Ms Ladybug

im an aroace preschool teacher. this is just a sidebog to anonymously talk about work

[larkandkatydid]

One thing I’ve become a real extremist about is little girl’s clothing and hair styles because if your kid can’t get her hair wet, hang upside down, climb over a fence or run full out in the outfit/hair she is currently wearing then why not? And the answer better be both extremely fucking good and describe something temporary.

[poodletrain]

Hope you don't mind a story that also made me extremist about this issue.

Took my friends daughter (2.5yrs) to the park. Dressed her in practical clothing that's ok to get stained, brought an extra change of clothing. She sat in the mud at the water bank and played with rocks and mud. A little girl came over, couldn't be more than 3yrs. She was looking longingly at my friend's daughter. She has her hair in a perfect style and she's wearing a pretty dress with white socks and dressy shoes. The parents say "Sweetie don't go into the mud, you'll get your dress dirty" and pull her away, while giving me a judgmental look as they see the kid in my charge covered in mud and throwing rocks into the water. It felt really weird, like we saw eachother as aliens with completely different ideas on how to raise children. When my friends daughter was done playing, changed her into clean clothing and went back home. She had a lot of fun at the park and a day full of nature and play. The other little girl kept her dress clean.

[maybeasunflower]

There's a Tumblr post about someone finding out that "girls" toddler clothes are more restrictive than "boys" toddler clothes to the point that it made it harder for them to crawl, at a stage where they were learning to crawl.

[impulsivelycontentious]

I made one about how my toddler child couldn't climb in girl's TODDLER PANTS.

We are not a house who cares much about gendering a baby's clothes. It's a BABY. It doesn't care. So we'd take the kid to yard sales and let them pick out whatever baby clothes caught their fancy and would fit. Some were 'boy' and some were 'girl'. Kiddo loved floral prints because they're a baby (yeah my kid has always picked their own clothes).

Anyway, my kid LOVED TO CLIMB. Sometimes.

It was weird. Sometimes they were all over the sofa and the playground equipment and MY LEGS and sometimes they just. Weren't. Couldn't figure out what was going on.

Until I caught them trying to climb on rhe sofa in one of their pretty flowered pants.

They COULDN'T LIFT THEIR LEGS PROPERLY. And gave up, and did something else.

So I tested this out and... Yeah. The kid COULDN'T climb in ANY of their girl pants. Any. Put them in boy clothes and suddenly the kid is on everything again.

We stopped buying girl pants completely until they were old enough to test them and my kid is a TEENAGER now and i still make them lift their legs individually and jump if it's a girl fit.

YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO MEAN TO DO IT.

Whoever designed these clothes literally did not care if the baby could MOVE. But only if girl.

[alienaficionados]

““When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with. The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.” All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.””

— Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (via jillymomcraftypants)

[shamebats]

In 1978, when she received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Lindgren spoke against corporal punishment of children in a speech entitled Never Violence! After that, she teamed up with scientists, journalists and politicians to promote non-violent upbringing. In 1979, a law was introduced in Sweden prohibiting violence against children in response to her demands. Until then there was no such law anywhere in the world.

What a legacy. We’re so lucky to have had her.

[im-a-ladybug]

Kids are so funny. I was reading sleeping beauty and a 3 year old interrupted me with "teacher?" I said "yes?" And she proceeded to tell me "my daddy showered last night."

After a pause where I tried not to laugh, I replied "thats cool" and tried to keep reading when 4 other kids also had to inform me that their parents shower as well.

[ivvyela]

nothing on this god's green earth can convince me that peter parker doesn't have an ao3 account where he is elbows deep in a 'rise of skywalker' fix-it fic. like, fully invested in it, been writing it pre-spider bite with ned, who is just as enthusiastic about it. but the thing is, it's really hard to do updates when you are literally spider-man.

every three months he'll post and in the author's note there's some shit like "sorry this took a while, i got shot seven times :/" or "i know it's been a minute, i literally got hit by a bus and then stabbed in the leg, but i'm all good!" or sometimes ned would log in and post with a note "hey i'm a friend posting on the author's behalf, they're healing from severe hypothermia but promised an update, so here it is!"

and the fic just gets increasingly more popular for the author notes alone. a good handful of the comments are something along the lines of "i'm not even in the star wars fandom, i'm just here to see if the author is good" or "every update i cheer for another day the author gets to live at this point"

and any reader who is a native new yorker kind of pieces together that holy shit the author might be spider-man because the timeline adds up, and they just fully embrace it. spider-man will stop a robbery and the guy behind the counter will ask when the next chapter will be up. spider-man returns a stolen backpack to a girl and she'll tell him that he "really got poe's voice down so well, it's really impressive."

ned thinks it is hilarious. mj finds out about the fic from twitter, to peter's absolute horror, and changes peter's contact name to "friendly neighborhood ao3 author". but the worst thing to happen is after an avengers battle where peter took a pretty big hit and ends up in med-bay. and during a press conference, when someone asks how spider-man is healing, tony just drops "spidey won't be down for too long. the star wars fic will be updated within the week, probably."

ao3 goes down for two days.

[shinseifer]

"average cat owner spends 3 years in prison" factoid actualy just statistical error. average owner spends 0 years in prison. Miette's mother, who kicked her body like the football and went to jail for One Thousand Years is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[avidreaderffn]

I love how every single Georg post observes the original's typo

[bananonbinary]

i like that you said "observe" instead of "preserve," implying this has religious importance.

[im-a-ladybug]

One of my kids has told me over and over that im a ladybug so I guess that's what I am now

[im-a-ladybug]

One of my biggest accomplishments is teaching the 3yo farm kid to stop stepping every spider he sees for fun and instead gently hold them and show them to his friends. He'll help his friends pick them up without hurting them and talks about how cute they are. If one seems hurt he'll stop playing with it and go put it by the fence so it cant be bothered by anyone.

I instilled the love and care for the life of even little bugs in a child. Can not be taken for granted