(no subject)

thinking about uhhh Society lately made me remember this morbidly funny story:

i was back in middle school history class, one of those vaguely moderate evangelical slash southern baptist college preparatory schools. (i say moderate since in all honesty they did an okay job allowing dissenting thoughts; it wasn't like critical thinking was completely squashed out although it wasn't entirely encouraged.) and i think the history class topic of the day was on ye classic ww2/nazi/etc topics where the teacher was subtly trying to get the class to see how easily it was to fall into the 'get rid of the degenerates' arguments by kind of baiting them with the "reasonable" lines of arguments (and then at the end pointing it out why that was dangerous in a complexity appropriate for middle schoolers).

(another piece of necessary context is i'm pretty glaringly physically disabled, and even back then nazis were kinda a Special Interest for proto-kink and 'yeah i need to know this shizz' reasons, so i could see where the teacher was going a mile ahead of most of the students.)

the teacher had opened the floor to a wider debate and one of the kiddos was starting to get too close to verbally agreeing blindly with said 'getting rid of le degenerates/etc' line of thinking. (it was kinda awkwardly sandwiched with the cultural hubhub of the abortion debate back in the 00's because again this is a southern baptist school but personally i would argue it's a useful lesson to learn in a historical context even if some of the wires were crossed.) 

and the details are sketchy but i think the kiddo was on the specific track of 'sure aborting/killing certian disabled folks makes sense if x y z-' even if obviously he wasn't explicitly saying that word for word.

the teacher and i exchanged A Look as the kid kept going on ('lol you know where i'm going with this. dunk the kiddo')

and i kind of. saucily just raised my hand without saying a word.

like heyyy, you do know you're talking about me with that line of argument. :D

i have never heard a kid go dead silent that fast lol.

(that said, i really didn't get any malicious vibes from the dude (i was well liked or at least neutral with very literally everyone) - total dumbass 'oh shit i didn't think about how that would actually. include a real person i know. oh fuck.' teenage ignorance of the kind we've all had before. but the kiddo was pretty quiet for the rest of the class.

.... anyway my thought these days is i hope i didn't scar the kid too much with mortified embarrassment lol. not the worst lesson to learn (eg 'think real hard about the consequences of policy decisions') but i think these days i'd make sure he knew i knew it wasn't personal.

(no subject)

"Many parents, in fact, report that the worst-case scenario is not when your whole family is ill but when the adults are miserable and the under-six cohort feels just fine.

Old hands at this situation have plenty of advice for first-timers, all of which boils down to this: lower your standards as far as possible without inviting a visit from Child Protective Services. Lock the doors, unplug the appliances, and leave the children to their own devices—a phrase that didn’t used to have technological overtones, but if there were ever a time to waive your no-screens policy, along with all your other policies, this is it. Your six-year-old wants to watch “Night of the Living Dead”? Go for it. Your four-year-old wants to eat ice cream on a hotdog bun? Sure thing. Together they want to finger-paint the toddler? Have fun. As for you: keep an ear out for genuine screams and excessive silence. Change dirty diapers and intervene in activities that would result in calling 911. Otherwise, divide and conquer with any available grownup and rest as much as you can."

- welcome to the preschool plague years

hilarious, real, and endearing article. i currently work at a place with a disproportionate number of parents to young kids/focus on toddlers, and ohmigod this is so true.