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Nov. 28th, 2018
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lizardsister:
lizardsister:
lizardsister:
the princess bride is exactly what a dnd campaign would look like as a movie like? the delightfully weird cast of characters with their own quirks, the strange pacing and narrative that still Works, the absolute absurdity of it all, the jumping back and forth between wanting to be serious and it being really funny, hell its even Told like a dnd story through the use of the grandfather being the one telling the story
what a fantastic fucking movie
also like the character backstories are SUCH dnd backgrounds like? “im out for revenge for my father who was killed by a guy with six fingers on one of his hands” “i bumped into a band of pirates and their leader liked me so much he ended up having me take on his title to retire”
that is the Exact shit that people come up with for dnd characters
DM: having narrowly escaped Humperdinck, you find yourselves in the dangerous Fire Swamps
Westley: do I know anything about this area? Any danger?
DM: roll a history check
Westley: 15
DM: you know of rumors of giant rats in the swamps, as well as quick sand
Westley: what do I know about the giant rats?
DM: roll nature
Westley: [nat 1] …… rodents of unusual size? I don’t think they exist
DM: hey what’s your passive perception-
(Your picture was not posted)
lizardsister:
lizardsister:
lizardsister:
the princess bride is exactly what a dnd campaign would look like as a movie like? the delightfully weird cast of characters with their own quirks, the strange pacing and narrative that still Works, the absolute absurdity of it all, the jumping back and forth between wanting to be serious and it being really funny, hell its even Told like a dnd story through the use of the grandfather being the one telling the story
what a fantastic fucking movie
also like the character backstories are SUCH dnd backgrounds like? “im out for revenge for my father who was killed by a guy with six fingers on one of his hands” “i bumped into a band of pirates and their leader liked me so much he ended up having me take on his title to retire”
that is the Exact shit that people come up with for dnd characters
DM: having narrowly escaped Humperdinck, you find yourselves in the dangerous Fire Swamps
Westley: do I know anything about this area? Any danger?
DM: roll a history check
Westley: 15
DM: you know of rumors of giant rats in the swamps, as well as quick sand
Westley: what do I know about the giant rats?
DM: roll nature
Westley: [nat 1] …… rodents of unusual size? I don’t think they exist
DM: hey what’s your passive perception-
(Your picture was not posted)
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ink-splotch:
yer a wizard, dudley
Harry Potter spent his eleventh birthday in a cabin on a tiny rock in the middle of the sea, listening to his cousin snore on the couch.
When a knock sounded on the wind-swept, rain-drenched door, it was not a giant fist (or a half-giant’s fist). It was a short sharp rap that sounded once, twice, three times before Minerva McGonagall simply charmed the lock open and stepped inside.
“Apologies,” Minerva said crisply, as Vernon raced out brandishing his rifle and Petunia pulled Dudley up off the couch and behind her. “I wasn’t sure you could hear me over the weather.” The rain fell down behind the professor in a roar. She was perfectly dry.
Minerva fished in her pocket without looking, because the only things allowed in her pockets were only ever exactly what she needed. “I’ve come to deliver this,” she said, pulling out a letter and handing it to Harry, who was cross-legged on the floor, “because our owl post seems to have been unable to get through.”
“And I’ve come to deliver this,” she added, pulling out a second letter, “because Hogwarts by-laws require a professor to hand-deliver acceptance letters to Muggleborn families for their explanation and comfort.”
The Dursleys did not look comforted, nor did they sound it once they opened their mouths. Dudley rubbed sleep from his eyes while Harry retreated to a corner out of everyone’s reach to open his letter (finally) and read through it. When he looked up again, Uncle Vernon’s rifle had turned into a rubber chicken and the professor was almost yelling.
“Your son has magic,” Minerva snapped. She had just come from a little family of Muggle dentists, who had taken notes on everything she told them, and their bushy-haired daughter, who had stared up at her with big hungry eyes and asked questions at breakneck speed. After that, this was not just exhausting but almost insulting. "Whether or not you want him to be, Dudley is magic. If we do not teach him to handle it, it will still happen.“
“I want to go,” said Harry, very softly.
Minerva couldn’t decide whether to go softer or more fierce. “Of course you will, Mr. Potter, if I have to escort you myself.”
“We won’t– we won’t allow–” Vernon began to bluster, but Dudley was watching Harry’s set face. His little eyes squinted.
“Dudley is not–”
“If Harry gets to go,” said Dudley at the top of his sizeable lungs.
“Dudley,” Vernon snapped, so Dudley raised his voice even higher to announce, “Then I do, too.”
“But Duddikins–”
Dudley’s face was going red. Harry moved quietly out of his radius and Minerva watched him go. “It’s not fair, you can’t stop me, I’m not gonna sit and learn dumb maths while he does magic–”
“Don’t say that word!”
“Neither of you is going–”
Dudley bellowed, no words, just sound, drowning out his parents. Harry watched the rain out the window. Minerva had known James Potter. She had known him well, in war and in peace, from behind a teacher’s desk and beside him in the trenches. This eleven year old looked very little like the grinning boy she’d so often scolded– but he looked a bit like the young man she’d later had the privilege of fighting alongside.
McGonagall drew close to Petunia as Vernon tried to muffle Dudley’s hollers with big hands and wheedling promises. “Mrs. Dursley, you may not be aware, but every letter to the Hogwarts admissions office goes through me, and has for decades.” Petunia’s bony face snapped up to meet Minerva’s eyes. “Including those sent with stamps.”
Petunia was pale, her fists claws at her sides. “Childish– those were childish, absurd wishes–”
“He is a child,” said Minerva. “He’s magical. Let him have this.”
Dudley took a breath and let out another bellow, kicking at his father’s shin.
Minerva tried not to wince. She tried to mean it. “Let him have the chances you didn’t.” Petunia’s gaze shifted away to the ground. Minerva reached out for the other woman’s elbow, her bony fingers as gentle as she could force them to be, which wasn’t very. “Don’t hate him for it, Ms. Dursley.”
“I would never,” Petunia snapped, raising her eyes in a swift, angry jerk, but Minerva had known Lily Evans, too.
Once Minerva had convinced Petunia and Dudley’s caterwauling had convinced Vernon, she set up an appointment date and time to take them to Diagon Alley the next week and left them to their impromptu seaside vacation. She napped on their back porch in Animagus form the day they were meant to meet her, watching with a cat’s focused patience as they piled into the car, snapping at each other. She’d sent them two follow-up reminders by the blandest owl she could lay her hands on.
In the Leaky Cauldron, Vernon cornered Minerva up against a table. She didn’t move a step backward, achingly resisting returning to her schoolgirl ways and transforming him to a lizard.
“If you’re not back from this– this Alley– with Dudley within the hour, I’m calling Scotland Yard.” He put his finger in Minerva’s face, and he miraculously remained human-shaped. Sometimes Minerva impressed even herself. “I have a direct line to one of their superiors. We provided the drills for their latest expansion, and I will not hesitate to call in favors.” Then he stomped off to get himself a drink.
Minerva raised her eyebrows at Raul, behind the bar, whose Head of House she had been for seven years, conveying quietly her expectation that any drink Vernon gulped down would have a generous dollop of frog spawn, and that Raul would charge him extra for it, too.
Dudley started gaping and didn’t stop as she led the boys into Gringotts and changed some of Dudley’s Muggle money for Knuts and Sickles. She watched his little beady eyes tick through an interested count of the little piles moving across the wood. A watery blue, they looked just like his father’s in his pink, squashed face. Minerva apologized briskly to Grelda, the Gringotts receptionist who watched Dudley while Minerva took Harry to his parents’ vault, and promised her some grateful banana bread at their next poker night.
While they clattered through the darkness of Gringotts’s underbelly, Minerva asked Harry about his hobbies, the latest books he’d read, and got brief answers– he was more interested in staring over the edge of the cart, gaze chasing after a glimpse of dragon fire. She nodded and let the silence sit between them as they bounced and screeched toward the Potters’s vault.
When Harry climbed out of the cart, all knees and elbows, she followed, thinking about book lists and schedules, maybe a new set of clothes. The chill of the underground clung to her ankles. She twisted the key in her pocket.
Minerva didn’t expect it to matter to her, the piles of coins that appeared when the vault door wicked away into smoke. It was metal, dead and cold– no, not dead, never even living. This was an errand run, like fetching her mail or a bottle of milk.
But Harry was standing there in his ratty hand-me-downs, and this had been left to him.
Galleons glittered in the dim light. This had been Lily’s, and James’s, and Minerva remembered when they had been as small as the child hesitating before her, staring.
“I knew them.” The words were fluttering behind the ridge of her teeth, and she didn’t say them.
Harry was eleven years old, just barely, and every child in the wizarding world knew his name. Only the tips of his fingers peeked out from the sagging sleeves of his sweater.
Minerva didn’t say, “I took Lily from her family’s house, with its greenish carpet, its lacey kitchen curtains, and big backyard. She wasn’t much bigger than you, and I walked her down this street and picked out her books and her robes and her cauldron, and I never gave her back.
“You’ve got her eyes,” she didn’t say, “but not the ones from back then, finding out magic was real for the first time. You’ve got her eyes from the end, from the last days. Not a single Evans came to her funeral, but I did.”
“Well, Mr. Potter? We have a lot to do,” she said instead, and helped him gather some fistfuls of Galleons into a pouch.
At the equipment shop, Harry looked like he might ask for a solid gold cauldron until Dudley shouldered past him and demanded one himself. At that, the smaller boy peeled away in disgust and found a pewter one. “No,” Minerva said to Dudley, and hauled him along by the shirtsleeve.
Dudley parroted his father’s words about robes, but he ran his grubby fingers over every cloth in Madame Malkin’s until Minerva made him sit. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the Owl Emporium but ended up shrieking, rolling, and pounding his heels on the street when Minerva refused to buy him an owl.
“Apply to your parents,” she told him sternly. She cast a Silencing Charm and sat with him, reviewing the shopping list, until he was done yelling.
She returned them in exactly sixty minutes. Dudley, sulking, went straight for his mother, towing his sack of new possessions behind him.
“I will see you all at Platform 9 and 3/4s at promptly 10:45 a.m. on September 1st.”
“9 and 3/4s?” Vernon scoffed. “There’s no such–”
“It’s approximately three quarters of the way between platforms 9 and 10. I will see you then,” Minerva said and then went off to get a drink from Raul.
-
Minerva expected Harry to get Gryffindor. He was Lily’s son, after all, and she had seen him stand in that shack with his chin high and tell her he wanted a brave new world. (It never occurred to her, and Harry never told her, that for that wanting the Hat had offered him Slytherin first.)
It was the Dursley boy she expected in green and silver. He was a pudgy, unformed larvae of a child. She’d seen him at age one, screaming for sweets, and then again at eleven, screaming to drown out his father’s protests, and she didn’t really see much difference other than size.
The Hat sat on Dudley’s head for ages while the kid fidgeted and sweated. In the entryway, he’d stuck a finger through the Fat Friar’s translucent robes and ignored Harry talking with a freckly redhead. Minerva wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about Harry falling in automatically with a Weasley– she was hoping this latest one turned out more like Bill or Percy, rather than the twins, but Harry was James’s son. He and Ron already looked inseparable, huddled together in the waiting line of first years.
Dudley kicked his heels against the wooden stool, the Hat slipping down over his watery little eyes. The silence in the Hall was breaking to murmurs as the wait stretched on– Minerva frowned. Was this shallow bully going to be a Hat stall? Between what? Slytherin, and–? Merlin, please not Gryffindor–
“RAVENCLAW,” the Hat announced and Minerva almost spat out her mouthful of pumpkin juice.
Read More (Ao3) (link)
.
(Your picture was not posted)
ink-splotch:
yer a wizard, dudley
Harry Potter spent his eleventh birthday in a cabin on a tiny rock in the middle of the sea, listening to his cousin snore on the couch.
When a knock sounded on the wind-swept, rain-drenched door, it was not a giant fist (or a half-giant’s fist). It was a short sharp rap that sounded once, twice, three times before Minerva McGonagall simply charmed the lock open and stepped inside.
“Apologies,” Minerva said crisply, as Vernon raced out brandishing his rifle and Petunia pulled Dudley up off the couch and behind her. “I wasn’t sure you could hear me over the weather.” The rain fell down behind the professor in a roar. She was perfectly dry.
Minerva fished in her pocket without looking, because the only things allowed in her pockets were only ever exactly what she needed. “I’ve come to deliver this,” she said, pulling out a letter and handing it to Harry, who was cross-legged on the floor, “because our owl post seems to have been unable to get through.”
“And I’ve come to deliver this,” she added, pulling out a second letter, “because Hogwarts by-laws require a professor to hand-deliver acceptance letters to Muggleborn families for their explanation and comfort.”
The Dursleys did not look comforted, nor did they sound it once they opened their mouths. Dudley rubbed sleep from his eyes while Harry retreated to a corner out of everyone’s reach to open his letter (finally) and read through it. When he looked up again, Uncle Vernon’s rifle had turned into a rubber chicken and the professor was almost yelling.
“Your son has magic,” Minerva snapped. She had just come from a little family of Muggle dentists, who had taken notes on everything she told them, and their bushy-haired daughter, who had stared up at her with big hungry eyes and asked questions at breakneck speed. After that, this was not just exhausting but almost insulting. "Whether or not you want him to be, Dudley is magic. If we do not teach him to handle it, it will still happen.“
“I want to go,” said Harry, very softly.
Minerva couldn’t decide whether to go softer or more fierce. “Of course you will, Mr. Potter, if I have to escort you myself.”
“We won’t– we won’t allow–” Vernon began to bluster, but Dudley was watching Harry’s set face. His little eyes squinted.
“Dudley is not–”
“If Harry gets to go,” said Dudley at the top of his sizeable lungs.
“Dudley,” Vernon snapped, so Dudley raised his voice even higher to announce, “Then I do, too.”
“But Duddikins–”
Dudley’s face was going red. Harry moved quietly out of his radius and Minerva watched him go. “It’s not fair, you can’t stop me, I’m not gonna sit and learn dumb maths while he does magic–”
“Don’t say that word!”
“Neither of you is going–”
Dudley bellowed, no words, just sound, drowning out his parents. Harry watched the rain out the window. Minerva had known James Potter. She had known him well, in war and in peace, from behind a teacher’s desk and beside him in the trenches. This eleven year old looked very little like the grinning boy she’d so often scolded– but he looked a bit like the young man she’d later had the privilege of fighting alongside.
McGonagall drew close to Petunia as Vernon tried to muffle Dudley’s hollers with big hands and wheedling promises. “Mrs. Dursley, you may not be aware, but every letter to the Hogwarts admissions office goes through me, and has for decades.” Petunia’s bony face snapped up to meet Minerva’s eyes. “Including those sent with stamps.”
Petunia was pale, her fists claws at her sides. “Childish– those were childish, absurd wishes–”
“He is a child,” said Minerva. “He’s magical. Let him have this.”
Dudley took a breath and let out another bellow, kicking at his father’s shin.
Minerva tried not to wince. She tried to mean it. “Let him have the chances you didn’t.” Petunia’s gaze shifted away to the ground. Minerva reached out for the other woman’s elbow, her bony fingers as gentle as she could force them to be, which wasn’t very. “Don’t hate him for it, Ms. Dursley.”
“I would never,” Petunia snapped, raising her eyes in a swift, angry jerk, but Minerva had known Lily Evans, too.
Once Minerva had convinced Petunia and Dudley’s caterwauling had convinced Vernon, she set up an appointment date and time to take them to Diagon Alley the next week and left them to their impromptu seaside vacation. She napped on their back porch in Animagus form the day they were meant to meet her, watching with a cat’s focused patience as they piled into the car, snapping at each other. She’d sent them two follow-up reminders by the blandest owl she could lay her hands on.
In the Leaky Cauldron, Vernon cornered Minerva up against a table. She didn’t move a step backward, achingly resisting returning to her schoolgirl ways and transforming him to a lizard.
“If you’re not back from this– this Alley– with Dudley within the hour, I’m calling Scotland Yard.” He put his finger in Minerva’s face, and he miraculously remained human-shaped. Sometimes Minerva impressed even herself. “I have a direct line to one of their superiors. We provided the drills for their latest expansion, and I will not hesitate to call in favors.” Then he stomped off to get himself a drink.
Minerva raised her eyebrows at Raul, behind the bar, whose Head of House she had been for seven years, conveying quietly her expectation that any drink Vernon gulped down would have a generous dollop of frog spawn, and that Raul would charge him extra for it, too.
Dudley started gaping and didn’t stop as she led the boys into Gringotts and changed some of Dudley’s Muggle money for Knuts and Sickles. She watched his little beady eyes tick through an interested count of the little piles moving across the wood. A watery blue, they looked just like his father’s in his pink, squashed face. Minerva apologized briskly to Grelda, the Gringotts receptionist who watched Dudley while Minerva took Harry to his parents’ vault, and promised her some grateful banana bread at their next poker night.
While they clattered through the darkness of Gringotts’s underbelly, Minerva asked Harry about his hobbies, the latest books he’d read, and got brief answers– he was more interested in staring over the edge of the cart, gaze chasing after a glimpse of dragon fire. She nodded and let the silence sit between them as they bounced and screeched toward the Potters’s vault.
When Harry climbed out of the cart, all knees and elbows, she followed, thinking about book lists and schedules, maybe a new set of clothes. The chill of the underground clung to her ankles. She twisted the key in her pocket.
Minerva didn’t expect it to matter to her, the piles of coins that appeared when the vault door wicked away into smoke. It was metal, dead and cold– no, not dead, never even living. This was an errand run, like fetching her mail or a bottle of milk.
But Harry was standing there in his ratty hand-me-downs, and this had been left to him.
Galleons glittered in the dim light. This had been Lily’s, and James’s, and Minerva remembered when they had been as small as the child hesitating before her, staring.
“I knew them.” The words were fluttering behind the ridge of her teeth, and she didn’t say them.
Harry was eleven years old, just barely, and every child in the wizarding world knew his name. Only the tips of his fingers peeked out from the sagging sleeves of his sweater.
Minerva didn’t say, “I took Lily from her family’s house, with its greenish carpet, its lacey kitchen curtains, and big backyard. She wasn’t much bigger than you, and I walked her down this street and picked out her books and her robes and her cauldron, and I never gave her back.
“You’ve got her eyes,” she didn’t say, “but not the ones from back then, finding out magic was real for the first time. You’ve got her eyes from the end, from the last days. Not a single Evans came to her funeral, but I did.”
“Well, Mr. Potter? We have a lot to do,” she said instead, and helped him gather some fistfuls of Galleons into a pouch.
At the equipment shop, Harry looked like he might ask for a solid gold cauldron until Dudley shouldered past him and demanded one himself. At that, the smaller boy peeled away in disgust and found a pewter one. “No,” Minerva said to Dudley, and hauled him along by the shirtsleeve.
Dudley parroted his father’s words about robes, but he ran his grubby fingers over every cloth in Madame Malkin’s until Minerva made him sit. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the Owl Emporium but ended up shrieking, rolling, and pounding his heels on the street when Minerva refused to buy him an owl.
“Apply to your parents,” she told him sternly. She cast a Silencing Charm and sat with him, reviewing the shopping list, until he was done yelling.
She returned them in exactly sixty minutes. Dudley, sulking, went straight for his mother, towing his sack of new possessions behind him.
“I will see you all at Platform 9 and 3/4s at promptly 10:45 a.m. on September 1st.”
“9 and 3/4s?” Vernon scoffed. “There’s no such–”
“It’s approximately three quarters of the way between platforms 9 and 10. I will see you then,” Minerva said and then went off to get a drink from Raul.
-
Minerva expected Harry to get Gryffindor. He was Lily’s son, after all, and she had seen him stand in that shack with his chin high and tell her he wanted a brave new world. (It never occurred to her, and Harry never told her, that for that wanting the Hat had offered him Slytherin first.)
It was the Dursley boy she expected in green and silver. He was a pudgy, unformed larvae of a child. She’d seen him at age one, screaming for sweets, and then again at eleven, screaming to drown out his father’s protests, and she didn’t really see much difference other than size.
The Hat sat on Dudley’s head for ages while the kid fidgeted and sweated. In the entryway, he’d stuck a finger through the Fat Friar’s translucent robes and ignored Harry talking with a freckly redhead. Minerva wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about Harry falling in automatically with a Weasley– she was hoping this latest one turned out more like Bill or Percy, rather than the twins, but Harry was James’s son. He and Ron already looked inseparable, huddled together in the waiting line of first years.
Dudley kicked his heels against the wooden stool, the Hat slipping down over his watery little eyes. The silence in the Hall was breaking to murmurs as the wait stretched on– Minerva frowned. Was this shallow bully going to be a Hat stall? Between what? Slytherin, and–? Merlin, please not Gryffindor–
“RAVENCLAW,” the Hat announced and Minerva almost spat out her mouthful of pumpkin juice.
Read More (Ao3) (link)
.
(Your picture was not posted)
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stardustkylos:
Daisy Ridley in and as Ophelia (2018)
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stardustkylos:
Daisy Ridley in and as Ophelia (2018)
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theoeuvre:
marypassw:
Xena: Warrior Princess
holy shit this set
(Your picture was not posted)
theoeuvre:
marypassw:
Xena: Warrior Princess
holy shit this set
(Your picture was not posted)
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cryoverkiltmilk:
get-yr-social-work-rage-on:
intersectionalparenting:
isitscary:
daeranilen:
daeranilen:
daeranilen:
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
I love this post.
Too many parents wonder why their kids aren’t honest with them, and never realize their own non-receptive behavior and their failure to listen are the reasons why.
At one point or another, a child WILL keep a secret from you, but if it’s to a point where all their emotional feelings are being poured away from you as opposed to toward you, it’s probably because you haven’t been emotionally trustworthy or open.
Adultism :(
not to mention, you then take away one of your child’s coping mechanisms. if your parents read your journal, you’re never writing in it again. if your parents monitor your conversations with friends, you won’t tell them when you’re depressed anymore. if you have a therapist that reports what you say to your parents, you won’t tell that therapist anything. now all those methods of venting, feeling better, self-soothing, sorting out your issues, and feeling safe are gone.
“i want information” is not synonymous with “i want my child to talk to me.” those are two separate goals, but i think parents conflate them – i want my child to talk to me, but since they won’t, i’m stealing information from them. no. you didn’t ever want them to talk to you. you wanted information. if you wanted them to talk to you, if that was your entire end goal, you would have approached things completely differently. stealing information from a child ensures they will never talk to you again. but if all you want is information, then you can take it however you want and call it a parenting success.
if what you wanted was a child who talks to you, you would apply the same principles you do to literally any other human interaction in your life, and cultivate a relationship and trust.
I had to stifle my horror and revulsion at my last job, when a conversation about removing the door from a child’s bedroom came up, and I was only one not in favor of it.
May be worth noting I was the only millennial in a conversation that was otherwise full of baby boomers.
(Your picture was not posted)
cryoverkiltmilk:
get-yr-social-work-rage-on:
intersectionalparenting:
isitscary:
daeranilen:
daeranilen:
daeranilen:
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
I love this post.
Too many parents wonder why their kids aren’t honest with them, and never realize their own non-receptive behavior and their failure to listen are the reasons why.
At one point or another, a child WILL keep a secret from you, but if it’s to a point where all their emotional feelings are being poured away from you as opposed to toward you, it’s probably because you haven’t been emotionally trustworthy or open.
Adultism :(
not to mention, you then take away one of your child’s coping mechanisms. if your parents read your journal, you’re never writing in it again. if your parents monitor your conversations with friends, you won’t tell them when you’re depressed anymore. if you have a therapist that reports what you say to your parents, you won’t tell that therapist anything. now all those methods of venting, feeling better, self-soothing, sorting out your issues, and feeling safe are gone.
“i want information” is not synonymous with “i want my child to talk to me.” those are two separate goals, but i think parents conflate them – i want my child to talk to me, but since they won’t, i’m stealing information from them. no. you didn’t ever want them to talk to you. you wanted information. if you wanted them to talk to you, if that was your entire end goal, you would have approached things completely differently. stealing information from a child ensures they will never talk to you again. but if all you want is information, then you can take it however you want and call it a parenting success.
if what you wanted was a child who talks to you, you would apply the same principles you do to literally any other human interaction in your life, and cultivate a relationship and trust.
I had to stifle my horror and revulsion at my last job, when a conversation about removing the door from a child’s bedroom came up, and I was only one not in favor of it.
May be worth noting I was the only millennial in a conversation that was otherwise full of baby boomers.
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letitrainathousandflames:
definitelynotaminion:
purplefairydragon7:
gramanderbae:
whiskeyfortheway:
sriusblcks:
#Viktor was obviously deeply in love with her #just remember the fact that he took her to prom #even knowing that he could’ve choose any other girl #remember how he forgot about everyone and danced with her all night #remember how he looked at her while saying ‘write to me, please’ #remember how, a few years later #on Fleur’s wedding #he danced with her one more time #probably being conscient that her heart already belonged to Ron #this is why I love Viktor Krum so much #he just enjoyed being with Hermione #and didn’t care about the future #mostly, because she wasn’t going to be a part of his.
.
#never understood krum hate #he’s like what everyone wanted draco to be #surrounded by dark magic and bad influences #treated like royalty #even without his famed seeker status he was pureblood elite #and yet he never treated anyone as lesser #he liked muggle born hermione for her mind AND physical beauty #thought harry was a great quidditch player #and never once compared harry to his own skills because he’s humble #was genuinely flattered that ron wanted his autograph #liked cedric and made a poin to tell harry so #also told harry he would be an ally in the fight against voldemort #the only time he did dark magic was under the imperius curse #to which he can’t be held responsible #three years later he talked to an in-disguise harry at bill and fleur’s wedding #just a regular person he didn’t know was harry #and investe himself in that conversation #he made such an effort to interact at hogwarts and i feel like most the fandom dislikes him for no reason #because he was the type of character who wanted to rise above the expectations others held of him #he knew durmstrang’s bad rep and actively wished to do better #i don’t know y'all i just think we should all appreciate viktor krum more (kneelb4todd)
read this guys, read.
Just appreciate him. If for no other reason then because he appreciated Hermione.
Victor Krum was ready to fight Xenophilus Lovegood of all people in the goddamn street because he was wearing the wizard Nazi symbol from ww2. Like no holds barred throw down.
Protect my foreign son and his goodness. Let Victor punch Nazis 2k17
Also in the wedding he told Harry that “that symbol” [the one xenophilus was wearing] would be graffitied here and there in durmstrang by students who “agreed with grindelwald” (neo nazis, in a sense). But victor and his friends kicked their asses to show that kind of thing would not be allowed.
Boy straight up had his own gang of nazi-punching bros, heck yeah
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letitrainathousandflames:
definitelynotaminion:
purplefairydragon7:
gramanderbae:
whiskeyfortheway:
sriusblcks:
#Viktor was obviously deeply in love with her #just remember the fact that he took her to prom #even knowing that he could’ve choose any other girl #remember how he forgot about everyone and danced with her all night #remember how he looked at her while saying ‘write to me, please’ #remember how, a few years later #on Fleur’s wedding #he danced with her one more time #probably being conscient that her heart already belonged to Ron #this is why I love Viktor Krum so much #he just enjoyed being with Hermione #and didn’t care about the future #mostly, because she wasn’t going to be a part of his.
.
#never understood krum hate #he’s like what everyone wanted draco to be #surrounded by dark magic and bad influences #treated like royalty #even without his famed seeker status he was pureblood elite #and yet he never treated anyone as lesser #he liked muggle born hermione for her mind AND physical beauty #thought harry was a great quidditch player #and never once compared harry to his own skills because he’s humble #was genuinely flattered that ron wanted his autograph #liked cedric and made a poin to tell harry so #also told harry he would be an ally in the fight against voldemort #the only time he did dark magic was under the imperius curse #to which he can’t be held responsible #three years later he talked to an in-disguise harry at bill and fleur’s wedding #just a regular person he didn’t know was harry #and investe himself in that conversation #he made such an effort to interact at hogwarts and i feel like most the fandom dislikes him for no reason #because he was the type of character who wanted to rise above the expectations others held of him #he knew durmstrang’s bad rep and actively wished to do better #i don’t know y'all i just think we should all appreciate viktor krum more (kneelb4todd)
read this guys, read.
Just appreciate him. If for no other reason then because he appreciated Hermione.
Victor Krum was ready to fight Xenophilus Lovegood of all people in the goddamn street because he was wearing the wizard Nazi symbol from ww2. Like no holds barred throw down.
Protect my foreign son and his goodness. Let Victor punch Nazis 2k17
Also in the wedding he told Harry that “that symbol” [the one xenophilus was wearing] would be graffitied here and there in durmstrang by students who “agreed with grindelwald” (neo nazis, in a sense). But victor and his friends kicked their asses to show that kind of thing would not be allowed.
Boy straight up had his own gang of nazi-punching bros, heck yeah
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