A dad got a sweet note from a fellow father after camping with his kids.
There are a lot of challenging things about being a parent; take your pick. The sleep deprivation, the overwhelming responsibility, the lack of free time. But truly, one of the hardest parts of being a parent is never being sure whether you're doing a good job or totally bombing it. If you're conscientious enough to even wonder if you're a good parent, you probably are, but parenting entails a million little choices and interactions, and there's always a lingering voice in your head saying, "What if you're really screwing this whole thing up?"
Reassurance and encouragement are always appreciated by parents, but not always received, which is why a note from one camping dad to another has people celebrating the kindness of anonymous strangers.
Someone on Yosemite Reddit thread shared a photo of a handwritten note with the caption, "To the man who left this thoughtful note on my windshield at Lower Pines Campground this weekend, I extend my heartfelt gratitude; your acknowledgment of my efforts to be a good father means a great deal to me."
The note reads:
"Bro,
I camped in the spot behind you last night. Let me just say, you are killing it as a dad. First off, I watched your wife guide you in as you backed up your trailer and nailed it on the first try without any yelling. Then your kids unloaded from the truck and were mild-mannered and well behaved. You told stories around the campfire and I had the pleasure of listening to the sounds of giggles and laughter.
From one dad to another, you are killing it. Keep it up.
P.S. Whatever you cooked for dinner smelled delicious!"
How often do we share these thoughts with strangers, even if we have them? And who wouldn't love to get a surprise bit of praise with specific examples of things we did right?
A handwritten note with the words "good job!" on itPhoto credit: Canva
So many people found the note to be a breath of fresh air and a good reminder to compliment people when we feel the urge:
"That would make any daddy's eyes water."
"It’s always nice, as a guy, to get a compliment."
"I complimented a guy's glasses at work (I'm also a guy, and btw they were really cool glasses, I wasn't just being nice) and now he keeps trying to tell me where he got his glasses and how I should get some. But I'm just having to be polite because I already have glasses and I'm not in the market. I finally had to tell him I'm not going to buy them lmao I just like them on him.
Made me feel like that's the first compliment he's had in years because he can't stop talking about it. Also I mainly liked the glasses because I think he's cute but he really thinks it's just the glasses haha jokes on him that cute bastard.""I was in the store with my wife and one of our 'adopted nephews' yesterday (we’re close friends with his parents and we’ve known him and his brother since they were newborns and 2yo, respectively). A woman came up to me at checkout while my wife was running out to the car and said 'I’m not sure what your family relationship is here, but I just have to tell you how nice and refreshing it is to hear all the laughter and joy from the 3 of you. You both seem like such a good influence on him and it warms my heart.' It’s such a small thing but as a dude, I can’t remember the last time someone gave me a compliment in public and it made my freaking day."
"10/10 letter. The and not yelling part gave me a good chuckle lol."
"We need so much more of men getting such heartfelt and sincere compliments. Thanks for sharing. ❤️"
A man smilingPhoto credit: Canva
"I’ve never considered leaving a note, but when I see a harmonious family with good parenting, it’s healing for me. My childhood was awful."
"Such an awesome compliment! Even though I don't have children myself, I like to remind my friends too that they're doing great & it brings them happy tears."
"This made me cry. I love that you are getting your 'flowers.' My dad sucked, I’m so glad you are one of the good ones."
"This made me cry too. It’s so hard to be a human. Let alone a parent. Getting a good job sticker every now and then really means a lot these days."
"I'm a big bearded guy and I would cry if I got this note. More people like this, please."
The best part of this story is that no one knows who the dad who wrote the note is, not even the dad who shared it. It wasn't written for clout or notoriety, it wasn't to get attention or make himself look good. No name or signature, just an anonymous act of kindness to uplift a stranger whether he needed it or not.
A dad with his kid on his shouldersPhoto credit: Canva
We all need to hear or read kind things said about us, and sometimes it means even more coming from an anonymous stranger who has nothing to gain by sharing. A good reminder to share it when you feel it—you never know how many people you may move and inspire.
This article originally appeared last year.
Sandra visiting E’s family in Georgia (2023)
Sandra McAnany isn’t one to sit on the sidelines. A 58-year-old grandmother from Wisconsin, McAnany spends her days teaching soft skills classes to adults and spending time with her family. Outside the classroom, however, she’s taken on a role that’s helping people in a big way: serving as a humanitarian parole sponsor and personally taking on the financial responsibility of supporting families fleeing from persecution, violence, and instability.
Since 2023, McAnany has welcomed 17 migrants—11 adults and six children through the CHNV humanitarian parole program, which allows individuals and families from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work temporarily in the United States with the support of an approved sponsor.
“Everyone has their own views and perspectives, but every person I sponsored is thriving and doing well here,” McAnany said.
McAnany didn’t know any of the parolees before sponsoring them, but she had a commitment to helping families from Venezuela specifically, hoping to reunite them with their families who were already living in the United States. After “praying a lot along the way” and communicating with the applicants through WhatsApp, she decided to apply as a sponsor and help them settle into the United States.
“I have a bedroom and a bathroom in my basement,” McAnany says. “My door is open and will always be open for any of the people I sponsored, if they ever have a need for housing.”
Sandra’s granddaughter, E’s daughter, and another friend at an indoor park (July 2025)
At the time, McAnany decided to volunteer as a sponsor to make friends and help other people through hardship. Now, her mission has grown: Seeing how humanitarian parole programs have changed her parole beneficiaries’ lives—as well as her own—for the better.
Humanitarian parole: A long history
Humanitarian parole programs are nothing new. Since 1952, both Democratic and Republican administrations have used humanitarian parole to provide a safer, lawful pathway for noncitizens to enter and live temporarily in the United States. In recent years, through different programs, people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries have been able to come to the U.S. to escape urgent crises in their own countries, such as political instability or war.
Coming to the United States through humanitarian parole is no easy feat. The process has its own strict criteria and involves extensive applications and vetting for both beneficiaries and their sponsors. Parolees don’t need to qualify for any other immigration benefit like asylum, but they need to meet the standard for humanitarian parole and successfully pass vetting requirements.
According to Refugees International, 532,000 people have been granted parole through the CHNV program.
A life-changing experience
From the moment she met her first parole beneficiaries at the airport—two families —McAnany already knew it would be a life-changing experience. “It immediately felt like family, like we were lifelong friends,” she said. But she could also sense that it was a culture shock for the parolees. On the way home from the airport, McAnany pulled into a nearby McDonald's and encouraged them to order dinner. Hearing the word “Big Mac,” the families smiled in recognition.
Despite the culture shock, McAnany’s parole beneficiaries had to adapt quickly to life in the United States. Once they were settled, McAnany worked “nonstop” to help the families acclimate to their new lives, answering questions about school and vaccinations while also helping them create resumes, search for jobs, and find English classes online.
It was through this process that McAnany realized just how resilient people could be, and was amazed “not only how hard it was for individuals to leave their loved ones behind, but the amount of work they did to come to the country and remain here.” McAnany also realized how fortunate she was to have her own family living nearby. “I can’t imagine any one of us leaving a country and being apart for an unknown length of time,” she said.
Eventually, and as circumstances changed—one of the parolees found a new job in another city, for example, and was able to move out. But no matter the length of time they spent with each other, McAnany says that with every parolee they formed a bond built for life. One woman, who she refers to as ‘E,’ has even become “like an adopted daughter.” McAnany has traveled to Georgia, where E now lives, three times to visit her.
Uncertain ground: What’s next for humanitarian parole programs
Despite being a critical part of immigration policy in the United States for the last 73 years, humanitarian parole programs are under threat. Immigrant justice nonprofits Justice Action Center and Human Rights First are currently suing the federal government to protect humanitarian parole programs and allow parole beneficiaries to remain in the country for the duration of their parole. McAnany is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
One of the ladies Sandra sponsored from Venezuela and her partner during Sandra’s first visit to meet her (December 2023)
Participating in the lawsuit has only further bolstered McAnany’s belief in and support for humanitarian parole programs. She hopes the lawsuit will be successful, she says, so that parole beneficiaries and their families can finally have some stability.
“We don’t know what the future is,” she says, “but I want to be optimistic and hopeful that every person I sponsored will be able to stay here safely in the U.S. and continue to thrive.”
This article is part of Upworthy’s “The Threads Between U.S.” series that highlights what we have in common thanks to the generous support from the Levi Strauss Foundation, whose grantmaking is committed to creating a culture of belonging.
Political polarization is out of control. It doesn't have to be this way.
What I'm going to share here may well be futile, and many people who need to hear this message and take it to heart probably won't. But America is at a precipice we've been hurtling toward for years, and if we don't do something now to slow the momentum, I fear we'll soon find ourselves plummeting over a proverbial cliff, one and all. It's worth an attempt to pull us back from the brink.
We all know that political polarization in the U.S. is reaching a fever pitch. What many people don't seem to recognize is how they individually play a role in it, especially those who are adamant that the "other side" is to blame for the division. As a lifelong political independent, it's been terrifying to watch my fellow Americans become more and more entrenched in hyper-partisanship, seemingly unaware of how they themselves are contributing to the problem, simply by allowing themselves to be pulled further into the partisan binary.
We can't divide America into "left" and "right." Photo credit: Canva
Democrats say Republicans are the problem. Republicans say Democrats are the problem. The vast majority of us absentmindedly use black-and-white ideological terminology that line up with our political parties to describe our fellow Americans—liberal or conservative, left or right, red or blue—as if 342 million people fit neatly into two political/ideological boxes. As a result, many Americans have found a home and an identity in those boxes, and unfortunately, some have built them into fortresses from which to shoot at the other side—figuratively and literally.
But no matter how people feel about one box or the other, neither of them is really the problem that brought us here. The problem is the premise that they are built on, which is that there are two opposing sides in the first place. It was inevitable that partisanship in a two-party system would eventually leads to an intractable division featuring extreme, binary thinking pushed by those who benefit from that polarization. The "other side" isn't just different, it's depraved. The 'other side" isn't just misguided, it's malicious. The "other side" isn't just wrong, it's evil. This kind of thinking is a feature, not a bug.
George Washington tried to warn us about the perils of partisanship. Giphy
George Washington tried to warn us about this in 1796 when he said that the "spirit of party" was America's "worst enemy" and would eventually lead us to our demise. We're right there, right now. Partisanship has been fully weaponized by those seeking and wielding power, pitting Americans against Americans, convincing them that the "other side" isn't just wrong, but evil. ("But the other side really is evil!" you might be thinking. Thank you for proving the point. The "other side" says exactly the same thing.) The walls of those political and ideological boxes have gotten so high and so thick that we've lost the ability to see one another's humanity.
Many things have gone into how we got here, of course, and there's plenty of blame to be tossed around. But instead of finger pointing when we talk about our polarization problem, what if we were to look inward and own our own individual part in it, whatever that might be?
I would love to invite every American of every persuasion to take a pause, zoom out, and honestly engage with these self-reflection questions:
Do I tend to label people as liberal/left or conservative/right based on what I know about their beliefs?
Do I assume a certain political party affiliation based on what someone looks like/how they dress/where they live?
Do I describe states and cities as "blue" or "red" and make judgments about those places based on those labels?
Do I use generalized terms like "the left" or "the right" to describe large swaths of the American population?
Does the media I watch or listen to speak in those binary terms? Is one used positively and one used negatively?
Partisanship is divisive in its very nature.Photo credit: Canva
Do I check multiple sources to find what's true before I react or form an opinion about something I see on social media?
Do I seek out a variety of commentary to genuinely try to understand different perspectives?
Do I contact my legislators when I want to see a change in policy, or do I just argue with people on social media about it?
Do I recognize when people are debating in an effort to seek truth and when they're using rhetorical tricks to "win" an argument?
Am I spending more time engaging with people online than I am in real life?
Do I pay more attention to the extreme voices on the political spectrum than to the moderate ones?
Am I aware of how social media algorithms affect what I see and am exposed to?
Do I see how the extreme element of the "side" I most align with is being used to paint my political persuasion in a negative light?
Do I see how the same thing is being done with the extreme element on the other "side"?
Do I acknowledge when someone from my "side" shares misinformation? Do I call it out?
There''s b.s. all over the political spectrum. Giphy
Do I think of a large portion of my fellow Americans as enemies or adversaries? Why do I view them that way?
Do I want to see my fellow Americans as enemies or adversaries? How can I see them differently?
Am I suggesting we stop using labels like left/right, liberal/conservative, etc. altogether? As much as possible, yes. These labels barely help us understand one another anymore—most often they are used to stereotype people or to take one person's objectionable action and ascribe it to the entire "side." So much of our current situation is a result of the extreme generalization of Americans into two groups, when in reality, very few people actually think, believe, live, and act within the confines of however those group labels are defined. Most of us know this intellectually, of course, but it's so easy to be pulled by language to one extreme or the other in a polarized political climate, especially via social media.
That polarization is purposeful, by the way. Giving people a political identity and an "other side" to fight against is one of the easiest ways to gain political power. Unfortunately, it's also playing with fire. (And if you think only one party does it, think again. It's just much easier to spot when it's done by people we disagree with.)
We can't solve our problems using the same means by which they were created. We can't change the politics that weaponizes partisanship if we ourselves are furthering and fueling it with partisanized thinking and rhetoric. We can't respond to political and ideological extremism with more extremism, even if we think our extremism is justified. Literally every extremist thinks their extremism is justified. Black-and-white, us vs. them thinking is extremism. It's becoming so common, we're getting numb to it.
None of us is immune here—this stuff is designed to tap our most primal instincts—but we have to fight it in ourselves. When we feel a push or pull toward binary extremes (which is easily mistaken for believing we're on the righteous side of things) we can consciously pull ourselves back to a place where we see one another's humanity before everything else.
I'm not both-sidesing here or implying that there aren't any legitimate issues with any particular party/side/ideology. What I'm saying is that partisanized discourse has become a zero sum game and too many Americans are willingly being used as pawns in it. While we can't control what other people do, we can reflect on the part we as individuals play and dedicate ourselves to being part of the solution instead of contributing to the problem.
Of course, stepping away from political labels and partisanzied discourse won't instantly solve all of our issues as a nation. But if enough Americans refuse to play the partisan game and reject the binary rhetoric of left/right, liberal/conservative, red/blue, Democrat/Republican, perhaps we can help prevent the U.S. from plunging into the dark, dangerous chasm we've found ourselves at the brink of.
It's worth a shot, at least.
7th grade students guessed what hobbies 40-year-olds have and the answers are hilarious.
Like it or not, kids will tell you what they really think. Their naive honesty is refreshing, hilarious, and at times, a little bit rough on the self-esteem of the adults around them. Regardless, they don't shy away from telling it like it is, or at least how they see it.
That's why 7th grade teacher Shane Frakes loves to frequently poll his students for their opinions on, well, almost anything.
Going by @7thgradechronicles on TikTok, Frakes regularly goes viral for his hilarious content and observations about his Gen Alpha students. But more than just building a platform and side hustle for his own gain, Frakes makes great use of his social media savvy to keep his kids energized and engaged in the daily lessons.
In a recent video, he asked his students to weigh in on this question: "What do you think people in their 40s do for fun?!"
Im Old Tv Shows GIF by PBS SoCal Giphy
The responses are not for the faint of heart. Here's the list the kids came up with:
Watch the whole video for a few fun easter eggs and unfortunate illustrations:
@7thgradechronicles Back In My Day 😆🥲 #teachersoftiktok #teacher #teachertok #middleschool #middleschoolteacher
Commenters in their 40s wanted to be offended, but had to admit that the kids had them pegged.
"Home goods is accurate," one wrote.
"I needed this laugh right before bed and I see no wrong answers," a commenter said.
"40 and I scored fairly high on this," said another.
"The accuracy. I feel attacked," added another user.
"These are more accurate than I would've guessed," another summed up perfectly.
Millennials have been called the Peter Pan generation because of their apparent delays in "growing up."
They look younger, seem younger, and even feel younger than a lot of their predecessors. It's a well-documented phenomenon, in fact. Part of it has to do with cultural and societal factors that have delayed major life milestones. Millennials came of age in a time where earning high-pay in their careers, getting married, and buying a house were more difficult than they ever were for their parents. Many people in the "Peter Pan generation" are just beginning to really get on their feet in their 30s.
Millennials also hold a deep fear of aging, more so than Gen X does. That may drive them to cling to styles, cultural references, and other preferences from their younger days. But it's not weird, no. This blurring of the lines that define what a generation is has actually been pretty seamless.
"A millennial parent can post a TikTok dance with their kids, binge Stranger Things, or geek out over a Marvel premiere without feeling like they’re stepping out of their lane," says Stacy Jones, a pop culture expert and founder of Hollywood Branded. "Earlier generations were pigeonholed into what their generation was supposed to be. Millennials are defining that instead. That cross-generational cultural participation blurs what 'age' looks and feels like. And it doesn’t stop there - today’s 50-year-old doesn’t look or act like the 50-year-old of yesterday. Wellness, skincare, acceptance of Botox, fitness, and social media have redefined what 'middle age' even means, pushing the whole curve of youthfulness upward."
Jones definitely has a point about how people look; there must be something in the water. This is what a 40 year old looked like just a few decades ago. No offense to the great Kelsey Grammer, but by today's standard, the style and hair would have most people peg him to be in his (late) 50s.
Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Frasier Crane in 1996By US Treasury Dept. Public Domain
All the more reason that Mr. Frakes' students' list is absolutely hysterical. If there's anyone bound to be playfully offended by being prematurely aged, it's us millennials. But the fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, we are getting older and settling down. Many of us truly do enjoy shopping for home decor and playing a round of low-impact pickleball.
What the kids don't understand is that we're still rocking the hottest music of 2001 and wearing our baseball cap backwards while we do it.
