Defiant Delight

dogs-of-peace said: 

I am regularly disgusted by what I see in my Facebook feed.

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Aiya Van Kooten everyone

When Aiya Van Kooten stood face-to-face with a burglar in her bedroom, her left eye twitched, then she went into “predator mode”.

“I screamed at him… jumped off my chair, leaped over my bed and sprinted after him down the stairs,” she said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8626910/Predator-mode-scares-off-burglars

So in summary:

This lady doesn’t just defend her home and loved ones, she will hunt you down, team up with other skilled individuals, get you put away, and then teach you the consequences of your actions until you’re a valuable member of society once more.

I’m seeing a ton of people posting this copy-and-paste update about boycotting the inauguration by SWITCHING YOUR TELEVISION TO A DIFFERENT CHANNEL. It’s a nice thought and a nice gesture, but that WON’T WORK.

I’m not putting those things in all caps to yell at you, I just want to make sure you see it.

How TV Ratings Work: Viewership is measured through Nielsen ratings. Unless you’re a “Nielsen family,” you don’t really count. Nielsen Family data is recorded through their Nielsen boxes, and then that data is gathered on a value curve to represent a larger audience.

Basically, no Nielsen box = no count.

Ratings are an estimate. It’s super archaic. But so is cable. That’s why viewer data is ALSO gathered through internet clicks and posts, interaction with online videos and social feeds, and streaming data.

How to REALLY Boycott the Inauguration: Avoid online content. Avoid clicking on videos, avoid linking articles and tweets, avoid social feeds, avoid recaps. Even hate-watching a video or posting a link to add the comment, “An oil spill in the Pacific Ocean is better for humanity than this administration,” still counts toward viewer data. Your hate-click is still an added view, and it doesn’t come with a little asterisk next to it that says, “But this person loathed it and weeps for the future.”

fandomsandfeminism:

thewolfygirl:

lawful-evil-novelist:

thewolfygirl:

The research says the more they were spanked the more similar the effects were to abuse….probably be cause spanking your child for every thing they do wrong IS basically abuse. My mother spanked me and my siblings as a child but only when we did something that warranted it. Normally we’d just get grounded but when it came to the time when my brother in middle school tried to steal my grandmothers car in the middle of the night to be cool and well already knew why it was a terrible idea, that was a different story and he did get spanked. Spanking is not a main punishment. It is a last resort.

No no no, it was a last resort with my family and it still had that effect on me. There is NEVER a good reason to hit your child. It is the same motion as smacking a child across the face, and that is counted as abuse.

It. Is. Abuse. Period. End if sentence.

Also if your brother stole a car he should be arrested, because it’s a crime.

Okay since you’re the one who brought it, what effect exactly did it have on you? I know it’s a personal question, but you can’t use yourself as an example if you don’t explain. Also he didn’t steal the car. He tried to. He was being stupid in middle school at a sleepover at my grandmothers and thought it’d be cool to ride around in her car. He didn’t even get out of the driveway. Spanking is ya know no where near as bad as being arrested.

A MIDDLE SCHOOLER? 

Middle schoolers are like, already developing complex abstract operational thought. They are fully capable of reasoning and having meaningful material consequences. 

And as a punishment, your mother HIT HIM? 

Yeah……that does not sound like, ya know, the ideal solution to this problem. 

Okay hitting someone is not the same thing as spanking. She didn’t freaking punch him in the face. She sat him down had a conversation with him because they both knew he already knew it was something he shouldn’t have done. Then she spanked him and took him home. He was grounded for a little bit and that was the end of it. He never did it again and now much older defends spanking. There is a difference between hitting someone, abuseing someone, and spanking your child.

So it sounds like your mother had NO REASON to hit him. 

so i behaved fairly well as a child but i liked to go into the woods

my parents were much like @thewolfygirl, from what i know, and used spanking as a last resort and hated the thought of resorting to it

i was spanked (once or twice) for going in to the woods.

but i never went into the woods again, i didnt fear my parents after that, and the physical pain of the spanking didn’t leave any lasting damage to me

Look, maybe you, personally, were truly not impacted negatively in anyway by being spanked.

Is it acceptable to strike an employee who makes a serious mistake? No?

Then why is it okay to hit a child? One who you have complete power over, who CANNOT stop you, leave, or in anyway object in an effective manner?

If you were to do so to an adult, it would undoubtably be considered wrong.... To "reinforce" a message with pain...

BODY HEAT: 42ºC

COLD WATER: 4.4ºC

HOT AIR: 148.9ºC ( […]children soon succumb in a 48ºC car.)

HIGH ALTITUDE: 4572 m

So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:

1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care. 

“Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”

“You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”

”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.” 

2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it. 

-Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?) 

Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”

Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away. 

3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls.  “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.” 

And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation. 

Most of the things I list here are preemptive measures- things to mitigate or lessen misbehavior before it happens. 

So, it’s a brand new time travel show on NBC; still finding it’s feet but I swear every episode has been better than the last and I’m so excited to see where it ends up. 

1. The incredibly gifted Malcolm Barrett plays Rufus. Rufus is a flawless human being. He’s sweet and smart and awkward and scared shitless but keeps trying even though he’s in way over his head. He gets at least one positively epic moment per episode. 

2. Race is brought up in every single episode, because Rufus has his own perspective on historical events and the show bothers to treat that as relevant. His white teammates, Wyatt and Lucy, are made aware of their white privilege while time traveling (for example, in the Lincoln assassination episode, Lucy is constantly reminded that the racial issues she can see in abstract terms are personal to Rufus).

3. Frequent encounters with historical POC, from Colored Regiments to Black Panthers to Shawnee chieftainess Nonhelema (god, I was so sure that episode was going to disappoint me with Scary Indians TM. Then they were like, “Nope, gonna teach you about this amazing Native woman who you never heard of and also portray her grievances with the white invaders as totally legitimate.”) The show constantly reminds us that POC were also doing things throughout history and those things were important. 

4. In modern time, all of the main cast back at base are POC. Two are WOC.

5. POC in the background. When the background is mostly white except for a few Black servants, at some point it will be pointed out that this isn’t because white people are “normal” but because segregation/discrimination was a thing. When the setting was actually diverse, they show that. Like in the Alamo episode; it had many white American and white immigrant defenders, but also some Mexicans and Blacks. Your average portrayal would completely ignore them. On Timeless, they explicitly talk about the free Blacks in Mexico. Even when Crockett or Bowie is talking, the background still has Black and Hispanic actors. 

6. I kept worrying that they’d start out well, but eventually sideline Rufus and focus on just Wyatt and Lucy, especially since they initially bond more with each other while he is very protective of them. But recent episodes have also had them fighting to save him, the whole group bonding more and Rufus consistently getting the most interesting characterization and storylines. 

1) A woman she worked with at the hospital who had a baby with one of the ambulance drivers. When work found out they fired her (he kept his job). She tried to self-abort with a knitting needle.

2) The sister of one of her neighbours who wasn’t able to rent a room because she was a ‘fallen woman’.

3) A girl who got sent to a convent house and scrubbed floors until the day she gave birth. Her baby was given up for adoption without her consent.

4) Girls who had babies with priests.

5) Women who were on their fifth, sixth, seventh child, who had been pregnant for the best part of a decade, begging for sterilisation because their husbands wouldn’t wear a condom.

My mother was given a “shot”; she lived 3 blocks from the doctor.   He never told her what it was, likely an “overdose” of progesterone, which is how they used to “induce menstruation” in a hurry (i.e. abortion off the books).  She was about 7-8 weeks by her estimation.  He said, GO STRAIGHT HOME, go to bed and stay there.  She walked fast, but nearly collapsed at the curb and my grandmother went out to guide her into the house.  She went to bed, stayed there and bled steadily and heavily for 3-4 days.  She said it was like being very very sick, headaches, nausea, vomiting… and then, gone.  

She never let me forget this and took me to my first NARAL meeting when I was 15 yrs old.  And here I am today, in my 50s–and I still remember my grandmother’s scary account; my mother swaying, literally, at the curb, and nearly falling, under the strength of that one shot.  

How did she get the doctor to do it? She told him, “If you don’t, I will do it myself”–and if you knew my mother, you knew she meant it.  She would have.  After all, lots of women she knew had.  

I want to tell you guys a story.

A few years ago, I came out to my mom the morning after my senior prom. She was surprised, then quiet, then asked what my real orientation was. I said, “I have no idea, but I like this one girl.” She was a little confused, but she kissed me and said, “As long as she makes you happy.” For the next few weeks, she asked a lot of questions: when did I realize? What was my new girlfriend’s orientation? What was the word for this or that? I WAS happy, right?

Fast forward about two years. My mom sits me down and tells me that she needs my help with her next book. She’s been writing middle-grade girls’ books (like, 9-14 range) since I was eight, and she says she has an idea that she really, really wants to get right. It follows the plot of Romeo and Juliet, she says, and the main character is a twelve-year-old girl realizing she has a crush on another girl when they put on the play for English class.

Fast forward another year to now. STAR-CROSSED is about to come out, and it is absolutely amazing.

My mom has poured her heart and soul into making sure this is a positive thing for kids to read. I’ve been reading and editing and helping with this book since its first draft and I’ve been, metaphorically and sometimes literally bouncing up and down on my heels, waiting to be able to tell people about it. It’s beyond sweet, and there’s a ton of Shakespeare and humor and goofy preteen drama and twelve-year-old girls flirting and Star Wars jokes and a glossary of Shakespearean insults in the back (yes, really), and it’s just so fun and positive and smart and I want to show it to every kid I know.

This book is for LGBT kids, written by a mom who has asked questions and done her research and tried as hard as she possibly could to make her own queer kid feel safe and loved and valid, and it REALLY shows. Mattie (the cutie on the left) and Gemma (the cutie on the right) are given space to learn about themselves, and ultimately they don’t have to figure themselves out right away or come out to everyone at once or choose a label. They’re kids. It’s okay to still be figuring things out. It’s okay. 

Fun facts: 

My mom said from the beginning she wanted both girls on the cover to make it clear what the book was about; then when they got the final artwork and Mattie’s hair was short, my mom wrote back and asked the artist to do the hair over to make it as obvious as possible that Mattie is a girl. 

When a few people started buzzing about Mattie being the youngest bisexual protagonist they’ve seen, she went back and changed passages to confirm that Mattie likes boys and girls. 

When I asked for a happier and less ambiguous ending scene, she set Mattie and Gemma up on a frigging date. 

The is only ONE other middle grade (ages 8-12) fiction book I know of with a bisexual protagonist and that is Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan.  The field of bi characters in childrens lit will DOUBLE with this book.