#kid stuff

[neon-glowing-rainbow-stims]

🎟️ ~ Ticket Eater ~ 🎟️ (sweetlylorelei)

(Credit if you use these please!) (ko-fi)

[generation-fucked-nostalgia]

🎃.🎃.🎃.🎃

[mightymizora]

I love everything about being in my thirties except one thing and it is

The ridiculous ramping up around the pressure around children. It is genuinely impossible to explain what happens, I would never have believed somebody telling me about it, but it is incredibly hard to exist as a person who either doesn’t want to or can’t have children at a certain point because it literally becomes all anybody talks about. And that’s understandable! It’s important!

But I see discourse around certain things and it’s always so visceral, understandably, but man it is… it is wildly high pressure when you get to a certain age. It feels like literally the only thing people talk about is their kids or getting pregnant.

And god forbid you’re quietly dealing with fertility stuff in the quagmire too because it’s truly a mindfuck. So many rules of what you are and aren’t supposed to talk about.

Kids are great but god the way we’ve set up parenthood sucks so badly.

[greywantssleep]

Shout out to 11 year old me who took eight sheets of printer paper, folded them in half, stapled the crease, and wrote How to Train Your Dragon fanfiction.

[audhdnight]

On the topic of gentle parenting (I’ve said all this before but not here and it bears repeating anyway) the counter argument of “well I would gentle parent if it worked but try that with my kid and you’ll see they don’t care” is so asinine

Like you wouldn’t sit a six year old down with their first primer and then expect them to be able to read fluently from that day forward. You wouldn’t only take your child to ONE swim lesson and then be done for the rest of the summer. You wouldn’t expect your dog to follow the “sit” or “shake” commands after one day of training. This is just not how learning works.

So yes, after one single instance where you tried gentle parenting techniques, your child is not going to respond automatically. That’s why we teach. That’s why we keep doing it, over and over, until they learn.

I used to nanny for a family of twelve. My main responsibilities were taking care of the four youngest - three little boys and an eleven year old girl. Every single one of them was rowdy and loud and over-energetic all the time - the exact kinds of kids I usually see described as “demon spawn”. The boys were pretty easy to calm down, but the girl had a mean streak and she liked to cause problems.

It didn’t take me long to realize why, though. Her brothers were the babies of the family, and they were used to getting all the love and toys and granted desires they could want. By contrast, she was usually overlooked. All of the times she came and wrecked a board game I was playing with the boys, or the times she unplugged the tv so we couldn’t watch the movie she didn’t like, or the times she ran screaming in circles around the room because her baby brother was crying and my focus was on him - it all made sense.

And so the next time she came and tried to ruin our game, I told her calmly that if she wanted my attention that was okay and I was happy to give it to her, but she wasn’t allowed to be mean to her brothers to get it. If she wanted to play a game with me one on one, all she had to do was pick one out and ask.

This girl, who was normally angry and weepy and refused to listen to any kind of reason, looked like her entire world had just flipped inside out. She dropped the board game piece she’d taken, turned around, and walked out of the room. Fifteen minutes later she was back with a bag of Uno cards, hanging her head and asking me quietly if I would please play with her.

That was one of our best moments. Yes, she was still prone to tantrums and lashing out. No, things weren’t always perfect after that. But seriously, most of the time “bad” kids are genuinely just starved for something - attention, instruction, validation, or even just some damn peace and quiet (which none of these kids ever got having ten siblings). You’d be amazed how far a loving word and a firm boundary can go for any kid. Especially when they rarely get those things at home.

[chronicsheepdrawing]

Thinking about Dave and Hal's relationship, also some Kid Stuff designs.

[wearethewitches]

GRANDMA ACTUALLY EXISTS, I REPEAT, THE GRANDMA IN STARFIELD ACTUALLY EXISTS

[chronicsheepdeprivation]

Just found out that 2001: A Space Odyssey has an actual, legitimate kids book and I'm losing my Fucking mind.

It's an audiobook too and the audio for the read-along record has been uploaded on YouTube and I don't know how but they somehow made Hal, the disembodied computer voice, a twink.

[pinknerines]

“is your grandpa looking very serious? Tickle him!”

“do you ever think imaginary friends don’t exist? Well they do.”

“do you ever get bored at the beach? I don’t.”

-me, age 7

[infuriateddandelion]

Tips For Kids With Strict Parents #1

The first thing to always remember, is that it's incredibly important that you have your own money. You can save up change in a piggy bank or get a job (if you're old enough), but you need to have some way of making money.

[sailorastera]

[neon-glowing-rainbow-stims]

🌊 ~ Rainbow Bowl ~ 🌊 (gdaybunji)

(Please credit if you use!) (ko-fi)

[generation-fucked-nostalgia]

Things I wanted to eat as a kid:

[wilder-and-lighter]

when i was a kid i organized all my stuffed animals by biological classes and would line them up around my room, and they had shifts for who got to sleep on my bed each night so they wouldn't get lonely and then my grandma told me that that was weird and that i was being anal retentive so i stopped doing it because i thought she was calling me a butthole

[clo-thespin]

yes. yes, indeed i do.

in fact, i had a TON of these. and i used to put them in my mouth. but get this, only the see through-ish glitter ones.

i liked the way the glitter felt in my mouth idk. looking back on it idk why no one realised i wasnt neurotypical until i was like 8.

[lilithsaintcrow]

Books and Connotations

Catkins are coming off the magnolias and I saw an actual cherry blossom yesterday, though not on the tree down the hill who’s usually first past the post. I suppose I might be able to relax a bit instead of dreading a sudden cold snap? (HAHAHAHAHAHA WHO AM I FOOLING.) I got to a major character death in the Sekrit Projekt last night, broke down crying, and decided it was time for bed. Going back…