It is fairly safe here, not that that excuses the neglectful parenting. Honestly the farm is fairly isolated, and the ferry workers would question her leaving the island without a parent. And in the event of harm to a child here, there would be no stopping the lynch mob that would result.
She does pretty well for herself, and has found a new “best friend” in my mother... who will feed her and keep her entertained. Yesterday they were decorating the building my mom is staying in. My mother is now also the official transportation to school several times a week now. I really think she should be getting paid for all this. Nautica sometimes really acts out to get her mother’s attention at times, but is otherwise quite well behaved. There are only a few kids in her age group on island, and she is literally the only kid here on the south side of the island. She will walk the 3km out to my trailer with absolutely no complaints to help me clean up the trailer... yep, apparently doing dishes and trying to organize my mess is “more fun” than hanging out alone with her toys or watching you tube on her phone. Anything to have attention and interactions with people.
She also shares everything she has, her candy, lunches (although I don’t think two cold hot dogs in a ziplock baggie is a great “lunch”, but I think she packed it for us herself and ate the pocket wiener) and popsicles. No matter how little she has of a treat she will always try to share it with you. Dad is not very well off financially and lives on his boat (child support and very little work here on island). She is saving up her money and for his birthday is going to take him to an optometrist “because he really needs glasses”. Dad is a bit of a recluse, very quiet and shy (a vegetarian too, so we can’t even really share any food with him to help out, they eat lots of pasta and sauce and have several totes of it). She has a heart of gold, even if she can be frustrating at times. The mother I don’t have very much good to say about, so I will leave it at that. Lack of literacy is a problem with all the kids here in general, and there are several people working outside of the school system to improve it. Ironically not the parents of the kids, but some avid readers. Some small featherless chicken tax pictures (shared with parental permission and also previously used for marketing purposes of the local FBook forum)
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Child labor is the best... they work for Candy and sausages! We are working on knife safety with her too... because all our knives are extremely sharp, and she is allowed to use them “unless she cuts herself” (then she gets a week of having her knife privileges suspended, mom’s rule) She is also getting pretty good at running the cash box and our POS. She gets a percentage of all the craft sales, and The summer market veggie sales as well. I might buy the supplies and do most of the work for the crafts, but they wouldn’t sell as well from an almost 40 year old as they do when she takes the credit for them. She made something like $80 one Saturday, her dad freaked out that she was making that much money from the market... she’s well on her way to getting him those glasses! If it wasn’t for Covid cancelling our summer Markets he would already be wearing them, as we had planned on really ramping up the craft items this year.
YD & I did consider taking the lad to one of the zoos for his birthday. We figured it was going to take both of us to hog tie him but either zoo is over an hour away & there was the question of car seats so it never happened.
And the ones I had got trashed they were used so much.
They must be mad.
have a great Thursday !! How much snow did you end up getting?
