"So, you know how when they're doing work on a road, the road gets a lot of road cones and they divert traffic and the roads won't hold as much traffic and things slow down, but when it's over you have a smoother, wider road that can move more cars and stuff?"

*nod*

"Okay, so when you hit puberty, your brain goes under construction and there's a lot of road cones up and stuff that's easy to understand right now becomes a lot less accurate and parts of your brain work better but parts of them are not working very well at all. Ultimately the whole system is going to be faster and bigger and able to handle more stuff, but in the meantime there will be times when your brain can't deal well with increased traffic. So stressful times are more stressful, and signals that work well under normal conditions might be misinterpreted."

"What they've discovered about teen brains is that most teenagers, while puberty is happening, have a harder time than one might expect in correctly reading the emotional temperature of the situation. They might, for example, think that people are angry with them when they are not, or that people are being critical when they are not, or that mild annoyance is something much more intense."

for kids who don’t have trusted adults in their lives, this might be a terrifying thing to hear. I don’t doubt the good intentions of the original poster, but “don’t trust your own brain and instincts, trust me instead” is a risky thing to say to just any teen, especially while they’re still learning to trust their own instincts.

as an adult with depression, anxiety and adhd, I sometimes hear a version of this from other adults in my life when I’m upset about something. “your brain is lying to you.” usually the person is trying to make me feel better, like “these terrible things you think about yourself aren’t true, you’re awesome!”

but, “your brain is lying to you” is a terrible thing to hear from a loved one, even if it’s true, because it doesn’t work. it doesn’t make me say oh hey you’re right everything’s actually fine right now. it makes me think, so you’re saying I can’t trust this organ inside my body? that my instincts are wrong, and instead I should listen to you?

honestly it just feels like that person is telling me my feelings aren’t valid and I’m stupid. and if that’s the case why would I listen to them? so then I feel alone.

99 times out of 100 I’ll sleep on it and wake up realizing hey, my brain was lying to me, everything’s actually fine. but I have to get there myself. there is no other way.

maybe I’m projecting my own problems onto this simple road construction analogy on tumblr dot com. well, so be it.

But as someone who experienced a certain sort of parental abuse, that line terrified me.

Some parents wind up doing abusive things to their kids, not because they aren’t fundamentally on their kids’ side, but because they are emotionally and assume that means that they are in all ways. They will say -- and mean! -- “I love you,” or “I’m on your side,” and then punish their child for, say, having sensory issues, or being too vocal about how they’re being hurt or any of a million “weird” traits. And those parents will use lines and ideas like that to reconcile the cognitive dissonance between “my child is hurt by what I’m doing” and “I love and support my child,” and push them on the kids as well. And if the kid develops a mental illness from the trauma of this pattern, then that’s all the more reason to distrust anything coming out of their brain. Clearly they just can’t see how hard the poor beleagured parent is trying, how much they’re doing tofor them, couldn’t they just try to see things from the parent’s point of view? Does the kid even care about the parent? Because they’re sure not showing it...

Ahem. You’ll notice that nowhere in this narrative does the parent actually find out what being on their kid’s side would mean, or trust their kid’s input on that point. A pattern that pushes well into adulthood - I’ve seen my mother reject mountains of evidence because I was the one who pointed it out, later accept part of that same evidence from a third party, and call it a ‘misunderstanding.’

As an example, with my kid who is currently going through puberty, up to now we have had a lot of conversations about trusting yourself and being sceptical of what adults say. I have unfortunately learnt from experience that children are perfectly capable of judging how trustworthy adults are, and that deffering to *their* judgement when you distrust them is a good way to get hurt. And especially considering their identity and neurodivergence, this has been vital to limiting the emotional damage of being surrounded by adults who swear up and down that they are on your side, it's just your brain isnt working properly.

I suppose it could work if you have already built a solid relationship with the child through showing you can be trusted, but even then it would rely on the adult's track record not changing through all the changes that come with puberty, and that still sounds like a gamble.

This one I actually found myself!

And I don’t think that this counts, but it still has the beautiful “Ah, fuck” vibes the rest of the post does:

And let’s not forget the cursed “Supernatural GIF Perfectly Describes 2020″ one:

If there's a child in your life that you want to introduce magic to, here are some small and simple ideas:

Enchanting their blanket and letting them know

Making wishes on dandelions

Using mythology as bed time stories

Painting sigils on their ceilings with glow in the dark paint (they get to see the sigil and actually see that it's charged and used as they sleep)

Tea parties

Pearl earrings for good luck, wisdom, and wealth

Knot magic applied in hairstyles

Celebrating the equinoxes and other celebrations

Creating a fairy garden

Putting a rosemary plant on their desk to help them remember what they studied

Teach them phases of the moon and their importance

Teach them florist things and geology

Take them to the beach

Let them decorate and keep an altar in their room

Give them some basic spell books

Put honey for sweetness and milk for strength in their baths or other herbs (just make sure it's safe for their skin and to be ingested)

Teach them basic palministry

Go feather hunting

Go foraging with them

Burn incense or get a diffuser for their room

Speak your chants, spells, and correspondences out loud

Make them a jar spell for peaceful sleep

Plant jasmine outside their window for health, happiness, and relaxation

Bake bread with them

Teach them to meditate and ground

Make them rose and honey tea when they feel lonely and sad

Have them keep a dream journal

Teach them how to read playing cards

Make them amulets for safety and love

Draw sigils on the tags in their clothes

Paint their nails a color to match what you want to bring into their life (ie blue for calm, red for love, white for peace, etc)

Use glow in the dark star stickers and recreate some constellations inside

Cleanse their room or teach them how to

When they have bad dreams, place some amethyst and salt under their pillow

Bring the color orange into their room to bring in energy and joy or blue to bring in calm and peace

Place an iron nail in the floor under their door and above their windows to keep out fae

Hand down your grimoires

Plant an oak tree in your yard to provide a place to play and also to bring strength into your home and as a place to worship deities associated with the tree

Teach them about curses and the like

Get them an authentic dream catcher

An opalite necklace for confidence

Shark tooth necklace for strength

Teach them to love and respect the Earth