There is a BIG difference between emotional abuse and normal conflict. They have started teaching our children that ALL conflict is bullying.

You don't want to play blocks with Jim... why are you bullying Jim by excluding him from your game? That kind of nonsense makes it difficult to take actual emotional and physical abuse seriously because now everything that causes conflict is either abuse or hateful. I would think that people who truly are the subject of harmful emotional abuse would want to see that distinction being taught.

And before you say you should be playing with Jim because it is mean to exclude him... maybe Jim is that asshole who knocks your block towers down. Now we have to let Jim knock our block towers down because it might hurt his feeling to be excluded? The lesson there is that not hurting another person's feelings is more important than your own peace and safety and THAT lesson leads you into abusive relationships where other people take advantage of you because you have to be 'nice' or YOU are the bully.

You can teach children both to share and that stealing is wrong (people don't HAVE to share with you).

You can also teach children to not be little shits to each other (saying hurtful things is wrong) but if someone disagrees with you or doesn't want to play with you or doesn't like you, it's not the end of the world. You aren't going to burn in hell forever if you tell your friend you don't want to play with him/her right now.

The world does not like you and people need to learn to deal with it. Instead what we have is active conflict avoidance (not conflict resolution) being taught. There is a BIG difference that is resulting in an inability to cope with disagreement and adversity. I see this my incoming engineers. I tell them their code doesn't work and they launch into a big defensive argument about how they are not to blame.

You are not entitled to other people's affection anymore than you are entitled to their things and minor disagreements are NOT the same bullying. Maybe if we stopped calling every little childhood conflict bullying we might be able to actually address the problem.

Because this is what they are teaching in schools. My 2nd grader was told by her teacher that "words hurt forever". I found this out while calming her down after her friend calling her 'mean' reduced her to tears.

There is no "sticks and stones..." anymore. Now it's "words hurt more than hitting" and "words are unforgivable".

It's important if you are looking for a mate.

Stay at home parents are employed. Why would you count then as unemployed?

If they were called "nanny" and received an official salary, you would call them employed. But because they are called "mom" or "dad" and simply have access to all the resources (money, food, shelter, etc) of the working spouse you don't want to count them?

So when the cashier rings you up you just assume it's correct?

The other month I took 30 1st graders to a park and when they rung us up they didn't give us the group package rate the website said we should have gotten. And no - it wasn't a simple "receipt says $X per person not $Y". It was $X for item A, $Y for item B, and $Z for item C because their POS system itemized each part of the package with an adult and child rate instead of just saying "Package" and then printed "X Child Items " instead of listing the per-person rate. (Literally the dumbest, most convoluted receipt I have ever seen).

Simple arithmetic is how you notice that stuff and are able to tell the manager what they did wrong so they can fix it and refund you the overage. In the middle of a hoard of 1st graders who all just want to go inside and the cashier telling you that she rung you up right and the POS system is infallible.

Sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and hope for the best. Other times, its better to wait.

Consider the implications of failure of a plan like this. If the consequences of failure are worse than doing nothing.... then yes. Do nothing.

I remember some bright idea to genetically engineer mosquitoes to wipe out malaria... A noble goal. The fish population in the area they tried it on took a nose dive. So yes... sometimes nothing is better.

On the one hand we complain about man interfering with natural processes and bemoan climate change caused by our greed and shortsightedness... on the other we propose deliberately altering the natural processes in order to cause climate change because we know better?

And if it goes horribly wrong due to our shortsightedness and arrogance? I know several people who truly in the depths of their hearts believe that they know better, are brilliant, and can do no wrong. A little self doubt can do the world a lot of good.