Be careful to consider whether your experience is a typical one, versus an unusually good or bad outlier anecdote. While an outlier experience may give an idea of what the best or worst case outcome is, assuming that it is typical could be a mistake and could lead to inaccurate stereotyping. Note also that outlier instances are often the most memorable, so stereotypes are often based on outliers rather than typical examples.
For example, if you read on these forums posters complaining about how their $250k+ incomes are just “middle class” and will not get college financial aid for their kids, but they cannot afford college list prices, and they resent the idea that kids from poor and actual middle income families get financial aid, you may assume that this is a typical attitude among those with $250k+ incomes. But that may not necessarily be the case, although it may look like it because of the visibility of such complaining on these forums (those who can comfortably pay list price for their kids’ college are not the ones who stand out complaining).
Yes, great point. My hope is that the process of understanding another’s predicament will stick with my kids rather than a particular bias toward all green Martians.
Excellent point - and when traveling to get experience it’s far more useful to leave the resorts behind. One learns far more interacting with folks in everyday settings IME. One thing I learned very quickly is most young kids don’t give a hoot what state/country one is from or the color of their skin if there’s a playground or soccer ball involved. They just become friends and play! Even language barriers seem to be able to be figured out.
One of our friends mused that one doesn’t really have to travel to different places to enjoy a resort - they all look pretty much the same with similar amenities, etc. They could probably build one inside a mall as has been done with amusement/water parks, etc. If one never leaves the resort it’s very similar to saying one has been to “X” because they landed in the airport for a few hours and interacted with employees there.