#penstab

@penstab finished this AMAZING commission of baby ava!! i couldn't be happier with it.

Kit you’re doing this so right ❤❤❤

PEN your approval makes me GLOW!!! <3 <3 <3 if anything gives me confidence and reassurance it’s u :’)

honestly I’ve had good advice and experience from 1) my mum, who worked as a college teacher and worked with a LOT of angry kids, and 2) working as an emotional support worker at another school in my spare time for the past three years or so. it’s like. yeah I’m not gonna lie, you get the shitty kids who genuinely are garbage bags, but it’s very rare you’ll get a genuinely mean spirited cruel kid. mostly it’ll be a kid who has issues at home, or with themself, and they just need someone to talk to them like they’re a person. I like to let them get on with their work even if they’re like, a bit chatty, a bit fidgety. I like to banter with them, build up my rapport, because they’ll listen to me a bit more. I’ve definitely yelled at kids and talked to them sternly when they’ve made pithy excuses for things, or when they’ve just been too rowdy or misbehaving, but when it’s sunk in I like to say, like...I’m sorry for getting stern but I believe they can push themselves more, or like...ask them if there IS a problem we can get to the bottom of, that I can help them with to make things easier. it’s a bit of both. some kids are just lazy and need hasslin. some kids are stressed out about how to fix things they’re doing wrong and you gotta help them out.

I’M GONNA TELL A STORY IN YOUR REPLY ABOUT A CLASS LAST WEEK, SORRY PEN. there was this kid in music class. they had to learn how to play frere jacques, and this kid was just fuckin around, messing with the keyboard, the volume, the settings, laughing and just. yeah fuckin around. so I get a lil stern with him and he kinda deflates a bit, so I sit down with him and I go ok. what’s the problem. you keep saying “I can’t do it” but not explaining which part, so which part are you finding hard. and he couldn’t do the fingerwork properly that the teacher had said they should do, he found it really hard. this kid has like no rhythm. so I was like ok that’s fine, just use whatever fingers are comfortable, and play each two bars after I’ve played them. and we went really slowly, him following me playing the measures and speaking out the notes, and he very very slowly...learned how to play frere jacques...and let me tell you, this child was SO PROUD of himself. he was THRILLED. he was super excited he’d managed it and I was SO delighted I told his teacher and wrote on his feedback sheet his effforts and attitude were just superb. and when you get to see these kids really putting in the effort and really being happy when they succeed it really makes it worthwhile helping them. it makes me wanna help them more. it’s hard to be a kid!!! especially with brain or mood or behaviour issues!! it’s rough!!! and yeah sometimes u gotta be a lil stern. but patience is the biggest factor! gotta be patient and kind more than anything!

YO

i still find it bewildering and hilarious that no one ever gave me shit while that was going on

tohri voice SO, SUBQUAIL,

IN THEIR DEFENSE they corrected themself after but like...subquail...

queering relationships, in the sense that they don’t fit neatly in the categories of friend relationships or romantic or sexual relationships - it did originate in the ace community way back when the aro community was like.. a subset rather than its own thing, and ‘queer’ was a little less fraught as a term online than it is now (i mean that nonjudgmentally, anyone can have any relationship with the term, just the atmosphere around it was a lil different then) (cont)

penstab replied to your post: skeleton-bat replied to your post: ...

so it was just like.. ace and aro and ace-aro ppl trying to find words to define their own relationships?? even then there was a lot of discussion about where the lines were between ‘friends’ and 'couples’ and how the lines were different from person to person and hard to define at all, so it was a useful concept for some ppl and not for others. not.. identity politics?????????? ugh

penstab replied to your post: skeleton-bat replied to your post: ...

TO BE FAIR I’m not active in current aro (or ace) communities because a lot of the Discourse actively wigs me out and upsets me. I don’t know if ppl now act like it’s a Clearly Definable concept that applies in the same way to different ppl. somehow I doubt it though!!! i don’t even use the term for myself but I deeply feel the difference between .. like.. friendship and ..other loving relationships that still aren’t romantic either? so. y'know.

penstabreplied to your post: skeleton-bat replied to your post: ...

..HI KIT BTW i hope this doesn’t sound like.. idk.. lecturing you!! this is more for the other ppl, idk how much of the history other ppl knew??

HI AUNTIE oh jeez no you’re okay this is really useful and interesting to know actually!! I know a lot of younger folk (me included) aren’t super brushed up on a lot of the terms that have some historical weight to them so I love to know more context and stuff. this whole bunch of replies is full of Good Stuff(tm) and I’m glad you spoke up, you have some a+ opinions here.

including the communities being...kinda rough lately lmao, I try to sort of poke my head in and steal shit and leave like a worrisome possum. but no yeah that’s a pretty legit reason for using the term, and it’s cool if people are cool to use it, I just also like the idea of an alternative?

yikes. i see pip’s friendly anon visited you too

YEAH LMAO I messaged them like oh jeez pip I’m so sorry

WHY ARE YOU THE WAY THAT YOU ARE, PEN!!!!!