“Imagine having a child that refuses to hug you or even look you in the eyes”
Imagine being shamed, as a child, for not showing affection in a way that is unnatural or even painful for you. Imagine being forced, as a child, to show affection in a way that is unnatural or even painful for you. Imagine being told, as a child, that your ways of expressing affection weren’t good enough. Imagine being taught, as a child, to associate physical affection with pain and coercion.
As a preschool special ed para, this is very important to me. All my kids have their own ways of showing affection that are just as meaningful to them as a hug or eye contact is to you or me.
One gently squeezes my hand between both of his palms as he says “squish.” I reciprocate. When he looks like he’s feeling sad or lost, I ask if I can squish him, and he will show me where I can squish him. Sometimes it’s almost like a hug, but most of the time, it’s just a hand or an arm I press between my palms. Then he squishes my hand in return, says “squish,” and moves on. He will come ask for squishes now, when he recognizes that he needs them.
Another boy smiles and sticks his chin out at me, and if he’s really excited, he’ll lean his whole body toward me. The first time he finally won a game at circle time, he got so excited he even ran over and bumped chins with me. He now does it when he sees me outside of school too. I stick out my chin to acknowledge him, and he grins and runs over and I lean down for a chin bump.
Yet another child swings my hand really fast. At a time when another child would be seeking a hug, she stands beside me and holds my hand, and swings it back and forth, with a smile if I’m lucky. The look on her face when I initiate the hand swinging is priceless.
Another one bumps his hip against mine when he walks by in the hallway or on the playground, or when he gets up after I’m done working with him. No eye contact, no words, but he goes out of his way to “crash” into me, and I tell him that it’s good to see him. He now loves to crash into me when I’m least expecting it. He doesn’t want anything, really. Just a bump to say “Hi, I appreciate you’re here.” And when he’s upset and we have to take a break, I’ll bump him, ask if he needs to take a walk, and we just go wander for a bit and discuss whatever’s wrong, and he’s practically glued to my side. Then one more bump before we go back into the room to face the problem.
Moral of the story is, alternative affection is just as valid and vitally important as traditional affection. Reciprocating alternative affection is just as valid and vitally important as returning a hug. That is how you build connections with these children.
This is so goddamn important.
I verbally express affection. A LOT.
My husband… doesn’t. I don’t know why. For the longest time part of me wondered if it meant he loved me less.
At some point I told him about a thing I had done as a kid. Holding hands, three squeezes means ‘I Love You’.
Suddenly he’s telling me I Love You all the time.
Holding my hand, obviously, but also randomly.
taptaptap
on my hand, my shoulder, my butt, my knee, whatever body part is closest to him, with whatever part of him is closest to me
All the time.
More often than I ever verbally said it.
It’s an ingrained signal now, I can tap three times on whatever part of him, and get three taps back in his sleep. Apparently I do the same.
Remember this the next time you want to complain about GMO’s, we may not have done it in a lab but they still are that.
Bananas looked like lemons wtf
Isn’t this more of a combination of selective breeding and GMOs? Not just GMOs?
Yes. But people talk about how GMO’s are “unnatural”, yet for centuries humanity has been exploiting mutations in animals and plants to produce food for themselves.
GMO’s are simply the process of inducing these mutations reliably.
People hear “Lettuce being modified with scorpion DNA” and think that we’re now eating scorpions. But, in reality, they’re taking a tiny bit of scorpion DNA and splicing it into the plant. Why? So the plant will produce poison that is not harmful to humans but will deter insects, reducing the use of pesticide, which CAN be harmful to humans and the environment.
GMOs are producing rice that can survive flooding, which makes rice more reliable yields and will prevent food shortages in poor nations that rely on said crops for staple food.
GMOs are also creating spider-goat hybrids. Why? So we can splice web production into the goat’s udders. We’ll be able to spin huge quantities of spider silk, enough to reliably create spider silk cables and ropes, which have more tensile strength than steel.
I for one am glad I live in a time where watermelons aren’t giant tomato abominations
The issue with GMOs is that corporations like Monsanto are patenting GMOs and arresting indigenous farmers for cross pollinating with they seeds. But there is nothing dangerous about the science.
^This.
The problem isn’t the science, it’s what capitalism does with that science.
this should be in the largest letters we’ve got, plastered everywhere until it gets through people’s heads:
The problem isn’t the science, it’s what capitalism does with that science.
100% correct medical information on tumblr for once; also consider calling 911 if you don’t know how often the person has seizures and ESPECIALLY if the seizure has lasted 5 minutes or more (which is why the watch is critical)
I have epilepsy so making sure the word is out on how to help people who do have seizures means a lot to me.
Oh my god, accurate epilepsy information. I am so happy, you have no idea.
“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”
Hey. LIVING COSTS MONEY! How about giving more money to the companies that employ me and MAYBE I MIGHT BE OK
This is such a funny thing to me because in Thai culture, it’s completely normal to live with your parents when you’re an adult. In fact, most people live in their family home until they’re married ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Saaaame in Pakistan dude and being abroad for grad school is really fucking me up I am not built to be even slightly independent 😂
In Western culture (including America!) it was completely normal for people to live with their parents in adulthood–sometimes until they married, sometimes longer. In America, that changed (for men) in the 1940s and 50s, when it was really really easy for an 18 year old to get a good job that paid more than enough to live a comfortable life on, or to afford college which would then practically guarantee you an even better-paying job. Women joined the trend of moving out at 18 in the 1960s and 70s.
And now those jobs don’t exist, or are few and far between, and guess what! People are living with their parents again. But that 70-year span was just long enough that it fell out of common memory, and now people are seen as “failures” because the economics have changed.
A very great deal of Western culture, ESPECIALLY America, is actually still based on a memory of the 40′s and 50′s as the baseline of normalcy despite them being a total fluke at the time.
World War II and McCarthyism created a massive shift towards rabid patriotism, Christian fundamentalism and the ideal of the “nuclear family” that resembled nothing before it and we’re still recovering from as the majority of our most powerful politicians are old enough that this period of sudden fanaticism is their “nostalgic good old days” and the way they think things are “supposed to be.”
I love when these posts randomly become tiny history lessons, it soothes me
sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really.
You’re being kind when you say “almost 100% fatality”. What people need to hear is: if you get to develop rabies symptoms, you’re dead. If you get heavy treatment after developping symptoms, you still need a miracle. Like, a real miracle, you should enter some religion if you escape that.
ALSO, I don’t want people feeling confident about petting stray/wild animals because there’s a vaccine available, either. I’ll explain why from my own experience (I’m not a doctor).
I got bitten by a wild tamarin once, on the pulp of my index finger. It drew blood, there are many wild animals in the area (tamarins, possums, bats, foxes) and it isn’t that uncommon to hear about 1 or 2 rabies cases every now and again (a puppy we gave to a friend got it, for instance), so I went to an ambulatory immediately.
Because I was bitten in an ultrasensitive area, I needed fast treatment. But it was also a small area, so the usual thing they do – inject the vaccine in the place – wasn’t a choice. They told me they’d divide the shot in 5 small ones, and inject me all over my body, so the antidote would get to my entire system fast.
Please stop for a moment and think that the disease is so worrysome that they’d rather needle me all over than to give me one shot and wait until it spread through my system.
Then they said that, okay, but there was a catch first. I needed to take an antiallergic shot. “Why?” “Because the virus is devastating, and as the vaccine is made from it, but weakened (like almost every vaccine) it will still create a reaction, and it’s a strong one, and it’s veru common for people to have strong allergic reactions to it.” YOU HAVE TO TAKE AN ANTIALLERGIC SHOT IN ORDER TO TAKE THE VACCINE COZ THE VACCINE COULD POTENTIALLY MAKE YOU REALLY SICK
ALSO IT WASN’T JUST “A LITTLE ANTIALLERGIC SHOT”
IT WAS ONE OF THESE FUCKERS HERE.
It was OBVIOUSLY dripped in my body and not injected because HAHAHAHA. Truth be told I was an adult already and I’m tall so I have a lot of mass but STILL.
So after I had taken the antiallegic and was starting to feel drowsy (as a side effect of it) the doctor came with the 5 shots.
– One in each buttock
– One in each thigh
– One in my left arm
They all stung like a bitch and I usually don’t care about shots.
“Okay so can I go home now?”
“No, we have to keep you under observation for 2h so we’re SURE the vaccine won’t give you any reaction.”
BINCH I WAS GIVEN A BUTTLOAD OF MEDICINE BUT THERE WAS STILL A RISK.
I slept through the two hours and then was liberated to go home. My legs, butt, and left arm hurt all over, like I had been punched there, for a few days. I also had a fever (not feverish, a fever)
BUT DID YOU THINK IT WAS OVER?
WRONG!!!
I had to take four reinforcement shots in the next month, one a week, so I could be positively be considered immunized.Every time I took a shot, my arm would swell and hurt like it’d been hit, and when night came I’d have a fever. Because that’s how fucking strong the vaccine is, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW VICIOUS THE VIRUS IS.
So yeah. DO NOT PUT YOURSELF IN RISK, GODDAMNIT. Rabies is a rare condition all over, THANK GOD, and 1 confirmed case can be already considered a surge and a reason for mass campaigning, AND FOR A REASON.
If you like messing with stray/wild animals, don’t go picking them up and be extra careful. Or just, like, DON’T – call a vet or an authority that can handle them safely.
I must add that I live in a country with universal healthcare, so I didn’t pay a single penny for my treatment. Is this your reality? If not, ONE MORE REASON TO NOT FUCKING PLAY WITH THIS SHIT.
Rabies is 100% lethal. Period. If you are scratched or bitten by an animal you’re not positive is vaccinated, you need to find treatment NOW. And probably go through all that shit I’ve been through (also if you are immunosupressed? I DON’T KNOW WHAT’D HAPPEN)
Stay safe and don’t be stupid ffs
Guys, I know this isn’t art nor anything like that, but I’ve been hearing about this rabies thing and ???? Look I trust none of you would risk yourselves like this, but maybe you can educate someone through my experience and stuff.
Also rabies does not necessarily cause frothing-at-the-mouth aggression in animals. Docility is also a very common symptom so any wild animal that is ‘friendly’ or ‘likes to be pet’ is suspect. Literally any wild animal is a vector.
Finally, you don’t need to be bitten. All you need is to come into contact with an infected animal’s bodily fluids through a cut that maybe you didn’t notice when you were handling it when it drooled on you.
Never touch a wild animal.
Infection with the rabies virus progresses through three distinct stages.
Prodromal: Stage One. Marked by altered behavioral patterns. “Docility” and “likes to be pet” are very common in the prodromal stage. Usually lasts 1-3 days. An animal in this stage carries virus bodies in its saliva and is infectious.
Excitative: Stage Two. Also called “furious” rabies. This is what everyone thinks rabies is–hyperreacting to stimuli and biting everything. Excessive salivation occurs. Animals in this stage also exhibit hydrophobia or the fear of water; they cannot drink (swallowing causes painful spasms of the throat muscles), and will panic if shown water. Usually lasts 3-4 days before rapidly progressing into the next stage.
Paralytic: Stage Three. Also called “dumb” rabies. As the infection runs its course, the virus starts degrading the nervous system. Limbs begin to fail; animals in this stage will often limp or drag their haunches behind them. If the animal has survived all this way, death will usually come through respiratory arrest: Their diaphragm becomes paralyzed and they stop breathing.
And to add onto the above, saliva isn’t the only infectious fluid. Brain matter is, too. If, somehow, you find yourself in possession of a firearm and faced with a rabid animal, do not go for a head shot. If you do, you will aerosolize the brain matter and effectively create a cloud of infectious material. Breathe it in, and you’ll give yourself an infection.
When I worked in wildlife rehabilitation, I actually did see a rabid animal in person, and it remains one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, because I was literally looking death in the eyes.
A pair of well-intentioned women brought us a raccoon that they thought had been hit by a car. They had found it on the side of the road, dragging its hind legs. They managed–somehow–to get it into a cat carrier and brought it to us.
As they brought it in, I remember how eerily silent it was. Normal raccoons chatter almost constantly. They fidget. They bump around. They purr and mumble and make little grabby-hands at everything. Even when they’re in pain, and especially when they’re stressed. But this one wasn’t moving around inside the carrier, and it wasn’t making a sound.
The clinic director also noticed this, and he asked in a calm but urgent voice for the women to hand the carrier to him. He took it to the exam room and set it on the table while they filled out some forms in the next room. I took a step towards the carrier, to look at our new patient, and without turning around, he told me, “Go to the other side of the room, and stay there.”
He took a small penlight out of the drawer and shone it briefly into the carrier, then sighed. “Bear, if you want to come look at this, you can put on a mask,” he said. “It’s really pretty neat, but I know you’re not vaccinated and I don’t want to take any chances.”
And at that point, I knew exactly what we were dealing with, and I knew that this would be the closest I had ever been to certain death. So I grabbed a respirator from the table and put it on, and held my breath for good measure as I approached the table. The clinic director pointed where I should stand, well back from the carrier door. He shone the light inside again, and I saw two brilliant flashes of emerald green–the most vivid, unnatural eyeshine I had ever seen.
“I don’t know why it does it,” the director murmured, “but it turns their eyes green.”
“What does?” one of the women asked, with uncanny, unintentionally dramatic timing, as she poked her head around the corner.
“Rabies,” the director said. “The raccoon is rabid. Did it bite either of you, or even lick you?” They told us no, said they had even used leather garden gloves when they herded it into the carrier. He told them to throw away the gloves as soon as possible, and steam-clean the upholstery in their car. They asked how they should clean the cat carrier; they wanted it back and couldn’t be convinced otherwise, so he told them to soak it in just barely diluted bleach.
But before we could give them the carrier back, we had to remove the raccoon. The rabid raccoon.
The clinic director readied a syringe with tranquilizers and attached it to the end of a short pole. I don’t remember how it was rigged exactly–whether he had a way to push down the plunger or if the needle would inject with pressure–but all he would have to do was stick the animal to inject it. And so, after sending me and the women back to the other side of the room, he made his fist jab.
He missed the raccoon.
The sound that that animal made on being brushed by the pole can only be described as a roar. It was throaty and ragged and ungodly loud. It was not a sound that a raccoon should ever make. I’m convinced it was a sound that a raccoon physically could not make.
It thrashed inside the carrier, sending it tipping from side to side. Its claws clattered against the walls. It bellowed that throaty, rasping sound again. It was absolutely frenzied, and I was genuinely scared that it would break loose from inside those plastic walls.
Somehow, the clinic director kept his calm, and as the raccoon jolted around inside the cat carrier, he moved in with the syringe again, and this time, he hit it. He emptied the syringe into its body and withdrew the pole.
And then we waited.
We waited for those awful screams, that horrible thrashing, to die down. As we did, the director loaded up another syringe with even more tranquilizer, and as the raccoon dropped off into unconsciousness, he stuck it a second time with the heavier dose. Even then, it growled at him and flailed a paw against the wall.
More waiting, this time to make sure the animal was truly down for the count.
Then, while wearing welder’s gloves, the director opened the door of the carrier and removed the raccoon. She was limp, bedraggled, and utterly emaciated, but she was still alive. We bagged up the cat carrier and gave it to the women again, advising them that now was a good time to leave. They heeded our warning.
I asked if I could come closer to see, and the clinic director pointed where I could stand. I pushed the mask up against my face and tried to breathe as little as possible.
He and his co-director–who I think he was grooming to be his successor, but the clinic actually went under later that year–examined the raccoon together. Donning a pair of nitrile gloves, he reached down and pulled up a handful, a literal fistful, of the raccoon’s skin and released it. It stayed pulled up.
Severe dehydration causes a phenomenon called “skin tenting”. The skin loses its elasticity somewhat, and will be slow to return to its “normal” shape when manipulated. The clinic director estimated that it had been at least four or five days since the raccoon had had anything to eat or drink.
She was already on death’s doorstep, but her rabies infection had driven her exhausted body to scream and lunge and bite.
Because, the scariest thing about rabies (if you ask me) is the way that it alters the behavior of those it infects to increase chances of spreading.
The prodromal stage? Nocturnal animals become diurnal–allowing them to potentially infect most hosts than if they remained nocturnal.
The excitative stage? The infected animal bites at the slightest provocation. Swallowing causes painful spasms, so they drool, coating their bodies in infectious matter. A drink could wash away the virus-charged saliva from their mouth and bodies, so the virus drives them to panic at the sight of water.
(The paralytic stage? By that point, the animal has probably spread its infection to new hosts, so the virus has no need for it any longer.)
Rabies is deadly. Rabies is dangerous. In all of recorded history, one person survived an infection after she became symptomatic, and so far we haven’t been able to replicate that success. The Milwaukee Protocol hasn’t saved anyone else. Just one person. And even then, she still had to struggle to gain back control of her body after all that nerve damage.
A tiny town with a smaller population than some high schools has contaminated water, so Michigan declares a state of emergency, supplies residents with bottled water, and is dumping all the contaminated water in preparation of hooking the town up with a clean water supply.
MEANWHILE nobody gives two shits about Flint, a MAJOR CITY with OVER A HUNDRED THOUSAND RESIDENTS.
the fact women are viewed as being more sexy at 15 than 40 is the creepiest thing in the world
Horrifying really
Looking through the notes, and people seem to be justifying this as evolutionary biology. They believe that human females are most fertile at the age of 15. Considering your body isn’t even done growing at this age, I find this incredibly hard to believe. Really? The best time for you to push a baby out of your vagina is when your periods probably aren’t even regular yet? Like the younger you are, the more likely you are to DIE from child birth. Well anyway, most websites claim you’re most fertile in your 20s, peaking at 27… So congrats on trying to blatantly justify pedophilia by using bullshit science.
Not only is “15 year olds are more fertile” a creepy, pedophilic belief, it’s also an extremely dangerous one.
Also, don’t believe the whole “most girls got married at 13-15″ bullshit. Most medieval records (pre-1500s) and more recent records show that this is pretty rare in a lot of societies. Most women actually married around 17-21, and others could be “married” young but not actually considered a woman to leave for her husband until around this age. IE, a family might “marry” their infant to another, usually within a few years age of the infant, but they would not live together until they were adults. This was often to show kinship between families, usually for political purposes, and could later be ‘broken’ before anyone went to live in another’s house.
Now is your excuse really going to be “BUT PEOPLE IN 1450 … rarely… DID IT TOOOO!” when you’re talking about people who didn’t wipe their asses, believe in bathing for the most part, rarely got to wash their clothes, or have basic access to sewage systems of any kind? Are you really gonna uphold the tenets of a society that really thought it was okay to shit in a fancy jar and throw it out the window when the jar got full? because… dude, there’s a reason the Japanese wanted to kick out Euro foreigners, and it wasn’t just xenophobia. We were freaking gross. We spread disease because we didn’t WASH THINGS. To the point where anti-Semetic beliefs spread because Jewish people kept their kitchens clean and stuff, so they didn’t DIE as often from basic shit like food poisoning and hepatits A (common in shellfish then). Was the solution to learn something and wash stuff? NO. Instead it was “Jews must be magical and are killing off proper Christians!”
Anyways. the point here is. What you think history might have been like is probably nowhere near as fucked up as you think it was, and if you think that’s a cool attitude to bring back, you’re prob more fucked up than 1400s Europe. So.
There.
Those are things you now know. Whether you wanted to or not.
(In Italy, the average age for marriage was 17; in France it is 16yo; and in England and Germany 18yo was the average age – all for first marriages. Source: “Medieval Households” by David Herlihy, Harvard University Press, 1985)
AND JUST SO YOU KNOW THOSE AVERAGE MARRIAGE AGES GOT HIGHER AS THE YEARS WENT ON. AND WOMEN MARRIED MEN THEIR OWN AGE.
“The World We Have Lost" by Peter Laslett details a thousand marriage certificates issued in Canterbury from 1619 to 1660. ~85% of English brides in this period were at least 19 years of age when they married. The average ages at marriage for women were ~22 years, for men ~24 years.
military worship in this country is out of fucking control
excuse me?
military worship in this country is out of fucking control
Yea you’re right, we shouldn’t honor the people willing to risk their life to save ours and defend our country … oh
Military worship in this country is out of fucking control
I’m in the military and yes it’s out of fucking control. Most of the people I know in the military feel the same way. You civilians need to calm the fuck down. Most of us joined in our teens or early twenties. For a lot of us it was because we needed a job, and we didn’t see any other options, and this job has good benefits, especially for an uneducated young person in America. We get healthcare and education!! That’s some tempting fucking fruit. But this is a JOB. Some people in the military become heroes, that’s true. Jumping on grenades, defusing bombs, dragging a wounded person from the middle of a firefight. They usually end up dead in the process. Those people deserve respect, in my opinion. They give their lives for their friends, no matter whether or not you agree with the policies that put them there in the first place. But a lot of people in America reflexively claim that everyone in the military is a hero, full stop. This isn’t true and it lets people look the other way when something is actually wrong in the military, because it’s the military, they’re heroes, they can do no wrong.
We’re doing a job, and a lot of us are never really put in harm’s way. I work in a climate controlled lab for 8 hours a day, for instance. Really grueling. Such a hero. This fawning lip service of an infallible military doesn’t do us any good. I know people who have bought into it, who have heard so many people tell them that they’re heroes that they actually believe it, and they are the stupid and dangerous ones. Joining the military does not make you a hero, and calling us heroes might make you feel all warm and fluffy and red white and blue but it doesn’t do anything for the people that end up on the streets with PTSD or come home with life-changing injuries or in a box. We’re human beings, not some concept that you can just mindlessly adulate and then feel better about yourself.
☝️🏽☝️🏽☝️🏽☝️🏽
oh boy just in time for the 4th of July
Speaking as a disabled veteran: it’d be one thing if the fucking hero worship MEANT ANYTHING. But it’s a bunch of empty loud words about how Brave and Noble everyone in the military is (nah some of us are assholes) and then when it comes to, oh I don’t know, paying a soldier enough to feed their family without food stamps, or giving disability compensation without a NIGHTMARE fight with the country that claims to “care” so much. Plus the whole “sending us off to kill other people to make rich men richer while innocents die for it” thing. It’s not “defending freedom” to shove our troops into everyone’s business in countries that happen to have oil and such
Military worship isn’t only annoying, it’s a hollow lie that’s basically dangerous to everyone
wupacing 