FFcrazy15—Fanfiction Blog

what’s the vibe of your blog. everyone has their own. is it an art gallery exhibit serving canapés. a nightclub. a knights of the round table situation. a book discussion meeting. a lonely hearts club newspaper section. a bedroom where you and two friends are chatting. the school of athens debating matters of consequence. a garden tea party. a bacchanal. an agatha christie murder novel style tense dinner party. etc

It’s a Tolkein situation. You came for the fandom and the literature, but unexpectedly found yourself in a cozy cottage drinking tea by the fire with way more Catholic stuff on the walls than you anticipated (which you may or may not be awkwardly trying to ignore).

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

The psych nerds found out ages ago that punishments that make the child think for a few minutes (about one minute or year of age until they're tweens) is much more helpful to develope social intelligence and understanding than punishments which prevents thinking, like the ones that involve pain. In fact, corporal punishment encouraged lying, extreme reactions, violent outbursts, go figure, they don't trust you.

This is all really fucking serious and important and I'm mainly reblogging for that, because this correct mentality needs to be spread around more, but I'm also reblogging because I absolutely lost it at the child who dreads having to wear the normal blue hat of shame.

Always glad to have people drawing a hard line at physical punishment! But, respectfully, I disagree that these (and many others in the notes) types of shame and control based punishments should be the alternative.

To take the dog situation just as an example, there are so many kind, respectful, and productive ways to respond depending on your discipline goal, the child’s personality, the reason behind the child’s behavior, etc:

It is easy to just not hit your kids, and nobody should. But knowing what to do instead can be really hard! You have to weigh a ton of options, and consider all the different factors, and make a bunch of decisions in a split second. And there's no way you can do it all the time. You have to also know how to pick your battles and you're probably going to resort to "just do what I say because I said so" sometimes and that's okay! But there's a better way than dunce caps and time outs, and I hope I was able to illustrate that with these examples.

Okay, this is all good advice, but question:

What about when the kid is being a jerk on purpose? What about when they know they're doing something mean, and they're choosing to do it anyway because they want something and they don't care if it hurts someone else or because they think being mean is funny. Even good kids do choose to be selfish jerks sometimes and put their wants before others' needs.

Your advice is all good and I'm not discounting that, but the advice you gave was for really little kids who are just learning about the world. What do you do when they're a bit older and the kid does something they know is unjust and hurtful, and still do it anyway?

Because it seems like at that point there does need to be some sort of actual consequence in place, like, "You chose to hurt someone, so I am removing you from the situation, and I am going to tell you you should feel bad about what you did to that person and ask you to think about how you hurt them. And then you're going to apologize and make it right."

I don't think guilt is a bad emotion for a kid to feel when they chose to do something they knew would hurt someone else simply because they wanted to or wanted to get something out of hurting someone. And I don't think consequences are out of line in that case either. Better they learn it now when consequences are low-stakes and temporary (loss of TV privileges for the day, grounded and can't go to your friends' house, have to do your siblings' chores for a week because you were cruel to them), than when they're older and consequences are high-stakes and permanent (expulsion, jail, or any other adult form of fucking around and finding out).

I gave advice about disciplining toddlers without shame and punishment, on a post celebrating shaming and punishing toddlers, because toddler behavior and development is my wheelhouse.

But since you asked, no I don't think shame and punishment become more effective or necessary as children get older. Yes your discipline strategies have to evolve and adapt for different ages, but belittling still doesn't become the same as teaching appropriate behavior.

I think maybe you understand that on some level based on the example you've given, because you've suggested something extremely mild (though they aren't a very effective form of a consequence. review natural/logical consequences from my bulleted list). There are people in the notes of this post talking about, for example, threatening to destroy a child's most treasured belongings if they don't comply.

Being ashamed and guilty for doing something horrible is different from the shame or powerlessness that comes from an adult belittling or being cruel to you. The former comes from having cultivated in the child a sense of caring, kindness, and civic duty toward others. And the latter only models for them what they can do once they have power over someone else.

I am not saying that nobody who was disciplined through punishment will develop "good" behavior. The reality is there are a million other factors that affect what kind of person a child will grow into: their environment, peers, the stories they read/watch, all the other adults in their lives, notable events, their own innate personality and how all those things interact.

What I'm saying is the punishment is not teaching the good behavior. The punishment is only giving the adult a sense of control. The good news is, there are other ways to teach good behavior.

Ah okay, I think I understand the disconnect here; I'm using the word "punishment" for the same concept that you're using the words "natural consequences," and you're using "punishment" for the same concept that I would call "child abuse."

And I'm calling "telling a child they should feel guilt" the same concept that you're calling "teaching them empathy" (telling a kid they hurt someone and wouldn't like it if someone did that to them, and (for one who's old enough to know better) they should feel bad about it because they knowingly disrespected another's rights and should work to fix it) whereas I think when you say "belittling" you mean something more like what I would call "shaming" (telling the kid they're a bad person for what they did, lecturing them for too long, etc.). I also see a difference between how you handle a mistake and how you handle something the kid knew was wrong and did anyway; the former you brush off and just help them fix the results because that could happen to anyone, the latter you treat as an actual problem.

Like, belittling a child, making them wear a secret dunce cap, destroying their objects are all things that I would call abuse because they violate the child's rights. Taking away screen time would be a natural consequence in the case of the kid not finishing their homework, now they have to do their homework instead of having fun (although to be more accurate I'm hoping to limit screentime anyway until they're teenagers). Not being allowed to go over to their friend's house would be a part of being grounded for something like being disrespectful to their teacher. If they were playing too rough inside and broke something expensive when I told them not to, they forfeit their allowance until they've paid back a reasonable-for-their-age portion of it. That sort of thing, where the consequence is a result of them having to repair the damage of what they've done.

In cases of older children (preteens and older) where the act was actually deliberate, malicious and hurt someone, I think in that case much stronger consequences are warranted. For example, if a kid of mine stole someone other kid's belongings, I think it would be fair and reasonable to have them not only pay back the kid they stole from and apologize, but also have to do some community service to contribute back to the society they just harmed (helping the janitor at the school for instance, if that can be arranged).

Look, it seems to me like you want my agreement that how you're raising your kids is fine, and you can have it. I don't know you or your kids or what your interactions/dynamics look like but these sound pretty normal and harmless to me.

If you want a deeper understanding though:

(I don't have kids yet, but I'm planning to have them in a year or two.)

Ah okay I think I understand this time: punishment is imposed from the outside and is not inherently connected to the offense, whereas consequences are natural or logical results of choices. That makes sense and it's a valuable distinction, thank you.

I guess where we disagree is my opinion that punishments are sometimes necessary where natural or logical consequences would either be too harsh (kid going without food because they forgot their lunch) or ineffective (the natural consequence of a kid being disrespectful to a teacher is the teacher not liking them, but some kids will just brush that off). So in that case a parent imposing a punishment like grounding a kid in place of a consequence as a way to enforce good over bad behavior is a reasonable.

Obviously if the kid understands why being disrespectful to teachers is wrong (it's unkind to the teacher, it distracts other students, it harms your education etc.) then that's better than them doing it out of fear of getting grounded, but if they refuse to understand or just don't care, then the parent still has to regulate the behavior some way, for the sake of the other students if not their own child.

(If a teacher is being an asshole then a kid doesn't have to respect them, I agree. I would always ask for my kid's side of the story first.)

Or in the case where a student keeps not turning in their work. The natural consequence is them suffering a bad grade. That might be acceptable for one or two bad grades, but if the kid keeps forgetting or if they just flat-out don't care about getting bad grades, then the natural consequence isn't going to stop the problem behavior and the kid will end up failing the class, which is detrimental to them. You're saying punishment is "not as effective" and I agree, it's not preferable to the kid internalizing and understanding the lesson on their own merits. But if natural consequences aren't working in a particular instance, then punishment is better than doing nothing and letting the kid continue the behavior that ultimately hurts them in the long run, and is unfair to everyone else around them too.

I just don't see fear of their parents punishing them as inherently bad thing for kids to have. It's obviously not the preferable reason for them to not do disadvantageous or unkind behavior, but if it's the only thing they'll listen to then it's better than nothing, because of how habits work. Yes, some kids will resume doing the disadvantageous behavior the moment they're out from under their parents' roofs. But some kids who initially didn't care about the natural consequences (possibly because they didn't have the life experience to understand them) and only avoided the disadvantageous behavior because their parents would impose punishment if they did it, in time come to understand the actual reason for the rule (provided their parents keep explaining it) once they've become habituated to following it and realize it's not as hard as they thought.

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

The psych nerds found out ages ago that punishments that make the child think for a few minutes (about one minute or year of age until they're tweens) is much more helpful to develope social intelligence and understanding than punishments which prevents thinking, like the ones that involve pain. In fact, corporal punishment encouraged lying, extreme reactions, violent outbursts, go figure, they don't trust you.

This is all really fucking serious and important and I'm mainly reblogging for that, because this correct mentality needs to be spread around more, but I'm also reblogging because I absolutely lost it at the child who dreads having to wear the normal blue hat of shame.

Always glad to have people drawing a hard line at physical punishment! But, respectfully, I disagree that these (and many others in the notes) types of shame and control based punishments should be the alternative.

To take the dog situation just as an example, there are so many kind, respectful, and productive ways to respond depending on your discipline goal, the child’s personality, the reason behind the child’s behavior, etc:

It is easy to just not hit your kids, and nobody should. But knowing what to do instead can be really hard! You have to weigh a ton of options, and consider all the different factors, and make a bunch of decisions in a split second. And there's no way you can do it all the time. You have to also know how to pick your battles and you're probably going to resort to "just do what I say because I said so" sometimes and that's okay! But there's a better way than dunce caps and time outs, and I hope I was able to illustrate that with these examples.

Okay, this is all good advice, but question:

What about when the kid is being a jerk on purpose? What about when they know they're doing something mean, and they're choosing to do it anyway because they want something and they don't care if it hurts someone else or because they think being mean is funny. Even good kids do choose to be selfish jerks sometimes and put their wants before others' needs.

Your advice is all good and I'm not discounting that, but the advice you gave was for really little kids who are just learning about the world. What do you do when they're a bit older and the kid does something they know is unjust and hurtful, and still do it anyway?

Because it seems like at that point there does need to be some sort of actual consequence in place, like, "You chose to hurt someone, so I am removing you from the situation, and I am going to tell you you should feel bad about what you did to that person and ask you to think about how you hurt them. And then you're going to apologize and make it right."

I don't think guilt is a bad emotion for a kid to feel when they chose to do something they knew would hurt someone else simply because they wanted to or wanted to get something out of hurting someone. And I don't think consequences are out of line in that case either. Better they learn it now when consequences are low-stakes and temporary (loss of TV privileges for the day, grounded and can't go to your friends' house, have to do your siblings' chores for a week because you were cruel to them), than when they're older and consequences are high-stakes and permanent (expulsion, jail, or any other adult form of fucking around and finding out).

I gave advice about disciplining toddlers without shame and punishment, on a post celebrating shaming and punishing toddlers, because toddler behavior and development is my wheelhouse.

But since you asked, no I don't think shame and punishment become more effective or necessary as children get older. Yes your discipline strategies have to evolve and adapt for different ages, but belittling still doesn't become the same as teaching appropriate behavior.

I think maybe you understand that on some level based on the example you've given, because you've suggested something extremely mild (though they aren't a very effective form of a consequence. review natural/logical consequences from my bulleted list). There are people in the notes of this post talking about, for example, threatening to destroy a child's most treasured belongings if they don't comply.

Being ashamed and guilty for doing something horrible is different from the shame or powerlessness that comes from an adult belittling or being cruel to you. The former comes from having cultivated in the child a sense of caring, kindness, and civic duty toward others. And the latter only models for them what they can do once they have power over someone else.

I am not saying that nobody who was disciplined through punishment will develop "good" behavior. The reality is there are a million other factors that affect what kind of person a child will grow into: their environment, peers, the stories they read/watch, all the other adults in their lives, notable events, their own innate personality and how all those things interact.

What I'm saying is the punishment is not teaching the good behavior. The punishment is only giving the adult a sense of control. The good news is, there are other ways to teach good behavior.

Ah okay, I think I understand the disconnect here; I'm using the word "punishment" for the same concept that you're using the words "natural consequences," and you're using "punishment" for the same concept that I would call "child abuse."

And I'm calling "telling a child they should feel guilt" the same concept that you're calling "teaching them empathy" (telling a kid they hurt someone and wouldn't like it if someone did that to them, and (for one who's old enough to know better) they should feel bad about it because they knowingly disrespected another's rights and should work to fix it) whereas I think when you say "belittling" you mean something more like what I would call "shaming" (telling the kid they're a bad person for what they did, lecturing them for too long, etc.). I also see a difference between how you handle a mistake and how you handle something the kid knew was wrong and did anyway; the former you brush off and just help them fix the results because that could happen to anyone, the latter you treat as an actual problem.

Like, belittling a child, making them wear a secret dunce cap, destroying their objects are all things that I would call abuse because they violate the child's rights. Taking away screen time would be a natural consequence in the case of the kid not finishing their homework, now they have to do their homework instead of having fun (although to be more accurate I'm hoping to limit screentime anyway until they're teenagers). Not being allowed to go over to their friend's house would be a part of being grounded for something like being disrespectful to their teacher. If they were playing too rough inside and broke something expensive when I told them not to, they forfeit their allowance until they've paid back a reasonable-for-their-age portion of it. That sort of thing, where the consequence is a result of them having to repair the damage of what they've done.

In cases of older children (preteens and older) where the act was actually deliberate, malicious and hurt someone, I think in that case much stronger consequences are warranted. For example, if a kid of mine stole someone other kid's belongings, I think it would be fair and reasonable to have them not only pay back the kid they stole from and apologize, but also have to do some community service to contribute back to the society they just harmed (helping the janitor at the school for instance, if that can be arranged).

eowyn by @juleisdrawing

TIL anyone who's going to overwinter in Antarctica has to have had their appendix out. Because removing an appendix that's not causing any trouble just as a precaution is way better than having one that's about to burst when you're on the ass-end of the planet with no way to be rushed to a hospital if shit gets real.

No, by the way, we absolutely did not think of this ahead of time. A dude named Leonid Rogozov got appendicitis in Antarctica. Fortunately, the expedition's doctor diagnosed him quickly and knew how to remove an appendix. Unfortunately, our man Leo was the expedition's doctor.

What did he do? Well, he set up a mirror, gave his belly a shot of novocaine, presumably told a colleague, "hold my vodka," and he removed his own fucking appendix. He survived.

Jozef Theodor Mousson - To the last rites (1908-18)

probably not that

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

The psych nerds found out ages ago that punishments that make the child think for a few minutes (about one minute or year of age until they're tweens) is much more helpful to develope social intelligence and understanding than punishments which prevents thinking, like the ones that involve pain. In fact, corporal punishment encouraged lying, extreme reactions, violent outbursts, go figure, they don't trust you.

This is all really fucking serious and important and I'm mainly reblogging for that, because this correct mentality needs to be spread around more, but I'm also reblogging because I absolutely lost it at the child who dreads having to wear the normal blue hat of shame.

Always glad to have people drawing a hard line at physical punishment! But, respectfully, I disagree that these (and many others in the notes) types of shame and control based punishments should be the alternative.

To take the dog situation just as an example, there are so many kind, respectful, and productive ways to respond depending on your discipline goal, the child’s personality, the reason behind the child’s behavior, etc:

It is easy to just not hit your kids, and nobody should. But knowing what to do instead can be really hard! You have to weigh a ton of options, and consider all the different factors, and make a bunch of decisions in a split second. And there's no way you can do it all the time. You have to also know how to pick your battles and you're probably going to resort to "just do what I say because I said so" sometimes and that's okay! But there's a better way than dunce caps and time outs, and I hope I was able to illustrate that with these examples.

Okay, this is all good advice, but question:

What about when the kid is being a jerk on purpose? What about when they know they're doing something mean, and they're choosing to do it anyway because they want something and they don't care if it hurts someone else or because they think being mean is funny. Even good kids do choose to be selfish jerks sometimes and put their wants before others' needs.

Your advice is all good and I'm not discounting that, but the advice you gave was for really little kids who are just learning about the world. What do you do when they're a bit older and the kid does something they know is unjust and hurtful, and still do it anyway?

Because it seems like at that point there does need to be some sort of actual consequence in place, like, "You chose to hurt someone, so I am removing you from the situation, and I am going to tell you you should feel bad about what you did to that person and ask you to think about how you hurt them. And then you're going to apologize and make it right."

I don't think guilt is a bad emotion for a kid to feel when they chose to do something they knew would hurt someone else simply because they wanted to or wanted to get something out of hurting someone. And I don't think consequences are out of line in that case either. Better they learn it now when consequences are low-stakes and temporary (loss of TV privileges for the day, grounded and can't go to your friends' house, have to do your siblings' chores for a week because you were cruel to them), than when they're older and consequences are high-stakes and permanent (expulsion, jail, or any other adult form of fucking around and finding out).

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

The psych nerds found out ages ago that punishments that make the child think for a few minutes (about one minute or year of age until they're tweens) is much more helpful to develope social intelligence and understanding than punishments which prevents thinking, like the ones that involve pain. In fact, corporal punishment encouraged lying, extreme reactions, violent outbursts, go figure, they don't trust you.

Whenever me and my siblings fought, my mom would put us in a "chair talking time out" where we had to go and sit in another room at a table and calmly work out our issue. When we'd resolved the issue we could come out together and tell her we were done fighting and go back to playing.

9/10 times this resolved the problem because we'd both look at each other and go "let's just TELL her we're done fighting even if we don't mean it so we can go back to playing."

We thought we were being sneaky but it actually worked because, by working together against a common enemy (Mom) we stopped fighting, forgot our argument and got back to playing. Which was exactly what she wanted in the first place.

She also had a "if you hit you sit, if you hurt people you can't be with people" rule (you can see how well it worked by the fact that I can quote it perfectly years later). If you were physically violent during playtime, you got sat down in a corner by the stairs and weren't allowed to play anymore.

My brother once hit my sister over the head with a bucket, so he got sat down and told "if-you-hit-you-sit-if-you-hurt-people-you-can't-be-with-people" and he screamed and cried while my sister went back to playing. And that's the one and only time I remember him ever getting physical with either of us, or anyone else for that matter.

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

The psych nerds found out ages ago that punishments that make the child think for a few minutes (about one minute or year of age until they're tweens) is much more helpful to develope social intelligence and understanding than punishments which prevents thinking, like the ones that involve pain. In fact, corporal punishment encouraged lying, extreme reactions, violent outbursts, go figure, they don't trust you.

Whenever me and my siblings fought, my mom would put us in a "chair talking time out" where we had to go and sit in another room at a table and calmly work out our issue. When we'd resolved the issue we could come out together and tell her we were done fighting and go back to playing.

9/10 times this resolved the problem because we'd both look at each other and go "let's just TELL her we're done fighting even if we don't mean it so we can go back to playing."

We thought we were being sneaky but it actually worked because, by working together against a common enemy (Mom) we stopped fighting, forgot our argument and got back to playing. Which was exactly what she wanted in the first place.

Since the OP made their post unrebloggable (and blocked me. Both actions they are well in with their right to do)

I'm going to make my response it's own post because I think the point is important

-

As someone who is autistic and has BPD and CPTSD and loads of trauma yes you sometimes need to change how you interact with others to keep people around

When I was 13 I hit the few friends I had when I was angry

I had to change that in order to keep those friendships

When I was in my early 20s if I was losing an disagreement with my husband I would threaten to kill myself. My husband told me it hurt him and was cruel and manipulative behaviour, because it was.

So I worked hard to change that to keep my relationship

It's easy to say "I shouldn't have to change for others" and that's true to an extent. You shouldn't change your interests or passions or dim your light. And you should have space to be imperfect and flawed and not have to pretend your ugly bits aren't real. But if something you are doing it causing other people harm you kinda need to change that.

That's called "living in a society"

People adapt to each other and make space for each other in their lives. You adapt to them and they adapt to you

You start being more diligent about throwing away the empty toilet roll because it really bothers them. They start warning you before they run the blender because you hate loud noises

I stopped threatening to kill myself because I was mad I was losing an argument and my husband stopped being so vocally judgemental amount media he personally dislikes

There is a certain type of person who heard the phrase "your emotions are valid" and took that to mean "my emotional reactions and my behaviour are always objectively correct because my emotions are valid and if you have an emotional response or react to what I'm doing negatively then you are wrong and you can't be hurt because my emotions are valid"

And that's a recipe for disaster

Your emotions are valid to feel. They are how you feel and there are reasons you feel the way you do

However, your reactions and behaviour are something you can learn to control and can be irrational

We live in a society and we as people change each other as we interact and that isn't necessarily a bad thing

Heck yeah the Christians are winning Tumblr for the Lord. Keep it up, boys.

Christened site. 😌

We're coming for Twitter once we're done converting here.

lol that's hilarious. I didn't realize we were that big a presence on this site, I just figured we'd all found each other and made our own little Catholic bubble.

I don’t think Winry gets enough credit as a genius. Like, automail would need her to understand engineering, robotics, anatomy, and particularly how nervous systems work, and she’s technically a surgeon. She was already a regular helper at Pinako’s shop when she was 11. At 15, she walked into a town full of top automail experts and impressed all but one of them with a rush-order arm she’d made. Then, she took over one person’s shop so thoroughly, her customers won’t even let someone else make the outer casings. On top of that, she read medical books as a child and not only understood them, but retained enough of it to successfully deliver a baby years later even though that had nothing to do with her preferred field. And she didn’t have any help from the Truth.

Winry might not be an alchemist, but she’s a medical and engineering genius and somebody needs to tell her that right now.

absolutely losing my mind that a bunch of nimby assholes spent $500k to build a sandcastle that was promptly wiped away

ted i really could not disagree more this is far from catastrophic. i am ensconced.

literally selling sand to people who live on the beach. some people's hustle and grift game cannot be overstated. world class shit right here

i love tumblr but i hate that we have been conditioned to think you can’t add some of the most insightful shit you’ve ever seen to absolute shitposts. please by all means reblog my posts with this kind of context because it’s so important. excellent points here.

Three words sprang to mind - thank you, Ken Burns - and those words were "The Dust Bowl".

I saw a exhibit once that compared the root systems of wild prairie grass to the roots of agriculture... lemme see if i can find it...

(found on reddit)

anyway yeah that's a root (heh) cause of the Dust Bowl.

#see but iroh is seeking it whereas sokka is pulled into spirit stuff kicking and screaming (x)

A professor in the world’s most prestigious university: It’s impossible to find the spirit’s lost library without dying during the search! I have spent my entire career and life looking for it with absolutely no results to show.

Sokka, who is about to be the one to spot the library after about an hour’s worth of casual searching, be the only member of the Gaang that the owl spirit directly addresses when asking why they are all in the library, and, after about ten minutes of light book perusal, find the incredibly rare and useful information that the Fire Nation actively attempted to obliterate: VAY-CAY!

via bonesbuckleup

i promise: however big you think this wave will be, it is bigger

I was warned, and it still got me.

You were absolutely right.