Seven in German handwriting has an additional line.

Not gonna lie, you sound as if you think controlling parents are in the right, the way you say they should have access.

That’s a resounding fuck no from me.

It doesn’t matter if kids fuck up or not. If they do, like your son, they hopefully learn a valuable lesson that apparently they have been spared before, for whatever reason. Maybe they never really had to put effort in studying in high school before - I saw a lot of that in my friends at college, they completely underestimated that college is harder than high school.

Or maybe they never learned to get shit done without parents nagging. Especially in that case they need to learn, for you will not always be there to nag. Helicopter parenting is a sign of lacking confidence in your kid’s abilities. And even if the kids are fucking up, mistakes must be made in order to learn.

It’s not your life, but your kids life, and your kid needs to live it. Let them. Support them if you can and they need help, but don’t enable them - if they keep fucking up, let them unfuck it themselves are the third time. Otherwise you’ll do your kid a disservice and make them unable to deal with life.

And I’m not saying don’t help them if they ask for help, like when they can’t figure something out on their own. Help them help themselves as much as possible and try not to fix everything for them.

You controlling the grades is trying to fix it for your son. How will he ever get work done later on his own? Many neurodivergent people don’t do well in-office or in a job setting in general. In a home office setting or if you are your own boss the skill to self-motivate is even more important.

Yes. My younger sister was always objectively better than I had been, and while my family was not as blatant as yours (seriously! What they do to you almost amounts to abuse if you ask me!) they subtly acted similar. Not expecting me to do well on my own, I was never fast or good enough… Yep, been there.

However! I’ve grown up and found my way, and my sister and I are closer than ever. She, too, hated this dynamic. And she told me that actually it was me who enabled her. You see, when I learned something new I was excited and got home and talked about. And she listened and learned. She has a better talent for math and numbers, but in the end when she learned something in school she basically already knew it because I taught her.

And I hated going to places alone, so once when I was in tenth grade I dragged my seventh grade sister to a film club for English movies. The teacher said he didn’t think she can keep up but she was welcome to try - and she did. She told me years later that for her there were no limits because of age or assumed ability. I asked, she was allowed to try, and she innocently just picked things up. She said this for her drove home the point of “doesn’t hurt to ask” and that this opened so many doors for her.

Objectively she is still “better” than I am. Very successful with a straight career, earns more too. But that’s not important. We’re still learning from each other and together, and we do our best to lift each other up. And she knows what it’s like to grow up in a toxic family, so she gets me.

I guess my point is that life is not a competition. And the “problem” in your situation is not you nor your abilities. It’s your parents favoritism and sabotaging and disparaging you. You are not your sister. And that’s normal and great. You’re different people with different strengths and different ambitions. You will find your way. No matter if it’s writing or something else. Don’t put that much stock in what you’re parents say and demand.

A good GPA doesn’t guarantee a good job or a good life. What counts is if you like your life, because you have to live through it.

Can you control the time when a calendar notif hits? Could changing that time help?

Sticks may be something that he has been hit with before - or maybe it’s the position above his head of something that scares him. You never know what a former stray experienced.

In my experience toy type matters a lot too. My current cat goes crazy over feathers at a rope that you can whirl around with a stick - I guess the sound the feathers make trigger her hunting instincts? Our other cat gets scared of that but hes always been sensitive to noise.

He loves those little snakes that are attached to sticks with a rope though. Leaves the feather cat completely cold. Catnip was meh for ours, but both lost their shit with Valerian, totally drugged up for five minutes (then the effect wears off and the cats won’t feel the same even with fresh scent). Where I live it gets used to help people sleep so we buy a whole bunch at a pharmacy, fill it into an airtight container (that shit stinks, it could make me vomit) and marinate cloth toys in their that we give them every now and then.

At the end of the day, all cats are different and trial and error is best. Also, if you found a cheap toy that works, stock up - often it’s not easy to get replacements once they break.

Wait you wouldn’t take your cat? After a week of you rarely being available you consider not being home at all for two days and a night?

I would strongly recommend against that. I’m worried that this may cause behavioral issues with the cat getting bored, depressed, feeling caged…

Possible consequences could be urinating outside the litterbox, willfully scratching your furniture/walls and more.

I’m not sure if with your work and travel habits a pet would be a good choice. Maybe one that doesn’t need social interaction?

I would advise against. A house is not a good place for a cat to be alone, and 40h per week is a lot. We have an old cat (17) and my roommate is at home all day and our cat still is super needy for attention.

There may be more aloof cats, but from my experience with cats they are most likely the exception and your cat would likely be understimulated.

Also, most cats do not handle traveling well. It is possible to train them but that works best when they are young and young cats should never be alone in a house for 40h/ week. My mom has taken in cats from an animal rescue organization where the owner was out for long hours too and she got depressed and overate so badly she had lifelong issues, even when she was with my mom and lost weight again. She also was incredibly anxious about my mom leaving her and would get stressed out if she had to be alone.

Despite what you may hear, cats are social animals and need interaction. If you are away from home 40h/week (and that’s not counting going to work), it’s better to get a bonded pair so they can play and interact. In rare cases you may find an old grumpy cat that will be fine - but you will probably never have a close bond with that kind of cat, and often they are used to going outside.

The cat violently displaced the Panda.

I mean that’s a black hat hacking forum. That alone would make me question what they were doing with their domains x)

What you don’t get is you can’t take away the version history of a given program and expect it to just work without constantly explaining things. There’s a reason there’s not windows 9 - because too many people wrote compatibility checks checking if the version started with “Windows 9” to distinguish 95 and 98 from the NT line back in the day and having an actual Windows 9 could have broken things.

Granted, Windows 2 is much older and it would be unlikely, but why do you insist of risking something at all when there are better ways?

You could have just said, oh, if there already was a version 2, let’s just call it “Windows Gen2” instead of getting belligerent.

Similar here, except I suggested a course and they accepted and paid for it (Software Testing). The programming is what I enjoy and want to pursue.

For me the commitment part was the issue. I’m still working on figuring out how to trick my brain into cooperating with commitments. Having a team that was looking forward to my suggestions and ready to rely on it ended up being the one thing that worked. But this is obviously not easily replicable.

I tried that several times but it never worked out for various reasons. For me I really started growing once I was working and had a team that was happy I wanted to learn more and answer my questions.

I’m like that and one of my friends as well. We’re both not diagnosed but strongly suspecting AD(H)D, and I’m also diagnosed with autism.

I can’t count the times I started trying to learn programming and ended up quitting for that very reason - but every time I did I knew a little bit more. So I just tried to learn my way and next time I wouldn’t need to look up asuch and got a little farther. But I also have the luck of having programmer friends who don’t mind trying to answer my sometimes very unusual questions, and over the several attempts I’ve learned enough to be able to work in test automation.

If you have patient and encouraging people around you you’ll eventually get there :) don’t go for ui at first, look for console programs so you can get to things like conditions and loops quickly. That’s where the meat is for me.

https://tenor.com/de/view/the-road-to-el-dorado-both-both-is-good-gif-8304204