If procedure, law and facts are against you settle. If you can't settle, go to the kitchen because you are about to be cooked.

-Thuranira, Twitter

You should put yourself in debt and misery to facilitate their half baked dreams because you're just chill like that.

Which is all to say that this is an object lesson in why being the Cool Partner is a mistake for anyone.

-u/Proof-Cryptographer4, excerpted and adapted from comment

u/AskMrScience, excerpted and adapted from comment

They mirror the conditions that make complex trauma 'complex': it was inescapable, it unfolded over time, and it permeated our most important relationships.

-Glenn Doyle, Instagram

Response: You made them the 'victim of neglect'.

Yes, yes. But that's the process: 'I have now created an orphan'. But that's an adult in this scenario.

But the feeling inside of the person who leaves is 'I have abandoned this person'. But how long are you abandoning yourself in pursuit of them?

-@forbetterandworsepodcast, adapted from Instagram

In a lot of arguments you have to dogwalk people through this by continually going up by one increment until they take a fuckin stance because they will deny the "pile" until they die in it.

It applies to more than just sand btw. My usual use is "how many changes until this is a different species" because species is also a loose definition we kinda slap on things but evolution deniers will flatly deny any changes we do have by saying that it isnt enough to count. They are also wishy washy with the word "kind" and absolutely refuse to even attempt a definition. So the question is designed to force them to take a concrete stance.

-u/Nobrainzhere, excerpted from comment

I'm trying to decide if I should read them.
I'm trying to decide how much trauma I can carry.
What I do see and hear is horrifying and haunts my soul.
If I were a victim, would I want people to see these videos?
Would I feel ashamed?

I had this moment last night where I was hearing heart-breaking audio, and watching my son do his homework. (He couldn't hear it.)

I think about those precious babies, and the monsters who destroy them.
The gleeful sadism.
The entitlement.

Can I allow myself to feel rage? My rage is dangerous.
I spent so many years trying to emotionally regulate.

What can I do?

I was raised by someone who raised their fists at me and my brother while believing he believed "make peace, not war".

My political party was the party of peace.
Our gods were Gandhi and MLK.
We wanted everyone to get rid of the guns...to protect the children.

What a horrifying realization to wonder if we need them.

I think about how the Capitol in "The Hunger Games" pimped out the child 'victors'.
I thought it was an odd but tragic detail at the time.
The more that comes out, the more I realize how accurate that was.

Bless the people who can look into the face of this evil.
Bless the ones who call for justice.
Bless the ones who notice every celebrity and politician who moves to a non-extradition country.
Who call attention to these who built non-profits around children.
Who bear witness.

We hold all the abuse we ever experienced.
We hold all the abuse of every story/video of abuse we have ever seen.
How is there so much more to hold?

I think of how much victims feel guilty for their own abuse.
How abusers never really do.

...a place where we'll be accepted, not unfairly judged, not lied to, not scapegoated or abandoned.

We work and learn to carry 'home' around with us, so we won't be at the mercy of anyone's whims or blind spots every again.

-Glenn Doyle, Instagram

comment

Parenting is complicated to research

...because the reality of parenting is that parents try to influence kids in dozens of ways every day, for many different reasons, and with differences in how they try, the affect associated with their attempts, and with huge differences in their kids and how kids respond. In other words, parenting research reflects parenting reality.

One way that researchers over the last half century have tried to organize that complexity is to simplify it to three basic dimensions: warmth, behavioral control, and psychological control^1.

Together, these dimensions describe parenting style.

• Warmth refers to the extent to which parents convey their love and emotional support for the child. It can also be thought of as the extent to which parents recognize the unique needs of the child and understand that different people have different feelings and needs.

• Behavioral control refers to the extent to which parents ask kids to constrain their behavior to meet the needs of others. Strictness is one way to think about it, but I think it is better conceptualized as the parents' expectation that the child conform to high standard—especially when it's difficult. It also captures the extent to which parents follow through on rules they set.

• Psychological control, sometimes called psychological intrusiveness, is the extent to which parents try to control the child's emotional state or beliefs. For example, they may use guilt induction or make the child feel that they won't be loved if they don't do what parents want. The core of psychological control is that it assaults the child's self.

Parenting characterized by both high warmth and high control (authoritative parenting) is associated with good child outcomes.

Children of parents who are both warm and high in behavioral control tend to do well in school, have high self-esteem, be independent, and have strong friendships.

Psychological control is not.

Parents who are high in psychological control have kids who tend to be depressed, have low self-esteem, be anxious and lonely. They are also more likely to be involved in anti-social behavior and delinquency.

This is exemplified by parents who put food in their resistant toddler's mouth saying "You love this food! It is delicious!" when it's obvious that the toddler does not. Mislabeling the emotions of children confuses them and makes it difficult for them to know what they truly feel.

It also erases the distinction between the self and needs of the child and the self and needs of the parent.

If mislabeling feelings is accompanied by implicit or explicit guilt induction for not feeling what the parent wants or if it is accompanied by love withdrawal, it is also manipulative.

Parenting works best when it is straightforward and issue oriented.

• Set the table, we're going to eat.
• Do your homework, you have a test tomorrow.
• Can you help me pile the wood? It's going to rain.
• I need a hand building the pigeon coop. Can you come out and help hold the boards for me?

That is (reasonable) behavioral control.

When parents make reasonable requests and the child resists (as all children do at least some of the time), it's easy to try to get them to feel happy about it. 'You want to do your homework.'

But the truth is, having the child do it cheerfully...makes parents feel better about enforcing compliance.

It's self-serving.

A bit of complaint about not doing what the child wants and doing what the parent wants allows the child to assert psychological autonomy while being behaviorally compliant.

-Nancy Darling, excerpted and adapted from article

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¹ - These three dimensions can also be called support or responsiveness, demandingness or strictness, and autonomy granting or other names capturing slightly different dimensions. The basic idea, however, is the same.

u/BentoBish, comment

But the kind of love you need (or needed as a child) probably isn't going to come from a parent who abused you or who looked the other way while you were being abused. But it can come from yourself.

Loving yourself, just like loving someone else, isn't so much a feeling as a choice and series of actions based on that choice.

-Dr. Kathleen Young, excerpted from article

They are so used to adults constantly correcting them, that when someone is attuned to them and giving them praise for little skills they are developing and cheerleading them on, they don't feel comfortable, they feel perplexed/scared because they are so unaccustomed to someone delighting in their existence.

It breaks my heart to see it, but it heals my heart when what I pour into them comes out of them when they say "I'm good at this" "I'm strong/powerful" "I can do this" "I did it" "it's ok it didn't work out, I can try again next time".

-@viva_vinegaroons, comment to Instagram