So now I have to deliver a quiet lecture on the Standard Model every night. He loves lists of things, like all the streets home from daycare, or the train stations between here and Central, so he loves hearing the list of leptons and quarks and bosons.
Alas I ran out of room for antimatter, colour charge and confinement, but hey, maybe there can be a second poster later.
It’s funny though — on the surface of it, it seems like it must be far too advanced for a 3yo. But when you think about it, quarks and leptons are no more or less real to him than, say, dinosaurs or planets, and he loves those too. And he recognises the letters on the particles.
I am absolutely overwhelmed by the kind and sweet things people are saying about this, thanks everyone ❤️
Addendum: he has really grasped onto the “everything is made of atoms” part of this, so tonight he listed just about every object he could think of and asked if it was made of atoms.
“And my bed?” Yes, and your bed. “And that wall?” Yep. “And the armchair?” Yes, the armchair too. … … “And… the book case?” Y—
“And my home?” Yep, the whole apartment block. “And your home? Oh wait, your home is my home.” Haha, it is. … … “But is it made of atoms?” Yep. “And… [best friend]’s home?” Yes, it is. And [other friend]’s home, and [third friend]’s home.
“Is [yet another friend]’s home?”
Update from the other night:
“Is my… is… [extremely long pause] is my atoms poster made up of atoms?” —Yes! Yes it is.
I have never heard such a contemplative silence. I think the next poster will have to be on the philosophy of referential language.
Update from this morning: after listing everything in sight (mummy? daddy? fridge? milk? cereal? table? etc.) he asks “is [baby sister] made up of atoms?”
yep!
*runs over to her on the floor* *puts face up real close to hers* “HI! YOU’RE MADE UP OF LOTS OF ATOMS! DID YOU KNOW?”
The type of the mother I’m trying to be. Not just encourage bodily autonomy, but reward displays of it, even when it might make someone else in the room uncomfortable.
I’ve made so many people uncomfortable in supporting my daughter’s personal space. People will try to hug her, she’ll sometimes say “No, thank you” and the adult will look at me to make her do it, but I just say “It’s ok honey, you don’t have to hug anyone you don’t want to.” It makes people irrationally huffy, making me feel even more justified in supporting my daughter’s choices. Creeps.
I legit had to mom-voice some random woman with a “she said no!” when she tried to force a hug on Madison. (who was not very good at verbalizing to people she didn’t know/trust at the time)
She replied, “I just want a hug, it won’t hurt her.”
Me: She. Said. No.
There aren’t many things more important than letting my daughter know that I have her back when it comes to something like this.
I work with five year olds and I had a very long talk with them about permission and that your body belongs to yourself and no one else. “Even if you want to hug your friend, you need to stop and ask if it’s okay and if they don’t want you to touch them, you should respect that choice and not do it.” they were like “cool” and then every time after that they had no problem asking their friends “can I give you a hug?” Or “can I hold your hand?” Very politely. If their friend said no, they shrugged and went on with their life. They even started asking me if they could hug me or if it was okay to hold my hand when they were sad. And I always ask when they need comfort “do you need or want a hug?” If they say no, I ask “okay, let me know what we can do as a class to help you feel better. Quiet time? Do you want a stuffed animal? Sit on the couch? Do you need some time alone?” They verbalize what they need and they become aware of their own autonomy and their ability and power to say “no.” Just because someone is an adult does NOT give them the right to hug a child who has said “no” or “no thanks.” Teach then that they own their own body, and no one else is in charge of it. Teach them the power of NO.
^^^^^this is so important
Whenever a kid refused to high 5 me for whatever reason, I make a point to say “thank you for stating your boundaries”.
My husbands family get so offended when my stepdaughter doesn’t want a hug. I just tell them “no, she said she doesn’t want one”. They often try to force her to hug them or just grab her. It starts young, and they learn their body isnt their own.
When I first met my stepdaughter, if I asked for a hug, she wouldn’t say no, but she’d go into a protective stance and just wait. She was waiting for me to violate her boundaries. I told her “you don’t have to give me a hug if you don’t want one. You’re allowed to say no”. It took a while, but now she’s happy saying no.
Children have a right to boundaries as much as an adult does. Don’t violate a child’s boundaries.
It means a lot to me, for reasons I won’t go into, that you’re teaching your stepdaughter that. We need to teach more kids about this, and for that matter, need to teach adults to respect kids’ boundaries.
Very important to tech both, children AND adults!
I wish my parents did this. My mum will ask if I want a hug and I’ll say no and then she’ll hug me anyway. Or I’ll be at a family gathering and I’m expected to hug everyone but I don’t want to. If I say anything about it, I get in trouble and I still have to hug everyone.
ah yes, the ‘you said no but I’m your family and you should get over it’
If you ground your children for not getting “good grades” even if they are trying I sincerely hope you get a pebble in your shoe that you can never get out.
i’m just gonna take this post for a moment so i can rant but like
i Hate how entitled adults can feel over a child’s hair!
it started when i was young myself, i wanted a mohawk, but my dad didn’t approve of that look on a “girl”, and insisted i’d regret such a bold cut. at 16 i was finally given full autonomy over my own head.
but then i have a son and everyone around us is trying to keep his hair short. when we finally moved out just me my partner and him, i told him he doesn’t need to get any haircuts he doesn’t want.
so he starts growing it out, it’s still short but coming on mid-length. his teacher makes a point to tell me it’s getting long as if i don’t have eyes. i hear her walking out with him one day talking to him about haircuts, as if to coax him into one. eventually i get child services called on me for ‘forcing a transgender lifestyle’ over what i can only assume is from a combination of me drawing cute ponies on his valentine box and letting him go to school in a ponytail.
he kept it short for awhile after but told me he wanted to grow it out again, so i let him of course. he comes home one day after getting a haircut at his grandpa’s and tells me he didn’t Want the haircut.
i ask why he got it then and learned he was bribed with a promise of a surprise IF he cut his hair.
tl;dr people need to back the hell up off of children and let them have owership of what’s on THEIR body! /rant
Same thing about getting a child to curl or straighten their hair. Or do anything with it. Just let kids have control over their bodies.
This happened to me when I was little too!! Growing up I had naturally tight Shirley Temple curls. The only problem was that you can’t get a hair brush through it if your life depended on it until it grew out over a few years.
but This One Lady from church decided that leaving my hair messy and curly was child abuse and threatened to call social services on my family every damn time she saw me until one day she was the designated kid watcher and ho boy my momma tells me i came out with tears in my eyes and greasy slicked down hair and that’s where she ends the story because i think my mother beat her ass but yeah.
Leave kids hair alone.
I’m going to be honest, parents who are super-controlling of their children’s hair creep me the fuck out and I’m not entirely certain why except that I get a vague feeling they kind of relegate them to, “annoying talking doll” status.
I loved my daughter’s long blond hair. It was thick and wavy and beautiful but when she told me she wanted it cut short ‘like a boy’(she was four) I took her to the salon and let her whack it off.
The stylist was skeptical, ‘are you sure?” and the thing is, she said this to me, not my daughter. So I asked my girl ‘are you sure you want it cut short?’ She was. The hair went. The stylist acted nervous most of the way through like she was waiting for one of us to burst into tears, but it looked cute! And my daughter loved it! (And it’s been short ever since.)
Autonomy over your hair is bodily autonomy and we as a culture need to start holding bodily autonomy as sacred
there is a reason that so many of us who’ve experienced trauma will reclaim control over our bodies and our selves by cutting and dying our hair. it’s part of us. it’s part of our expression. that’s vitally important to people, especially kids, who are still early in the process of learning how they fit into the world around them.
Hot take, but if you see your baby struggle through five hours of homework and then you get pissy because they drag their feet about doing chores? You need to reevaluate.
Like I’m not saying kids shouldn’t be taught responsibility and shown how to keep their house clean. I’m just saying maybe children get tired and frustrated too.
Like. Your teenager doesn’t have an “attitude”. She’s just had 7 hours of school and then came home to do 5 more hours. Then, her parents implied she was lazy because she hadn’t gotten around to doing the laundry. I’d snap at you too.
the longer I’m parenting-aged the more I realize how disciplinary oriented parenting styles are significantly more deranged than initially assumed
me as a teen watching a parent storm across a room to scream at a child for accidentally spilling paint: hm. This is not good.
me as an adult watching another adult storm across a room to scream at a vulnerable and still developing child for accidentally spilling paint: This is my villain origin story
I hate family vloggers so much imagine having this little respect for your adolescent kid’s privacy and personal life
Do You Know What Children Are
They don’t have jobs, nor do they pay for rent, utilities, or food. That’s the textbook definition of a freeloader.
no it’s the textbook definition of “children”
“why isn’t this 3 year old paying rent? fucking freeloader i dont know why i keep you around”
This has the same energy as “ambulances aren’t your taxi to the hospital”
Imagine making the choice to bring a child into this world and then declaring that child to be a leech on your resources. Like, did you not expect that you’d have to pay for your kid’s food and other aspects of their upkeep? Did you somehow miss all the memos about what parenthood entails? Or were you actively ignoring them in favor of a plan to birth not a family member, but an employee?
THERE ARE LAWS AGAINST CHILD LABOR, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT THEM TO ACQUIRE A JOB??
I’m pretty sure the dictionary didn’t specify it as “a legal adult who-” does those things because they thought anyone reading the definition would be smart enough to intuit that it doesn’t apply to those who are under the age of majority, and thus aren’t expected to be providing those things in the first place.
Or it’s possible these potatoes really *don’t* know What Children Are.
I think a lot of these people – a depressing number of parents in general, really – liked their kids when they were cute little babies and toddlers who didn’t have their own opinions or demand privacy or whose boundaries and personal autonomy could be more easily over-ridden because you can pick them up and tote them around.
When you have a baby, you’re very much the center of that baby’s world. They’re completely dependent on you.
But once the kids get older and start being more opinionated and having more complicated feelings, and don’t just idolize their parents, and maybe start to realize their parents are flawed human beings just like every other human who’s ever existed, and you can’t just stuff them in a foofy dress or whatever to make them Be Cute on command, there’s a certain kind of parent who feels very offended and threatened by that.
It’s like when your kitten or puppy grows up to be an adult cat or dog, and they’re not “cute” anymore.
And that’s when a lot of shit about “earning your keep” starts, and a lot of the guilt-tripping, too, I think, when kids don’t just fall down at these parents’ feet in gratitude and obeisance.
So basically what you’re saying is they got Pet Syndrome with children – puppies are cute, but grown dogs are work so return them to the shelter I guess
Pretty much? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
My biological mother did pretty much that about the time she lost her marbles when I was about 9. And she’s certainly not the only one I’ve known whose kids hit more or less that development stage and went “Oh, wait, I don’t want to be a parent anymore, this is hard and I don’t like it”
Don’t have kids if you’re traumatized and it’s going to get in the way of raising a kid safely and healthily and not in a way that’s also gonna traumatize them in a different way. And don’t have kids if you think it’s going to “heal yourself through the purest form of love” children and their childhoods aren’t your guinea pigs to experiment with for your own healing
Wait. Um. Excuse you? 🤨
I think op was pretty clear? Don’t have kids if you’re not in a place mentally where u can give them a healthy childhood. Traumatizing ur kids won’t fix your own trauma, all it’ll do is create more traumatized people. Children are people and u can’t just use them as some sort of fun project to get over your own issues
ifesbob 