For Anyone Who Reblogged The Original, You Should Probably Delete That If You Ever See This.

When you're autistic, it's impossible to miss how much society normalizes child abuse.

I could dedicate my entire life to studying how to interact with people and I'd still never master the social skills that young children are expected to have on command.

Say the wrong thing? That's disrespectful and you're punished. And you don't even have to actually say anything wrong. Pretty much anything you say can be considered "giving lip" if your parent wants some excuse to punish you. But if you say nothing, then you get punished for ignoring. You also have to calculate your response to their mind game quickly because taking too long to respond is considered ignoring. Also, if you're being wrongly accused of something, saying nothing is considered a confession. And even if you somehow manage to say exactly what your parent wants in exactly the correct tone, they'll still punish you for "sarcasm" or "not really meaning it".

Happy aniversary you dumb fucks @staff

I didn't even notice. I thought they meant "write shit" as in "write low quality works" and I was like "yeah, college will do that."

Bro İ hate being an academic they're making me write shit 😭 İ thought İ was just supposed to sit in an old chair smoke & say something french every now and then 😢

Nobody Told Me This shit would suck so much

first job. walmart. sucks. I think i was mildly depressed before and maybe didn’t really notice; now i REALLY feel it. Ive been crying freaking rivers the past few days. especially before and after work. and its so hard to keep it mostly hidden. i felt guilty and useless before for not doing much with my time, but it hasnt really changed. im so tired and fucking upset. its so hard, but they tell me to be happy that im making so much for a place like walmart, i hate it. i never wanted to grow up and suffer, i just wanna feel okay. i wanna run away from all of this, maybe even disappear. this world is so painful. maybe im not cut out for all of this, i just wanna sleep

One of the newer daycare teachers at my center was complaining about a specific child - who has a lot going on we’re still trying to map out, but definitely some type on developmentally divergent on top of attachment issues with their single mom.

Anyway, said kid, a little under 4 years old, was resisting doing art, which was really upsetting the one one teacher when the other (who’s worked with this kid for over 2 years) was basically like “Ok, not today, this isn’t a good day for you.”

One thing I do when I find kids at the center resisting my instructions is asking “Why” - on me.

Why am I asking this child to do something?

“What they are doing isn’t safe” and “What they are doing is harming another child” are obviously good reasons for me to pursue my point.

“Maintain structure” is, honestly, generally a good reason, where “structure” is the regular rules and expectations of the class and schedule.

Having a predictable structure helps most children feel safe, because they don’t have to be the adult and decide what is going to happen - their teachers are the ones that set boundaries for safety, have their physical needs met, and create expectations that allow them to develop patience and delayed gratification.

But forcing a child to participate in an activity? Not just “now it is art, because we do art every day” but “you must do art??”

Asking my “Why, what is the child getting out of this” devolves down after a few levels to:

The child has to learn to comply over their own mental health.

Even the more experienced teacher who let the one kid sit out and rest from art is irritated when children refuse to sit quietly during Circle Time, which pisses me off because all the trainings I’ve taken on Circle Time say “have a quiet activity optional for children who don’t want to sit and participate.”

Sadly, as I was discussing this with my other Autistic coworker at closing, we agreed that “Conformity despite mental health” is a primary rule in modern education, and both of us despite being aware of the obvious issues with this are powerless to even motivate major change within our own center without taking “Room Lead” roles.

Which we both agree would break either of us. 😓

I Might Have Fucking Autism wtf

It’s clear to anyone who spends enough time with me that I’m some flavor of neurodivergent. It’s been that way my whole life, but my mom is too prideful and used to flip her shit whenever someone even implied something like that. She says she doesn’t make defective kids. :/

"You'll grow out of being sensitive."

"You need to grow up and stop crying all the time."

"You can't let everything hurt you like this."

Will I really grow out of this though? It doesn't make sense. My mouth starts moving before i think, and someone says that they weren't talking to me, that I should be quiet...

And suddenly I'm six years old again, being yelled at constantly and occasionally beaten for talking too much or talking out of turn.

Why does it hurt so much? It shouldn't hurt. We're all adults and they even said it somewhat gently... So why do the tears roll?

It's wild how abusers will normalize things and use different language to make it sound okay.

"spanking" instead of "hitting" or "beating" unless they're threatening you. Once it's over, you got *spanked" and not "beaten."

I've known for a while that my parents were physically abusive when I was growing up, but I was afraid to call what they did "beating" until recently. I had a conversation with someone I grew up with, and that's what she called it. I was dumbfounded for a second before I stopped and thought about it. Then, I felt validated and heard.

Doctors could name a disorder "Whiny Bitch Disorder" and I assure you that the reaction in the ND community at large would not be "what the fuck is wrong with the psychiatric field and how they think of mentally ill people, we should not allow that name and diagnosis", but rather "PSA: Please don't use 'whiny' and 'bitch' as insults, that's ableist against people with Whiny Bitch Disorder!"