snail-is-wired

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internet friends are kinda like illegally downloaded friends. you don’t get the physical copy but you still get all the great content

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do y’all remember before direct messages tumblr had a dumbass ask limit of 10 per hour and communication was impossible until they introduced dumbass fan mail and we were basically sending telegraphs back in forth trying to communicate those were…dark times

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When kids are trying to explain a problem they are having to you, you need to ask questions. Kids often don't have the words that they need to explain what is going on. So, they substitute in words that they do know that are as close as possible. If you take what they say at face value, you can sometimes entirely miss the actual problem.

A recent example is a kid, ten years old, I know who kept saying that their problem is that they "get bored" when reading. I've been helping by recommending books and other material relevant to their interests to their parents, but it didn't seem to work. So, I came over, sat down with the kid, and asked them to read as much of a short story as they could before they got bored.

They could read about sixty or so words before they were unable to focus on the text any longer.

According to them, this has been a problem since they were seven. But because "boredom" was the only word they had for it, they received attempts to get them more engaging texts. That's a great strategy for most book-shy kids, but not when it's looking far more like an undiagnosed disability. This kid has amazingly supportive parents who are now looking to get them more expertly evaluated, but because they didn't have the language to explain how bad the problem was, it flew under the radar for three years.

Ask kids clarifying questions when they're having trouble, especially when the problem you think they are telling you about isn't being solved by solutions that would normally work. You might figure out why those solutions aren't working.

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#2 #can only handle weed occasionally in the right mindset #which i usually am not in

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this is so on the nose

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Watterson pulled no punches

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Suddenly hit with the vivid memory of when a cat had kittens and I was maybe four years old, and an older kid (I think a cousin?) kept saying with disgust and horror that she was "eating the afterbirth" (as mammals do), but I didn't know what that meant and started asking, only to be ignored or dismissed by the adults, who also wouldn't let me see no matter how FRANTIC I got with my questions, even when I started bawling my eyes out. Because, see, my interpretation of that sentence was that she was eating the kittens. What else would you conclude if you don't know the word "afterbirth," you're too little to know anything else comes out with the babies, and everyone is acting like it's something too nasty to explain to you in words? I don't remember when I figured out that they meant something else but I remember four-year-old me being devastated all day and terrified the next morning that all the kittens would be gone. All they had to say was "it's yucky stuff that was on the kittens, so she's cleaning up!" but no they could evidently not come up with anything more creative than just "it's nothing!" And worse yet my questions made them laugh. They LAUGHED at the unfathomable violence I was sure had happened in that cardboard box. Can you even imagine how demented I thought these people were. I was four years old already thinking I was the only rational compassionate being in a house full of sick sadists. Please try to entertain the questions of children, especially if they seem upset. You never know when they just think you're a fucked up asshole hiding a kitten massacre.

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Genuinely, I don’t know how else to get the word out, but I feel like if your home-cooked dinners don’t taste right, you're missing either paprika, sugar, butter, or chicken bouillon.

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i hear a good lyric and start mentally holding up blorbos like im in the home depot paint aisle comparing swatches

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