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• I let my kids take over the grocery self-checkout.
• What started as chaos turned into teamwork and independence.
• Grocery shopping became a way to teach practical life skills.

I have always loved grocery shopping with my kids. From the time they were babies and toddlers, I loved putting them in the cart and chatting about what I was buying. It always feels a bit chaotic, but it’s always been one of my favorite things to do with them.

Now that they’re older and have graduated from riding in the cart to walking beside it, I’ve looked for ways to get them more involved in the process. They would help choose produce or grab things off the shelf and put them in the cart.

But then the day came when they wanted to start scanning groceries at the self-checkout. There are three of them, and the thought of them all grabbing items out of the cart and scrambling to scan things seemed like a lot.

But one day I thought, “What the heck, let’s see what happens.”

Things got wild

The first time we did this, it was understandably chaotic. My son (the oldest) insisted on scanning, and the younger girls wanted to scan as well, so there was a lot of grabbing for items and running from the cart to the scanner. Groceries were tossed haphazardly in bags.

I was trying to keep track and make sure everything was actually scanned, and one kid started looking at the candy shelf near the checkout.

When we left, I was sweating. But the kids were so happy. You’d think they had just gotten to drive a spaceship. But no, they literally did a basic grown-up task that many actually dread.

They fell into their own roles

After a few times, they fell into a rhythm that I had no hand in figuring out. Each started to handle their own task while I kept a watchful eye on the cart and made sure everything got scanned. The oldest and the middle work on scanning, even talking to each other to make sure nothing is left behind, or adjusting based on who can pick it up (my son takes care of the heavier items).

Once the item is scanned, it’s passed to the little one, who puts it neatly in the bag or box. When everything’s done, she gets to use the debit card to pay, navigating the prompts on the screen like a pro. It’s a special moment when, as a parent, you can step back and watch your kids figure something out on their own — or better yet, with their siblings.

When I asked them what they liked about helping at the checkout, my son said, “I’m not bored. If I wasn’t helping, I would just be standing and doing nothing, and it’s boring.” It gives them a sense of purpose that’s really fun to see.

We’ve taken it a few steps further

A few years ago, I created a Master Grocery List. It’s laminated, so I use a dry-erase marker to mark the items we need each week. Since the kids have gotten more involved in shopping — and have more opinions on what they’d like to eat — I moved the list to a spot on the fridge that’s easy to access. Now, if they use the last of something, realize they need something for school, or have a supper idea, they’ll add it themselves.

Since helping with groceries has been a theme in our home lately, I decided to go one step further and hand the phone to my middle child so she could place a pickup order herself. She had the list handy, and I told her the budget. She had a blast and did a really great job, even recommending a smaller size coffee when she saw the prices to make sure she stayed within the budget.

It can be hard to take a step back, but it’s worth it

Part of the fun of raising little humans is teaching them how to do daily tasks and watching them learn how to navigate the world. Basics like doing laundry, loading the dishwasher, and shopping take time for them to figure out, but they end up with a sense of pride and accomplishment as they learn. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

The first time the kids took over at the checkout, I found myself reaching to help multiple times. But given a few extra seconds, they typically figured things out on their own. I’ll still step in if necessary, but I try to wait for them to ask for help rather than just jumping in and taking over.

They’ve made mistakes, and I’ve had to help, but at the end of the shopping trip, they have a sense of accomplishment and ownership. It’s also good for me to step back and let them do so. Up next, I’ll hand off the list in the store and see how it goes.

• Sundar Pichai is scheduled to speak at Stanford University’s commencement next month.
• Students have booed several execs this year for talking about AI in their speeches.
• Pichai is one of the leaders of the AI boom, but says people are “rightfully” anxious.

Tech CEOs have a lot to manage, from earnings calls and board meetings to competition and employee morale.

Now, in the age of AI, they also need a “boo strategy.”

This year, graduates have heckled some executives during commencement speeches after the corporate leaders made optimistic comments about AI, reflecting a growing anxiety among students about to enter the job market.

Students booed former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the University of Arizona, while Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta drew backlash at Middle Tennessee State University after he discussed AI’s impact on music and media.

So the hosts of the tech podcast “Hard Fork” recently asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai what his “boo strategy” will be when he gives the commencement speech at Stanford University next month.

For Pichai, the challenge is real: He leads one of the companies driving the AI boom at a time when many graduates worry the technology could evaporate the jobs they’re about to pursue.

“I’ve always been extraordinarily optimistic about the next generation,” he told the hosts. AI, he said, doesn’t change that. “My goal would be to share my experiences, and that’s what I’m looking to do.”

“These graduates are actually both going to be a big part of driving that progress and also dealing with the impact,” he added, referring to AI.

It’s possible Pichai will be met with a more receptive crowd at Stanford, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley and home to some of the most talked-about AI courses in the country.

Still, the perception of AI among the public is low. A Pew Research Center study found that about half of Americans felt the increased prevalence of AI in their daily lives made them feel “more concerned than excited.” Many Americans across the country, meanwhile, are resisting new data centers in their communities, which are essential to powering AI products like chatbots.

At least a dozen major companies have cited increased efficiency from AI as a factor in their decision to lay off employees this year. And AI has made job-seeking more difficult by prolonging the interview process. The unemployment rate for new grads reached a 4-year high at the start of 2026.

Pichai told “Hard Fork” that people are “rightfully” anxious about what sort of future the technology will create. “Humans aren’t evolved to process that much change,” he said, adding that the scale of the change is unlike anything the world has seen.

Earlier this month at Carnegie Mellon University’s commencement, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made the case that AI will be a net positive for humanity, including for those newly starting their careers.

“Now it’s your time to realize your dreams,” he told graduates. “The timing could not be more perfect.”

• Guadalupe Galindo-Nevarez and her family moved from California to Texas in 2022.
• Life is more affordable in Texas, but they couldn’t get used to the weather.
• Despite higher living costs, the family is planning to move back to California as soon as possible.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Guadalupe Galindo-Nevarez, 63, who moved from California to El Paso, Texas, with her husband and daughter in 2022 and now plans to move back to California. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in El Paso, but I ended up going to college in Sacramento and living there for 47 years.

A couple of years ago, I started feeling homesick. I wanted to move back to El Paso, be closer to my family, and raise my teenage daughter in a different environment. My husband and I both thought Texas could be a good fit for her because it has high school programs that allow students to earn their associate degree before graduating.

In December 2022, we moved from Natomas, a neighborhood in Sacramento, to El Paso. We bought a brand-new four-bedroom, three-bathroom home for $250,000. Compared with California’s expensive housing market, it felt like an incredible bargain.

Texas’s lower cost of living has been great. Groceries and dining out are noticeably cheaper, and gas prices were as low as $2.34 per gallon before they started rising because of the Iran war. The lack of state income tax is also huge.

But while we’ve enjoyed those advantages, we’ve come to realize there are a lot of trade-offs to living in Texas — and for us, they outweigh many of the benefits. We once thought living in El Paso would be a permanent relocation, but now we’re happily making our way back to California.

Life in Texas isn’t what we thought it would be

When I told my family I was moving to El Paso, they were excited. They kept telling us, “Everything is so much cheaper and better here,” and they were right — for the most part.

El Paso really is a beautiful place with very kind people. It sits along the border, near Mexico and New Mexico, so there’s a unique blend of cultures. I wish more people knew about El Paso’s culture and its incredible, authentic Mexican food.

I was used to living in El Paso because I grew up here, but it has been much harder for my daughter and husband to adjust.

When we first moved here, my daughter immediately said, “I don’t like it.” She started school and made a couple of friends, but she said a lot of people treated her like an outsider.

She’s very happy we’re going back to California. She’s interested in pursuing a degree in molecular biology and is hoping to get into UC Davis.

My husband was over Texas within the first two weeks of us moving here. One of the biggest adjustments for him has been the weather.

In El Paso, summers regularly get above 100 degrees, and the winters can also be surprisingly harsh. Temperatures can dip to 18 degrees, which is much colder than what we are used to in California.

The wind in El Paso has also been challenging. We didn’t do enough research before moving, especially about the neighborhood where we bought our home. It’s a nice, brand-new neighborhood, but there’s a lot of open land behind us, so the wind feels even stronger. Just last week, winds reached 41 mph, tearing the curtains off our pergola. Dust storms are also common, especially in the spring.

We’re moving back to California as soon as possible

We are very sports-oriented and try to do a lot of activities as a family. In California, we would go to Monterey Bay, Los Angeles, Dodger games, and other baseball games. But in El Paso, there just isn’t as much to do, especially for a 16-year-old.

There are places to hike, but overall, it the activities here feel much more limited. I find myself looking forward to visiting places like San Francisco, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Monterey Bay again.

My husband worked for the State of California for 30 years, so we have excellent insurance in California. My medical treatments will be a lot more affordable for us there.

We know we’re probably going to have a higher mortgage when we move back to California, but the property taxes in Texas are much higher than we expected, so we’re comfortable with that trade-off.

Right now, we’re looking into buying my oldest daughter’s home in Sacramento. She has been looking for a bigger home for her family for about eight months, so our timing depends on when she finds something. But we know we’re going back.

We call this whole experience a learning lesson. If we ever move again, I will definitely do more research. We should have looked more closely at the neighborhood, the weather, the medical benefits, and the overall lifestyle before making such a big decision.

Did you move to a new state, only to realize it wasn’t the right fit? We want to hear from you. Email reporter Alcynna Lloyd at alloyd@businessinsider.com to share your story.

• My best friend and I, who are in our 40s, joined my parents on vacation in Florida.
• Our multigenerational trip felt nostalgic, and it was nice to spend time together as a group.
• Discovering new places and visiting old ones was a blast, too, and I wish we’d done this sooner.

My best friend and I leave a trail of sand from our day at the beach as we hurriedly run ahead of my parents, beach cruisers haphazardly parked outside the rental.

We’re on a mission to hide a disheveled Barbie doll named Trixie (a victim of a DIY haircut long ago), somewhere hilariously unexpected in the house.

It’s a favorite pastime of ours — and the best part is the suspense while we await the discovery, which prompts uncontrollable laughter when my mom or dad finds Trixie posing in the microwave.

This was just one of our staple summer vacation antics that my best friend and I had been performing since meeting in the last two flute seats of band class at 12 years old.

Fast forward 30-plus years, and the only thing that’s changed is that we’re grown adults with careers and children (hers: human, mine: canine), and we’ve swapped soda for cocktails.

These days, I’m based in New York and she’s in Texas, so we mostly only see each other once a year on a specially chosen annual trip.

This time, instead of relaxing in Jamaica or road-tripping through Arizona, we decided to hijack a long weekend of my parents’ monthlong vacation on the Florida Gulf Coast.

The trip was a reunion 13 years in the making that took us right back to the good old days

Mom and Dad, both in their early 70s, were happy to oblige and let us 43-year-olds join them.

Growing up, Erin was like a bonus daughter to my parents — she spent weeks on end at my house during summer break, never missed a Friday pizza night, and always joined our family vacations.

But with life taking us both to various corners of the world, it had been 13 years since they last saw her.

So, when the opportunity arose to crash my parents’ vacation in Siesta Key, we chose to make the reunion finally happen as our annual trip, leaning into multigenerational travel with nostalgic flair.

The two of us brought along matching pool floats and all of our old shenanigans, including Trixie’s understudy, Tricia, courtesy of Erin’s young daughters.

As soon as we arrived, it was just like our beach jaunts of yesteryear, all of us under one roof in a house rental, sharing meals, laughs, sunshine, and for Erin and me, a room with bunkbeds.

Each morning, we chatted with my parents over coffee before hitting the beach to lounge and search for seashells like we used to, reminiscing about that one time my mom allowed us to bring 92 of them home, for some reason.

Between the great company and mix of old and new favorites, we had an amazing time

Dinners were spent listening to live music with a bowl of clam chowder at our favorite haunt, the dollar-bill-ridden Siesta Key Oyster Bar, and discovering new spots like Casa Masa, where the margaritas on tap and housemade blue-corn tortilla chips still have me swooning.

Then, we’d round out the evening with card games at the house, snickering around the dining table while we waited for my parents to notice Trixie hanging upside down from the light fixture above us.

As a little surprise, I organized a sunset beach picnic for us girls, and it was such a great way to share a memorable experience with my mom and best friend.

My dad picking us up for our ride home after we wined and dined on the beach was the nostalgic cherry on top.

Although my career as a travel writer allows me to venture to far-flung places (sometimes with Erin in tow), the slower pace and walk down memory lane with my parents in Siesta Key made this one of the most fulfilling trips I’ve had in a long time.

Going back to basics turned out to be the exact type of vacation I needed, with quality time well spent.

I left with a slew of special memories made with some of my favorite people all together in one place, and sure of one thing: We won’t be going another 13 years before doing this again.

• Trump’s new policy could force many immigrants to apply for green cards from outside the US.
• USCIS may grant exceptions for immigrants who offer economic benefits or serve national interests.
• Experts say Trump’s policy could disrupt mixed-status families and long-term visa holders.

President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown is triggering alarm, confusion, and fierce debate among lawyers, advocates, and many in the business world who rely on visa holders for skilled labor.

On Friday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would grant “adjustment of status” — the process that allows some immigrants already in the US to apply for a green card without leaving the country — “only in extraordinary circumstances,” potentially forcing many applicants to return to their home countries and wait abroad while their cases are processed.

While a USCIS spokesperson told Business Insider that applicants who “provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest” may still qualify for exemptions, it remains unclear how broadly the administration plans to enforce the new restrictions or how many immigrants could ultimately be affected.

The administration has framed the move as a return to the original intent of immigration law, while critics warn it could upend the lives of foreign workers, mixed-status families, and long-term visa holders who have relied on the process for decades.

Here’s what smart people are saying about the sweeping policy shift.

Blake Scholl

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO at Boom Supersonic, a company developing a supersonic airliner, said on X that he understands why “we don’t want people to come to the US to be criminals” and “mooch on welfare.”

“But I don’t understand why we make it harder for motivated, ambitious, hardworking people to come to the land of opportunity,” Scholl added.

Nick Davidov

Nick Davidov, the founder of Davidovs Venture Collective, a VC that supports repeat AI founders at the seed level, called the changes in the green card application rules “the biggest bullshit move by DHS in its history” and the “worst imaginable way to disrupt important work for the country.”

“So everyone on a O1 or H1B visa would have to stop working legally in the US, go back to their country and wait for years of backlog?” Davidov wrote on X on Friday. “This includes top scientists in our universities, founders of billion dollar companies.”

Davidov added in subsequent tweets that Iranians and Ukrainians can’t really return to their home countries for safety reasons, and that immigrants such as Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Sergey Brin have created some of the country’s most valuable companies.

Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng, AI entrepreneur and cofounder of Coursera, called asking green card applicants to apply outside the US only “a capricious attack on legal immigration.”

“It will hurt families, leave us with fewer doctors, teachers and scientists, and hurt American competitiveness in AI,” Ng wrote on X on Friday.

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and a prominent Trump critic in Silicon Valley, wrote on X that the DHS’s new policies are a “harmful move for tech, business, and America broadly.”

“Does this mean AI Researchers, employees, and students will now have to leave the country and wait through a backlog process to continue their work?” Hoffman wrote.

Yvette Clarke

Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York, called the new green card policies “a disgrace.”

“It will rip talented, hardworking immigrants out from America and our economy, congest an already overburdened backlog, and further break an already broken immigration system,” said Clarke on X.

“And that’s by design,” Clarke added. “This administration has made the pain of immigrants a priority, and that won’t change until there’s no one left to hurt.”

David J. Bier

David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called for new leadership of USCIS in a series of posts on X on Friday, where he said that the new policies show “total malice against the applicants.”

“The policy is a radical expansion of DHS’s ‘quiet quitting’ on legal immigration that has been going on for months,” Bier also wrote in a blog post. “Now USCIS’s new memorandum details a plan for mass denials. USCIS has gone from the ‘quiet-quit’ to walking out on 1.2 million green card applicants.”

“Forcing green card applicants to leave will render many green card applicants ineligible because, when they leave the United States, they will trigger the 3- or 10-year bars on receiving an immigrant visa based on accrual of unlawful presence,” Bier added.

Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun, a pioneer in AI research and the former Chief AI Scientist at Meta, had a very curt and perplexed response to the change in green card policy.

“Why?” wrote the ACM Turing Award Laureate on X, who reposted an article detailing the DHS’s announcement.

LeCun was born in France and immigrated to the US in the late 1980s.

Garry Tan

Garry Tan, the CEO of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, called the new guidance “bad and misguided.”

“We need to keep smart people in the country to build the future and build tomorrow’s businesses that employ millions of people,” he wrote on X.

Ash Jogalekar

Ash Jogalekar, a Microsoft senior project manager working on agentic AI, described the memorandum as “self-sabotage” in an X post on Friday.

“As a scientist and immigrant who loves this country, I cannot think of worse ways to cripple American scientific competitiveness while other countries surge ahead,” Jogalekar wrote. “It is completely pointless. Between the funding cuts and rash, irrational policies like these, China could not have done worse if they had decided to sabotage science in the U.S.”

• My husband and I retired to our Oregon farm full time.
• We now share the farmhouse with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson.
• Multi-generational living has brought both chaos and deep joy.

My husband and I bought our farm in Banks, Oregon, 25 miles outside Portland, in 2017. From the start, we dreamed of retiring there and envisioned multiple generations of our family living on the property.

We had plenty of room with acreage, a four-bedroom farmhouse, and a barn. My daughter Maria and her husband Stephen moved to the farm where she ran her horse business while my husband Scot and I lived in Montana, following a job for him.

Retirement took longer than we planned. And we never envisioned living in a multigenerational home.

My daughter paid us rent

We longed for the ease of country living and wanted to help our daughter launch her business: training horses, teaching people to ride, and caring for 20 horses. Maria and Stephen paid rent and did the heavy lifting of farm life. They fixed whatever broke (pipes in winter, the tractor in summer), maintaining the barn and property.

Scot and I loved the space — a hay field, pond, garden, horses, ducks, a white fence, and a red barn that reminded me of the best part of my girlhood. I especially loved a barn in the rain, listening to the plink, plink against its metal roof.

A year and a half ago, when Scot finished his last job, retirement became a reality. We moved to our farm full time, sharing the farmhouse with our daughter, son-in-law, and later, their baby. We planned to build a second small home. Nothing fancy. But the construction bids we received were astronomical. While an even smaller second home than what we dreamed is hopefully in our future, four adults plus one grandbaby under one roof was just right.

We loved cuddling our grandchild

Living with an 8-month-old baby who wasn’t ours was a joy. We cuddled, rocked, read, and sang to him while he slept through the night and passed him back when he was cranky. I took him on stroller walks in the mornings when Maria fed the horses. We talked to the ducks and listened for the barn owl. When he squealed with delight, I was one big grin. Living with our offspring lifted the quiet of our empty nest years. I was absolutely in my happy place.

Of course, there were bumps.

Sometimes the space felt crowded, and I needed more privacy. Most days, the German Shepherds’ hair (they should be called German “Shedders”) clung to everything. Occasionally, dirty dishes waited in the sink too long; shared spaces were messier than I preferred. I had to give up being a control freak. If I needed quiet, I’d read in our bedroom or write at my desk. I’d step outside and remember why we bought the property: to live closer to our loved ones and to the earth.

When I witnessed Maria and Stephen being tender and silly with their son, when Stephen and I cooked dinner together, and when I stood under a star-splashed sky, the inconveniences of us all living in one home felt trivial. I was grateful we made this move.

I grew up living with multiple generations

It’s natural to me to have family on one property. I partially grew up on a family ranch in Tenino, Washington, with grandparents, parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Each family had their own trailer — single-wides with tinny front doors and thin walls. I shared a room with my two sisters in bunk beds stacked three high, me in the middle bunk.

I spent weekends and chunks of summers on that ranch, romping with my posse of sisters and cousins, riding horses, swimming in the icy river, teasing chickens, and building forts out of hay bales in the red barn. I watched calves, colts/fillies, and piglets being born. Countless hours were spent roaming in the woods, talking to fairies, following my imagination. I got to be myself in dusty Wranglers and mud-covered Justin cowboy boots. The Bar P, as it was called, balanced out living in the suburbs with all its rules and the ways I was expected to be a polite girl. The ranch was freedom.

Half a century later, my husband and I created our own multi-generational farm.

My son, daughter-in-law, and 2-year-old grandson live in Southern California and visit when they can. We’ll make room for them if they want farm life too.

Last summer, my son and his family stayed with us, soon after my daughter’s son was born. While my 2-year-old grandson fed the ducks and “drove” the tractor, my daughter nursed her newborn, my son-in-law grilled delicious burgers, and my son told the best stories — my heart boomed. I thought of my grandparents gathering us all around the picnic table or the campfire, and understood to the bone why they cherished having their progeny together. How ranch time was bliss time for them, like it was for me now. How freedom is being outdoors with my family, with room to ponder the sky and dream.