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11 votes
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Abuse and toxic masculinity: The complex themes of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2
5 votes -
Adoption isn't happily ever after
This will probably make some people uncomfortable and even angry, but it needs to be said. Adoption isn't happily ever after. The media loves to portray it that way, especially for foster kids....
This will probably make some people uncomfortable and even angry, but it needs to be said.
Adoption isn't happily ever after.
The media loves to portray it that way, especially for foster kids. Everyone loves the fairly tale story about the poor abused kids that get rescued by the selfless hero foster parents who then adopt them and everything is all good after that. I mean, the kids now have loving parents and a stable home. That's all they need right?
People love a happy ending. But fairy tales aren’t real and life isn’t that simple. Adoption is messy, and I don't mean the legal process, I mean the actual adoption itself. Adoptive parents aren't selfless heroes, they are regular flawed people just like everyone else, they just happened to choose to adopt.
These kids have been through bad things that are beyond the imagination of most people who don't have experience with the kids themselves. I hear it all the time. People say "They just need a good loving home". Loving and stable homes are great, but they don't make those bad things go away. Even if the adoptive parents were perfect (which they definitely aren't) these kids will be dealing with their trauma for the rest of their lives.
And for these kids trauma isn't simple like so many people assume it is. It isn't just bad dreams and sadness. It's rage. It’s frequent meltdowns over the smallest things. Sometimes it’s hurting pets, or even other kids. Sometimes it's trying to burn the house down. Other times it’s stealing from kids at school. Sometimes it’s grade schoolers finding ways to look at porn. Sometimes it’s trying to molest other kids. This doesn’t describe all kids from foster care. It’s not meant to scare you. It’s meant to show you that there’s more than what you see on the outside.
For these kids meltdowns have a completely different meaning than for most other kids. A meltdown isn't crying and getting angry for 10 or 15 minutes. It can be hours. Hours of true screaming. Hours of punching doors and walls. Or punching us. Or hurting themselves. Total non-compliance. It's a total inability for them to calm down at all. Sometimes we have to physically restrain them for safety reasons. Usually, they have to physically exhaust themselves before they finally begin to come down.
And it's not their fault.
And we parents aren't perfect either. Sometimes we scream back at them. Sometimes we escalate the meltdown even more. Sometimes we restrain when it's not necessary. Sometimes we just layer on consequence after consequence, not because it's helping, but because we are mad and caught in a power struggle.
We take them to doctor appointments. We adjust meds. We get to counseling every week. We literally pull them out of public school because they can't function there. We are usually exhausted. We are often hopeless. We fear they will never have a normal childhood. We fear that they won't have a good life as adults.
We can never replace their birth parents. They will always miss them, no matter how bad the abuse was. They will mourn what could have been. They will mourn what should have been.
They point that hurt and anger at their adoptive parents. They say they hate us. They say they will kill us.
We aren't a fairy tale family. We aren't some success story about the power of love.
We were the safest option in a bad situation.
We will always love them as our kids. We will always strive to be there for them, to support them, to give them what they need to have whatever healing is possible.
For them though this will never be as good as having birth parents that were safe and loving in the first place. This will never compare with what should have been.
34 votes -
US parents say Peppa Pig is giving their kids British accents
12 votes -
Paternity leave: The hidden barriers keeping men at work
12 votes -
A project of one's own
5 votes -
Looking for a new high chair. What would you recommend?
The last time I posted on tildes, I got some really helpful suggestions on a mop for my floors. Now I'm looking for a new high chair for my daughter. She's nearly 6 months old, so we're about to...
The last time I posted on tildes, I got some really helpful suggestions on a mop for my floors. Now I'm looking for a new high chair for my daughter. She's nearly 6 months old, so we're about to start her on solid foods but gave away our older son's high chair a while back when he started sitting in a regular chair (and because it was terrible).
The main requirement is that it's easy to clean, but it also has to support a younger baby sitting in one for the first time. Our last high chair (Graco brand) almost seemed like it was designed to have as many difficult-to-reach crevices as possible where crumbs could get pulverized into.
What do you think?
6 votes -
Choosing a school in a segregated city
9 votes -
Having kids
8 votes -
Can kids navigate their way across London alone?
9 votes -
The truth about my son
8 votes -
Notes from "Don't Shoot the Dog"
4 votes -
Two women gave birth on the same day in a place called Come By Chance. They didn’t know each other, and never would. Half a century later, their children made a shocking discovery
10 votes -
Swedish carmaker Volvo will offer a generous paid parental leave scheme to its 40,000 employees globally
8 votes -
Miscarriage bereavement leave bill passes unanimously in New Zealand Parliament
15 votes -
Unexpected joys of kids playing Atari 2600 games
9 votes -
Children with same-sex parents do better at school than their peers
11 votes -
No, that British hospital didn’t ban the word "breastfeeding": The ultra-viral story is an outright fabrication made by the institutionally transphobic British press. It worked.
22 votes -
Leading baby food manufacturers knowingly sold products with high levels of toxic metals, a US Congress investigation has found
11 votes -
Three American mothers, on the brink. Eleven months, multiple breakdowns, one harrowing realization: They’ve got to get back up and do it all again tomorrow.
10 votes -
Parents with disabilities face extra hurdles with kids' remote schooling
8 votes -
Bets, bonds, and kindergarteners
5 votes -
My family’s slave
10 votes -
Study indicates climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children
20 votes -
The last children of Down Syndrome
16 votes -
"Other countries have social safety nets. The US has women."
19 votes -
The mad, mad world of niche sports among Ivy League-obsessed parents
10 votes -
Six women speak about their fears of bringing a child into a world that feels like it’s teetering on the edge of collapse - and why they’re choosing to do it anyway
14 votes -
Misguided things our parents did
I'd like to hear your stories of things your parents did with good intentions that went wrong. This is mine. When I was very young – old enough that I can remember it, but young enough that I...
I'd like to hear your stories of things your parents did with good intentions that went wrong. This is mine.
When I was very young – old enough that I can remember it, but young enough that I wasn't going to school full time yet – my mother would volunteer at a local nursing home. I never met my maternal grandmother. I think she died a year or two before I was born. I have a vague memory of meeting my maternal grandfather, and there are photos of it, but he died when I was still quite young. Maybe 4 or 5. I don't believe either of my grandparents were in ill health before their deaths. But I think that their deaths affected my mother and she wanted to help other elderly people, so she started volunteering at the nursing home.
I have 2 older brothers who by this time were in school most of the day, leaving my mother and me at home alone. I think she also got bored of doing housework and wanted to do something useful with her time. (I can't say I blame her!) I suspect she also thought that the residents of the nursing home would enjoy interacting with a child, even if it wasn't their own grandchild. So she took me with her. I think she wanted me to learn to value elderly people and to learn to value community service.
Unfortunately, she failed miserably. What I learned was that old people are scary as fuck and I didn't want to be anywhere near them. You this was a nursing home. This was not an "old folks home" where they play canasta, have dances, and engage in elderly hanky panky. This was end-of-life care for people dying of cancer, and the now-preventable diseases like polio. The entire place reeked of vomit, and the old people were hard of hearing and weird. They were almost always in a bed or wheelchair, and usually in hospital gowns. There were often sounds of screaming from other rooms where some patient was in terrible pain from whatever ailment they suffered.
The residents were all old and gray haired except for one. He was a young man. He had to be younger than my mother who would have been in her early 30s. He was probably 20-ish years old. His hair was not gray - it was dark black and close cut with electric clippers, though not quite a crew cut. He was always in a hospital gown and always in a wheelchair that had an IV pole on it (though I don't recall there ever being anything hanging from it). And while he looked normal, he had some sort of mental deficit where he could only grunt and moan. I would often see him loudly moaning and gesticulating as if trying to point at something to say, "give me that," or "take me over there."
The one bright side to this place was that there was a woman in a red and white striped uniform who pushed around a cart full of every type of candy imaginable! I wanted so much to get a peanut butter cup or a chocolate bar from her, but no. Her candy was strictly off-limits to me. (I don't know whether it was cost or health that made my mother refuse to ever let me have a piece of candy.)
I'm pretty sure my mother was trying to teach me the value of both old people and volunteering to help our community. But as a ~4 year old, it was too much. It instead taught me that getting old meant pain, suffering, and eventually death, and that old people are scary as fuck. I didn't want to get old or be around old people. (I eventually got over it and now am nearing being an old person myself. 😉)
20 votes -
Why do you wanna be a parent?
I really don’t have much to say, that’s 100% an honest question about something I truly fail to understand. I’m not opposed to having children if it seems right for some reason, but this is not a...
I really don’t have much to say, that’s 100% an honest question about something I truly fail to understand. I’m not opposed to having children if it seems right for some reason, but this is not a dream or project of mine. When I ask people about it, I get vague answers or stuff I cannot relate to at all. And some people seem to want to get married and have children just because they think they’re supposed to.
I’m really not in a position to judge, but I will probably politely ask further questions for my own education.
If that’s a sensitive topic for you and you don’t wish to indulge my curiosity, maybe this post is not for you! Everything surrounding parenthood tends to generate gratuitous animosity, so please be patient with my earnest ignorance.
17 votes -
Here’s what one week of online school is like for my seven- and five-year-old kids, explained in a comic
17 votes -
Bridging the gap: Thoughts on racism from a White mother of Black children
16 votes -
Parents who work in childcare are trapped in an unsustainable system
8 votes -
"I barely have anything left to give": For parents of kids with autism, the unique challenges presented by the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic have sometimes been overwhelming
7 votes -
If you're a parent, what is it like?
If I see myself in someone's child here then I'm deleting this thread, no questions asked /s You should probably say/indicate your and your children's age and sex (can be plural, obviously.) You...
If I see myself in someone's child here then I'm deleting this thread, no questions asked /s
You should probably say/indicate your and your children's age and sex (can be plural, obviously.)
You can follow the Q&A format below but you don't have to.
A few questions that come to (my very uninitiated) mind are:
How much time do you spend on them?
If you aren't their biological parent:
(i.e you're
@aphoenixnot hetero and a parentdidn't want to go through fkin birthing peoplean adoptive parent, for example)- Where did you (uhh) find them?
- If it was an orphanage, what was it like there? (Can you even find children elsewhere if they don't have parents?)
- How many children were there to choose from?
- What led you to choose the child you picked in specific instead of someone else?
(Dear God, is this an ethical question to ask?)
How do you parent them?
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Do you follow what they're doing on the Internet or how much they use it? How much?
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Do you encourage them to have a good diet? How much?
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Do you encourage them to do more chores? How much?
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When you do this, how cooperative are they? If they aren't, what do you do to convince them?
How do you and your partner split the time spent taking care of them?
What was the most unexpected thing about parenting to you?
More personal questions below. (You can avoid these, I probably would too tbh)
If you had a particular preference/expectation for what you wanted/expected your child to be and got something else, what did you do?
How did birth(-ing?) go? What was it like?
What was being/seeing your partner be pregnant like?
Is there anything you regret doing when parenting them?
Why did you have them?
30 votes -
Rwandan single mothers turn to online babysitting of Japanese kids
12 votes -
What is something your parents were wrong about? What were they right about?
Note: I didn't want to clutter up the title, but "parents" in the title and below applies to anyone who raised you, whatever their role or relation. As we grow up, our view of those who raised us...
Note: I didn't want to clutter up the title, but "parents" in the title and below applies to anyone who raised you, whatever their role or relation.
As we grow up, our view of those who raised us changes. Some of their "unfair" rules might make more sense in hindsight, for example. I'm curious for answers to the following questions:
- What were your parents wrong about?
This is something that they legitimately missed the mark on, for any reason. You might have realized it at the time, or have come to realize it in hindsight. Either way, you can definitively say it was the wrong call now.
- What were they right about?
There's probably a lot they did right, but in particular I'm interested in stuff that either seemed wrong to you as a child but you've now come to realize was the right call, or right stuff that you now realize is far more important than you did at the time.
Also, with any discussion of parenting it's important to remember that everyone's experiences are difficult and that some responses might open up about some difficult things. Please remember to be kind and empathetic in your responses!
19 votes -
A message to TikTok parents who use my face to make their kids cry
43 votes -
The value of extended families
6 votes -
My nonbinary child: An anthropologist muses on what her career and child have taught her about gender stereotypes and fluidity
7 votes -
Inside Roblox's war on porn - The game platform is extremely popular with children, and the company is waging an endless fight against "condo games": explicit, often sex-themed user creations
19 votes -
I’m an epidemiologist and a dad. Here’s why I think schools should reopen
9 votes -
Parents raising ‘theybies’ say it liberates children from gender roles and gives them the freedom to choose their own label
11 votes -
YouTube brings summer camp home to kids. Experience adventure, arts, sports or STEM camp at home with #CampYouTube
3 votes -
Thirty years ago, Romania deprived thousands of babies of human contact. Here's what's become of them
18 votes -
I am a mother of a trans teen and here’s what you’re getting wrong about them
10 votes -
New York’s Gender and Family Project advises parents how to support their children’s gender expression
7 votes -
I’m a developer. I won’t teach my kids to code, and neither should you
19 votes -
A short history of child protection in the UK, with discussion about the impact of temporary coronavirus law
6 votes -
UK man who gave birth to child cannot be named as father on that child's birth certificate
12 votes