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I'm Page, a gal in her 30s obsessed with pretty much anything. If you like Final Fantasy, Magical Girls, Star Trek, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, LOTR, HBO War Shows, etc. then this is the place for you and I like you already. Twitch is twitch.tv/mershelle9

[chips1977]

Can i chew on wires

[chips1977]

can i chew on your wires

[mershelle9]

I have an entire box of wires that I don’t know what they go to. By all means, have at it

[wholesalemagnesiumoxide]

i think "bedtime abolitionist" is an unserious pejorative and i think less of people who use it. it's bad that children's lives are so heavily regimented, actually, and it'd be good for them to have more autonomy in these matters.

but, yknow. ruthless criticism of all that exists unless it makes you look like a whiny child, or something.

[jackawful]

I used to work extensively with kids and I am unironically a bedtime abolitionist.

Specifically at summer camp, I noticed that trying to enforce a bedtime would result in nights of me going cabin to cabin telling kids to be quiet repeatedly until 1-2AM. Then we would all be cranky and exhausted about it the whole week, and it made me come off like a controlling asshole to the kids cause...I was being a controlling asshole. And like, I was young enough to have really salient memories of having been a camper, so excited to talk to new friends that I didn't sleep - the kids had good reason to stay up!

So I figured out that I could, instead, lay out the first night that they could stay up as late as they wanted, and talk to their friends, as long as they were physically in bed with lights off. I would get a lot more sleep and was better able to function in the morning, and if a kid complained about being tired the next day, I would ask about how long they stayed up the previous night and let them connect the dots themselves. Inevitably, most kids would stay up really late the first night, and then they would self-regulate and get to sleep way quicker, because they were motivated to balance their own wants & needs instead of an adult breathing down their neck about an arbitrary externally-imposed sleep deadline.

I started extending this method to more things, trying to make sure my role was less Authority Figure and more resource for learning how to care for themselves. I went through college and found it was backed up by a lot of the research out there on parenting and teaching styles. Literally just respecting the autonomy of kids in my care and talking them through decisions instead of telling them what to do would make "behavioral issues" evaporate, and make both me and the kids happier. It helped even more when I started working with traumatized kids and teens in foster care after college. Sometimes a kid would even point out to me when a given rule in a workplace didn't make sense and I could give them an exception and/or go to my boss and try to get things changed. Often, arbitrary rules from higher-ups made things way more difficult for everyone.

Trying to explain this to authoritarian parents AND my worse bosses over the course of my childcare career was like pulling teeth.

Kids deeply crave autonomy and responsibility, and if you give them the former they will often gladly take up the latter, but you have to give them the chance to make their own choices and make non-life-threatening mistakes first. But to someone who views a kid as property, or even a well-intentioned perfectionist parent, the idea of giving a kid that autonomy is terrifying, so they try to make it sound absurd to justify maintaining control.

Anyway, yeah, bedtime abolition forever. The kids will do just fine without bedtime.

[rustyanddustychevron]

Everyone keeps talking about "the writer's barely disguised fetish". But I still haven't heard about "the writer's barely disguised huge ass pet peeve"

[marxistlesbianist]

[livelovelaugh-777]

[whyenn-reader]

Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I really wish more ADHD mental health care told you WHY things like this matter to our quality of life.

The Hyperactivity in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is NOT about being physically hyperactive, it's about having a "hyperactive central nervous system" because it's a form of inheritable dysautonomia. The problem with disautonomia, especially the ADHD kind, is that it makes boredom flag to your nervous system as a THREAT, triggering hyperactive and maladaptive central nervous system processes like fight or flight.

But dysautonomia kills you that way. Literally, part of the reason our average life spand increase on stimulents is that it helps manage risk-taking impulsivity that can get us killed by accident, but the other part is that stimulents can regulate a hyperactive CNS such that it is functionally (while impacted by the stimulent) NOT dysregulated anymore. And PHYSIOLOGICALLY that is essential because the physical outcomes of dysautonomia can reduce your life span by YEARS if not decades through self-perpetuating hypervigelence, endocrine disruption, and adrenal fatigue.

So when the ADHD brain goes stimulation-seeking and a doctor tells you to practice mindfulness, it feels like being told "hey go stand in a functioning boiler until you can stop thinking" rather than WHAT IT IS which is the process of re-teaching your body what is and isn't safe.

Standing outside making mindful, non-interpretive/moralized observation of the world helps your brain and body re-acclimate to the idea that absence of that frantic "busy" feeling isn't a threat or a risk to your safety, and gradually reduces the level of distress that just hanging out somewhere triggers for you.

Learning WHY this stuff was being suggested and understanding what it was actually supposed to do went a long way towards changing my relationship with my ADHD. I am FAR more functional now, far less prone to shame spirals and rejection sensitivity, hell, I can **sit physically still for near on an hour at a time** now without feeling like I'm going to crawl out of my skin.

So yeah. Go outside. Let the world narrow around you and take deep breaths until it stops feeling claustrophobic or like you need to climb walls. Learn how to let little sensations become big ones like the way the heat of the sun on your skin starts as a gentle warming and be omes a unique collection of sensory moments depending on how it lands on you. Listen for sounds under sounds and let them fade in and out as you move your focus from one sound to the next. Enjoy. Move on. Rinse and repeat.

When you no longer feel like the world is actively killing you, it's a lot easier to navigate it.

[whyenn-reader]

S++ tier addition to the post, thank you tumblr user butts bouncing on the beltway

[musashi]

Hey can you guys reblog Cheeseburger so he can take a sunbeam nap on lots of blogs. No other reason I just want you guys to see him.

[chrisbrecheenwritingaboutwriting]

[v3sha]

silly stickers

[zwei2x]

I'm all in for this size difference dynamic, for the Owen Sandrock lovers out there.

[nikyri-art]

Not me being pissy there are no wedding outfits for the chars no.. noooo…. Clawing at the 'change outfit' button like feral animal

[featheryfallenangel]

[zusua-coi]

Sleepyhead and Space-case 💙💛

[wifegideonnav]

affirmations for bus drivers: i am sexy and necessary for society to function 💞 ten minutes is not that late 💞 i can fit through that gap 💞 the passengers don’t need to sit down before i blast away from the bus stop 💞 i can take this turn as fast as i want 💞 twenty minutes is not that late 💞 everyone on this bus desires me carnally 💞 thirty minutes is not that late 💞

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

this is, as the kids say, frying me (a glasses wearer)

[humanpersonface]

Additional update to this

[lizluvscupcakes]

[dogpuppy]

[sistaofpeace1]