My foster kiddo's birthday is coming up soon, and we got a REALLY good deal on a PS4 for his birthday. I'm buying him used games to go with the console. I asked him to describe what kind of games he wanted and things he liked in games. He wants a split screen co-op FPS where he's able to hunt for rare loot. He wants a looter shooter that he can play with me. Also odd criteria, but he wants games that I'm good at because it's like "watching a ninja". He explained this, and Borderlands is the only game I can think of that has all of it. He didn't mention Borderlands by name, so it's not like I'd be saying no to anything on his list specifically. I'd settle for a co-op split screen FPS we could play, but there aren't very many of those on PS4.

Here is the issue I'm running into though. On one hand, this child is turning 9. He is just too young for Borderlands. However, this child has also witnessed multiple people die of drug overdoses, watched a million rated R movies with his mom, so censoring things feels weird. Like who am I to censor some middle school grade jokes when he's into morbid things as a result of seeing death his entire life? I'm thinking maybe we just make it a game where I have to play it with him if he wants to play? Any split screen game recommendations for us that may be more age appropriate?

How we doing folks? Hope your week went well!

I’m white. My daughter is also white. She’s 3 years old, almost 4.

Up to this age, my approach to teaching her about race has been to focus exclusively on skin color. Meaning, we talk about how people can have all different colors and tones to their skin. Talking about skin color on a spectrum. But always emphasizing that people are all the same and that everyone should be treated the same.

In isolation, this all sounds lib. I of course want to get all into structural and institutional racism et al. But… she’s 3. Up until a few months ago she was still pooping and pissing in a diaper. My thinking is that emphasizing this more lib understanding of race is more age-appropriate now, and we can get into the real stuff a little later on when she has the mental and emotional maturity to handle it (that said, I have told her that the cops aren’t very nice to people who don’t look like us. Whatever, the daycare has pigs come over and talk to the kids even at her age, so fuck em I’m gonna counter that shit now).

Is this the right approach? Is there more I should be doing? If you all have any age-appropriate books on this topic you can recommend, definitely let me know.

I know this comm is a slow one, and I think that's just the nature of parenting. I did have this thought though that it could be nice to have a weekly thread for just general chatter and checking in.

We've been circling the sickness drain for what feels like more then a month now. Everyone has had norovirus at this point, this weekend was my turn apparently after dodging it for weeks.

Took today off in hopes to just mentally recover, only to have daycare call to let me know kiddo2 projectile vomited about an hour after drop off.

So now I'm hanging out with him, shelving all the things I wanted to do today for some other rare moment where I have time for myself.

I took my kid to Target the other day. As one of the last 3rd spaces available where capitalism showcases the latest and greatest, I figured I'd treat it as a learning experience for him. He really wanted a very specific skid-steer toy, so I told him he could pick out something else if we couldn't find one.

There is something very unsettling about vaguely understanding the state of the world and being a parent. First I drove him through the clothes section because he's around the age where I'd like him to start expressing his preferences on what he wants to wear. Up until now he's been told what to wear by all the gifts he gets for his birthday, and I didn't really understand that implication until just then.

And that led to the next basic conclusion - his toy preferences were also dictated by all the gifts he's received from friends, grandparents, or what he sees at school. We walked through what was clearly and distinctly the girl toys section. I'm still to shit so I felt awkward walking down the aisle but I put on a brave face and asked him if anything there interested him.

Nope he still wants the skid-steer. We pass by the car brain section and I notice more acutely now that there are 600 variants of the same plastic car with different paint colors. None of them interest him. We see the fascist puppies of paw patrol which thank god he doesn't care for either. In the construction toys section, a skid-steer catches my eye and I point it out to him. He shakes his head, no daddy that's a bulldozer. My toddler knows more about construction equipment than me. I'm proud and terrified in the same instant.

He zeroes in on an excavator. I remind him this will be the 4th variant of excavator that he owns and explain that we should donate some of his older excavators since we don't need all of them. I spend a few minutes in the aisle of target asking if he's sure that he wouldn't enjoy trying out a different toy or exploring his interests a bit, but he's set.

In the parking lot I show him how to return the cart to the cart return. I was reminded of the redditest discourse ever - cart return politics. People in those threads act like returning a cart is some mark of a morally superior person. Like it isn't the most basic bare minimum utterly insignificant expression of social responsibility. It still needs to be fucking taught to a person. Empathy is natural but it still needs to be nurtured or people will just assume whats in front of them is just how things are.

As I'm strapping my excited kid in to his car seat I keep thinking about that. He's holding his cheap plastic excavator that's maybe a third the size of him and he can't wait to get home, and what's in front of him is just how things are. I get in to the driver seat and I feel totally overwhelmed. I start tearing up. I immediately move the rear view mirror so he doesn't see his grown ass dad show a moment of weakness in a paved sea of personal chariots in front of the temple of capitalism. This way of life is built on so much suffering and it's so hollow and fake, and here I am teaching my child the prescribed ways of coping, escaping, avoiding it.

I love my kid, I've already made so many mistakes and I know I'll make more. It makes me really hopeful that he loves construction stuff so much. I feel so much shame for being a stupid lib for so much of my life, but also so much of his life. I also can't help but wonder if my parents felt the same way when I was a toddler, if this is just some repeating cycle that will continue until this decaying empire fails its last failure that finally breaks the whole system.

They could stop it all now if they wanted. They could end things from a position of relative strength. Agree that - haha ok things went a little too far there - let's end the whole exploitation and colonialism thing. Maybe start talking reparations and some prison sentences for the worst offenders. Nothing could possibly make up for all the pain and suffering done so far, but nothing will get better until it stops.

But they don't. My child will grow up immersed in this death cult machine and have to operate in its confines just like me. Me, his father, the guy he looks up to and expects to protect him. We talk about radicalizing people but I can think of nothing more radicalizing than realizing the world you are handing down to your own children is this.

We all know children should read Das Kapital in the original German when they're 12, but apart from that, what books or leftist cartoons should they be learning at different ages.

Age 4-8

Some Zapatista/Subcommandante Marcos books of fables

Age 9-13

???

Age 14-16

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists