the whole “i used to be a teen who hated authority only to grow up to become the authority that hates teens” is a bad bad thing that practically every other generation has fallen into and we all need to make an extremely conscious effort not to repeat the fucking pattern
Studies have shown that the shift starts to happen around age 30. If you’re close to that, make a conscious effort to be open to and accepting of younger people. I’m 31 and paying close attention to how I react to young people and new trends and shit and trying to keep myself from developing those thought patterns.
HEY KIDS! WANT TO LIVE IN A PANOPTICON?! YOU SURE DO!!
HEY PARENTS! WANT TO NORMALIZE INTRUSIVE SURVEILLANCE AND MINIMIZE PRIVACY RIGHTS?
WELL YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS!!
CW/TW for under the cut:
abuse, child emotional abuse, mental health,
I feel like vomiting.
Its like someone took all the toxic, disgusting, vile, broken aspects of capitalist society and *distilled* them into one product.
Maybe I’m a bit sensitive to this in particular. But I was an intensely anxious child. My parents consistently and grossly invaded my privacy as a child to the point where I started to suffer from delusions that people around me could read my mind.
When I was out of the house mum would occasionally go through my room, my draws, cupboards, bags, school books, and pockets.
I never knew when it was coming. I wouldn’t know until I got home and she presented the “evidence” of wrongdoing and demanded explanation (anything from unfinished schoolwork to empty food packets).
To this day I start to feel severely I’ll if I stay away from home for more than one night. Even though I no longer live with parents.
So I think I probably feel more strongly than most about the necessity of privacy and agency for children.
But this right here feels like it was custom *designed* to induce paranoia.
Fuck. I am so angry and sad and sick.
Gods protect these kids. ❤
There’s plenty of similar products and the reviews just get worse.
Please please don’t do this sort of thing to your kids. I cannot stress just how damaging creating this atmosphere in your home is.
It might seem like a funny joke or a great parenting tool, but believe me your kid will deeply feel that lack of trust.
Teach your kid good morals, teach them compassion and empathy, teach them to be “good” purely because its the best way to be.
Kids need room to make mistakes. They need room to fuck up, realise their own fuckup, and fix it *without* authority figures finding out and taking control.
Otherwise all they’ll ever learn is that rules must be followed blindly, and authority figures must be feared and obeyed rather than respected.
And for the love of god don’t teach your kid that their privacy can justifiably be violated by authority figures based on the suspicion of “bad” behaviour.
Don’t teach them that the constant threat of punishment is the only reason to be good.
This is what these “toys” do.
Please don’t buy them.
‘tis the season to show kids love, compassion, and to be better human beings, not scar them for life
I feel like it’s become less socially acceptable to hit your pet than it is to hit your child. And that’s… kind of absurd.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s absolutely abhorrent to be hitting your pets too, but I feel like when someone hits an animal everyone’s like, “Holy shit. Someone call animal control? How can you hit something that can’t even fight back? This is disgusting.” and then when someone whacks their kid everyone’s like, “Well, you know. That’s just their parenting style.”
There was very little protection for minors before then. Children were considered the property of their parents and barely anyone intervened when they were mistreated.
Mary Ellen was rescued from unfit parents only after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) stepped in on her behalf. ASPCA advocates pointed out that if Mary Ellen were a horse or a dog, her mistreatment would be prohibited by statute.
A judge agreed that the young girl deserved at least the same protection as an animal.
It is morbid enough that animals were legally more protected than children and that this very comparison was used to extend legal rights to children.
But the worst part is that a lot of parents have apparently not updated their beliefs since then and still treat children as property that they can do anything they want to. That is what a lot of people consider an ideal “traditional family”.
Whoa, I had no idea. That’s wild.
Dogs have more enumerated rights than minors in the state of Pennsylvania.
It’s sad that toxic game culture is so prevalent cuz like. As someone who has ended up in random matches with kids before, I can attest to how fucking easy it is to reverse and un-teach shitty attitudes in kids.
Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.
I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.
The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:
A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.
B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.
tl;dr: The kids are alright. Adults are shit heads.
I cant agree with this post more
I witnessed something similar with my younger brother (this was when he was In fifth grade so bear with me here) and his friends. The teacher assigned for them to build a somewhat accurate spanish mission in Minecraft because their school had gotten some iPads and she needed to assign them something other than a PowerPoint.
Now here’s the thing. Most of these boys, my brother included, have ADD/ADHD. About a week into the project all they had in their shared world was chaos. Somebody filled the place with tnt and lit it up. Holes everywhere. Whenever one would attempt to try and build something (mostly wood huts and not the actual project) it would be destroyed within minutes as the boys began to insult each other heavily and complain that the design was ugly.
I brought my own ipad with me and decided to sit with the boys while they continued their reign of terror. I joined the world and built a hallway out of brick at the very center of this war zone. Immediately one of them tried to destroy it under the impression that “it looks bad”.
“Well, what should I make it out of?”
“Diamond.”
The ten year old mind is a mystery to me…
Anyway, then I showed him some pictures similar to these:
I reasoned that it would be easier to sway this kid toward another pretty block than trying to get him to stick to the materials of the time, so I asked him if he would like to help me replace my brick design with quartz (eh, it’s white).
Bam! One of the ten year old anarchists is dutifully building me a glittering gem hallway for our insanely rich monks.
The other three are off somewhere still yelling at each other and setting off explosives, but we have something built. Much to my surprise the kid asked if he could build the church next because he “wanted to build the most important part”.
Here’s where I learned something important. I don’t have ADD or ADHD but as I said before my brother does. When he gets fixated on something, he’s really gets into it. Once a few minutes had passed and this kid already had four walls up I decided to grid up the entire mission. One gets the church, one gets the farm, etc.
After playing the game with them for an hour, I had a pretty good idea of where each kid should go.
Church kid, I found, was very particular about materials and shape(hence his hangup over the brick). I gave him free reign over the outer walls of the mission and showed him the reference pictures to get him started.
My brother liked the farms most (he was building dirt domes over the cows don’t ask me how I made this connection it just worked, okay), so he was in charge of building pens for the animals.
Another kid was, at first glance, very loud and bossy when it came to decorating (constantly said we were making chairs wrong). Turns out he likes interior design, like putting benches and beds in the little rooms, so his bossiness was just frustration with my brother’s artistic sense I guess.
Another was very good with placing trees and plants around the exterior (I guessed this because he covered the place in a ridiculous amount of trees and I asked him if he would like to know where they are supposed to go). He got to make a vineyard for us and organized how the crops should go.
So how did it turn out?
Actually very nice!!
So what did we learn? Kids actually like to play games and be praised for their creativity and intuition. If I had just told them to stop messing around rather than direct their attention to areas within their interests, they never would have gotten anything done.
After an hour of gaming they:
Mirrored my language; “thank you!”, “which part are you working on?”, “I like this block.”
Realized each other’s strengths; “hey [kid name] can you help me with the roof?” “How do you make the big trees [kid name]?”
Were able to articulate exactly what they did or didn’t like without using force; “that looks good!”, “how about we put it there?”, “I don’t like that block, how about this one?”
On the plus side, since we moved the game file to my device for safekeeping, I now have a cute little souvenir of the time I played Minecraft with four ten year olds.
This is a really long post, but it’s super important. In games like Fortnite where you’ll find lots of kids, it’s important (if you can) to steer them away from toxicity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into kids who talk like toxic adults and the act of just being nice to them completely turns them around.
This isn’t limited to games, by far. When younger kids are exposed to snide, aggressive older people in any capacity their instinctive response is to adapt that behavior to seem cool and adult and avoid being a target.
Maybe you’re not even an asshole and you just play around with your friends by ironically insulting them, but kids don’t really know the difference. They don’t have that context. And they can continue to develop thinking this is just the way you’re supposed to act and that any sensitivity or vulnerability is something to be laughed at.
I experienced this as a 13 year old on 90′s webforums and I didn’t break out of a non-stop snarky rude mode until like 22.
kids have no concept of anything. i walked into my kindergarten class and one kid asked me what my name was. when i said miss jones, he said “i like that name. did you know i’m in love with you”
i asked my four year old cousin how old he thought i was going to be at my next birthday and he said 8. im 23
once i told a 6 year old that i had finished school and was doing “more school” [university] and she asked “why haven’t you found anyone to marry then”
We were at a museum and I was asking for the student discount and my nine year old cousin looks up at me with his eyes wide and says “wait you’re a STUDENT??”
I used to babysit these three kids and the eldest who was around 11 at the time was talking about how adults are boring and when I told him I was an adult he said, “That’s not true, you’re my age”
our aunt teaches and she has this story about a little girl who really was always pretty quiet in class and then on the final day of kindergarten she just up and stated ‘i’m all teached now. i don’t need to be teached anymore. i’m done of being teached.’
once when i was 19, I told my little cousin that i was 19 and she looked up at me with huge eyes and went, “Does that mean you don’t have to bring an adult with you to the pool?”
My 6 year old cousin saw me driving for the first time, looked up at him mom and said “does that mean she is married now?”
I watched my dad and my niece (3 at the time) arguing over a pair of pants and whether or not they were also a dress. My neice’s argument was that they were, in fact, also a dress because they were blue.
I asked the kids in my daycare class what they thought I should be for Halloween and this little boy goes, “ooh I know! A pickle! You’d be such a good pickle”
On the first day of class with my favorite student of all time, I said, “Are you okay? You look like you have a question.” And she looked me right in the eyes and said, tremulously,
“Can a piranha eat a stapler?”
One time I was working with a kid and he looked up at me and asked “Do you have a boy?” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I told him that I did not have any boys. He looked shocked and then deeply concerned and said “Well, you better hurry up and shave your arms so you can get married; August is next month!”
I was sitting on the floor with my 3yo niece and we were playing with her younger brother’s alphabet blocks and the O had an octopus on it. So I picked it up and asked her what it was.
“Octopus,” she said, all curls and smiles.
“And what kind of animal is an octopus?” I asked. I was looking for “fish” or “sea creature” but I would have accepted almost anything–”weird,” “gross,” even “slimy.” “Underwater” or “it lives in the ocean” would have also been acceptable.
She looks me right in the eye and says, happy as a clam, “It’s a cephalopod.”
Miguel is right. The first time I watched it, I expected a later scene where Miguel was proven wrong or shown the error of his ways—one where it’s firmly established that adults might make rules that don’t make sense, but they have their reasons and it’s best to abide by their wishes.
But no. That doesn’t happen. Instead, we see that Imelda’s insistence on the music ban, and her refusal to reconsider, indirectly (or perhaps directly) land Miguel in even greater danger, as he wouldn’t have gone after de la Cruz were it not for Imelda insisting he give up music forever. The happy ending comes not when Miguel agrees to give up music to please his family, but when he defies the ban to save Héctor and restore Mama Coco’s memories.
I can’t tell you how many kid’s movies I’ve seen that would have taken “Family comes first” to mean “The adults’ wishes are paramount even if they’re unreasonable.” It would have been so easy to have Miguel simply go along with what Imelda wanted, but Pixar instead gave us a story where a child’s decision to contest an unfair rule is what eventually restores a broken family.
It’s sad that toxic game culture is so prevalent cuz like. As someone who has ended up in random matches with kids before, I can attest to how fucking easy it is to reverse and un-teach shitty attitudes in kids.
Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.
I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.
The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:
A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.
B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.
tl;dr: The kids are alright. Adults are shit heads.
artherra 