#not childcare stuff

[motherhenna]

Havin a bad day, y'all.

Like is this normal?? For jobs not to give you a specific location until after you've gone through the onboarding / hiring shit, only to place you over an hour away? Like a full bus and BART ride? I'm having to quit this job before I even start it because they never communicated to me that I'd be placed that far away from the Inner Richmond district of SF. Am I the asshole here or is this ridiculous

[nothorses]

I saw your tags on the post about trick or treaters not speaking and I am v interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the concept of “developmental delays”! I‘ve seen the idea that disability is a construct, but I’m not as familiar with the idea that development is also a construct. You have really great takes as an educator and someone who like, actually GETS how kids work, so I am interested in your thoughts!

I also know that posting on this subject might be poking the bear, so it is 1000% cool if you would rather not comment 💜 Tysm!

Oh I'm happy to talk about it! I love talking about this stuff, thank you for asking me to 💙

This isn't exactly new ground; there's been plenty of research into and writing on the subject, and deconstructing "development" as a static concept was, ironically, a huge part of my most recent development class.

The idea is that our understanding of "benchmarks" of development, which informs the larger concept of development as a whole, is heavily rooted in the assumption that Western culture is The Standard. We prioritize walking, talking, reading, and writing, which means we cultivate these skills in our children from a young age, which means they develop those skills more quickly than they do others.

To use one of my favorite examples from Rogoff, 2003, Orienting Concepts and Ways of Understanding the Cultural Nature of Human Development:

Although U.S. middle-class adults often do not trust children below about age 5 with knives, among the Efe of the Democratic Republic of Congo, infants routinely use machetes safely (Wilkie, personal communication, 1989). Likewise, Fore (New Guinea) infants handle knives and fire safely by the time they are able to walk (Sorenson, 1979). Aka parents of Central Africa teach 8- to 10-month-old infants how to throw small spears and use small pointed digging sticks and miniature axes with sharp metal blades: "Training for autonomy begins in infancy. Infants are allowed to crawl or walk to whatever they want in camp and allowed to use knives, machetes, digging sticks, and clay pots around camp. Only if an infant begins to crawl into a fire or hits another child do parents or others interfere with the infant’s activity. It was not unusual, for instance, to see an eight month old with a six-inch knife chopping the branch frame of its family’s house. By three or four years of age children can cook themselves a meal on the fire, and by ten years of age Aka children know enough subsistence skills to live in the forest alone if need be. (Hewlett, 1991, p. 34)" (pg. 5)

In the US we would view "letting an 8-month-old handle a knife" as a sign of severe neglect, but the emphasis here is placed on the fact that these children are taught to do these things safely. They don't learn out of necessity, or stumble into knives when nobody is watching; they learn with care, support, and safety in mind, just like children here learn. It makes me wonder if Aka parents would view our children's lack of basic survival skills with the same concern and disdain as USAmerican parents would view their children's inability to read.

Do we disallow our children from handling knives because it is objectively, fundamentally unsafe for a child of that age to do so- because even teaching them is developmentally impossible- or is that just a cultural assumption?

What other cultural assumptions do we have about child development?

Which ties in neatly with various social-based models of disability, particularly learning and, of course, developmental disabilities. If your culture doesn't value the things you are good at, and you happen to struggle with the things it does value, what kinds of assumptions is it likely to make about you? How will it pathologize you? What happens to that culture if it understands those values to be arbitrary, in order to accommodate your unique existence?

[mcelroyfamilystaff]

Tuesday, August 29th.

The evil turtle man must face his fate.

(If you want a real notification for when we go live, not just a YouTube one, turn on notifications for our instagram story posts, we always post there before we go live on YouTube.)

[gaylactic-fire]

I know me and my classmates definitely have biases based on our work experience. I wanted to see if the general Tumblr population would agree with some of us lol.

No "I hate kids" r/childfree slop in the notes or I'll break your ankles

[carletes]

Earth sign besties are bestieing, carlando are carlandoing, AND my milk came in??? A bitch is fed AND feeding

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

You’d think Sweden and Norway is similar and Yeah we are, but hearing my aunt who lived there for a year tell us about Norway, I just realize how much different it also is.

For example, in Norway you pack your own lunch to school while in Sweden you get free cafeteria food. And so, most people in Norway just have sandwhiches for lunch. In Sweden, a lunch is more or a full cooked meal.

Then it’s costs with child care. Daycares are much more expensive in Norway and apparently they only have 20 days a year they can use to be in case a child gets sick. Which seems like a lot, but toddlers get sick a lot. In Sweden I think it’s more of an insurance thing you get depending on how much you’re home with the kid for the month. However, I can’t say a lot about it, but because my aunt complained about it in Norway I am guessing it’s a better system with that specifically.

Honestly I think the biggest similarity Norway and Sweden has is a similar language. Otherwise, I feel like culture wise we’re more similar to Denmark the more south you go and more similar to Finland the more north you go (the difference between swedes from south and north is BIG)

[tittysuckersworld]

god i wanna be a parent one day so bad

[personostient]

Your art fucks a lot, I hope it can support the children 🙏

uh oh.

Blank template provided for fun and sport

if you use it, tag me. i wanna c

[tariah23]

[benevolentdinosaur]

Prompt: You are four years old and in preschool. Your teacher announces that it's time to pack away

Please reblog so we can find more classmates to help pack away

[books-and-kids]

We did it!

I dropped Abe off yesterday morning. He and his family were sooooo excited to see each other and I told his mom to text me anytime she needs a babysitter.

He was only here for 6-ish days, which is nothing in fumblr time. But it was a long week for me! I slept 12 hours last night and I'm still tired.

Hosting was hard and I can't say I enjoyed it -- it definitely didn't make me happy. In addition to the p00p in my tub, other lowlights included holding down a screaming child for 2+ hours while multiple stylists detangled his hair (partly my fault for not getting it taken care of sooner, partly how he came to me) and picking up a cold that makes me feel like my throat is ripping every time I cough.

But I keep seeing texts about more kids who need hosts and I have the same feeling I had before this week -- that I want to say yes. I want to do a better job than I did this week, so that it's smoother and easier and more successful, but I don't want to stop. It's similar to how I feel about my job (nonprofit work for the cause I care most about in the world) -- this is meaningful work and I really want to do it and do it well, and that doesn't change even if some individual days are hard.

Also, there's something about it that really worked for me in a way I didn't expect. In a lot of ways the goals are fairly simple and well-defined, especially for a young kid and a short hosting: feed the kid, keep them clean, make sure they exercise, get them to sleep a reasonable amount of time, maintain their connection to their family, give them love and affection. So every morning, when he ate a healthy breakfast, I felt successful. I changed his diaper and felt competent. He scream-cried and I gently but firmly held the boundary and felt proud of myself. It was a series of discrete tasks that I was mostly able to accomplish, and there are very few feelings I like more than the feeling of successfully checking an item off my to-do list.

All of which is to say... I thought I wanted to do this, which is why I started doing it, but I wasn't sure that I might not hate it immediately and realize I should never do it again. But so far, all signs point to this being the right choice!

[selamat-linting]

so like, since my dad was in jail for the majority of my little bro's life (2009-2014 and 2016-2024), my mom had to work so the childcare tasks is relegated to me and my sister. my brother actually took after me a lot, the moment he turned eleven he started talking back to me using my words, he's as stubborn and witty as i am and i kinda get why people want to have kids. there's a sense of pride to see someone taking up aspects of yourself. even when its used against you. but man, i was a bad brother and an even shittier mom to him. no amount of apologizing can undo the baggage he'll get from me for the rest of his life.

[asteria-argo]

“Breakthroughs being made for the next chapter of Jamie vs bedtime tonight”

🎶 tell me more, tell me more 🎶

OKAY, so I've been very stuck because I decided I wanted to do an away game next but I couldn't figure out for the life of me what would actually happen in the chapter, I've spent the last couple days actively avoiding my document cause it's been making my brain hurt.

This afternoon when I was taking a lizard nap (laying directly in the sun and just kinda zoning out for a couple hours) I was thinking about how this is THE Chapter to get everyone involved in some silly shenanigans because this fic at its core is supposed to be ridiculous. I was also thinking a lot about work, because I have a shift tomorrow. These two thoughts converged and I finally figured out what to do for the chapter. Beware Spoilers from this point on

I want to include the team, I want to include Jamie being a brat, and what better way to tie those two things together than to have Roy come find Jamie to send him to bed, only for Jamie to full on sprint away from him to A) avoid the others finding out he has a bedtime at all because its embarrassing to admit out loud and B) he straight up just doesn't want to go to bed, he's been having fun with his friends and doesn't want to stop. What ensues is Roy regretting his life choices and the rest of the team being dragged into a hotel wide game of chase for reasons they only kind of understand. This is of course inspired by the time I had to chase a child around the daycare for THIRTY MINUTES to get them inside for rest time.

[madowperle]

I have 30 minutes left to decide if I have the strength to walk to the thing I have to go today

[cerubean]

before and after of my mods folder

patting myself on the back bc my mods folder has never been so clean and organized ^-^

[nostalgia-tblr]

re: my seemingly fringe "I don't think we're meant to think Odin was a dreadful cunt" take, when was Thor 1 actually made? Like... 2010/2011? Because I think Odin is (presumably based on comics canon) meant to be "a bit distant but overall good as a parent" but 2010ish is well after the recent (historically recent, by which I mean since maybe the 1980s) shift in our culture's ideas about fatherhood and what make "a good dad" as well as similarly radical shifts in how we approach disciplining children. MCU!Odin is therefore odd because he's a couple of generations out if he's meant to convince the audience that he's A Good Dad or even an acceptable one. Even the people making the film can't have (all) thought he was any good so with this in mind I'm more open to the idea that Odin is meant to be fairly shit. (But not entirely, and certainly not to the point of him being evil - he's doing his best and arguably the issue isn't him but the culture they've all been born into.)

IDK how old the writer was but there could be an intentional generation-gap thing going on there? An "everyone thinks this is acceptable and even good parenting, but it isn't and everyone involved is getting messed up by it." You don't have to go that far back historically before failing to show regular affection to your kids wouldn't be seen as a significant flaw in a father (whereas it absolutely would be in a mother - v interesting that as the status of women in our society has increased our idea of a good dad has shifted significantly towards an ideal that would previously have been considered "maternal" and thus "unmanly." Oh hey, looks like patriarchy is bad for men too!)

I still think a lot of fanon and fanfic overstates it (which is fine until we're at the point of inventing obviously abusive behaviour and then seemingly forgetting that we made that up), and that Odin is at least meant to be 'doing his best' but yeah Them Thor Films must surely be aware that his best is nowhere near Actually Good, yeah? I mean unless they were written by a man who lives in the 1950s, which they probably weren't. (There is absolutely some generational variation in how far the social change has taken hold but you'd have to look for a long time before you'd find a man of any age who'd say "I really wish my father had been more reserved and had spent less quality time with me" rather than wistfully expressing the opposite of that.)