SmallBoats.com wrote:
they want to live.

And I feel the same way. The problem comes when you expect someone who
does not, to live it. Like expecting your guest to "make some food"
when you have nothing in your cabinet at all written in english, or
expecting a nearly 50yo office worker to keep up a 6 mile speed walk
with 60 pounds of suitcases, walk 30 yards ahead, and complain that
someone that age "should be ableto keep up"... and not offer to carry
one of the bags.. Tell the mouse that living in a basement apt, with
no TV, recognizable food, no microwave, no windows.. only NPR on the
radio that "you are too old to be homesick". It was not the minimalist
lifestyle that was the problem, it was the refusal to accept that
others, especially guests, might not be as comfortale with it. It was
the idea that her lifestyle was superior, and my girls should just
like it, and live it, right then, to the point of being condecending
when they did not understand.. Elite liberalism, at it's best.. I love
my kid, hope she comes around soon, but for now her total intolerance
physically hurt my wife, and totally turned the mouse off to higher
education...


If you are describing your eldest daughter's lifestyple, it certainly
does not sound like "elite liberalism" to me. What is sounds like it
mental illness. I doubt your daughter is a modern-day transcendentalist,
trying for a remake of "Walden."

I also doubt her education at The American University was the cause. If
your younger daughter thinks that is the case, you and your wife ought
to steer her in the right direction, because without a "higher
education," she's going nowhere unless she gets into a union
apprenticeship program with the electricians or plumbers.