is never a good reason when children are killed, and yet they are killed all of the time.

However, it is heartbreaking to think that the Krims may have to go through a trial -- and most likely will have to testify. Especially considering that Marina is pregnant. On the other hand, they may welcome the chance to help put their children's alleged killer behind bars.

Will you follow the trial?

Image via Splash News

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5 Things '80s Kids Did Growing Up That Our Children Will Never Understand

donderdag 18 juli 2013

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Jenny Isenman 3 hours ago in Big Kid

I recently made a list of crazy things Gen Xers used growing up that are completely antiquated now. It reminded me of conversations I had with my relatives, when I was a child, where they told these fantastical tales about things my generation would never experience. Like, walking 20 miles to school ... in the snow ... uphill ... shoeless. Or running into gypsy bandits that lived in the woods near their house or even sitting around the radio to listen to your favorite shows.

As crazy as all of that sounded (exaggeration and all), I'm pretty sure the things I grew up doing as a Gen Xer wouldn't sound much less abnormal to my own offspring. And so, I imagine these are the yarns I will spin as my kids grow up.

"Well, youngin's, you think you've got it tough with your Facebook and your Google and your iParaphernalia? Why, in my day, we had to ..."

1.) Work a car with our own two hands. Sure, people in the old old days didn't have automatic transitions, or steering for that matter, but do you know what my generation had to do? We had to pull up the locks with our fingers!!! And that's not all, if you wanted a breeze or to let out an odor or some cigarette smoke (oh, everyone smoked in my day, even the kids), you had to turn a crank around and around and around to simply open the window a crack. And don't get me started on positioning the seat!

Also, there was no guarantee you would make it out alive as seat belts were merely suggested and you were allowed to sleep along the back ledge or sit in the front seat by the time you were talking. Not that you had a proper car seat leading up to that point anyway. No, the only thing between you and a windshield was your mom's outstretched arm. Thanks mom.

2.) Turn the channel. Oh kids ... you think rolling down the window seemed exhausting? Try lumbering over to the television. EVERY TIME you want to change the channel. I kid you not, the channels were located on the set ... and there were only 13 of them! And only like four of them had programs! And sometimes you had to walk to the TV across shag carpets that shocked you as you shuffled! And you HAD to watch all the commercials! And if the show you were watching didn't get good reception, you may have to adjust the bunny ears! Or just stand there and hold them for the duration of the show, because the TV inevitably worked better when you were touching (or near) the bunny ears to ensure you never got to sit back down. No, I am not referring to the stupid V you make behind people with your fingers when you photo bomb them!!! Sheesh, forget it. Why don't you just go watch the Disney Channel on your phone or something?

3.) Put a needle on the record. Sooooo, they used to have these big round things called records. Maybe you've seen one in a YouTube video where someone is DJ'ing. They were like supersized CDs. I'm sorry, you don't know what that is, um, DVDs. Sure, we can say Blu-rays. Anyhoo, you had an arm with a needle that had to be placed on the record to play a song, but you had to be so careful when you put it on because the slightest pressure could scratch the whole thing. You know, like the way you have to use your Sonicare -- gently and let it do all the work? Now, if you were really adept at record playing, you could find the right groove for any song you wanted to hear. Oh, and you know how your speakers are the size of a pin head? Mine were the size of furniture. In fact, they took up most of my room. In fact, one speaker doubled as my bedside table and the other speaker doubled ... as my bed.

4.) Use a map. Maps were how we pretty much got anywhere far or got lost trying. You see, we didn't have those fancy shmancy GPS systems that feature maps, log traffic, and offer alternate routes. No, we had massive papers that seemed to keep unfolding and unfolding and unfolding with tons of tiny lines on them that remind me of the backs of my once sexy legs. We had to use our fingers to plot the lines that would get us there. You could lose your place in the blink of an eye. It was harrowing.

Yep you're right, it is kinda like Google Maps except no automated voice or pop-ups alert you when to turn and if you've gotten off-course. That's what people who worked in gas stations in the middle of nowhere were for!

5.) Look things up manually. See, we didn't have a massive database like the Internet at our fingertips. No, we read things that were made from trees. They called those things books and there was a whole section of them that were considered references. They included things like dictionaries, encyclopedias and thesauruses ... thesarii? Damnit, I'll have to Google the plural of thesaurus later, but you get the point. 

We found these reference sections in places called libraries where a man named Dewey Decimal was king. There we didn't buy books, we simply shared them with other people and got their book cooties. We even got information for reports and school papers from these books. In fact, I once got an encyclopedia set for a birthday present (yeah, we didn't get fun things back then because knowledge was expensive). Anyhoo, Nana (my mom) bought it in two installments -- the first half and second half of the alphabet. But we couldn't afford the second half, because like I said, encyclopedias were like a million dollars and do you know what happened? In sixth grade, I had to do a report on Switzerland and I failed because I only had A through M.

Damn you Jane Lewis for getting Madagascar!

So, don't come crying to me when you forget to charge your iPad or a lightning storm affects the satellite TV because, now you see how tough we had it growing up.

What things did you do growing up that would make your children laugh?

Image via Denej/Flickr

Filed Under: safety, internet, technology, your kid asked what, aging, trends, blogs, electronics, humor, mommy bloggers, my generation, cars, apple, cameras, cell phone, communication, computer, gadgets ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jenny Isenman

Jenny Isenman, AKA Jenny From the Blog, is an 80’s obsessed mom, who has no idea where all these wrinkles came from and why she can’t hand something to her kids in the car without pulling a muscle! FB her, Tweet her, Laugh at with her, Pin her (not in a voodoo kinda way)

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