Luke @rivergoblinsworld - Tumblr Blog

In the era of transition from shackles in a dark dungeon to short leash in the outdoors

#if my demons eat their leash and run away we are all fucked

fairycosmos

t shirt that just says WHATEVER YOU’RE READING INTO MY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND BODY LANGUAGE YOU’RE MISINTERPRETING

piranesies

they should invent putting on sunscreen that doesn't feel like putting on sunscreen

lakevida

walking around the dashboard at four in the morning stepping on all the creaking posts loud as fuck

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.

maidthings

"this is unbecoming of me" is genuinely a useful thing to have in your mental toolbox

just saw a pigeon doing the puffed up courtship dance thing to another pigeon, and as he was strutting around he suddenly stopped for a split second to do a very brief preen-peck at his own side, then returned to the strutting around. and i surprised myself by instantly losing respect for the male pigeon in that moment, like come on man i appreciate you had an itch or whatever but how is she supposed to feel special when you're getting distracted by bullshit like that? which on reflection i don't endorse, i mean those are pretty harsh dating norms i'm imposing on these pigeons, from a total outsider perspective, for no reason. probably not all girl pigeons are as uptight about that sort of thing as i would apparently be if i was a girl pigeon, maybe she even found it endearing who knows, i don't know her. it's none of my business really. sorry pigeons.

wyrmicelli

me tongue-deep in a sandalwood candle: 🤤

the tjmaxx employee loading a fourth tranquilizer dart into their blowgun: i need backup

snowown

delinquentbookworm

one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.

Where do people find peers to make friends with

#my realest friendships are all with people old enough to be my parents and/or grandparents