My Brain Randomness

Who was your favorite human in the circus? I know you hate them now and cant bear to even think about them, but you did care fkr them at one point. I just wondered. 🤗

A-Are you sURE you want to Ask me THAT?! Do you really want me to delver deep into getting that answer for you guys? I...I really didn't give it a lot of thought! Are you sURE you don't want to ask me what my favorite color is? Or...or what's under my hat again? (It's different this time, I swear!)

Like...you DO know there's things I like about them, but also things that I DISLIKE about them, right? How many insults I had to ignore saying them out loud? How much they put me through working outside my comfort zone?

Do you really want me to spend the time to actually coming up with an exact answer to that?

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

STOP-