u/jungleroo

In a nutshell, I went to Aspen Dental for an exam and a cleaning. I now feel both swindled by their team and dumb for my own mistakes, because I did sign a financial agreement and a consent to the treatment. However, I was not told that the services were nonessential. I believe they intentionally misled me by telling me I had stage 2 periodontal disease, therefore making me think that the procedures were necessary as without them, I would eventually lose teeth. A few weeks after my appointment with them, I went to another dentist who told me he didn’t see any evidence of stage 2 periodontal disease. Aspen is now expecting me to pay approximately $1,200 for the non-covered services they performed, and they charged it to a CareCredit card that I opened on the same day as my appointment.

Do I have a case at all here since it seems like they gave me a false diagnosis in order to pressure me into nonessential treatments? Or am I completely screwed because I signed the papers? Straightforward, no BS answers appreciated. I know it’s my fault I signed everything, but hearing them tell me I had an irreversible diagnosis that would eventually lead to tooth decay and potential loss had me panicked and not in my right mind.

Two months ago, I accepted a job to work at a local summer camp. In the interview, the staffing director said they could provide care for my son, who’ll be nearly 15 months at the start of camp, at a heavily discounted rate compared to the camp’s normal tuition!

Now, this whole situation is my own failure, because I didn’t question it much and quickly accepted without asking for further details about the care they’d be providing. That’s my fault. Not that it’s an excuse, but I’m a FTP and money is tight. Without a job for the summer, we will have to tough it out for two months on my husband’s salary which is just barely enough. The job offer meant low cost childcare plus a modest take-home salary.

Fast forward to now. I went to a mandatory staff meeting last week and asked about the childcare. The interviewer pointed to a house and explained that because my son is too young to be in camp fully, they will provide a “babysitter” and he will spend most of the day in the basement of the house, while occasionally being brought out to walk around the campgrounds.

Immediately started panicking because to me it sounded like they are basically running an unlicensed, “unofficial” daycare. He did not clarify who the babysitter will be, and did not offer to show me the space. And now I honestly feel dumb asking, because clearly I feel like it makes me look like a bad parent that I’m just now asking these questions when camp starts literally 4 weeks from tomorrow.

I honestly feel awful and so irresponsible, but I messed up and there’s no going back. But what’s the smartest option going forward? Ask whatever questions I can but follow through with the commitment regardless? Try to find alternative care that will definitely be more expensive and might negate any earnings I receive from the job? Or pull out last minute and take a hit to my professional reputation and possible future opportunities to work with this particular camp, while also creating the likelihood that I’ll be unemployed for the summer? Appreciate any advice.

TL;DR: Summer camp management told me they’d provide low-cost childcare while I work, and turns out that care seems low-quality compared to what they provide for campers. Need advice on how to proceed—go forward with it unchanged, find alternative (more expensive) care, or stay home with my son and survive on one income for 2 months?

Saw an advertisement for an open role with the tagline "105k/yr full-time nanny position". Naturally, if I see six figures, I'm going to at least check it out. I'm in grad school but still open to the idea of career nannying for the right family.

So, I look at the job description. Three kids, all school-age and attending school during the day. Not weird until you look at the schedule, which amounts to a whopping 58 HOURS PER WEEK.

Now, why on earth would a family possibly need to employ a nanny for nearly 60 hours/week with 3 school-age children? Meanwhile, the description simply says that the family wants some "help" with household chores while the kids are in school, AND they would appreciate some "flexibility" with the schedule, with no specification as to whether that means potentially fewer or more hours.

While 105k/year sounds like a lot, it works out to roughly $35/hr. I currently get paid the same hourly wage as an afterschool nanny with no additional responsibilities outside of childcare and driving. I can't and won't work 60 hours a week, so I won't be applying. Regardless, my alarm bells were going off instantly. I'm not sure I'd apply even if I could handle that amount of working hours.

Interested to hear if other nannies also think this sounds like an insane job description? Would you apply?

My husband recently brought up the idea of sleep training our son. He’s 13 months old and sleeps through the night, but needs to be rocked for 15-20 minutes in order to fall asleep. His mom came to babysit the other night and I think he may have felt embarrassed, for lack of a better word, because she expressed surprise that she couldn’t just lay him down fully awake since our son doesn’t fall asleep independently.
I pushed back against the idea because I don’t mind rocking him to sleep, I enjoy having that closeness with him. He’s worried that if we don’t sleep train, our son will have trouble sleeping independently ever and will want to sleep in our bed/have one of us sleep in his bed, and he will eventually not be okay with that because he believes there’s an age at which that won’t be acceptable. Personally, idc if my son wants to sleep in our bed at any age, but I’m sure that may lead to some possible consequences to our husband/wife relationship if our child is constantly in our bed… so does he have a point? Am I misled in thinking that forgoing sleep training won’t have any significant impact on his future sleep habits?

Scientific research and anecdotal evidence both welcome!

Vent post because I’ve been feeling really sad about the state of our relationship recently.

It hasn’t been the same since I was pregnant and gave birth to our first child last spring. He walks on eggshells, and is just a completely different person compared to how he was when we were dating and engaged. He was confident, didn’t hold back or mince words with me if there was something that needed to be talked about. Now, if there’s a problem, it’s not spoken about unless I bring it up. When I do, he will often reveal that he’s been thinking about the issue too, but hasn’t said anything about it because he claims he can’t decide when is “the right time” to initiate a conversation.

We’ve had sex exactly 3 times in the past year since our child was born. When we talked about it the first time 4-5 months ago, he tells me he’s aware and wants it to change. Fast forward…. nothing ever happens. Not even a hint or a whisper. When we talk about it again, I tell him not to overthink it, just act on his desires—i.e. if you want to kiss me, hug me, etc., just do it, I’m not a freaking brown bear that you need to approach with caution. I even told him that if he’s nervous about performance issues, then we don’t have to do anything penetrative… we can cuddle, shower together, mutual m*sturbation, etc. This was news to him. I thought that would open up things, now that he was aware of other options. But no luck. A few days ago, he “tried” to initiate things by asking me if I wanted to “canoodle” (I kid you not, he actually used that word). I hate to admit it but I got the ick so bad. It turned me off so profoundly that my own husband is so obviously apprehensive to being affectionate towards me all of a sudden. I’ve never told him he needs to ask permission before touching me or initiating something. In our early days, there was passion and spontaneity, nothing seemed to hold him back. The attraction was mutual, we had great conversations and lots of fun together, so everything else seemed to come naturally.

Yes, postpartum wasn’t easy for me and I dealt with PPD/PPA. But I worked with a therapist/psychiatrist to get the help I needed and I still work with them to this day. Yes, I’ve gotten upset with him because I quickly became the “default parent” which was a role I never wanted to be put in. But I feel like because I continue to speak up when I feel like I need help, he acts like a hit dog. Like I’ve traumatized him to the point of retreating into this shell that now he is afraid to come out of. Am I just supposed to put up with certain things so as not to make him uncomfortable? He treats me like how you’d treat a roommate that you have to make peace with so you can make it through the rest of a lease period without going at each other. I feel abandoned, unattractive, and confused about how else I’m supposed to handle this. I can’t help that having the burden of being a good mother, a good student (I’m in grad school currently), a good employee at my job, and a good wife all at the same time stresses me out and I feel like the workload is unfairly tipped with him getting a lot more opportunities to decompress and relax than I do.

We are talking about doing couples counseling soon and I hope that will help us find some common ground again and remind us why we’re here and why we chose to make a vow to each other to get through all of life’s challenges together.