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.
(Source: lastlifeinuniverse)
ilikemygrungelikeilikemysteak:
The easiest way to get a group of Americans to violently turn on each other and fight to the death is to ask them all what carbonated soft drinks are called
The answer, of course, is fucking soda
do you literally want a fight right now
And to think I called you /friend/.
r u effin kiddin me
get out of here
its soda because its syrup mixed with SODA WATER
Why would you even call it pop? Because the bubbles pop? We don’t call lions roars or burgers tsssss.
I tend to want to fight my friends up north who call it Pop, because I’m like….wtfuck is that? They hear the word Soda and they cringe.
It’s because soda sounds weird, just like some places say “sneakers” while up here we say “gym shoes”
In art class my friend rolled himself in bubble wrap and stayed like that the whole day. When he sat down in our math class the teacher told him to take it off and he didn’t want to so he said “long live the king” and rolled out the door and down the hallway. And all you could hear was the faint popping of the bubblewrap as he rolled away. My teacher never went after him.
its always the math teacher who tells you you cant
Yes good.
(Source: oathkeeping)
ilikemygrungelikeilikemysteak:
The easiest way to get a group of Americans to violently turn on each other and fight to the death is to ask them all what carbonated soft drinks are called
The answer, of course, is fucking soda
do you literally want a fight right now
And to think I called you /friend/.
r u effin kiddin me
get out of here
its soda because its syrup mixed with SODA WATER
Why would you even call it pop? Because the bubbles pop? We don’t call lions roars or burgers tsssss.
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the stone
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the chamber
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the dementors
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the triwizard tournament
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the returning
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the creepy childhood
- Harry Potter and the voldemort can u not with the horcruxes and just die already jfc
