This may just be my experience as an autistic person, but the kids I’ve nannied whose parent’s complain of ‘bad awful in cooperative selfish autistic behavior’ are… Not like that? At all?
Like, for example, I cared for a kid for a while who was nonverbal and didn’t like being touched. Around six years old? Their parent said that they were fussy and had a strict schedule, and that they had problems getting them to eat. Their last few nannies had quit out of frustration.
So, I showed up. And for the first little while, it was awkward. The kid didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, you know how it is. And for the first… Day and a half, maybe? I fucked up a few times.
I changed their diaper and they screamed at me. I put the TV off and they threw things. Not fun, but regular upset kid stuff.
Next time, I figured, hell, I wouldn’t like being manhandled and ordered around either. Who likes being physically lifted out of whatever it is they’re doing and having their pants yanked off? Fucking few, that’s who.
Next time, I go, ‘hey, kiddo. You need a new diaper?’ and check. ‘I’m gonna go grab a new one and get you clean, okay?’ ‘Wanna find a spot to lay down?’ ‘Alright, almost done. Awesome job, thanks buddy’.
I learned stuff about them. They liked a heads up before I did anything disruptive. They didn’t mind that I rattled of about nothing all day. They didn’t like grass or plastic touching their back. They were okay with carpets and towels. They liked pictionary, and the color yellow, and fish crackers, and painting. They didn’t look me in the face (which was never an issue- I hate that too, it fucking sucks) but I never had reason to believe that they were ignoring me.
Once I learned what I was doing wrong, everything was fine. Did they magically “”“become normal”“” and start talking and laughing and hugging? No, but we had fun and had a good time and found a compromise between what I was comfortable with and what they were comfortable with. (For the record, I didn’t magically sailor-moon transform into a socially adept individual, either. In case anyone was wondering.)
I don’t like eye contact. It’s distracting and painful and stresses me out.
They didn’t like eye contact either.
Is eye contact necessary to communication? No. So we just didn’t do it.
Was there ever a situation where I HAD to force them to drop everything and lay down on the lawn? No. So the thirty second warning came into play, and nobody died.
“But they never talked!”
No, they didn’t. And they didn’t know ASL, and they didn’t like being touched.
So you know what happened?
My third day in, they tugged on my shirt. ‘Hey monkey, what’s up?’ I asked. And they tugged me towards the kitchen. ‘oh, cool. You hungry?’. They raised their hands in an ‘up’ gesture. ‘you want up? Cool.’ and I lifted them up. They pointed to the fridge. I opened it. They grabbed a juice box out of the top shelf, and pushed the door closed again. ‘oh sweet, grape is the best. You are an individual of refined taste.’ I put them down and they went back to their room to play Legos.
“But they didn’t say please or thank you!” “But you should be teaching them communication skills!” “But!” Lalalalala.
1. The entire interaction was entirely considerate and polite. I was never made uncomfortable. I was made aware of the problem so that I could help them solve it. There was no mess, no tears, no bruises, no shouting.
2. Did my brain collapse into a thousand million fragments of shattered diamond dust out of sheer incomprehension? No? Then their communication skills were fine. Goal realized, solution found, objective complete. They found the most simple and painless way to communicate the situation and then did it.
Kids are not stupid. AUTISTIC kids are not stupid.
I’m willing to bet real cash money that the real reason the last few nannies had quit had a million times more to do with their own ability to cope, not the kid’s.
To this day, that was the most relaxed and enjoyable job I’ve ever had.
And I know I don’t speak for everyone. All kids are different. All adults are different. But in my time and experience, pretty much 95% of all my difficulties with children come from ME not being understanding enough. Every single “problem child” I’ve worked with turned out to be a pretty cool person once I started figuring out how to put my ego aside and let them set the pace.
Again, not speaking universally, here. I’m just saying. Sometimes social rules are bullshit, you know? People are people
Have you ever read an article about the study that found that teaching the parents to cope with autistic kids yields better results than other therapies? Because this is exactly what they were talking about.
please remember that in a healthy, adult relationship (romantic or not), you should be able to talk about things that are bothering you. if you are bottling up your emotions and holding it against someone when you haven’t told them what is wrong, you’re not engaging in healthy behaviour. but also, if your friend/significant other makes you feel as though you can’t talk about what bothers you- i.e. has made you feel guilty/gotten extraordinarily angry when things were brought up in the past- they are not engaging in healthy behaviour.
“The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]”
One time one of my coworkers was talking about his daughter (who was only 5-6 at the time) and how he was already worried about boys, etc. once she got older. He wasn’t one of those dads, who would quite literally hunt down a teenage boy with a shotgun over some backseat shenanigans. He was just a concerned dad.
He asked me what my dad used to do to scare all of the boys away from me, or to at least make sure they were good to me.
My answer?
Example.
My dad never once said, “Katie, if a boy hits you, make sure to bring him back here so I can make him pay.”
Instead, my kind, gentle-soul dad expressed anger and utter contempt for men who beat their wives (and vice versa), and has never in his life raised his hand against me or my mother.
My dad never once said, “Katie, don’t go out with a boy who’s rude to the waitress.”
Instead, my father has treated every single server we’ve had throughout my entire life (except the rare ones who were rude first) with respect and courtesy.
My dad never once told my brothers to get up and offer the pregnant lady their seat on the subway.
Instead he was the first one to stand up, and smiled proudly when his young sons copied him when 2 other women boarded.
My dad didn’t raise me to only make good decisions when he’s there looking over my shoulder. He showed me what to look for in a man, not by preaching at me or declaring that he was the perfect mold. But his treatment of others (esp women) is the foundation for my standards when it comes to men.
So, parents, you want to make sure all of those Bad Apples stay away? Step one is to demonstrate what a Good Apple looks like, up close and personal.
Because if you’ve taught your daughters to respect themselves enough to have high standards, there won’t be any need for you chase any Bad Apples away. Your daughter will take care of that for you.
This is important. It’s also important to teach little girls that self help is always an option.
When I was eight I went to my parents crying because a little boy was routinely jumping me from behind when he passed me in the hallways and pulling my hair and it hurt.
My parents didn’t tell me that the boy must have a crush on me, or that I should cut my hair, or even to go tell a teacher (though that last one wouldn’t have been bad advice).
Instead, my dad knelt down and soberly said the following:
“That’s not ok. It’s never ok for someone to touch you in a manner you don’t like. If someone does that too you once, you ask them politely to stop and tell them you don’t like it when they do that. If they do it a second time, you look them in the eye and tell them loudly, “I’m feeling threatened and if you do that again I will defend myself.’ If they do it a third time, you break their nose.”
He proceeded to teach me how to break someone’s nose.
I’m sure people will debate the appropriateness of this advice, but I’ve only ever had to move past yelling “I’m feeling threatened” once. My dad wanted me to know, from an early age, that I wasn’t weak or entirely dependent on others to defend myself, he wanted to teach me that I had power too, and I should use it when necessary.
I guarentee you the thing Walmart fears most in this world are their workers unionizing. They are royally fucked if that happens. I was subjected to a ton of anti union propaganda while there. I also bet anything that if it did happen, they’ll raise prices, and blame it on the “unreasonable demands of the workers,” to pit the customers against the employees.
Unionize domestic and childcare workers, they’ve always endured working in extremely atomized, isolated working conditions that leave them uniquely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse!
I’m deputy of our office’s union, and lucky enough to live in a country where unions are relatively without stigma.
Unionising is honestly one of the best things you can do to protect your livelihood and make it better for those that follow.
Businesses fear the union of workers for a reason; you start to compare wages, share grievances, notice favouritism, discrimination and discrepancies, and learn from experiences etc. It’s the worst kind of office gossip for employers. My work place is part of a huge company which is nearly always above board; but through our unions we discovered a huge pay difference between us and other centres, we’ve discovered staff not getting the same holiday allowances, issues with duty of care for those with disabilities etc, and every year we get to negotiate our pay rise rather than just accepting whatever shitty percentage they give everyone else.
I know it’s easier said than done in some countries and job fields, but even meeting with your coworkers and sharing your thoughts is a good move – you’ll be surprised at how much you realise you weren’t aware of.
When I put them in the queue I thought everyone was going to get annoyed because they’ve seen them a million times, I feel terrible that so many of you guys haven’t!
There is this controversy in book industries about e-books; specifically Amazon who has made it easy for someone to self publish whereas before it would cost someone thousands of dollars and so if you did you were a loser because you obviously couldn’t get an agent or even get an indie publisher to back you. All of a sudden a million books are being self published by losers who are ruining literature because anyone can just print anything and nothing matters anymore. It’s the same thing they said when they invented the printing press and then again when trade paperbacks became a thing.
A whole bunch of people, mostly fanfic writers just repurpose in their work, start publishing these short erotic novels that they haven’t even edited and it was all getting weirder and weirder.
BDSM became mainstream because of EL James publishing her Twilight fanfiction ‘50 shades of gray’ and then suddenly there were a bunch of books that made people uncomfortable about time traveling to fuck dinosaurs. One erotic novel written by Christie Sims and Alara Branwen kind of became the poster child for the demise intellectualism.
A few years later someone calling themselves Chuck Tingle started to publish tiny erotica novels about people having sex with unicorns and Bigfoot that were intentionally weird with long and had highly specific titles. The covers went viral, most people thinking they were memes but then discovered they were real books that were actual short stories written by somebody who knew how to write and was obviously mocking the controversy.
Everyone was complaining and trying to find out who he was and journalists were trying to contact “him” but he refused to be interviewed. The popular rumor started going around that it was actually a father and son that wrote the books together and someone who everyone is probably sure was actually Chuck Tingle was anonymously interviewed and was like, “lol yeah and we usually write them start to finish in one night” which made people madder and was true because he really blew up when a meme about this dress went viral in a day and by the end of the day
Chuck
Tingle had a new erotic novel about fucking the dress.
Adding to the controversy is the fact that if you publish through Amazon people can read your books for free through their “digital library” but when people check out books it’s technically counted as a sale. Out of nowhere some dude named Chuck Tingle was at the top of the bestsellers list with these offensive books and sort of accidentally got nominated for a really prestigious award and everyone lost their shit.
The powers that be were changing the rules so he couldn’t win, which is what also happened to Neil Gaiman when his comic book Sandman got nominated and everyone was outraged that a comic book could be considered literature. Neil Gaiman actually won the award and then they put in a rule that no more comic books could be nominated, but they got lucky with Chuck Tingle and he didn’t win. Except then he was nominated for a second time.
Obviously Chuck Tingle didn’t win again,
but then he kind of doubled down and published books about getting fucked by his nomination and then fucked by the concept of getting fucked over by the industry. Then his book started getting really mostly sociopolitical and shoved his award nomination down everyone’s throats..
They were still just short weird erotica, but instead of being tongue-in-cheek funny they became condescendingly critical.
He has a website with an about me page but he’s become a folklore hero and everyone is 99% sure it’s fake.
As he stands now, the industries are still really upset but the indie scenes are considering them high art.
I am among the latter.
Don’t forget, the whole reason people nominated Chuck Tingle for the Hugo awards in the first place is because a lot of white male authors were really mad that women and racial minorities were winning awards. They nominated him, but of course, he wasn’t going to ruin the mystery by revealing himself, so instead he had someone go to the Hugos in his place… Zoe Quinn, who Gamergate centered around, and who was therefore the poster child of everything this group *hated*.
Chuck Tingle is a goddamn master.
Thank you for addingthat. I was about to be “but it wasn’t an accident he was nominated for a Hugo”
western ppl talking about the poor conditions of women’s rights and lgbt rights in africa, asia, the middle east and south america is so frustrating and stupid bc U LITERALLY DID THAT!!!!! most laws prohibiting same sex relationships etc or laws restricting women were imposed on these regions by western imperialism. although the situation has changed in the west, the countries that suffered under western presence still largely hold on to the old western legislature. India is an example, where lgbt ppl are still struggling to undo the laws imposed on them by the british, Japan is an example, as they only prohibited same sex relations for 7 years in order to become part of the international community. westerners influenced and messed up countries with such progressive cultures and now dare point the finger at those ‘backwards savages’. the only inhumane thing u are looking at is hundreds of cultures destroyed to fit western culture.
Holland made his highly anticipated debut with the release of his very first single, “Neverland.”
Drawing upon Holland’s own experiences of being openly gay, “Neverland” explores the feelings of a boy who just wants to avoid the countless times he’s experienced discrimination and escape to somewhere he can love freely. He also refreshingly portrays these emotions in the music video for “Neverland.” Notably, Holland is the very first openly gay idol. [x]
Archive 