#Day care for neurodiverse children

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Me because the Percy Jackson series is actually about the different cycles of abuse, which include abuse within romantic partners (Sally and Gabe), abuse between “family” (Percy and Gabe, Meg and Nero), abuse from people in positions of power (the gods over the demigods), and so on, oppression than ranges from having adhd in the public educational system to being forced to perform quests for your entire life for people who could not care less about your well-being, how camp is both somewhere safe but also the bittersweet taste of arriving there and realizing you can never escape, you can never be normal your life will never be the same. There’s no turning back. How Luke was right on theory but not on acts, how these kids got around the idea to never make it to 18, and how there was nothing they could do about that. How many of them sat in their cabins, counting down the days until their sibling/friend/partner came back, only for them to not come back at all. Was it ever their turn to leave someone waiting behind? Annabeth, Percy, Grover, Thalia, the whole deal with Nico, Bianca, Silena, and every single demigod. Children of Apollo were the camp healers, was it a choice? A moral obligation? In camp Jupiter there’s Jason, there’s Reyna, Piper’s story, Leo’s story, Leo lived on the street, the way Jason and Piper’s relationship was heteronormativity pushed by Hera because both of them were queer but she wanted a perfect couple. After being gone missing, people searched for Percy, but Jason? The devastation of Leo and Jason’s relationship, how Leo never knew his feelings for him were required, how both Leo and Piper thought they knew Jason but it was all fake memories, how Jason never fully got his memories back. Hazel’s story, Frank’s story, how Nico and Leo’s mutual dislike for each other comes from a place of understatement. How they both see themselves in each other and look away as one looks away from a mirror when they dislike their reflection. They are both so similar, almost the same. They both are also autistic, except Leo is always masking, and Nico never really learnt how to. Neurodivergence, adhd and dyslexia. Being a demigod is a metaphor for neurodiversity. Was Dionysus actual punishment looking over camp? Or was it spending years and years seeing demigods come and grow and die? Knowing there was nothing he could do about it? Knowing than if he was with the gods, he would be causing their deaths, instead of grieving them? Does Chiron feel hopeless? Memory, names, ghosts. Blades, swords, arrows, blood. So many blood, blood-stained hands. Monsters follow you before coming to camp, did they hurt you family? It was all your fault. They don’t want you to come back, you bring danger, you’re more dangerous than the monster, you are a monster yourself, after all the Minotaur was a demigod too. Leo killed his mother, Zeus killed Maria, Sally got taken to the underworld, Tristan was held hostage, Fredrick and his wife and sons got attacked by monsters, and who’s fault it was? You run away you keep on running but you’ll never outrun the danger because the danger is yourself, you are at fault, how do you run away now?

The odyssey, the iliad, the statues in museums, you look at them, do you see yourself? Do you see any resemble? Your nose kinda looks like theirs, the shape of their lips, the width of their hands, but that’s a lie you’re nothing like them, never will be, is that a tragedy? Do you want to be like them? Do you want to be a hero and die a heroic death? Or do you simply wish to visit your family on Christmas and live the life your little cousins will eventually live? Maybe you’ll never see the life they’ll live, maybe you’ll die before seeing it. There’s nothing to be done about that, you just have to accept it. Don’t you feel the rage, bubbling inside of you, making your hands shake? What can you do with it? Not much, remember last time, remember Luke, what did he accomplish? Nothing, blood, screams. You remember the war, you remember the city, maybe it was the first or the second time you set a foot on it, now every single time you do (if you do) in the future, it will be tainted. Look in that corner, that used to be destroyed. Look at that building, my friend died against that wall, that road was filled with blood. Was it ours? Theirs? Is there even a difference between us? Should there be? Why were you on your side? Why were they in theirs? Who was right? Who was wrong? You can go anywhere but home, maybe you’re not welcomed, maybe there’s no home to return, maybe it’s better for everyone if you don’t return. Nico keeps Bianca’s jacket, Leo taps iloveyou on Morse code. Piper was forced to be someone she wasn’t, she thought she was someone she was not, she was forced to think that. Who is she? Is she even who she thought she was? Jason still don’t remembers everything, and him? Who is he? Nico will never get his memories back, he wonders about his mom, did he have more family back then? Grandparents, aunts? Hazel is a walking curse. Silena and Clarisse as Patroklos and Achilles. Apollo seeing the brutal reality of demigods’ life on trials of apollo.

Your hand shakes, the sword you hold moves, you feel it’s weight, do you want to hold it? Do you have to?

The dead come back to haunt us, Nico sees Bianca everywhere, Leo still remembers his mother’s voice, Hazel came back from the dead, Frank holds his life on his pocket, Thalia lost a brother twice, Leo didn’t really die, Jason died instead, Percy wished to drown himself, half of camp still waits for their brother to come back, even if it has been months, even if it has been years. Luke’s mother still waits, was she crazy? The campers who thought to recognize their friend’s face for a second before remembering than it couldn’t possibly be them, were they crazy too? Who was crazier? Luke’s mother who did not remember, or the campers who did? The underworld has no mercy only justice, but the world has no justice only mercy. You might get mercy, but you never will get justice. Was it fair anything than happened to them? You might be spared in a war or in a battle out of mercy, out of pity, out of recognition, but that didn’t stop you from having to fight in it, that didn’t stop you from having to wield the sword. Spare all the people you want, turn a blind eye to whatever you want, mercy? sure, but you were still holding the sword, you were still supposed to fight, you still weren’t in charge of your life. How was that justice? How was that fair? Names had power, even their names had more power than your life, even the letters making up their names were more powerful than your fists, could you ever win? Could you ever win when their names were so powerful they could not be pronounced but your life was so worthless they didn’t even care to learn yours? To learn the names of the ones than died because of them. You can’t say the name of you sister’s killer, but you’re still expected to burn an offering to them each night at dinner.

[duckprintspress]

National Non-Fiction Day: 31 Titles to Get Your Queer Learn On!

In the past year, we’ve posted a lot about our favorite queer fiction titles. We wanted to take Non-Fiction day to talk about the non-fiction titles that have impacted us! Whether self-help, memoirs, psychology, history, sociology, or a different non-fiction genre, these are books that have helped us learn, helped us teach, helped us improve, helped us see and be seen, and helped us be more informed. So join us as we introduce our thirty-one recommendations for National Non-Fiction Day!

Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing

Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

transister: Raising Twins in a Gender-Bending World by Kate Brookes

!Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 – 1914 by Matt Cook

Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins by Cassandra Snow

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Janet W. W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity by Ryan Lee Cartwright

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Queer Budapest, 1873 – 1961 by Anita Kurimay

LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care by Kimberly D. Acquaviva

Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa by T. J. Tallie

Handbook of LGBT Elders: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Principles, Practices, and Policies edited by Debra A. Harley and Pamela B. Teaster

LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media by Christopher Pullen

Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

LGBTQ Cultures: What Healthcare Professionals Need to Know about Sexual and Gender Diversity by M. J. Eliason and P. L. Chinn

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth

You can view this list as a shelf on Goodreads!

It can be so difficult to find good non-fiction resources on queer topics. Which titles to DO you recommend?

[ukrfeminism]

Women dealing with severe mental illness are still being jailed despite prisons being “ill-equipped” to offer suitable care, a major review has warned.

Many women and health providers view the prison environment as “unfit for purpose”, while six in 10 inmates said the “inconsistent” health and social care services across England’s 12 women’s prisons needed improvement, the long-awaited NHS and Prison Service review found.

Despite figures suggesting nearly 60 per cent of female offenders have experienced domestic abuse, the review warned of a “gap” in mental healthcare and specialist support for women who have experienced trauma, including sexual and domestic violence.

The review – which was due last March – is touted as involving potentially the largest-ever engagement of women with lived experience of prison, drawing on more than 2,250 responses from group discussions, one-to-one meetings, letters, postcards and drawings.

Its findings underscore heightened concerns around women’s prisons, after the number of self-harm incidents rose by 63 per cent to hit a grim new record of 20,248 in the 12 months to June – three times higher than a decade earlier – despite the number of women self-harming remaining relatively stable in recent years.

The “absolutely staggering” rise could reflect issues with understaffing and a lack of suitable training, HM chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor told The Independent last month, adding: “These are often the most vulnerable, very unwell women, some of whom should quite frankly be in secure hospital, not in prison.”

Experts have long highlighted that mentally unwell women are being imprisoned unnecessarily, with MPs warning last April that legislation handing courts the power to remand people in prison “for their own protection” should be repealed.

While the government’s draft Mental Health Bill proposed this, and introduced a requirement to remand people to hospital when the only ground is concern for mental health, Rishi Sunak did not include the Bill in the King’s Speech – leaving it off the parliamentary agenda for the year ahead.

“This is a missed opportunity to right a grave wrong, and means women as well as men in crisis will continue to be sent to prisons which are unfit and unequipped to meet their needs,” Prison Reform Trust chief executive Pia Sinha told The Independent.

The newly-published review also highlighted that women’s reception and early days in prison are often “traumatic, deeply distressing and bewildering”, especially for pregnant women and mothers separated from their children.

“I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t feel like I could ask, I felt completely away from everything,” one woman told the researchers. “When they told me, I didn’t have a clue, I couldn’t picture it, then I found out I was hours from home and it really hit me how far away from my kids I was.”

Only around half of women said their immediate healthcare needs were met during the first 24 hours in custody. Vital services are also often not gender-specific, researchers found, leaving further gaps in care for women.

“Not one person has spoken to me about incontinence, menopause, what are healthy bowel habits, my boobs,” said one woman, while another told researchers: “Managing your periods in prison can be a nightmare. Some women don’t even know the pill or coil can help. They just assume because they’re in prison, they aren’t entitled to this sort of help.”

Women with reduced mobility, who are neurodiverse and who are older appeared most disadvantaged by a poor environment in prisons, the revew found, with one woman saying: “You’ve got more chance getting around prison on a flying carpet than you have in a wheelchair.”

The report also highlighted that not all staff are trained in trauma-informed care, with one respondent quoted as saying: “‘There are so many mental health ladies and ladies with learning disabilities that should not be here. 

“The prison is not a mental health hospital. Staff are not trained to deal with the complex needs, so those people do not get help to do anything or get what they need.”

Another said: “Officers don’t always get it, sometimes how they talk to us makes it worse. They need better training; they need to learn how to see it when a woman is in crisis.”

Meanwhile, in the 2019/20 year, some 45 per cent of women did not attend planned outpatient appointments, compared to 22 per cent in the general population – with “complex” reasons for this including there being no prison staff available to accompany them, according to the Nuffield Trust.

The Ministry of Justice has pledged to deliver on the report’s eight recommendations, and has earmarked £21m for a three-year delivery plan jointly led by the NHS, and Prison and Probation Service.

Urging an “ongoing multiagency commitment” to delivering the recommendations, the Prison Reform Trust warned that the review “cannot be reduced to yet another bureaucratic process”, adding: “Its success needs to be measured by the impact it has on improving the health and social care needs of women in custody.”

[swords-of-a-soilder]

Just Shapes

I'm just venting here, I'm not asking for advice if anything the most I'd want is a supportive word or two.

A random day in 2022 I was playing the Sims on my mother's laptop, I had a lot of mods of course, a few risky ones in including.

I had a queer couple, that I loved playing with, but suddenly whenever they got intinment, they had a moodlit in which they express not being intersed in each other.

It felt like my entire world had fell apart, I was in frantic tears trying to fix. I would constantly jump back and forth from create a sim trying to figure out what mod was breaking their relationship.

I eventually fixed it, but once I did, once I looked back at these sims again, they became shapes, pixels on a screen they weren't real they were never real.

I close that save, then never opened it again.

Perphas I'm parasocial in what I'm about to say, but the reality is we're all parasocial it's why certain careers exist. streamers depend on the viewer being parasocial, our enjoyment is what pay them.

Its just some people take things too far, and it gives parasocial behaviors a bad name, I knew the qsmp characters were different from their actors(streamers) that played them.

I'm not the type of person who thought Philza minecraft was my best friend but q!Philza was someone else entirely. Someone I felt close to, someone who's journey I felt apart of; Those eggs were just as much my kids as his own, I felt like a resident.

With Forever's removal and q!forever with him I became painful awear of what I was watching.

The series that keep me company when I quit my abusive job and was seeking new ones, The series that made me forget the pain of being hit by a car, the series that made me forget the Sexual abuse I expressed at my newer job that I shortly quit after.

The pain I felt over and over non stop, the continuous cycle of trauma I was able to process slowly without feeling alone. Living in that tiny space, with nothing to eat but determine not to go back to my abuser, at least with them I wasn't alone.

Perhaps I'm parasocial for feeling like a resident, perhaps I'm parasocial for loving Chayanne and Tallulah like my own children, perhaps I was parasocial for cheering for my team in Purgatory.

But it meant so much more to me than just a Minecraft roleplay server, it was my entire life. And now it's just shapes, pixels and shapes on a screen.

I think back to Qsmp 2023 and it's there, the joy, this overall sense of Happiness these people I know and care about, I made a Tumblr account just to see more art of them, I engaged in headcannons, joined discord servers with other residents we were all residents.

Whether you were a crow that sat top q!Philza's head, the voices in q!Fit's head; your art sat in the museum, your head canon's adopted into canon and your jokes acknowledged.

We were residents, without ever stepping foot on that island....

Now Tumblr still recommends me clip, There are some people I forgot to unfollow or choice not to. They show me the new Island and new creators, they tell me about the new mods and new characters.

They show my children, they show me my friend q!Philza, they show me all these things I love but..

It's Just Shapes...

Now in it's current existence it's just shapes, pixel on a screen actors In a play, I see nothing but the actors behind it, nothing but improvised roleplay, nothing but a video game.

Shapes.. and it drives me insane that some people don't understand that, and it comes with the neurodiversity I Know. no one ever talks about how painful hyperfixation death truly is.

Its made worst by seeing how the fandom, the other residents have started turning on one another. Residents bite and growl at me like I'm a villain came to kill them, I was one of you!

It wasn't my choice but it's one I'm glad for, seeing how cruel We've became. It isn't even the same island anymore, they left me behind on the old one.

And that's fine, the new one is just a pixilated mess to me.

[c0rpseductor]

its like. i dont care what other people call themselves bc that's their choice. but in the broader sense of like as a community term or in the event it were used on me, i just really hate neurospicy.

i said this in my tags but it feels infantilizing, and reductive and sanitizing. i think there's nothing wrong with appreciation of oneself or like disability pride, i make tons of autistic jokes for sure, but i think like. i don't like when being ND is presented as essentially being more cool/interesting/eccentric with no real downsides and i feel like that's the only context in which i see neurospicy. like you'll talk about being neurospicy for having a special interest you talk about a lot, a relatively socially acceptable manifestation of autism, but i doubt anyone would apply neurospicy as a descriptor to childhood behaviors of mine related to autism and trauma, like having massive screaming meltdowns or attacking other children. because that's disturbing, those are disturbing behaviors

and similarly like, i feel like neurospicy is never going to be applied to discussion of challenges like executive dysfunction that prevents you from showering for days in a row or brushing your teeth, or needing major assistance with most ADLs, or having chronic pain and exhaustion due to neurological and psychological factors like my own chronic migraine which is probably somewhat related to trauma. nobody talks about being neurospicy for having debilitating flashbacks or terrifying hallucinations or horrible intrusive thoughts or any of that shit, even though mental illness is also neurodiverse. bc none of that is fucking cute and quirky.

like maybe this is a bad faith read of the term but it feels like an appeal to the majority and a washing-away of the "ugly parts" of neurodiversity, by both people who are relatively (not entirely! just compared to others) free of "ugly" or stigmatized symptoms/conditions and people who just really want to hide theirs in exchange for acceptance and positive attention. being a little awkward and quirky when you talk to the cashier is neurospicy but having a compulsive skin picking problem is Weird and you're Weird. feels like negative progress to me

[ihhfhonao3]

Some hate I’ve gathered over the past two (2) days because I think they’d make funny copypastas. Tw for rabid ableism and transphobia because that’s just what people do on here I guess lmao

Having gender dysphoria is being delusional; you are deluded about your own body to the point where you seek to change it to conform to misogynistic stereotypes. Calling someone delusional who is, in fact, delusional, is not, in fact, ableism. Being delusional is undesirable. Being mentally ill is undesirable. Saying otherwise is ableist. Everything you listed is indicative of being delusional, besides the disabled bit. None of what you listed has anything to do with being disabled. Using the term "neurodiverse" to identify yourself is as fucking stupid as using "biodiverse" to identify a plant. The human population is neurodiverse, our planet is biodiverse. "Neurodiverse" is a term neither coined, nor used, nor sanctioned by neuroscientists. "Queer" is a slur against LGB (HOMOSEXUAL) people. It is not an identity. Being a delusional misogynistic, science-denier like all trans and "non-binary" people are, has nothing to do with being LGB. Additionally, there is no oppression that trans people face for being trans. Being a furry is disgusting, as well as delusional, and, again, has nothing to do with being LGB. No furry is oppressed; people find them disgusting bc they simply, by definition, are. I don't even really know what the fuck "otherkin" means and I don't want to. No one cares about this niche bullshit, and no one is oppressed due to their attempt to be it. Other people thinking you're stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting isn't, in and of itself, a form of oppression. Sometimes, others think you're stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting bc that's precisely what you are. I'm here to tell you that anyone who uses the "identities" you listed (besides being disabled), and/or believes in the ideologies connected to them; that person is stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting. Grow the fuck up. Stop talking about LGB people, and stop including us in your larping puppyplay creepy bs. Your ahistoric delusional porn-sick behavior has nothing to do with us, and it never has.

@ihhfhonao3 tried to "call me out" by reposting my page to their blog, calling me a bigot etc. yet when I responded to their post with logic and explained that as a gay man I do not accept an ideology created by pe do John Money, they deleted my comments and responded with infantile and massochistic messages. This is so typical of the left, their hypocrisy, and their love of censorship.

I do not intend to harm any individual, however I will not hesitate to call bullshit on an ideology that is absolutely harming people. Its harming children and young people, its harming women, its harming LGB people. I have been "radicalized" by my first hand experience of narcissistic trans individuals, and my observation of the interesting correlation between governments, and corporations promotion of the "progressive" pride flag and all things trans. I absolutely believe there is a nefarious agenda.

Have there been "gender non confirming" people forever!? Absolutely. But they havent used drugs and surgery to ruin their bodies. It was only ever a very small number of people that were so non conforming as to be "cross dressing." Someone told me the other day in all seriousness that they didnt think men should wear shorts. Peoples ideas about conformity and gender are all over the map. You can wear whatever the f you want to now... just dont tell children that they need to become sterile to "be their true selves."

Yes gender separate from sex is a construct. Its a normative set of traits. However these things are not at all concrete. To conflate ones biology with the clothes one likes to wear is NORMATIVE CAPITULATION! So why are the supposed rebels perpetuating NORMATIVE STEREOTYPES!?

Its ludicrous and is evidence that these people are actually weak minded victims of a massive psychological operation fomented many decades ago. These same people will say thats just a "conspiracy theory" and yet believe that "THE PATRIARCHY MUST BE SMASHED," yet want to give children's bodies and minds over to Pharma Corp and Rockefeller medicine!?

It is a psy op.

There are autogynaphilics, and there are gay men with internalized homophobia. These are mental states of confusion. They are not lifestyles to be celebrated or something to take pride in.

These people are not part of the LGB. They are hostile to everything that LGB is. Drag queens and transvestites are not transexual. You are not born in the wrong body. You are not too "butch" to be a woman, or to "femme" to be a man. Gender separate from sex is just a concept, a lens, a made up thing like unicorns. We can talk about them, but it doesnt make them real.

This is a nuanced conversation that must occur before its all out war and were literally murdering each other in the street. Thats what the puppet masters want. They want chaos. They want us hating each other. I dont hate people, but I do hate lies. And I will stand up to lies and liars till my very last breath.

Not all people who identify as “queer” are mentally ill, but you definitely are, OP. Seek help, please, as wanting to be dehumanized and suffering from violent mood swings are very serious signs of deep disturbance. Also I don’t believe you have the “spoons” to make a phone call, let alone rip out someone’s entrails.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Long-ish personal story about my job and about music and it sort of slightly connects back to comedy at the end, but only a bit (and unlike most of my personal posts lately, this one isn't even about how difficult it is to not drink alcohol, though it is a story that I'm writing on a Saturday night to distract myself from wanting to drink alcohol, so not entirely unrelated). Regular comedy posting will resume shortly.

There’s this SMBC comic that I really love:

(Source)

I’ve been thinking about this comic lately in a weird way, as I’m nearly six months into this job as a therapist for autistic kids. I don’t write much about my job, partly because it doesn’t have anything to do with the general topic of the blog, partly because I try not to talk about my job much in general due to confidentiality. But we are technically allowed to talk about it in ways that don’t give identifying details, and I have a story I really want to tell, and I don’t think anyone is going to be able to work out which of the hundreds of thousands of kids in Canada I’m talking about from this post on an anonymous blog.

There’s one kid I work with for three hours, three nights a week. He’s ten years old and he’s quite severely impaired in a number of ways; he’s not completely non-verbal but he can only say a few words and doesn’t have the cognitive capacity to express himself well, he understands more words than he can say but he still doesn’t understand anything beyond simple sentences, we’re trying to teach him to read but it’s at extremely early stages, he mostly doesn’t understand what’s happening. He semi-regularly has meltdowns during which he mostly just cries and tries to hurt himself, but can be aggressive against other people too.

He’s someone that people mean when they talk about “low-functioning autistic people” (I know the language is loaded an complicated, but there’s no term for it that isn’t loaded and complicated so I’m going with the clearest one). Most of the clients I work with are. They’re in the “low-functioning autistic” category that I usually hear referenced as a way to invalidate the neurodiversity movement. You know, when higher-functioning autistic people try to claim that autistic people should be treated as fully human and able to self-advocate, and then people will reply that this only applies to high-functioning autistics, but actually there are lots of low-functioning autistics and they’re not fully human, they can’t even talk or understand speech or read or write or dress themselves.

Sometimes I see people reply that of course autistic people can do all those things, and I’m not sure that’s always a helpful reply, because there lots of them who can’t do those things. Who can’t join the neurodiversity movement and self-advocate because they don’t have the cognitive capacity, who do actually need to be taken care of full-time for their own safety and well-being. But I think what we should be arguing is those people are still fully human, it matters how they think and feel, we can still make an effort to not just keep them alive and in line, but to understand them and meet them where they are and see that they have preferences and personalities like anyone else.

When I started this job in August and was trained to take over from this kid’s previous therapist, I was told that music can sometimes keep him in a good mood, so I should bring the centre’s laptop in the room during my sessions with him and play kids’ songs on YouTube sometimes. I asked if they had to be kids songs and was told no, I can experiment and see what he enjoys, the only rule is the lyrics should be clean.

I started this with fairly selfish intentions: I don’t enjoy listening to children’s songs all the time, so I thought I’d see if he liked anything else. I’m not completely selfish; if he’d hated the other stuff, I’d have played the kids’ songs that he likes. But on my first day with him, I put on a couple of the more upbeat and accessible Lennie Gallant songs, and had the absolute pleasure of watching his eyes light up with delight. I could see every tiny moment of the music hitting him, of him processing this thing he’d never heard before, this huge smile spread across his face and he got up and danced. When the song ended, he used one of the very few phrases that he’s able to consistently say with full understanding of what it means: “Put the music back on.”

Lennie Gallant is a folk singer from Rustico, Prince Edward Island, who now lives in Nova Scotia, and those are all places on the East Coast of Canada. Canada’s East Coast has a huge folk music tradition, including a lot of Celtic music that comes from the Celtic immigrants there (by and large, Scottish immigrants to Nova Scotia, particularly the island of Cape Breton off the Nova Scotian coast, and Irish immigrants to Newfoundland), but also a lot of stuff that’s developed in its own way in Canada. From when I was very young, my dad raised me on Canadian folk music in general, but particularly a lot of East Coast music, I’ve gone to folk festivals with him every summer since I was too young to talk. Lennie Gallant has been one of my favourite singers for nearly 25 years. To give an idea of how true this is, my parents currently have a cat named Rustico, because they let me name it, and I went with Lennie Gallant’s hometown as my inspiration.

I remember the first time I heard Lennie Gallant. I was nine years old, we were sitting in the living room, my dad put on the new Lennie Gallant Live album and Pull of the Fundy Tide started playing. And I remember how it felt. It felt like I’d never heard anything like it. There was so much going on. I closed my eyes and couldn’t process how much I liked it, and I made him play it again. If I try really hard when I put the song on now, I can still feel that.

It was so fucking cool to watch the same thing happen to this kid on that night, but this time I was on the other side of it. I watched him struggle to take it in, to have a whole new concept of what music can be opened up to him. He wanted to hear it over and over. I kept playing different Lennie Gallant songs, he kept playing and smiling and dancing.

In folk music there's a basic dichotomy between the stuff that's more trad or less trad (I mean, I guess that's true in any genre), more trad meaning less production and either no lyrics or very traditional lyrics and less of a beat and lots of other factors. So I figured as long as I stick to the less trad side of my collection, I can play this kid anything, I don't need to make it children's music. Over the next few weeks, I kept playing him my more accessible stuff. This, for example, was his favourite:

Another great Nova Scotia singer, Dave Gunning, has a couple of Christmas albums, which I figured are good crossover between folk music and music that's for kids. So I started playing him some of Dave Gunning's Christmas songs, which he also loved. Then one day, while trying to navigate back to the Christmas album, I accidentally touched this song, and put it on:

It's a medley of fiddle tunes off this great album that Dave Gunning did called A Tribute to John Allan Cameron, John Allan Cameron being a legendary Cape Breton singer who popularized traditional Celtic music in Canada, so a lot of that album is further to the trad side than most other stuff Dave Gunning does. When I accidentally put on the medley of fiddle tunes for a ten-year-old I was trying to entertain, I quickly realized my mistake and went to pause it until I could find the Christmas stuff.

But in that moment I saw his face, and a whole new sense of recognition was spreading across it again. Just like that first day when I put on music for him, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing, but loved it. Breaking slowly into a huge smile, snapping his fingers along to it. When I pressed pause, he said "Put the music back on," so I did.

After that, I set out to find just how trad I can go with this kid. I found out, pretty fucking far. Butterfingers Medley is actually pretty accessible as far as medleys of fiddle tunes go, but I tried playing him slower and more complicated and/or traditional fiddle tunes, and he enjoyed all of them. Then I tried playing Gaelic-language stuff, and this induced a whole new wave of shock and amazement at how beautiful it was, he could not get enough. One day he was "scripting" - which is the word for when autistic kids will repeat phrases they've previously heard (usually from a TV show or more likely a YouTube show these days, sometimes they repeat phrases that their parents or teachers have said, it can be anything they've heard before) under his breath around another therapist, and she asked me if I knew what he was saying because she couldn't figure it out, so I got closer to him to listen, and then had to tell her that the reason she couldn't understand him is he was speaking Gaelic. Specifically, scripting the lyrics to this beautiful song by Cape Breton band The Rankin Family:

I tried as hard as I could to go too trad for this kid, just because I was curious to see what the boundaries were. I played him the most out-there thing in my music collection, which was the Barra MacNeils' (another great Cape Breton band) Mouth Music, and he fucking loved it:

This kid is the best. At some point I did abandon my quest to find the boundaries of what music he'll like, and just started trying to put together a playlist of his favourite stuff. Because he doesn't indiscriminately love everything. Sometimes I'll put stuff on and he won't be that into it, and there is a pattern to what he likes and what he doesn't, but the pattern isn't, as I'd initially expected, that he likes the most accessible stuff and dislikes the most traditional stuff. Or that he likes the faster stuff and dislikes the slower stuff (if anything, it tends to be the opposite of that). The pattern is that he likes some things in music more than others, just like any other person does, and even if he can't have conversations about that more complex than just saying "Put the music back on" after songs he likes and not saying that after songs he dislikes, that is still enough for him to communicate those preferences. Which is where I come back to the idea that even the "low-functioning" people still have fully formed personalities, which obviously I knew full well before I played some music for a kid at work, but this sort of thing seems like a good example for people who don't know it already.

He's got a fairly broad palette, though, and it does include some of the faster songs that sound like the sort of thing a kid would be into. I wish I could have legally taken a picture of his face (I can't because confidentiality) the day I first played him this one:

My job is stressful and scary, both due to the nature of the job and due to the nature of me, specifically the part of my nature that gets easily overwhelmed and I am constantly terrified that the next day will be too much and I'll have a panic attack at work from the social overload and then I'll get fired. It's not easy, and I haven't managed to find a lot of the "rewarding" parts of an allegedly rewarding job like this, because I'm so focused on just getting through the day. But this is one part of the job that I have really, really loved. I love getting to play music for this kid and watch him be amazed at the existence of something he never knew about before.

And that's what makes me think of the SMBC comic. I've actually been thinking a lot lately about my own dad, how he raised me on this music. How he took me to a folk festival every year since before my first birthday, and he played me his favourite music in the living room when I was too young to know the words to have a conversation with him about it, but I'm sure my body language let him know what I liked, just like this kid does with me. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad singing me to sleep with folk songs when I was three and four years old, because I refused to sleep due to "the world going upside down and almost explode" every time I closed my eyes (I was first diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at age 8, which seems young until you consider that it was four years after I started telling my parents that I can't sleep at night because it makes me feel like the world is going upside down and is about to explode). My dad's singing got me to sleep, it got into every aspect of my head.

I've always been really grateful to my dad for the way he introduced me to music so early, gave me a love of it. I feel lucky that I get to trace my favourite music back through my whole life. My favourite songs and artists and albums from when I was five years old, and eight years old, and ten years old, and twelve years old, and fifteen years old, are still among my favourites today.

When I play music for this kid, I bring back my early memories, of the first time I heard my favourite songs, when I was young and everything still felt new to me. I remember the amazement that music could sound like this, that something this good could exist, that the range of potential human feelings included all these new things that I was experiencing for the first time because of this song. I remember that, and I know from the look on his face that that's what this kid is feeling right now, as I play him a new song for the first time.

But I also bring back my early memories of my dad. I remember the look on his face as I ran around the living room dancing to The Rankins and The Barra MacNeils and The Irish Descendants when I was a kid. I remember his smile, how proud he looked when I liked stuff, how he'd dance with me, he'd excitedly tell me to listen closely before putting on the next song, because he couldn't wait to see my reaction. I don't think I understood until this year how special that was for him too, to get to share this with me. Because it's the way I feel when the smile of amazement passes across this kid's face during a new song.

And of course it was amazing for my dad to get to share that with me! We all love that! This is everyone is desperate to give music recommendations to anyone who will listen, because it feels really, really good to take something that induced a good feeling in you and watch it induce that same feeling in someone else, especially if you can know you're the reason why that's happened. I am currently writing an entire post just as an excuse to give people a bunch of recs for my favourite music (and to avoid thinking about wanting a drink). Of course that feeling is special. Of course it made my dad happy to do that for me. Zach Weinersmith of SMBC comics wrote that nice comic strip about how that's one of the best parts of being a parent.

That's all been happening for months now, and the kid has heard most of my best stuff. I've developed a couple of playlists for him - one for when I want to get his energy up and put on something upbeat, and one for when I want him calmer. It has a range of stuff, and I try to mix it up. I know his preferences now, I know what his favourite songs are and what they have in common so how to guess if he'll like a new one or not. And he doesn't look amazed when they play anymore, because he now knows that music like this exists. But he still smiles, and dances, and says "Put the music back on", and loves them.

One day last week, he was struggling hard. Crying off and on, and I was doing all the things that normally help: turning down the lights in the room, stepping back to give him space, soft and soothing music. But he kept getting upset.

I was alone in the gym with him when he had a meltdown that was worse than any I'd dealt with before. He started banging his head against the wall, and it scared the hell out of me, because of course I don't want him to hurt himself. I blocked it with a mat and he came after me, scratching my arms and hitting me. He pushed away and screamed.

I turned the lights down and grabbed my phone to try some music. Music had gotten us out of bad situations before. During the worst meltdown I'd seen him have before last week, I finally got him to calm down by putting on The Mingulay Boat Song off Dave Gunning's John Allan Cameron album, I just played it on a loop until he sat down on his knees and closed his eyes to take in the music and slowly stopped crying:

But since then I've played that song for him lots, it doesn't have the same impact as it did when it was a novelty. It worked the first time because I was able to induce that "Wow, I didn't know music could sound like this" feeling in him, and that'll distract a person from anything. But he knows music can sound like that now. He knows all my music, or at least, all my music that could be at all appropriate for this situation.

Well, he knows almost all my music. Because as I was starting to panic and look to my phone to decide what to play for this kid who was scratching at me and posed a threat to his own safety (because "head banging" sounds like one of the less severe behaviours, at least compared to behaviours that involve committing violence against others, until you actually see a kid do it and realize how badly they can hurt themselves if you don't block it), I realized I did have a new folder in there.

And this is where the post comes back around to my usual topic. Did you think I'd finally taken a break from the constant posts about John Robins to write a heartfelt story about my history with music and connecting with a child at my job? Nope! This was secretly a John Robins post all along.

So, in one of the radio episodes, John Robins listed his top five favourite albums of all time. Van Morrisson's Astral Weeks at number one (Elis specifically checked with him that he really means number one of all time, better than all Queen albums, and he said yes), and 2-5 were: In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, I See a Darkness by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Ghosts of the Great Highway by Sun Kil Moon, and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Obviously I wrote all those down and downloaded them, because I am a normal person who is not too far down a fandom rabbit hole.

Van Morrisson, weirdly, was actually my first ever favourite singer. In that when I was three years old, the first time I was old enough to have any kind of preference, my favourite thing to do was run around the living room dancing to this album called Irish Heartbeat by Van Morrisson & The Chieftains. My favourite song on the album was Step Be Gaily, a song that is actually called Marie's Wedding, but when I was three I called it Step Be Gaily because that's how the first line of the chorus sounded to me (it's actually "Step we gaily"), so my whole family still calls the song Step Be Gaily. The song is still in my music collection and it's still great.

I spent years listing Van Morrisson as a singer I very much liked. Until I was about ten, and my parents told me that since I like Van Morrisson so much, they'll play me some of his other stuff. And I quickly learned that actually, I do not like Van Morrisson. What I like is a Celtic folk band called The Chieftains, and the one album they made in collaboration with Van Morrisson, who is otherwise quite a blues-y and R&B-type singer and I'm not into that. I did try the Astral Weeks album on John Robins' recommendation, and I did not like it, because that's not my kind of music, but I'm glad the people who like it are having a good time.

The other four albums were different, though. I already knew some of the songs off the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy one, but listening to the whole album turned out to be a great idea, I've added it into my common rotation. Neutral Milk Hotel was exactly what I'd always assumed Neutral Milk Hotel would be, from years of vaguely hearing about them but not actually hearing them, which was ranging from all right to pretty good. The Sun Kil Moon album I quite like, and I'm still in the process of listening to some of its songs again because I feel like it's the sort of thing that rewards repeat listens.

The Godspeed You! Black Emperor album was exactly as weird as you'd expect from a band with a punctuation mark in the middle of their name, that made an album with four tracks that are 20-ish minutes each. Experimental music isn't normally my sort of thing, but I gave it a shot because John Robins told me to, and I was glad I did.

I tried listening to the first track while on a break at work, lying in the hammock that they have in their gym, closed the doors and closed my eyes and played my noise canceling headphones and tried to feel like I was at home so that I could recharge my social battery a bit and lessen the risk of overloading to the point where I have a panic attack at work and get fired. This song started and it was all weird and experimental and I didn't know what to make of it, but as it went a bit further in (like I said, each track is around twenty minutes so there are lots of changes throughout each one), it got to a part that was really lovely and relaxing. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me and it did, actually, help me to stop feeling all the stress of the job and transport me to some state of mind where this wasn't happening and it was okay.

I probably don't really have to write the rest of this story, because now that I've written the various parts of the backstory, I'm sure you can guess the ending. I needed a song that a kid who loves music would find beautiful and relaxing enough to calm him down, but the regular ones weren't working because he was too upset, and I thought the only way to solve it might be to induce that feeling of "Oh my God I had no idea music could sound like this", to distract him with the shock of novelty. I also had a song that I'd never played for him before because even I had only recently discovered it, and I barely knew what to make of it, but I did know it was amazingly relaxing.

So I put it on, and he stopped in his tracks, and I watched him tilt his head while he considered what he was hearing, and in that moment of quiet I managed to get him to sit down on the hammock, and I turned the lights all the way down and closed the doors to the gym, and I sat in front of him and rocked him very slowly and gently, and then of his own accord he went from sitting in the hammock to lying in it, and I played the music softly. After a few minutes he stopped crying altogether, and I hit pause on my phone, and he said "Put the music back on," so I did, playing that section of the song over for half an hour, just me and him sitting the gym listening to this weird band I got from a comedian on the radio, blood drying on my hands and my arms from where he'd scratched me, until his dad came to pick him up.

And that's my story. I wrote this instead of drinking alcohol. Sometimes my job is fulfilling. Autistic people are people, even the ones with a significantly lower cognitive capacity than neurotypical people. John Robins' taste in music is a mixed bag. I hope everyone is having a good night.

[ejaydoeshisbest]

What My Special Needs Brother Has Taught Me

I am making peace with the reality of taking care of my special needs brother as we get older in years. For context, I am turning thirty this year, 2024.

I am already imagining us in the future; all grey hairs and wrinkled skin. Our joints aching, and he, whining and complaining.

I will still be preparing his meals because my brother is afraid of hot oil and the heat coming from the stove.

I will spend most of my money on his medicines unless a good government program finally helps to assist autistic elders in the Philippines.

I will still work a decent-paying job to provide for his basic needs and if I have some extra, maybe I could put in a good insurance company and HMO.

My best hope is for him to become independent and find good work on his own, of course. But if he doesn’t, then I have to make sure we both don’t suffer.

Personal Struggles with Accepting Responsibility

If you were to ask someone stronger, more mature, and more resilient than me about the challenges of caring for someone in the family who has special needs, they would probably say that it is a blessing and their personal calling.

They probably would accept the responsibility with pride. If ever they doubted, or feared, or felt moments of weakness, I’d like to think they would carry on sacrificing a major chunk of their lives for the benefit of the whole family.

If you would have asked me the same question some months ago, I would have glumly replied that I have no choice.

For the longest time, I was a weak, self-centered person. I put myself first above others and fled at the first sensations of a binding responsibility, especially if I felt that it was a heavy burden to carry on my own.

For a long while, too, I resented my special needs brother and my parents.

I didn’t ask to be their eldest child who was supposed to support a special needs sibling for the rest of my life. To be fair, they weren’t forcing me, but the passive aggressiveness and guilt-tripping tactic was just as effective.

I thought that my brother would keep me from living my best life, that he would hold me back from so many opportunities and wonderful adventures. Providing for his needs meant sacrificing a lot of my free time and freedom.

Now, though, I have begun to settle into the role of helper or caretaker around the house.

Perhaps it was time. Perhaps it was age or biology or a combination of all three.

It has been difficult. It still is. True enough, it meant a lot of sacrifices; personal time, days off, simple pleasures, creative hobbies, and other projects. But there will be no one to bear this burden but the family members who will remain.

I’m finding the peace in accepting that. But it doesn’t erase the fears I still hold to this day.

My Fears of Taking Care of a Special Needs Sibling

Expenses

Raising special needs children, children with disabilities, children on the autism spectrum, neurodiverse kids, or whatever term one chooses to describe their current situation is more expensive than neurotypical, “normal” children. Some, if not most, need constant supervision for the rest of their lives.

They need different therapies to improve speech, movement, and other behaviors to be functional in a public setting.

Then you need teachers with specialized training to educate them in the hopes that they would use those skills to achieve full or partial independence.

Though my brother went to a specialized school with competent, kind, compassionate teachers, all the expenses came from my father’s pocket, without help from the government. At least, to the best of my knowledge. He worked hard so my brother got the proper education he needed.

Living in the Philippines is hard enough for lower-middle-class families like ours. I can barely scrape by with the meager salary that I had during my last job before I tried freelancing. I don’t feel confident that I’ll have the kind of money that my father had in his youth, so I’m scared that I might not provide for my brother’s future needs.

And those needs will grow more expensive as we both age. That is why I fear our future expenses.

Lack of Government Support

I’m not the type to blame the government for everything, but reading a recent article still showed the lack of progress or any concrete plan for assisting Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in the country.

The news article stated that there aren’t enough “full-fledged learning centers for learners with disabilities in every locality due to the shortage of health professionals who can assess children with special needs”.

After reading that, I worried that there was still a lack of government support for adults with autism who are capable of working a simple job.

My brother isn’t on the severe side of the autism spectrum, you see. He can talk, and dance, and understand you, just as long as you talk simply. He could still write his name, albeit squiggly. He can understand movies and children’s books. He can understand simple orders.

I am grateful that at least he doesn’t need round-the-clock attention. But I’m afraid that if he doesn’t use the skills he learned in school, he will end up losing confidence in himself, and forget the skills he acquired in the expensive school.

While I’ve read that the popular shopping malls in the country have been hiring people on the autism spectrum since 2016, I have yet to personally encounter actual adults with autism working in the many malls that I visited. I’m not sure the information holds up now.

I don’t know if the Philippines would ever have a professional kind of assisted living program for the mentally challenged or disabled. But it would be a great burden off the parent or guardian’s shoulders if there were indeed competent caretakers to watch over the special needs individual as they make ends meet.

Then again, these facilities cost quite a lot of money. It would be up to the government, along with the rest of society, to share this burden to improve the quality of lives of all. I’m willing to do my part as well.

The only benefit from the government that helped somewhat was the discounts on bills and groceries when I presented my brother’s PWD ID at the cashier.

I shiver to think what would happen if there was no government aid at all. I don’t want to be one of those elderly people I see on the news. The ones who are in their 80s and 90s still taking care of an autistic aging adult.

My Own Physical Health Limitations

My brother is physically stronger than me. Ever since I was a small child, I was a weakling. I remember the years when every morning, my breakfast was thirty minutes of nebulizer and my dinner was a nightly dose of preventive inhalers.

I’m grateful that I’ve grown out of those severe asthma attacks, but no one can say for certain if it will come back with a vengeance. I hope not, for my family’s sake.

Still, I’m afraid that my health could not keep up with the demands of a full-time job, and some side hustles to help with the finances, while also taking care of myself, having a social life, and taking care of my brother.

It feels like I already have a child with no partner to help me.

All this pressure is taking a toll on my mental capabilities as well. If I don’t stop overthinking, then it will only cause further strain and negatively impact my health.

I need to train my mind to become resilient.

Ironically, that is what my brother is teaching me the more I reflect on how to better care for him and address his needs.

What My Special Needs Brother is Teaching Me

Accept Responsibility and Face Reality

I have learned that accepting responsibility and forcing myself to not overthink about the future and every little detail that irritates me takes a load off the mental and physical stress.

Would it be nice for government assistance? Yes. Would it be nice if my parents set up funds for his future? Definitely.

But that isn’t my reality. All I can do is focus on what I can do at the moment. It may not be enough but at least it’s a plan. Plans still count as something.

I also realized that things will get worse if I choose to run away from my problems. For years, I hoped that it would resolve on its own as I faced my own challenges. I hoped that a solution will fall from the sky and save us all. I hoped that my parents would think of something grand.

Again, the reality of our situation is that it won’t get any better if I don’t contribute.

The reality is that my parents are getting more lines on their faces with each season. Grey hairs are growing faster than they can color them. Their skin is sagging.

I feel myself getting older too. I am on the last stretch of my 20s. I better contribute to the family while I still have remaining strength.

That is why when well-meaning people insist that it really isn’t my responsibility to care for my special needs brother, I tell them that I am not comfortable abandoning them altogether. I need to be present to tackle all the problems on hand so that my aging parents would not suffer.

It may not be my fault that I am physically weaker than average and that my brother has special needs, but it is still my responsibility to act.

That’s just acting like a decent human being and as a good brother.

Besides, we’re Filipinos. It’s ingrained in our culture and tradition to stick together. Unless the family is downright toxic, then by all means, cut them off.

Furthermore, I did my years of selfishness. I partied. I played games to my heart’s content. None of it was fulfilling. All of it was wasted hours and days on cheap dopamine.

I had fun at the moment, but the pain multiplied depending on the time I had delayed addressing important obligations.

In my defense, it wasn’t like I was delaying gratification. I treated these simple pleasures as rewards for being an adult. Still, I admit that there was selfishness there.

Lastly, I have no interest at all in starting my own family. I’m happy being single for the rest of my life. I am an antinatalist, after all. Maybe this is the universe’s way of balancing things out.

Build Strength and Resilience

I used to have this victim mindset all the time. But taking care of my brother grants me a new perspective in life.

It forces me to look for solutions, instead of dwelling on problems. It forces me to become positive and helps me access this delusional confidence to survive and to keep showing up for work.

I realized I am more motivated to finish things and stick with my chosen struggles if it means supporting someone else. It makes things worth doing. It gives me strength and purpose.

I’m aware that helping others boost overall mood, but I’m not doing it for that. I’m not helping because I want that surge of positivity.

I’m helping out of love and out of reciprocation for the sacrifices my parents had made.

I'm helping because I have a lot of years to make up for.

Live with Hope

My special needs brother makes me see what matters most in life.

It’s about bringing people together and trying your best to protect them. It’s about sharing the load with others. It’s about giving more than you take.

It’s about living life one day at a time; to be comfortable with the lows and to enjoy the highs. It’s about never giving up and always believing in the power of hope, that whatever happens, we’ll get through this together.

It’s about honoring the sacrifices of my father and mother, cultivating a strong support system, and being a support system in return.

It may not completely erase all my fears, but living with hope manages them enough so that I have the determination to pick myself up every day and continue focusing on the present. And hope that all my efforts will count for great things in the future.

There are no guarantees, I know. But it won’t stop me from working.

Having said that, I’m not going to overwork myself. That in itself is a bad strategy. Balance would be the key here.

Work the hours, clock out, live well below our means, cook healthy meals, and ask for help when needed.

Be Sympathetic

Sympathetic. Empathetic. Compassionate. Kind. Patient.

Helping care for my special needs brother has let me release some of the negativity in me.

With a background in dramatic storytelling and a short stint as a PR writer, one of my major roles was reading and researching all the negativity in the news to hook people’s attention.

Maybe I had absorbed too much negativity that I viewed my life bleakly.

I had become jaded and toxic to the point that I had to be less sensitive to the plight of others to protect whatever pool of emotions I had left, which, ironically, made me seem dull, insensitive, and an emotionless husk.

I viewed my life with crushed hopes and broken dreams.

Now, I am re-learning how to search for the silver lining in each situation. I am re-learning to be more understanding towards hostility. I will still fight back even if it means defending myself and my time, but I am more reflective of such negative encounters.

I understand that we’re all lost, alone, and confused. I understand that we either lash out or keep our emotions bottled up.

Helping take care of my brother, I sometimes see that I’ve wasted so much of my energy on negativity and toxic behaviors. I am learning how to let go.

I would also add that I have a rocky, tumultuous relationship with my father. But the care he provided for my brother humanizes him. I still hate the guy, but I respect his sacrifices.

Conclusion

I still have a lot to learn. Every day is filled with frustrations. But without my brother, I am still stuck being a self-centered, hedonistic individual, afraid to face the reality of the past before it haunts him in his future.

Because of him, I am willing to do my best each day, good or bad, and to have faith that I can overcome obstacles.

Words: Ejay Diwas

Art: Viviai Art

[jessielefey]

Not just from that angle neither. It's also just the literal consequences of parental interactions.

"Kids are always on their phones." Yeah, it's the only time they aren't getting yelled at.

"Kids never go outside anymore." Are they even allowed outside? For a lot of kids, "going outside" is an entire event requiring multiple days of pre-planning with authority figures to achieve.

So they're trapped inside, and inside they cannot run without getting yelled at, have to always be quiet, have to sit nicely, don't make a mess, stop screwing around and do it right, wait and wait and wait, and be patient.

And when they're outside, they can't get dirty, can't run ahead, can't get hurt, be careful, so even that isn't the release it's supposed to be.

Kids need to *play*, and it by literal definition is not playing if they're forced to focus on external supervision and/or judgment.

So yeah, they're watching youtube or playing dumb mobile games on your phone all the time, maybe even at the park. That's the compromise they've struck with you; the alternative is screaming fights as they meltdown from understimulation and you meltdown from overstimulation.

You taught them that devices are the least risky way to have some autonomy and intellectual engagement while avoiding the most amount of parental micromanagement, the same way my parents taught me to shut up and watch tv because at least it killed time. Don't get mad at them for the corner you backed them into; if you don't like it, *you're* the adult, you're the one with the control to make different choices here not them.

Devices are like the archetypal cocaine water: it's only a problem when the cage is too understimulating. Devices get boring quick if there's literally anything else better to do, even with the neurodiverse kids; if your kid is spending *that much* time on tech, something is wrong and *they* can't fix it because they're children. They barely have impulse control yet, and as they are well reminded do not make the rules or make the decisions. They need your *help*, not your scorn; scorn is just giving up with extra smug moral self-satisfaction, it doesn't actually *fix* anything.

im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!

an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.

“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids

[unhingedwomandiaries]

Another lunch break squandered hate-reading news stories that'll just bum me out for the rest of the day. This time it's some depressing exposé from across the pond about these so-called "calming rooms" that are apparently meant for neurodiverse kids in UK schools to take a breather when feeling overstimulated. Except an investigation found these rooms used to literally just be utility closets and cupboards. Now they are being used to forcibly isolate and mistreat vulnerable students.

Kids were locked in these bare white boxes, some left sitting in their own filth for hours after being physically assaulted and verbally abused by the same teachers paid to support them. And these depraved sadists are still employed, still allowed to "work" with children despite confirming every parent's worst fears about having a special needs child placed in an institutional setting. It's subhuman treatment on a legislative scale that seemingly no one in power cares enough to stop. But I'm sure the next round of empty reassurances is just around the corner.

Makes you nostalgic for the good old days of our relatively quaint "In-School Suspension" rooms in the States. Those ominous little window-free concrete boxes where you'd be unceremoniously banished if you stepped out of line, denied any academic responsibilities for the day beyond staring mindlessly at the walls and pondering how society systematically fails those who struggle. I guess the Brits saw our model and said "Hold my lukewarm tea, we can make this even more dehumanizing and traumatic."

The whole sadistic concept feels like something out of a Cold War-era psychological torture manual. Which is probably why the one person I knew who got ISS didn't exactly turn out to have the most enriching adult life. If memory serves, his offense was bragging about his older brother's DUI on AIM like some try-hard way to seem cool and aloof. Incredibly lame posturing even by a hormonal teenager's standards.

Ross never did explain the full extent of his crime, but he outlined the basic psychological torment of being trapped alone in that sterile, empty room all day like some Kafkaesque minimum security penitentiary. No schoolwork, no stimuli, no human interaction. Just...existing. For seven hours straight. With a permanent disciplinary mark on your record that colleges would inevitably discover (because they ask on applications) and judge accordingly.

Looking back, it was probably Ross's cry for help towards whatever darker underlying forces were weighing on his teenage psyche. Because now I see his family was already unraveling. His mom passed right around the time my dad died, and his older brother would precede Ross himself in tragically premature "sudden death" before he was even in his thirties. Kid didn't have a chance from the jump.

So while the specifics of Britain's calming room atrocities disgust on a new level, the underlying truth feels pretty universal: For all our self-congratulatory lip service about creating more nurturing environments for struggling youth, our institutions always find new ways to fail the most vulnerable populations. Civilized society is a myth. We're still just modern-day Babylonians hazing the "others" however we can get away with. Cruelty and negligence remain the purest universally shared human experiences.

[noisycowboyglitter]

Autism Mom: Honoring the Unbreakable Bond Between Mothers and Their Autistic Children

Autism Mom: A Badge of Strength and Unwavering Love

"Autism Mom" isn't just a label; it's a symbol of unwavering love, fierce advocacy, and a commitment to a child's unique journey. Here's what it means to be an Autism Mom:

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A Champion for Acceptance: Autism Moms become vocal proponents for their children. They work tirelessly to raise awareness, dispel myths, and create a world where their children feel understood and included.

A Source of Strength: They are the rock for their children, providing emotional support and navigating therapies, appointments, and educational needs. Autism Moms are resourceful, constantly learning new strategies and adapting to their child's unique world.

A Teacher and a Learner: The journey of raising an autistic child is a continuous learning process. Autism Moms research, attend workshops, and connect with other families, constantly seeking ways to best support their child's development.

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A Tireless Advocate: Autism Moms are vocal proponents for resources, services, and appropriate educational settings for children on the spectrum. They fight for their child's rights and inclusion in classrooms, communities, and activities.

A Symbol of Love and Pride: Above all, Autism Moms are filled with an unwavering love for their children. They celebrate their unique strengths and perspectives, fostering a sense of pride and confidence in their children's journey on the autism spectrum.

Being an Autism Mom can be challenging, but it's also incredibly rewarding. It's a testament to the strength, resilience, and unwavering love a mother can possess.

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Choosing gifts for autistic adults can be tricky! Consider sensory preferences, hobbies, and interests. Here are some ideas:

Sensory Items: Fidget toys, weighted blankets, noise-canceling headphones, calming aromatherapy items.

Organization & Relaxation: Planners, journals, self-care products like bath bombs or essential oils, comfortable clothing.

Interests & Hobbies: Items related to their favorite activities like art supplies, board games, music equipment, or tech gadgets.

Experiences: Tickets to a museum or concert with noise-cancelling options, a spa day, a cooking class, or a weekend getaway to a quiet location.

Remember: Personalization is key! Think about what makes the autistic adult in your life unique.

Buy now

The interlocking puzzle piece is a widely recognized symbol for autism awareness. It represents the "puzzle" of understanding autism and the vast diversity of experiences on the spectrum.

However, some in the autistic community find the puzzle piece dismissive, suggesting they need to be "completed" or "figured out."

Alternative symbols, like the rainbow infinity loop, celebrate neurodiversity and the unique strengths autistic individuals possess.

Regardless of the symbol used, raising awareness for autism and fostering acceptance for autistic people remains crucial.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf by Mary Specker Stone

On SALE now! Pre-order Price Guarantee: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/valentines-dinner-at-wren-wolf-by-mary-specker-stone/

Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf is a story of love: naïve and stubborn, stumbling, unforgiving, passionate, and, at times, disconsolate. Maddening love between #neurodiverse partners who long to understand one another. Frayed #love between divorced spouses trying to raise children amicably. Parental love, where generational wounds threaten to become dams that block life’s fluid possibilities. Self-love is here, too, the spiritual labors of aligning heart and mind. And, love for the feverish world. Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf is an off-road sojourn through landscapes and moments in one woman’s life as she learns what love has to teach her. #poetry #poems #chapbook #life

Mary Specker Stone’s poems have appeared in Image Journal; The Healing Art of Writing, Vol.1; New Verse News; Gyroscope Review, and other journals. Her scholarly writing, focused on communication dynamics between patients and health care providers, was published in Technical Communications Quarterly and the American Medical Writers Association Journal. After an early career as a biomedical writer, Mary studied rhetoric and composition, earning her M.A. in English from Northern Arizona University. While teaching college English, Mary developed an interest in poetry, and more recently, in the way poetry contributes texture and depth to spiritual life. She’s a certified Spiritual Director who leads poetry salons and serves writers, artists, and people in recovery. Mary lives in the greater Phoenix area.

PRAISE FOR Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf by Mary Specker Stone

Rich with luscious and gritty sensual detail, with wildness and coherence, Mary Stone’s poems connect writer and reader to each other and to something beyond ourselves, to “those places at the very edges of a creature.” Stone entices readers into deeper emotional territory through her inventive metaphors. Weather elucidates death, a dam and a father bend nature, and serrano chilis transport us to news we “can barely grip.” Joy and grief are never far from one another in these poems that stay with us long after we have read them.

–Pam Davenport, author of A Midwest Girl Thanks Patti Smith, winner of Slipstream’s 32nd Annual Poetry Chapbook Competition.

Reading Mary Stone’s Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf is like time traveling through a life, stopping at mile markers: a little girl who didn’t understand how to play war, played with her brothers’ toy soldiers like dolls; a young woman skiing the Mississippi, who will “surely sin, show my tits, drink hurricanes;” a bride who “needs to believe in him;” a wife in a long marriage pondering forgiveness; and a woman at a surgery consult asking, “What’s to become of the nipple?” These poems are full of courage, heart, the ironic view of the speaker, and lessons learned, such as: “Love cannot be forced, must be allowed to flow outward over rocky shelves…pour down, frothing like worshippers at a tent revival.”

–Susan Vespoli, author of Blame It on the Serpent and Cactus as Bad Boy

To sit down and read aloud this mature, elegant collection is to sense an intimate voice just out of hearing. As Stone reflects on a life’s landscape, we detect the heart’s wordless wisdom like an overtone. It reassures us that through it all – loves, betrayals, doubts, triumphs – our connections are cherished and forgiven. “Most tenacious, “she writes, “those places/at the very edge of a creature.” We are softened and enriched by the experience.

–Kathy Kramer-Howe, poet Lake Mattawa 2020: a pandemic, a small cemetery, and a month alone. Phoenix, Arizona

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems

[iammitesh86]

"World Autism Awareness Day"

"5 Facts About Autism Spectrum Disorder"

1) Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disability that usually appears before the age of 3 year.

2) Early diagnosis and treatment significantly improves children's life outcomes.The earlier autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed and treated, the better for the child.

3) Autism Spectrum Disorder is not passed on to the child by the parents, however

The multiple causes of ASD are unknown, either before or during pregnancy Parental behavior during and after pregnancy does not cause ASD.

4) Many children and adults with autism spectrum disorders Often cares deeply but lacks the ability to instinctively develop empathy and socially connected behavior.

5) Individuals with autism spectrum disorder can be very creative. They can excel in the field of music, theatre, art, dance and singing as compared to normal human beings.

#WorldAutismDay #inclusiveeducation #vocationaltraining #psychosocialsupport #ASD #AutieBiographical #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent #Autism #neurodiversity #neurodiverse #AutismAcceptance

[matildainmotion]

TRANSITIONS: Help from Cookie the Chicken and a Hopi Elder

Mural on our living room wall by Tenar McDermott

Transitions.

One of those things that are meant to be famously hard for kids, especially for neurodiverse and/ or highly anxious ones, like mine happen to be.

And there are so damn many of them. The day - just an ordinary day - is full of hundreds of thresholds, little shifts and changes. Sleeping to waking. In bed to out. Night clothes to day clothes. Bedroom to bathroom. Upstairs to downstairs. Inside to out. Outside to in the car. Out the car to into school. And that list just covers up to 8.30am (and names my daughter’s least favourite transitions of the day). The other top three toughest transitions in our household, all of which can take hours and involve huge emotions, include:

Hungry to fed.

On screen to off screen.

Waking to sleeping.

And the strategies listed in all the parenting literature that are meant to help?

Routine. Strong predictable patterns.

To allow plenty of time.

To give early warnings. Count downs.

Music, songs, soundtracks …..

….which are all, I am sure, wise in many instances, but in our case don’t do much or can even escalate matters. Whenever I start giving my kids ‘early warnings’ they scowl at me and tell me to go away and shut up, because - let’s face it - I am just being the bringer of bad news. I am letting them know that change is coming. It’s on its way in half an hour. In fifteen minutes. In ten. In five. It’s nearly there. And if I then start to sing, or put on a soothing or upbeat soundtrack, that doesn’t help either. Not anymore. They know what I’m doing. I used to put on ‘Mah Nah Mah Nah’ from The Muppets in the mornings but they cottoned on. I might as well put on The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s entry tune – actually, I have tried this a few times), as all I am doing is letting them know that the thing they are dreading is nigh, and they don’t want to hear it. Who would?

I know I don’t want to hear it. Or rather I do - I want some kinds of change - I am longing for them, but not the sad, ending part. That part of the transition is horrible. And right now, everything in my life is in that phase:

I have just finished writing my novel. It’s over. And the next book has not yet begun.

We need to move house. I don’t yet know to where.

We need to move schools. I don’t yet know to which, or if we should start our own learning initiative.

My mother is recovering from pneumonia- the long phase in my life where she cared for me, and then helped with the children is shifting into the phase where I care for her.

The children aren’t little anymore, but they also aren’t big.

Oh, and I am peri-menopausal. Not yet an elder. But definitely not a younger now either - my years of a regular cycle are done.

Many endings then, but they are slow and messy. Sad and muddy. Like the weather. Not invigoratingly cold, or ablaze with tremendous autumnal hues. Not dying in style. But mild and wet. It’s pissing down as I write this and I might have to go out into the dark shortly to rescue the hens who have their coop perilously close to the river. My phone just buzzed with a flood warning.

My daughter wants to be inside the warm, dry cosiness of a new chapter already - to skip over the transition. She knows we need to move house, but she hates my mentioning it - she says it makes her too sad and she gets cross the moment the topic comes up. She wants to be already in the bit where the moving is done and she has a bedroom all of her own with pink, purple and gold painted walls, a bunk bed with a slide down from bed to floor and a cat basket in one corner for a kitten, called Sodie, who will be white, with a black spot over one eye.

Well, yes.

I’d like that too.

But even in Harry Potter (to which we are re-listening, over the bedtime threshold, courtesy of Stephen Fry) the transitions are hard. Disapparating (vanishing and reappearing elsewhere in an instant) is painful. Even when using magic, you can't avoid it - change hurts.

Especially when you don't yet know what you are going towards.

Especially when there is just the soggy, muddy, undignified ending part and the new thing, the next one, hasn't started yet. It's vague. An idea only. A fantasy. Or a complete unknown.

Rereading this I realise there are far more huge and terrifying transitions people undergo than the ones we are facing, couched as we are in a high degree of privilege. My father fled Nazi Germany at 16, having no idea what he was heading towards. Nowadays the number of people seeking refuge is only going up, with the water levels. Fleeing all they know. Going to towards everything they don’t.

But if inside every transition, however tiny, is hidden the same combination of sadness and fear - grief at what is being left, and terror of what is coming - I am not surprised my children howl and resist it with all their might.

What might help us? Since the official parenting tools I am meant to employ aren’t doing the job right now. Not in the tiny shifts, or in the big ones. And I feel downhearted. And scared. As the rain pours down outside.

So far, I have found two things that help:

Cookie the Chicken and a Hopi elder.

First, Cookie.

Cookie is not one of the hens out in the dark, currently at risk of drowning.

No. Cookie, lives in a little soft, pale blue hand-stitched pouch, on a pink thread. Cookie is there at the school gates to greet my daughter in the morning. If I manage to ease her from sleeping to waking, from in bed to out, from night clothes to day, from bedroom to bathroom, from upstairs to down, from inside to out, from outside to car…IF I make it as far as Cookie, waiting at the school gates, I know the rest of the transition will go just fine. My daughter will hop and skip over that final threshold into school, with Cookie by her side, or hanging round her neck, no backward glance.

Cookie comes to my daughter, care of one of the quiet hero’s of this chapter of our lives, who I will be very sad to leave when it does finally come to an end - the Wellbeing Lead at my children’s school. What I love about Cookie, (and the Wellbeing Lead) is that she is what I call ‘a threshold guardian.’ She does what all good threshold guardians do - she gets on with her own clucky business. She nibbles at chocolate chip cookies, sews seeds, and the other morning she even had a little chick, but she doesn’t bat an eyelid (if she had any), or drop a feather, in patronising concern for my daughter as she steps over the threshold. She doesn’t bring news of the doom of change, or promise glorious golden bedrooms or cute kittens to come. She is just there, at the point of transition.

I wrote a piece years ago called ‘Angels in Doorways’ which was about these threshold guardians. I wrote it at a time, long before parenthood, when I found it hard to leave the house. It helped me to think of these figures, stretched in the doorways like great webs, not doing very much, but making all the difference in the world. If you are old enough to remember him, the shopkeeper, of the magic costume shop in the children’s TV series Mr Benn is another example of just such a guardian: he’d quietly appear, beside Mr Benn, at his elbow, when it was time for the transition back to ordinary life. No warning. No countdowns. No soothing music. No questions. He was just there. Without fail.

So Cookie, who is there to help my daughter, also helps me. We all need a Cookie in our lives, I think. Pecking at biscuit crumbs, clucking in her little bag, while change comes.

And then there’s the Hopi elder…..

I’ve come across this quote a few times, and as I was listening to the rain outside, waiting for my son’s breathing to change to the slight rasp of sleep, wondering whether I need to head down the hill to rescue the actual hens, it came to mind again:

“There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And…see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves.”

I find this oddly relieving. Terrifying, yes, but also relieving.

It is relieving that it contravenes the (perfectly sound, often untenable) parenting advice to sustain clear routines and rhythms, to respond to flux and change by trying to keep as much as possible stable and orderly. Because more and more I find myself wanting to do the opposite. To let myself and the kids break the rules, undo the rituals, eat on the sofa, draw on the walls, leave the dishes in the sink, stay up late, as if it were a special occasion, a carnival, a party. Sometimes I do these things, sometimes I don’t, but even acknowledging the impulse somehow helps me through the changing days. Actually, the one from this list that has most notably occurred of late is the drawing on the walls: what began, when we first moved in, as small illicit scribbles in a corner, done furtively by my daughter- then a toddler with a crayon- and which I vigorously expunged, has bloomed rapidly in recent months to become great figures meandering unchecked across the dining and living room walls. There are so many of these – all either girls or cats – that they do in fact look like a group in transit. They remind me of the graffiti on school desks – evidence that we were once here, and that we won’t be soon.

The Hopi’s advice also lifts me out of my small story, of books and houses and schools, and wakes me up to the fact that what I am experiencing isn’t actually personal - it’s a huge global shift. Transition is a condition of life, but it particularly describes the age through which we are living. I know the world is changing - can hear it in the hardness of the rain outside - I do not yet know how things will unfold. None of us do.

Every two hours, through the night, I get up and check on the government’s ‘flood alerts’ page - there is a graph of the river Medway’s water level near me. The black line shoots upwards at an alarming rate, reaching 1.36 metres at 1am but by 3am it has levelled off. The hens, for now, can stay tucked up in their coop.

And Cookie is there to meet my daughter in the morning.

All is well.

And much is ill.

My mother, convalescing, listening to Radio 4, tells me the news is bad.

No way round it. Change is coming. As the Hopi elder says, and as Michael Rosen tells us in We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,’ there’s no way round it. No way under it. No way over it. Got to go through it. So I will gather up the hens, the children, my mother, my husband, and push off from the shore, and along the way I am deeply thankful for the Cookies, the angels, the quiet shopkeepers of the magic costume shops, for accompanying us, across the threshold of this time.

How about you?

How do you weather the transitions, in your lives and in the world? What are your strategies? Who keeps you company? Or - to put it more prosaically - how the heck do get yourself, and the kids, out of bed in the morning?

Image by Zoe Gardner @limberdoodle​

[attackfish]

I saw a deeply stupid post in the Ursa tag the other day, which is unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence, but in this case, this particular post took aim not only at Ursa, the fictional character, but at the human beings who defend her parenting of Azula. The poster said that it really bothers them when people try to justify Ursa's reactions to Azula' behavior by saying that Ursa was just worried about her daughter's behavior, because after all, that's what the abusive parents of neurodiverse children say too, they say it's about the behavior not the child.

This line of logic is deeply flawed and dare I say problematic. Azula wasn't stimming. She wasn't talking too much in class. She wasn't misreading social cues and upsetting someone. She wasn't doing any number of things that neurodivergent children do that are ultimately harmless, for which they are punished. She wasn't even doing something that was potentially dangerous to herself, for which she had minimal understanding or control over. The behavior that concerned her mother was the skillful manipulation, control and bullying, of her brother and companions, animal cruelty, and speculating openly and gleefully about her grandfather's possible death or usurpation, something that would be echoed not long after by her equally gleeful taunting of her brother with the prospect that their father is about to murder him.

This behavior is all very much the product of Ozai's abusive parenting, and a sign of deep psychological damage that has been done to her. It's also dangerous to herself and to her peers, including her brother, and if it isn't somehow stopped, it indicates that she will grow into a dangerous adult. I want to repeat that, her behavior, leaving aside the concerns for what it might mean for her future development, is already dangerous to herself and other children.

This is a thing that happens in the real world. Children, including traumatized children, often exhibit behavior that is dangerous to themselves and others, and that behavior should absolutely concern the caring adults in their lives. Likewise, behavior that is the sign of trauma and abuse should also concern the caring adults in a child's life.

Ursa is not aghast that her child is acting in socially frowned upon ways. She is coping with a child who is engaging in deliberate and profound cruelty aimed at other children, including her brother. There would be something very wrong with Ursa as a parent if that didn't scare her, as indeed there is something extremely wrong with Ozai, who encourages it.

The use of neurodiversity here is especially aggrivating to me for two reasons, the first, because it feels manipulative as hell, and is used to claim that any parent who is concerned about their child's very worrying behavior is in fact ableist, and a bad parent. More, this logic is overtly aimed not at Ursa the fictional character, but at the real people who don't agree that her treatment of Azula was mistreatment. It's the manipulative use of accusations of ableism and supporting the abuse of neurodiverse children to win a fannish arguement, and as a disabled and neurodiverse person, seeing ableism against neurodiverse children used as effectively a manipulation tactic in this way is offensive, and also dangerous, because it is exactly the kind of argument that ableist parents bring up to counter people advocating on behalf of neurodiverse children, who want them to not be punished for behaviors that are part of their neurodiversity.

The other reason I find this particular argument nauseating is because of the exact type of behavior that Azula was engaging in, which is to say the bullying of her brother and companions, in which she exhibits a high level of social awareness, and certain types of strong social skills. I was regularly bullied by children with strong social skills and high levels of social awareness, for my lack of those things, and for my weirdness, almost all of which was born from either my neurodiversity, or my lack of social experience thanks to my disabilities. This bullying was often either ignored, or encouraged by the parents and teachers of the bullying children. They did not view this deliberate cruelty as concerning. And they should have.

Azula has one parent who sees that behavior as concerning, as extremely troubling, and one parent who doesn't. The fact that so many people in this fandom seem to think that realizing this kind of behavior is troubling, inherently makes someone a bad parent, is frustrating in the extreme, because it is in fact an example of good parenting, and Ozai's lack of concern about that behavior is part of what makes him one of the most abusive fathers in children's media.