The type of the mother I’m trying to be. Not just encourage bodily autonomy, but reward displays of it, even when it might make someone else in the room uncomfortable.
swedepea
I’ve made so many people uncomfortable in supporting my daughter’s personal space. People will try to hug her, she’ll sometimes say “No, thank you” and the adult will look at me to make her do it, but I just say “It’s ok honey, you don’t have to hug anyone you don’t want to.” It makes people irrationally huffy, making me feel even more justified in supporting my daughter’s choices. Creeps.
I legit had to mom-voice some random woman with a “she said no!” when she tried to force a hug on Madison. (who was not very good at verbalizing to people she didn’t know/trust at the time)
She replied, “I just want a hug, it won’t hurt her.”
Me: She. Said. No.
There aren’t many things more important than letting my daughter know that I have her back when it comes to something like this.
I work with five year olds and I had a very long talk with them about permission and that your body belongs to yourself and no one else. “Even if you want to hug your friend, you need to stop and ask if it’s okay and if they don’t want you to touch them, you should respect that choice and not do it.” they were like “cool” and then every time after that they had no problem asking their friends “can I give you a hug?” Or “can I hold your hand?” Very politely. If their friend said no, they shrugged and went on with their life. They even started asking me if they could hug me or if it was okay to hold my hand when they were sad. And I always ask when they need comfort “do you need or want a hug?” If they say no, I ask “okay, let me know what we can do as a class to help you feel better. Quiet time? Do you want a stuffed animal? Sit on the couch? Do you need some time alone?” They verbalize what they need and they become aware of their own autonomy and their ability and power to say “no.” Just because someone is an adult does NOT give them the right to hug a child who has said “no” or “no thanks.” Teach then that they own their own body, and no one else is in charge of it. Teach them the power of NO.
^^^^^this is so important
publiusmaximus
Whenever a kid refused to high 5 me for whatever reason, I make a point to say “thank you for stating your boundaries”.
My husbands family get so offended when my stepdaughter doesn’t want a hug. I just tell them “no, she said she doesn’t want one”. They often try to force her to hug them or just grab her. It starts young, and they learn their body isnt their own.
When I first met my stepdaughter, if I asked for a hug, she wouldn’t say no, but she’d go into a protective stance and just wait. She was waiting for me to violate her boundaries. I told her “you don’t have to give me a hug if you don’t want one. You’re allowed to say no”. It took a while, but now she’s happy saying no.
Children have a right to boundaries as much as an adult does. Don’t violate a child’s boundaries.
It means a lot to me, for reasons I won’t go into, that you’re teaching your stepdaughter that. We need to teach more kids about this, and for that matter, need to teach adults to respect kids’ boundaries.
Very important to tech both, children AND adults!
FRICKING PREECH
You know what? I’d retrain to work in early childhood education, in order to do like the others in this thread are doing.
Matter of fact I’m going to legitimately open a tab right now and research about what I need to do/learn/study to work with littles instead of high schoolers.
Consent and bodily autonomy. Seriously: I could change the world, teaching this consistently to little kids before they’re trained by the world to let everyone else trample their boundaries.
She replied, “I just want a hug, it won’t hurt her.”
Not getting one won’t hurt you, lady.
There’s something so insidiously nasty about this kind of attempt—the way it portrays someone wanting contact with an unwilling person as reasonable and harmless while positing the unwilling person’s refusal as an act of personal harm, thus creating a situation where “asking” can function as a demand using legitimacy drawn from the fiction of its being a request.
It’s Schrodinger’s Request, basically. Technically they’re asking, but the expectation that the answer be yes functionally turns it into a demand, but their waiting until after the refusal to reveal the demand lets them expect it to have qualified as a request, which they use to frame a refusal as rude.
Thing is, at best, they spared no thought in their heads from the get-go about whether the person might decline, and at worst, they made the request fully expecting to use the fact that they asked as a bludgeon to demand a yes as though it’s owed to them as the other person’s part of an agreed-upon transaction, which it isn’t.
The choice to ask for something is made wholly by the asker; there is no standing agreement between asker and askee for the request to be obliged. That’s why it’s asking. That’s how asking works. You might get told no. If you’re not prepared to accept no, you’re not asking, you’re wrapping a the front end of a demand in deceptive packaging.
To dismiss someone’s objections by citing how little you’re asking for, or that you’re asking, is to craft the illusion of mutual agreement—”I ask, therefore you give”—that doesn’t exist on the other person’s end, and force it on them. It does an end-run around consent by bundling expected agreement with receiving the request, banking on the fact that one doesn’t need consent to ask for consent; a blanket permission, generally, exists to ask for things—because it’s only asking.
Expecting acceptance as a reciprocal return for making the request upends that.
There’s also the emotional manipulation of making it about how the refusal hurts the asker’s feelings; one of them chose the situation, and that’s the one who should bear any emotional cost; to cast refusal as an attack is to dismiss in the askee the same feelings as the asker champions in themselves, in a situation the asker has sole responsibility for creating.
“No” shouldn’t cost anything to the person refusing. They didn’t create the situation. It’s the responsibility of the person asking to be able to accommodate being told no, and this is true however large or small the request is.
Something cannot be simultaneously too small for them to object to and too big for you to handle not getting.
what’s the creepiest biome? if you were stuck in your own personal horror hell, what would it look like? deep dark woods? spooky swamps? frozen arctic wasteland? the terrors of the deep sea? so much variety!!!
A pitch black marsh. Unable to see what’s below - and just forced to keep walking to prevent getting stuck in the mud. There are no trees, no moon, and the only sound is splashing of the water. You hear splashing while you walk but it doesn’t seem to be you. Every time you stop, so does the sound. Your thrist for water growing with every step.
just-the-way-youre-not
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT
keeping-up-with-the-jenners
Reblogging because I care about you guys
Important
ladyofthegeneral
Rohypnol has an INCREDIBLY salty taste to it. It’s disgusting. And it also isn’t a drug that acts immediately! The minute you notice the salty taste, you have about 5-10 minutes to get somewhere safe or call an ambulance, and it CAN be fought if you’re aware of it. It will make you woozy, it will make you so dizzy you can’t stand upright, it will certainly make you unable to walk properly, but if you struggle to remain conscious you can get about 20 extra minutes of consciousness from the drug before it will knock you out completely. If you’re in a public place, and the person who drugged you is trying to take you somewhere private, start. a. fight. Insist as LOUDLY and as VIOLENTLY as you can that you refuse to go anywhere with them. Odds are they’re trying to make as little of a scene as possible as they drag you away, and if you’re putting up a fight and very clearly ‘drunk’, eyes will turn on them and they’ll either need to let you go, or cause a serious scene, which they don’t want. Don’t just act like you’re just protesting being taken home, though. Fight like your life depends on it even if they aren’t assaulting you. Cause. A. Scene. That’s the last thing they want.
spsyched
Everyone should reblog this!
mizukiinozomii
Very useful.
To that last one that shit is NO JOKE
Boasting the FUCK out of this
I made it so wherever I look explodes
op of this post probably wasn’t even trying to be the funniest person on earth when they made this video
ubercharge
king.
ukthewhitewolf
free range mop
I love her, she looks so absolutely bizarre
one good thing about december on this hellsite is that this gif will be making its rounds again
ebimanami
oh my god why have i never seen this gif
a-night-in-wonderland
The Adventures Of Business Cat
tomibunny
#i like these cause it implies that depsite all these weird things he does hes so good at buisness #that they let it slide