So I’ve had a refugee join my class this week, and he’s got pretty minimal English. Hasn’t stopped the kids in my class in the slightest though: they’ve helped him with his vocab work, kept him company while the rest of the year rehearses the end of year play (because its about evacuees and the air raid noises freaked him out), invited him to play every game.
And TODAY OH MY GOD TODAY we had assembly, and every week one child per class gets a headteacher award for doing something great. After the awards had been dished out, one kid puts his hand up and frantically whispers to me “can i say something?” Now this lad is what we usually refer to as a lovable rogue. I give him the benefit of the doubt, wave over to the headteacher and kind of derail the assembly, going “um yeah I think one of my kids wants to say something?”
This boy stands up. Takes a deep breath. Says in front of the whole motherfucking school, all 500 kids and teachers, “so this is my new friend, he’s only been in England two weeks and only been in school two days but he’s trying really hard with his English and he’s really kind. So we think be should have an award too.”
Everyone clapped and I was just a sobbing mess at the back, mascara everywhere, girls in my class going “Miss are you okay” and patting my shoulder and I’m just like “yeah you guys are just so awesome that my eyes are leaking.”
I love that age when little girls get really weird and mystical and savage
Like nine through eleven years old, those are some weird years for us
When I was 9-10 I read The Egypt Game and The Headless Cupid, taught myself hieroglyphics, and decided to practice witchcraft
The past three years, my son has come home telling me about the girls he knows, who are: 1. possessed by a demon controlled by a button at the back of her neck, 2. haunted by a dead aunt, and 3. converse regularly with the dead.
I used to talk to bees by running in circles of their dance patterns
Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery
where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art,
say archaeologists.
Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient
form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early
efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.
A Cambridge University conference on the archaeology of childhood on
Friday reveals a tantalising glimpse into life for children in the
palaeolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago.
“Some of the children’s flutings are high up on walls and on the ceilings, so they must have been held up to make them or have been sitting on someone’s shoulders,”
So many Pro-Spanking advocates talk about how they “Deserved” to be hit by their parents because they were “a bad kid.” And it makes me so sad.
You weren’t.
You weren’t a bad kid, and you didn’t deserve to be hit. Maybe you were a difficult kid, maybe you struggled with boundaries or rules or expectations. Maybe you had bad behavior much of the time. But you, yourself, were not and are not a BAD person for that, and you didn’t EARN violence. You didn’t have it coming. It shouldn’t have happened to you.
Someone’s kids are spoiled rotten little fucks who don’t know how to behave in public or at home. There have been many attempts to successfully pull spanking from parenting in recent years as the post modernist mentality hit that realm. But there is a reason is it a tried and true part of parenting because there is a balance to achieve between rewards and punishment. Some parents are too liberal with spankings and others won’t even hold it in reserve for the worst of behaviors. New age parenting is incomplete because it only looks at half of the nessisary puzzle to raise your child. If you look at studies previous to the 90s you find that spanking was beneficial, but when the post modernist echo chamber started impacting psychology this flipped to reject all classic knowledge as is a trend with post modernism as a whole.
And all of these are post 1990. Did you even read what I said, or simply get triggered by my statement so quick you just replied.
The first one explicitly says that its built off 50 years of collected meta data. Soooo.
And Also “This science is too recent” is an interesting methodology. Like…that…isn’t how sociology works.
also, the main reason nonviolent parenting styles haven’t worked isn’t because you need violence to parent, it’s because the various methods never actually address the problem.
we have this weird idea that consequences are the best deterrent to bad behavior, but that simply isn’t true. If consequences- be it spanking, a time out, losing your video games, going to jail, etc- are the ONLY THING keeping you from doing something bad, you’ll more than likely do it if you think you can get away with it. or, alternatively, you’ll be so afraid of consequences that you’ll be mentally incapacitated at the slightest hint that someone is upset with you, killing your social life and any chance to learn the skills you need to handle that situation.
what actually stops being from misbehaving is understanding WHY they shouldn’t do something. and “my house, my rules” doesn’t cut it as a reason; there needs to be an understandable reason. sometimes it’s an inherent consequence; you can’t put a cookie in the ps2 because then the ps2 breaks and you can’t play video games anymore. sometimes it’s a moral reason; you can’t hit your sister because it hurts her and makes her upset. sometimes it’s a social reason; grandma will think you’re rude if you drop a hard boiled egg in her water glass.
you need to actually talk to your kid and help them understand these things with whatever level of reasoning they have. and if they’re too young to be reasoned with, they’re too young to understand why you’re hurting them.
another issue is that many times, the child does understand why they need to be better, but they’re unable to. bad grades are a huge example of this. getting spanked for a bad grade never made me do better, it just made me cry so hard i choked every time i got anything below a C. it took until highschool, with no help from my parents or teachers, to realize that the reason i was failing was because i had memory problems, and it took another year to figure out how to remember better. if my dad had sat down and taught me some ways to remember better instead of putting me over his knee, i would have been doing much better.
and this may surprise you, but the reason we’re finally understanding that spanking DOESN’T benefit kids is because we’re finally looking at them as people, not pets or property. child psychology is about understanding that this is a human being with all the same capacity for feelings that you have, maybe even more, and not nearly enough resources to express them. children aren’t little monsters that need to be herded and corralled and trained. they’re very tiny, very confused people, and it’s our responsibility to teach them how life works.
Children playing with Barbies in media:“This is Sally. She’s the mommy. She loves fashion, swimming, and she drives a convertible! She has a baby with Ken and sometimes they kiss.” OR “Look, I ripped Barbie’s head off! Ha ha ha! I’m a boy.”
Children playing with Barbies in real life: “This is Aurora, the fallen goddess of the sky. She has been banished from her kingdom and bound to a mortal body by her sister, who rose to power by human sacrifices. She now leads an army of cannibal water spirits who eat men. Sometimes they have orgies. They dismembered a traitor and keep her head on a Popsicle stick as a warning to others. Aurora can turn into a wolf and uses battle magic to paralyze her enemies. The king of the stuffed animals developed rabies and she had to slay him to save his people, but they do not understand that it was an act of mercy and kindness and are sending assassins after her for regicide. This is Aurora’s soulmate, Crystal, but her soul is trapped in a gemstone while an evil spirit pilots her body and attempts to murder her friends.”
So, because people writing inaccurate kid!fic bothers me, a quick reference to kids (Disclaimer: I have no professional background in child development, and no offspring of my own – this is all based on other people’s kids.):
Newborn: Person-larva. Cannot do much but eat, sleep, cuddle, cry, poop. Cannot hold their own head up. May pick up on the mood of the person holding them, but response to it is going to consists of either contentment or complaining. Those are pretty much the two states of a newborn: happily cuddly or expressing displeasure.
2 – 6 months: Somewhat more aware of surroundings, own appendages, etc. Will recognize people, like some better than others. Smiles, laughs, babbles. Somewhere in here rolling over commences, and possibly crawling. Starts teething.
6 -12 months: Lots of babbling, but no actual talking. Crawls, pulls self up to standing while holding onto things, may start wobbly independent walking. Some kids are climbers (may heaven help their parents). Eating some solid food (as in, mashed up stuff), but still nursing / drinking formula too. This is the beginning of the exploratory, everything-goes-in-the-mouth stage. Still teething.
1 year old: Has teeth, eats solid food. Many parents wean at this age, but it’s not unusual to continue breastfeeding. Talks, but probably not very clearly – pronunciation will be interesting, and vocabulary very limited. May repeat a new word incessantly. Points at things they want. Physical coordination and verbal skills increase as child gets older. Maybe develop utterly random phobias, usually of things that are new or unpredictable. Interested in other children, may mimic older children. Still sticks everything in their mouth.
2 years old: Speaks well enough to be understood by those who know them, but not necessarily strangers. Uses simple phrases. May mash words together to express a concept for which they don’t yet know the word, or make a word up. Is learning labels for things, though they may not be accurate (i.e. all old men are grandpa, all round objects are a ball, etc.) Knows colors, parts of the body, types of animals, etc. Walks, runs, dances, etc – basically the full range of physical stuff, just all of it is kinda awkward. Can roll a ball or throw it in a clumsy way. May have a favorite toy, security blanket, etc. May play pretend games or make up stories, but they’re likely to be fair inscrutable to adults. Wants to do things independently, but is likely to be easily frustrated. Has tantrums. Plays with other children, but not terribly good at sharing or being nice. Asks questions; the ‘why?’ stage has begun. Toilet training begins around this age; girls tend to get the hang of it quicker than boys.
3 years old – pretty much the same as 2, only a bit better at all of it. Asks a LOT of questions. Has friends. Plays pretend. Understands rules (though is unlikely to obey them very well). Can count, though not very far. Speaks well enough to be understood by strangers; you know that so-cute-you-could-die kid-speak people love to write? This is the appropriate age for it (up through about age 5).
4 to 5 – cutesy kid-speak is age appropriate. May still have tantrums, still not the best at sharing, but should be starting to get socially functional. Can throw or kick a ball, jump, stand on one foot, all that. Can count, recite alphabet. Some kids start learning to read and write arond this age, though it wouldn’t yet be abnormal for them not to be able to. Lots of pretend play. Emotionally intense; everything is dire. Learning to be self-maintaining, i.e. may bathe independently but needs an adult to wash their hair.
6 – 10 – speaks like an emotionally immature adult; the things they have to say are still kid-like, but they should be easing out of kid-speak. Reads, writes, can do math – these skills increase with age. Understands and (usually) obeys rules, has a concept of fairness, kindness vs. cruelty, etc. Forms tight friendships, keeps secrets, wants to fit in and be liked; having a best friend or a group of friends is the most important thing in their world. Wants to be good at things; has definite interests and academic strengths and weaknesses. May bully or be bullied; kids this age can be mean. As in horrifyingly so. Has crushes (though probably still finds it acutely embarrassing). Understands death. Kids this age will curse, though hilariously badly. Still wants parental affection, but probably not in public.
11 – 12 – mini-teen, which is to say emotionally vulnerable, short-sighted mini-adult. Naive still, but not terribly so – has a basic understanding of human nature, events around them, etc. Begins to form political / ideological / religious opinions. May begin reciprocal romantic attachments. Strongly focused on collective identity, what ‘niche’ or ‘crowd’ they identify with. Some girls start puberty. This is also the age of things going badly wrong; kids know which other kids are the sociopaths at this stage. While everybody else is learning how to not be a mean little shit to everybody unlike themselves (or a bitter perpetual victim), those few who aren’t developing in a good direction become downright terrifying.
13 – 15 – somewhere in here, kids will start either facing major adult-scale decisions and problems themselves, or seeing peers doing so. Shit gets real. This is why teenagers think they know everything; the rose-colored glasses of childhood fall off, and they are suddenly So Very Jaded and cannot imagine there being more to the world than what they can suddenly perceive now, because it is overwhelming. Likely to be angry at the world, likely to gravitate toward ideological extremes. Takes risks. Forms romantic attachments; may experiment sexually, may not, maturity levels here very A LOT.
16 – 21 – moody adult with far more curiosity than common sense. Does thing in grand and dramatic fashion. Experiments with different identities. Wants total independence. Many develop greater social maturity around this time; stop seeing others in terms of cliques, develop greater empathy and ability to see things from multiple perspectives. Forms romantic attachments that may be serious or even life-long.
This is pretty accurate IME, and if you want more detail for the first few years, try Touchpoints.
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