They are unexpectedly sassy, and I love that. More details of The Ancient One.

When you're autistic, it's impossible to miss how much society normalizes child abuse.

I could dedicate my entire life to studying how to interact with people and I'd still never master the social skills that young children are expected to have on command.

Say the wrong thing? That's disrespectful and you're punished. And you don't even have to actually say anything wrong. Pretty much anything you say can be considered "giving lip" if your parent wants some excuse to punish you. But if you say nothing, then you get punished for ignoring. You also have to calculate your response to their mind game quickly because taking too long to respond is considered ignoring. Also, if you're being wrongly accused of something, saying nothing is considered a confession. And even if you somehow manage to say exactly what your parent wants in exactly the correct tone, they'll still punish you for "sarcasm" or "not really meaning it".

Neurodivergent_lou

If someone could just tell me how to function properly that would be great thanks. I feel like I’ve been winging it forever nd honestly this is not easy

Dear parents

Pretending that your kid isn't disabled and getting mad at them for needing more help and support than your other kids and wanting them to "try harder" and also pretend that THEY aren't disabled by ignoring their OWN needs as well doesn't make them less disabled by the way

I can’t believe how accurate this is. I’ve had a rock collection since I was a kid, and I’m still collecting them to this day.

Do any of you relate to this? If so, what do you like to collect? It can be plushies, toys, whatever. :)

Neurodivergent Girl

a bottom-tier autistic experience is being told throughout your entire childhood that you are just an overthinker when it comes to social situations and later finding out that your friends did, in fact, hate being around you and tried to communicate that through weird little hints

i honestly forget that autism mums say 'autism won today' to mean like their kid had a meltdown and that they are ableist. like nooo autism win means something like i found something cool out about my special interest or i managed to avoid a meltdown or i got to infodump!!!!! autism win is good!!!!!!

The fact that homelessness is controversial tells you everything you need to know about conservatives.

At some point in your life, you were taught that being slightly annoying is an unforgivable sin. Maybe it was by your parents or a teacher or a friend or a bully or an older sibling. But someone taught you that being slightly annoying is a crime punishable by death.

You must unlearn this.

You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.

If you ever want to truly love your fellow humans, if you ever want to truly love yourself, you must have forgiveness for being annoying.

Our Lady of the Damp and Rain

Look upon this mighty work! Our Lady resplendent in gold!

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

this is what ancient greek philosophy is like

False! “Sightly” is a positive word, so the default way for things to work is good as well.

The true most ordinary object is beautiful, horrible sounding, very smelly, intangible, and delicious.

I still don’t think it matches anything in existence but to truly understand a thing one must know its true nature.

"touchy" is also a word! however it's mostly used for things that aren't objects, like subjects of conversation. it either means "oversensitive and irritable" or "requires careful handling/wording, delicate"

i think the second one works well for our hypothetical object. so we can use that.

therefore, the Default Object is:

and i still cannot think of anything that matches this

behold, the default object!

I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.

When my oldest kids were small -- about 6 and 8 - I bought them a Video (the VCR kind) of John Waters' Hairspray, a film they loved, and, getting home at 3 am, left it for them with a note. They woke me up the next morning. "It's not Hairspray. It's something scary with a car." Due to a mislabelling error, the videotape was Stephen King's Christine.

I mentioned it to friends and a day later got a call from a tabloid journalist who wanted to know about this terrible thing that had happened to my family. "It's not a story, " I told them. "My kids know where the off-button is and how to press it, and the moment they knew they weren't watching what they wanted to watch, they turned it off."