why would it hurt me—or was it real?

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

But that’s not the only place where we curtail kids’ freedoms. Like, say a little girl’s getting a haircut and she wants to get half her head shaved so she looks like Natalie Dormer in The Hunger Games, like, first the barber’s going to look to the parent for permission (which is already fucked up) and then the parent’s almost certainly going to say no and tell the barber to trim a few inches off or whatever it is they think their hair should look like and…

What I’m getting at is that so many of the things we think we need to protect our kids from are *fucking harmless*. Shaving their heads, going to the supermarket in a spiderman costume, eating ketchup for dinner, these things are not going to seriously harm anyone. In so far as they are mistakes, they are mistakes that kids should be able to just make and gracefully recover from.

And I think the mindset here – that children need to present *normally* because otherwise what will people think of them, and what will people think of their parents – is *precisely* the same mindset that leads to abusive shit like “quiet hands” and ABA. That it doesn’t matter what they want, what’s good for their well-being, what matters is that they *look and act* “normally”.

Like it seems like there’s something akin to a curb-cut effect here? Where this mindset hurts developmentally disabled children more, a lot more, but maybe the most efficient thing to do is just to tear it out by the root, to criticize it wherever we see it? 

susie is not an inherently mean and violent girl, quite the opposite actually. but when she NEEDS/WANTS to be either of those things, she can do it very easily. you can't separate susie's roughness from her character, its a part of who she is. she's not perfectly polished, and that's part of her charm. that's part of why noelle likes her so much!

noelle knows susie is not a bad person, or violent, or mean. she knows how sweet she is and how sweet she can be. but noelle doesn't want a super soft, almost defanged version of susie, she just wants...susie, period. and susie is sweet, and caring, and thoughtful, yes. but she's also rough around the edges, intimidating, and stubborn. and susie needs to recognize that no matter what, she doesn't need to change herself to be worthy of love.