Thinkin about how as kids parents told us to clean our rooms without having ever shown us how to themselves, taught us any organizational skills, spatial management, or any other knowledge necessary to know how to efficiently tackle a mess without getting overwhelmed and then got exasperated when we as ten year olds didn’t just……figure it out

This is not a dunk on my parents for the record. I had wonderful parents growing up and still have an amazing mom. I think this is just one of those smaller and common things of parenthood that I think addressing would be monumental in reducing a very common household stressor. If parents led their children in cleanups and helped them reason out plans to manage their time and stuff, especially neurodivergent kids, the entire household would be a lot more calm, streamlined, and overall happy I think!!!

I’ve got one 7 year old perfectionist (possible ADHD) and one sweet 5 year old hurricane (DEFINITE ADHD) and me (also brain full of cats, despises prolonged supervisory things). Here’s some things I’ve learned specific to that that are also generally good for teaching kids to clean. (Or yourself.)

1. If you want a kid to clean, first you have to teach them to even see mess. They don’t! But it does stress them out.

“Okay, let’s look for something out of its place. If it’s on the floor, it’s out of place. If it’s on your bed and it’s not a blanket, it’s out of place.”

2. Go by category, it’s easier to find stuff to put away if your search engine has a specific target, and it’s more satisfying and efficient to put away a big chunk of mess at once.

“Got something? Ok, are there other things like it? Let’s find all the BOOKS. I will HELP YOU.”

3. Important!! Don’t walk away from a kid with focus issues expecting them to instantly learn a task and finish it! You are setting them up to fail! The first several times you need to be there for the whole process and demonstrate by helping. That motivates them. They feel less panic that you’ll bail and they’ll be stuck alone not knowing what to do next. Narrate what you’re doing, too. Help and supervise less as they seem to need you less.

“I’ll get the books on the floor, can you help me get the ones under your bed? I can’t fit!”

4. In my experience most kids, but especially kids with ADHD would walk to the fucking moon to help you, they just need a clear plan, keep the criticism light, short, and to the point, and ffs PRAISE THEM when they do things right, cause we’ve all (I hope) seen the statistics on how much more negative interaction they get compared to other kids (and rejection sensitive dysphoria is a motherfucker). But more than praise you need to show them how what they did was good for THEM. Do nooooooooot take this opportunity for an ‘I told you so’ or a ‘finally’ or you will suck out all their accomplishment.

“Hey, great job, you found that horse you were missing because you cleaned! And your room looks so nice! It’s really comfortable to play in now, and you did that.”

5. Emphasize it does not have to be perfect or complete to be worth doing. I don’t want to will my kids my paralysis of inaction because I can’t start part of something unless I can do all of it.

“We don’t have time to do the whole room, but let’s pick up the legos before bed so you don’t hurt your feet. And then it’ll already be done tomorrow!”

Other small but important things: make sure everyone is fed and not cranky when you start, including you. Do what YOU need to be in the right patient headspace for this. Put on music. Get coffee. Take breaks! Take dance breaks, tickle breaks, whatever. Make em short, set a timer, keep it consistent. Stop completely if they’re getting overwhelmed or stressed and be prepared to finish another day. They may complain and flop around a lot the first few times. Stay tooth grindingly positive and keep at it, it WILL get better. If you mess up, start again. It’s ok. It’s never too late.

MISTER HOZIER SIR

End tweet: “…I would probably be somewhere in the middle” and like. WHAT.”

Here’s the source, it’s from his biography “The Good Neighbor”

COME THROUGH MS TWENTYBITEEN

hozier released a new album today was I supposed to find out myself or wait for the lesbians on my dash to start crying

Wasteland, Baby! a quick summary

jury duty cat

“I think cats should serve on juries” is the natural extension of “I think dogs should vote” and I’m 100% behind this

me when my frie

WHEN THEY

Articles I can use against truscum

I have got your back. Here are those damn sources

There is not enough difference in male or female brains to tell them apart

A gender-neutral pronouns other that they/them has existed since 1858, thon 

There are more than 2 genders (tons of sources in the description that if i tried to write them all here i would die of age)

“””Transtrenders””” aren’t actually transitioning and then regretting: 1  2  3 4  5 

Biological binary sex isn’t a thing: 1 2 3 4

in the wikipedia page for social construct of gender category sex and sex category the sources are 7 27 28 

He indeed is

Being trans is not a mental illness/ you don’t need dysphoria to be trans: 1  2  3  4 5 6 7 (this one is massive)  8 (also if you want a living example of a cis person with dysphoria search godflex here on tumblr, careful it’s nsfw)

From here

This might be updated in the future

A Star Trek idea: A comedy sitcom where instead of a Vulcan on a mostly human ship it is a human on a mostly Vulcan ship

All the Vulcans are fiercely protective of the ‘fragile, illogical, prone-to-danger, smart, reckless little human’.

To make the human feel more accepted (as it is only logical) the Vulcans try to include aspects of terran culture in the ship’s day-to-day life, failing spectacularly at it.

The human loves them even more for it.

They’ll get better at celebrating the human’s birthday next year. It’s the thought that counts.

@jvlianbashir​ THAT’S A GOOD END TO THAT EPISODE THOUGH… the vulcans put together awful, bland decorations. they make a cake because it’s of “significant importance”. they go through the process of putting together this party and Studying this Human Ritual and the entire episode is setting up to what you KNOW will be a horrible result. they do a bad job!! then when the human’s birthday comes, and they reveal the off-the-mark, underwhelming looking birthday bash, the human just. starts crying. because they had no idea their crew would go through all this trouble to celebrate their birthday, and even put up DECORATIONS, or make a CAKE, and there’s a birthday card with extremely polite impersonal messages written and a hundred perfectly tidy signatures. and the vulcans are just standing around like “you appear upset. the Birthday Party was unsatisfactory”.

reblog this and put the age you realised you were not straight in the tags

Kind of gives you chills .

Good Lord, how delicious! I wanna do that! The next time I’m in a cathedral, I’m doing it. 

As she stood inside an ancient and empty church in Montefrío, Spain, Malinda Kathleen Reese belted out one of the best Christmas carols of all time-“O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and the end result was just heavenly.

I’m obsessed with this because A. Victorian Christmas Carols B. European Cathedrals C. It’s gorgeous and fuckin choristers are my favorite