Posts by Peter Brooks5

hiddenheron58 said:Can you tell me how you set boundaries and rules? How do you stop the kid from hitting her or insulting me when no punishment or plea seems to work? Let me try to illustrate the situation. Here's an example of our fights... He comes home from school without saying hello. I say,🙏 "For heaven's sake," he walks into his room and slams the door (I'm already starting to lose it here, but I'm holding it together). I say, "Dinner's ready, son. Wash your hands and come to the table..." He won't wash his hands and tells me to get lost. I stay quiet and then try to pivot: "How was school?" and I get an answer like... "Why do you care? Just relax." Then the little girl comes in from school, and as soon as she hears the door open, she comments, "Ugh, she's here, what a total eyesore." I warn him, I try to mediate: "Hey, don't do that, honey, let her be, she's tired and hungry" (and I'm already terrified that her irritability and instigating are going to ruin dinner). She sits down and starts chatting with me, she's being bubbly and energetic, we're laughing, and he's just miserable because her energy bothers him, or our relationship bothers him, or I don't even know what... We try to pull him into the conversation, but he's being rude and pushing us away. Then he either hits her under the table or calls her a "hideous brat." (He acts like he's 10 instead of 15; honestly, it doesn't seem like a normal reaction for those years.) She tells him, "Fine, you're the ugly one!" or "Stop telling me to shut up!" and then he just snaps, slaps her, and starts hurling even worse insults... the poor thing, she's a wreck. I start trying to calm them down, and then he turns on me and says...😳I knew you’d take the pet's side. I try to explain that they were actually the one who started it, but instead, I just end up being called trash and worse. It always spirals into insults and screaming... Can you help me make sense of this? I need advice on how to handle the situation or just how to stay calm, because this kind of thing happens to me every few hours—and over the weekend, it's even more frequent. thanks

If this is really what's happening, you have a massive problem.
Look, protect your daughter.
Get him away from the family as soon as possible.
There are doctors and facilities for this.
The older he gets, the bigger the problems will become, and they'll be things you can never fix again. You'll just end up with someone who grows up to physically abuse and harass you.
Listening to all the advice on these forums won't solve anything. You know that better than anyone, because if it worked, you wouldn't be here on the forum looking for help.
Good luck.

Frank Kim said:A pound of what? Unsorted, unstripped e-waste? 🤷 Does anyone actually know a specific spot or company that handles this?

We're talking kilos of TVs, monitors, or just any random pile of unsorted electronic parts.
I'm not talking about what happens in your neighborhood, either. Where I live, there’s a company with an EPA certification that buys them for about 12 cents a pound.
That same company picks up batteries for $0.33, while everyone else is offering maybe 40 or 50 cents.
So, I'd say a realistic price for electronic components would be around 4 cents.

Also, do you even know how to use Google?????

Yeah... it's about 90 cents a pound right now.
You should probably check which companies actually have the license to buy back electronic equipment. Some might have more scrap than others. Just do some digging, see who’s offering the best rate, and go from there.

darkbison14 said:I’ve noticed that prices for clothes and food are basically the same everywhere. I picked up some pants in Washington, D.C., then hit up Budapest just to see the difference, and the price was identical. After that, I headed over to Germany and saw the exact same thing. So now I'm wondering, what's the deal? Why are prices more or less the same when, say, Germany has way more space? Thanks.

Well... I wouldn't say prices in the EU and here are the same... especially not for food.
I shop for food in Italy quite often. Some things are similar to what we have, but most items there are cheaper by up to 50%.
What I want to know is why food is so cheap in Italy while it's painfully expensive here?!🤷
With their salaries, it's no wonder they're always vacationing in America, while Americans can never afford to go anywhere with our wages.🙄