#Boundaries In Parenting

[familythings]

Should Parents Kiss their Children on the Lips?

Have you ever kissed your children on the lips? As simple as this question sounds, in fact it has proven to be a sensitive topic that have divided the world apart. Celebrities and common people continue to fight in all possible ways to convince others for their point of view. Statistics Remove any trace of makeup only with water by using our MAKEUP REMOVER SPONGE. Eco-friendly fiber that easily…

[flwrkid14]

Love and Obsession: The Tim Drake Way

part 2

Everyone in the Batfamily knows Tim Drake has… issues with boundaries. They’ve spent years trying to teach him what’s appropriate and what’s—well—deeply unsettling and completely invasive. To be fair, he’s learned. Mostly. He doesn’t stalk his family anymore (much), and he no longer pulls up files on every single person they talk to (okay, maybe just sometimes). But it’s progress.

But then Tim starts dating Danny Fenton. And, oh boy, a few screws come loose.

It starts small, as always. Just little things. Tim’s a detective, after all—background checks are second nature. Danny’s living in Gotham, and Gotham isn’t safe. So, really, what’s the harm in knowing a little more about Danny’s friends? And his professors? And maybe also his classmates? It’s just standard protocol. Okay?

“Tim, you’ve run a full dossier on my entire biology class?” Danny asks one day, laughing as he flips through a file on the coffee table. Tim shrugs. “What if one of them is dangerous?” “Pretty sure the most dangerous thing in that class is the midterm.”

Danny doesn’t think much of it. He’s a little flattered, even. Tim’s protective. It’s sweet.

But Tim’s mind doesn’t stop there. Danny’s too handsome. Too charming. What if someone tries to hurt him? What if someone tries to take him away? It’s not obsessive—it’s just concern. So, a tracker on Danny’s phone? Necessary. Cameras in his apartment? Standard. Monitoring his sleeping patterns and hangout spots? Logical.

Tim tells himself it’s love. And maybe a little insecurity.

“You have a tracker on his phone?” Dick asks, trying not to sound alarmed. Tim nods, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Of course. What if something happens to him?” “And the cameras?” “Safety.” “The background checks on his professors?” “Gotham U isn’t exactly known for its stellar staff, Dick.”

It doesn’t stop there. Tim knows everything. Danny’s eating habits, his favorite places to go when he’s stressed, his childhood allergies. Tim’s mapped out Danny’s entire life. He knows about Danny’s ghost powers too—of course he does. He’s Tim Drake. The moment he realized Danny was Phantom, it just… clicked.

Danny being half-ghost? That’s just one more reason to worry. Tim’s up late at night, watching for any signs of ectoplasmic interference. He tracks the energy spikes. He monitors Danny’s fights.

He doesn’t think Danny knows. He’s terrified of what will happen if he finds out.

But then he does.

One evening, Danny walks into Tim’s apartment and casually drops a folder on the table. Tim’s heart stops.

“What’s this?” Danny asks, raising an eyebrow. Tim swallows hard. “I… it’s just…” “You’ve been tracking me?” Danny opens the file, glancing through pages of surveillance reports, background checks, even analysis of his ectoplasmic energy. Tim feels like his world is about to shatter.

“I… I can explain,” Tim says, his voice tight. “I’m just… worried about you. You’re in danger all the time, and I—” Danny walks over, cupping Tim’s face in his hands. Tim braces for the worst.

But Danny just smiles. “Can I put a tracker on you too?”

Tim blinks. “What?” Danny kisses his cheek. “If you’re watching my back, it’s only fair I watch yours. I need to make sure you’re safe too.”

Tim stares at him, speechless. Danny doesn’t look scared. Or angry. He looks… fond. Like Tim’s obsessive tendencies aren’t a problem at all.

“I’ve never had someone care about me this much,” Danny says softly. “I trust you with my life, Tim. This? This just proves how serious you are.”

Tim thinks he’s just fallen deeper in love.

-------------------

The Batfamily? They’re worried.

Jason corners Tim in the cave. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You’ve got cameras in his apartment. You’ve mapped out his entire life. You’ve got a tracker on him and a heartbeat monitor. And he’s… fine with it?” Tim nods, a dreamy smile on his face. “Yeah. He even wants to put a tracker on me.” “That’s not… healthy, Tim,” Dick says carefully. “That’s—” “It’s mutual,” Tim interrupts. “We’re protecting each other.”

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tim, this isn’t how relationships are supposed to work.” Tim shrugs. “It’s how ours works.”

Damian watches the whole thing with narrowed eyes. “This is deeply unsettling,” he mutters.

They try to talk to Danny. Intervention style. They invite him over, sit him down, and gently (or not so gently) try to explain that Tim’s behavior isn’t normal.

Danny just laughs. “You guys do know I’m half-ghost, right?” “That doesn’t mean—” Dick starts. “I spent my entire life being hunted by ghost hunters. I’ve had worse invasions of privacy.” Danny smiles. “Tim cares. He keeps me safe. That’s all I need.”

The bats don't quite know what to say.

-------------------

Tim and Danny, two slightly unhinged souls who think mutual surveillance is the ultimate act of love.

The bats? They’re just trying to keep up.

(“At least they’re happy?” Barbara offers weakly. Bruce sighs. “For now.”)

Gotham’s version of love was never going to be normal. But this? This is a whole new level.

[padfootastic]

can’t help but think of how, if we choose to go by sirius’ characterisation as a private, arrogant teen who only lets a select few into his circle, sirius’ post-azkaban life just have been such an utterly humiliating experience for him.

especially OoTP. when he has all these near strangers in his childhood house, that he hated and loved and ran away from and couldn’t ever escape. if he spent his entire pre-azkaban existence building a cold and aloof persona, not letting people know what his home life had been like, then to have all of these people get a front row seat to it because of kreacher and portrait walburga’s shenanigans must have been near unbearable. to have the entire order, including snape whom he disliked and mistrusted, hear the kinds of names he’s being called.

not only does he have to deal with the retraumatisation of his childhood, but also the fact that he’s flayed open for everyone to see. it’s not only his freedom, innocence, dignity that has been snatched from him but his privacy also. it’s such a cruel thing to experience, on top of everything else.

to have literal children, his godson who he has been kept away from all this while, whom he presumably wants to be able to look up to him, to have him see into the deepest parts of his soul. to have to be so weak in front of him. not only is he subjected to such vileness but he also cannot do anything about it.

sirius has not had a moment of peace in all the time we knew him. it is indignity upon indignity that is heaped onto him. every other character has gotten a moment of respite but him. it fully breaks my heart.

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]

[lurukifennecfox]

Amity was... Odd

It always was even before the Fenton Portal, just more subtle, cold spots, newer electronics not working properly, older picking up things that weren't always there, things at the periphery that you can't see when you turn, shadows too dark, lights too dim.

Lake Eerie was named that for a reason. they knew to never swim alone, or at night without lights.

Then the portal happened and those who didn't adapt left. then the invasion and they thought they are going to just go back to new normal and...

The town refused to leave. Not the people the town itself, turned out Amity had a city spirit and she liked it in the Zone so they adapted, 'parkers always adapted if they didn't they left, this side of the veil or the other.

They managed to coax Amity to return and continued living, a little to the left, teeth a little too sharp, eyes a little too intense, hearing a little too good, but they adapted. They found out more ghost culture in the zone, some learned to fight, some decided not to. They weren't bothered by property damage anymore, the buildings would pull themselves back together and they would help.

Amity was always Odd it just wasn't subtle anymore.

[dukeofthomas]

Here's my controversial opinion; if you're trying to write Bruce as a non-abusive, good parent, you should also write him respecting his kids' privacy, boundaries, and not stalking&surveying them.

[whetstonefires]

You know I'm realizing one reason you keep seeing mdzs modern AUs where the Jiang parents are alive mainly so they can dramatically fail and betray Wei Wuxian by cutting him off financially--defaulting on his college tuition or formally disowning him etc--isn't just that people want to translate the Burial Mounds II arc into modern terms while keeping Jiang Cheng clean of it.

(Despite the fact that the internal logic of Jiang Cheng's character is largely built around him being a person who would abandon someone he intensely cared about under these specific circumstances.)

It's because it's hard to set up a modern analogue for the way that Jiang Cheng is responsible for Wei Wuxian, as his Sect Leader.

We live in a highly individualistic society. People are trying to write Wei Wuxian Tragically Wronged, and because there's a normative expectation that people in the position of parents will provide you with resources, and certainly won't withdraw them without warning, but no such assumption that people in the position of siblings necessarily owe each other support, making this work in modern setting with Jiang Cheng in his canon role would require a lot of extra work, just to get a less readily resonant result.

But I keep thinking about it. Because something that's getting lost here is, not just the nuances of character and relationship, but like...it's sort of key to the story that cutting Wei Wuxian off was, in fact, Completely Socially Appropriate.

The level on which it was a betrayal is subtle, and deeply cutting. And intensely tied up in the very different opinions each of Jiang Cheng's parents had about what obligations existed in their family wrt Wei Wuxian, and what these meant.

The level on which it was the obvious, normal course of action is blatant. That is to a huge extent why it happens: because Jiang Cheng's instinct to conform is a survival instinct, reinforced by trauma, and Wei Wuxian's choices meant he had no coherently compelling reason not to obey it, and enormous peer pressure to do so.

The fact is that Jiang Cheng was making a reasonable choice, the actual thing 'anyone would do in that situation,' unlike Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao's respective wildly warped ideas about what that is.

Wei Wuxian wasn't betrayed by Jiang Sect like your foster parents cutting you off because you're disobedient. Wei Wuxian was betrayed by Jiang Sect like your brother refusing to drop fifty grand to bail you out of jail.

Of course Wei Wuxian tells him not to. And of course the fact that Jiang Cheng already chose in the moment not to pay a cent because Fuck You Wei Ying still stands there glaring, a precedent that can never be taken back.

And then later he's betrayed by Jiang Cheng like your brother cooperating with a police investigation into a manslaughter you really did commit, that's being handled like domestic terrorism. And then like your brother calling the cops on you. And then like your brother helping the cops find where you're hiding.

I'm personally fascinated by the way Jiang Cheng's lifelong resentment for the way Jiang Fengmian reliably bailed Wei Wuxian out of everything informed those decisions to do the normal thing, the way he's reacting against his dead father as well as against Wei Wuxian and the actual situation.

But even without that daddy issues angle, the fact that the person who made that choice was Jiang Cheng, and that it was simultaneously the reasonable appropriate normal upstanding citizen rational thing to do and so shitty Wei Wuxian would be entitled never to forgive it is sort of. The Point.

Of the scenario, and also to a considerable degree of the entire finely tuned narrative construct that is Jiang Cheng.

[royalarchivist]

Cellbit: Yeah, [Bobby is] our son.

Roier: What?

Cellbit: He's our son, no? Or not? Am I not?

Roier: I mean… he's already dead. [...] By the time we got married, he was no longer around. So in theory, in theory-

Cellbit: But in my heart, he is my son.

Roier: Oh, that's fine, in your heart, yes. In your heart, yes. But actually-

Cellbit: He could have been my son, he could have been.

Roier: But actually, he is my son and Jaiden’s.

Cellbit: Yes yes, definitely, of course.

Roier: [Smacks him] Exactly. Well, you're the step-father, you know?

[ Full Transcript ↓ ]

Cellbit: Hey Tina, have you met Bobby? I don't think you did, right?

Tina: I met him a little bit earlier, he's so cute!

Roier: Aww

Tina: I told him I like StarBobby.

Cellbit: Yeah, it's our son.

Roier: What? But-

Cellbit: He's our son, no? Or not? Am I not?

Roier: I mean... he's already dead.

Cellbit: That's true, that's true.

Roier: By the time we got married, he was no longer around.

Cellbit: That's true, true.

Roier: So in theory, in theory-

Cellbit: But in my heart, he is my son.

Roier: Oh, that's fine, in your heart, yes. In your heart, yes. But actually-

Bagi: Am I the auntie?

Cellbit: He could have been my son, he could have been.

Roier: But actually, he is my son and Jaiden’s.

Cellbit: Yes yes, definitely, of course.

Roier: [Smacks him] Exactly. Well, you're the step-father, you know?

Bagi: So I don't think I'm your auntie, sorry. Unless you want to!

Cellbit: Yes, fake dad, fake dad. Fake father.

Roier: But it's ok. It's ok.

Cellbit: It's ok, it's ok.

Roier: It's this dumbass' fault he died anyways.

[etherealacademia]

going to high school was harder than my entire undergraduate degree at a top university. i'm starting my master's degree in a month and i bet I'll be able to say that high school was more difficult. i don't know how i survived that environment

[kay-enemy]

Tim's flawed view of parenting

Remember how in Tim's first appearance he told Dick he ought to pay Bruce back for raising him?

(The New Titans #60, 1989)

While the actual explanation is that DC chronically attracts writers with a hard on for bad parenting, I'm divided on how to interpret this in-universe.

Does this speak more to the Drakes, that they made Tim think parents are owed something just for doing the minimum for their kids? Is this indicative of Tim's unhealthy obsession with Batman, that he has Bruce on a pedestal?

[mycroftrh]

Bruce: So, Tim… I’ve been reading some parenting books, and they suggest maybe I should be… “setting boundaries” for you. And, uh -

Tim, staring him dead in the eyes: Listen to me closely, Bruce. I want you to understand this. Are you listening?

Bruce: Of course.

Tim: Good. Then hear this: if I sniff so much as a whiff of a boundary I will take that boundary and I will make it my bitch. I will lay waste to it. I will go scorched earth. I will nuke it with the Watchtower laser. Do you understand?

Bruce: Mhm.

Tim: Good. Now go upstairs, it’s past your bedtime. And don’t think you’ve successfully distracted me from that bruised rib. We’ll be having a talk tomorrow.

[ribb0ngirl]

𝑚𝑦 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑡𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑐 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦 ౨ৎ

by a girl living in a shitty household for my girls (or guys, nonbinaries, etc.) living in shitty households ♡

𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝚑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑡𝚑𝑒𝑚

♡ Trying to change people who don't want to change or don't even acknolledge the fact that they have to change is literally pointless. Instead, try to focus on what you can control, such as how you respond to your parents, your choices, and your behavior.

𝑏𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑡𝚑 𝑤𝚑𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝚑𝑎𝑟𝑒

♡ Trust is a crucial element of healthy relationships, so consider only sharing personal information with those who have proven themselves trustworthy. Your parents probably don't fall under this category if they:

gossip about you

criticize you

share things about you without your permission

use what you tell them against you

You don't have to tell them everything (or anything) that's going on in your life. Only share mundane stuff if your parents are nosy (like mine)

𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠' 𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠

♡ So an example of this could be: If you know that your parents become forgetful, aggressive, or otherwise difficult after a certain time of day, try to interact with them earlier in the day to avoid the worst of their behavior. But this doesn't mean that you should plan your life around your parents. You can work around their limitations if that works for you. Always put yourself first in this situation.

𝚑𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑦

♡ When things start to take a turn for the absolute worse have a plan to leave, like an excuse. Obviously don't use the same one every time but here are a few:

homework/studying

a chore (washing the dishes, cleaning your room, etc.)

friend hangout you're late to

errand

Personally I totally overuse having homework or studying

𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘

♡ I know how tempting it is to want to yell at your parents, talk back or straight up disagree or correct them when they are clearly in the wrong. But I've learned the hard way that it makes your life so much easier if you just suck it up, I know it sucks but just go along with what they say, that way the aftermath won't be that bad or not even bad at all.

𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓

♡ Dealing with toxic parents can be stressful. That stress can take a toll on your physical and mental health. It’s important that you make self-care a priority.

𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑡𝚑𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝚑𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑐 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝚑𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝚑𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠, 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑔 ♡

[belllllove]

[justthedismount]

The more I see of these gymnasts on social media the more I appreciate Jade's unwillingness to engage with any of it

[morganbritton132]

Always thought it was funny that I was considered a “difficult” child because I *check notes* knew how I wanted to be treated and didn’t accept any less. Wild.

[midnights4ge]

When having boundaries is interpreted as having audacity, run.