Post what you're thinking right now.

[Lucifer]

I know too many who are in essence killing themselves to stay in a dysfunctional family for the sake of kids, though.

QFT.  and that sort of thing fucks up everybody in the family - spouses, kids and even "peripherals", like friends.

in my experience of kids and families (from twenty years of teaching/counselling etc.), kids are resilient enough to deal with breaks and splits, but can really live without the sham of two people trying to maintain what is essentially a complete lie of a relationship. 

i've had to counsel and/or work with kids whose behaviour has gone fray bentos more often because their parents are staying together and fighting/not speaking etc. than because their parents have split up.  and the counselling the latter generally seems to take a shorter time.  in effect, it's the "big trauma, but over relatively quickly" versus the "insidious, ongoing trauma, which seems to have no end."  i bleieve the damage done is greater in the latter case, too.

[odeon]

I'm not exactly speaking from experience, but I would guess that if both parents are mature about not using the kids as insult-messengers or emotional dumping grounds, the kids are probably a lot better off than if the adults stayed together in a hostile environment for the sake of a warped commitment. That the harm to the kids has more to do with the parents' individual maturity levels than whether or not they stay together.

True.

[odeon]

OMG I'm tired.

[Lucifer]

OMG I'm tired.

time for bed, said zebedee.

no, not that sort of bed, you crazed beast. 

oh, i dunno know... 

[DirtDawg]

OMG I'm tired.

Me, too.

I'm fucking exhausted from work, but I'm going into the pool with the kids if they ever get their swim gear on.

I am prompting them, but they are both in their own little worlds. I really should try harder to pull them out, I suppose.

They will benefit, if I can just break off the taproot growing out of my arse and into the chair.
 

[odeon]

OMG I'm tired.

time for bed, said zebedee.

no, not that sort of bed, you crazed beast. 

oh, i dunno know... 

[Parts]

Dreading the thought of having to work in an attic tomorrow

[GalileoAce]

Most houses in Aus don't have attics. Some do, but most don't.

[Pyraxis]

What do they do with the space? Or do they have flat roofs?

[GalileoAce]

Some have flat roofs, but the space is empty, there's insulation in there, but the space would be inadequate to serve as an attic.

[GalileoAce]

In an attic there's walls (as in inner walls) right?
In aussie houses there's no walls, you can see the roofing tiles or 'tin roof' from the inside.

[Peter]

Attics here (we call them lofts) don't normally have internal walls, and may or may not have flooring to cover the insulation.  Sometimes they're converted into proper rooms, but space tends to be limited due to the low sloping ceilings.  The previous owner of this house added some internal walls to our loft to create a small room, but access is via an odd wooden ladder in a closet and it's pretty cramped, so we just use it for storage.

[Pyraxis]

It always annoys me when cheap bulk "rich" housing is built over here with huge steeply sloping roofs because they make pretty peaks or something, and then the space inside isn't developed. You could fit whole apartments in some of those roofs.

[Peter]

More films and programs should have hot female main characters with autistic traits and a penchant for kicking ass.

[DirtDawg]

I would totally accept them.