Mjollydragon - Insert Witty Comment Here

"Should parents read their daughter's texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?"

Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”

I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.

I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”

Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.

Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.

It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.

It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.

Unpopular Opinion

I enjoyed reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

I believe that most people on this thread are upset at the doctors, not at other people on the thread (apart from the one exchange at the top). I hope that I don’t have to explain why it matters for doctors to believe patients about their symptoms?

Also, this isn’t about doctors giving patients the diagnosis that they “want”. This is about doctors giving patients an accurate diagnosis of what they actually have.

Finally, I know ally-falls-downstairs in real life and I can vouch for their credibility.

being a female means needing to see 10 different doctors to get a proper diagnosis because they always think you’re exaggerating and/or lying

Wait, but if Tony learned all his history from watching Hamilton, then why doesn’t he list Hamilton as a founding father?

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I’m reading up on chocolate frog cards in the Harry Potter universe, for reasons, and-

“Came up with the ever changing floor plan.” 

Really, Ravenclaw? Really?

“You know what this school needs? To not make any sense-”

“Rowena, I don’t think-”

“Exactly, you don’t think. I’m brilliant and this is perfect. Moving staircases, walls that think they’re doors-”

“But how will the students get to class?”

“They’ll have to figure it out.”

“…”

“Everyday. They will figure it out everyday. My students will live in a tower and navigate these stairs every time.”

“The stairs move! This doesn’t seem safe…I think I’ll put my common room in the basement, Rowena.”

“Ditto. I think the dungeons would be safer…”

“…My kids will brave these stairs. I’ll take the other tower.”

Previously, I’d only seen the first two panels and assumed it was the complete comic.

This version is much better.

For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.

No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:

“You know! Boys will be boys!” 

“He’s just going through a phase!”

“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”

“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”

“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”

I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”

She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.

It was so tempting.

He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.

She had to keep her building safe.

Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.

His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.

Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.

I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”

Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning.  How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?

There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.

There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.

Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”

The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement

Hmmmm, how about, say, sexist people?

Feminism isn’t about trying to control people’s actions. Could you please clarify what, exactly, you’re referring to?

I've never seen anyone try to control women like a group of feminists