Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
A tall, thin blonde person of indeterminate gender was watching me. They were very tall, dressed like David Bowie and had a German accent. They took a big drag of their cigarette and said, “You know, the problem with you humans is you give away every part of your self until there is nothing left.” I looked down at my body, and my entire torso had been hollowed out. Everything inside had been replaced with black and silver machines. They blew out a big cloud of cigarette smoke and told me, “Just because you exist by accident doesn’t make it any less meaningful.”
Whatever the fuck this dream got going on… it helped me
theyre so rude and in their mind theyre so nice for even talking to you at all
this gave me PHYSICAL PAIN
i didn’t realize that i repressed that memory but i absolutely did and it happened almost exactly like that
I only made it halfway through.
She creates more content like this on tiktok and they’re hilarious but it’s also so painful to watch. I even lowkey started to hate seeing her because of how accurate it is. But then I saw this comment in one of her videos and it really made me think
Cleaning symbiosis is a mutually beneficial
association between individuals of two species, where one (the cleaner)
removes and eats parasites and other materials from the surface of the
other (the client). (x)
Forever obsessed with the fact that even the in-universe annotation in the appendices talking about how Legolas brought Gimli along to Valinor with him is like “We don’t actually know how they managed this. By all accounts, it doesn’t make any sense”
Gimli: So you know I’m on board with this, obviously, but like. If the world is flat for you, and it’s NOT flat for me, and the boat is only supposed to be able to get there the flat way…
Legolas: ?
Gimli: What happens if we’re both on the boat?
Legolas: I don’t know, but we’re gonna find out
[Insert title card reading MYTHBUSTERS: ARDA EDITION]
Every year, in a small Welsh town, there is a race between riders on horseback and runners on foot. Evidently he above subject came under some discussion in a bar, and a bet was made, which resulted in a challenge people have recreated every year since. The race features dozens of horses versus a similar number of runners, and while a horse usually wins, it is always pretty close, and SOMEtimes, sometimes a human runner wins.
The race is 22 miles long. It is shorter than a standard human marathon. This is so that it is fair to the horses. A typical marathon is 26 miles long. A healthy distance for a horse to undertake in a single day for the purpose of travel is between 20 and 30 miles, but only if they walk at least part of the way. The years a human runner has won the race, the weather has been hot, as heat also favors human runners.
Interestingly, if the race is only ten to fifteen meters, 30 - 45 feet, a human can also win against a horse, which takes longer than a human to get up to full speed.
This fact of human capability for pursuit hunting and distance running is also part of why we have partnered with dogs for so much of our time on this planet. Dogs and wolves also engage in pursuit hunting, and sled dogs in particular can run miraculous distances due to some very interesting biological processes.
His name is Eugene Goodman. In a now-viral video, he is seen confronting White Supremacists and using himself as bait to provide cover for the evacuation of lawmakers. He was alone in a hallway when the mob reached him, and Congress was being evacuated to the left. He lured the mob away from lawmakers, drawing them in the opposite direction and up the stairs.
Officer Goodman deserves recognition for his amazing bravery and selflessness. Because of him, Congress was evacuated safely and no lawmakers were assassinated on that terrible day. He risked everything to save others, and he is a hero.
My interest in “Cole announces everyone’s crushes while they pine mutually” as a plot device only grows with each passing day. A partial sequel to my previous comic (x).
omg i found this video on youtube called “elk hunting chihuahua” and the guy is like “make sure you have a good hunting dog” and just opens his backpack to reveal his lil chihuahua named coco and tells us how amazing she is at hunting
and then he just whips her out and says “you gotta have one of these things, they can track, and they’re just the best hunting dogs in the world” and that was the whole video and honestly i’ve never wanted a chihuahua more in my life
My grandparents are baffled when we just don’t care about certain things. The last time we did a socially distanced lunch they were complaining that our neighbor keeps really old broken cars that he likes to work on in his front yard and we were like “Yeah, and?” and they didn’t know how to respond to that.
Like the very idea that we would just mind our own business and tolerate mildly annoying behavior from other people is like rocket science to them. They just can’t comprehend it.
My mum never has anything nice to say about modern music. It’s always “this song is shallow nonsense”. Yeah maybe I want to listen to shallow nonsense. What about it
![toothpast:
“ theworldisanapple-youareaseed:
“ lizzingwithkriz:
“ Pregnant Ghost Bat having an ultrasound at Featherdale Wildlife Park
”
congrats it’s a bat
”
[delighted bat noises]
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md0a2v5pIH1qmckr5o1_500.jpg)