Gaashk
3d ago
I hope that having a label helps things to improve, and that things do continue to improve. That's interesting about the supplements helping.
I have three children, and my older daughter (Z, 6) is spectrum-y. It doesn't currently seem to matter all that much -- she's extremely verbal and likes stereotypical girl things, so doesn't stand out all that much. There was a highly verbal child in the intensive autism program I sometimes teach, and I though "wow, he sounds exactly like Z!" It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why. It's also hard to describe why without myself sounding like a bad mother, and using term like "blathering." I thought that maybe kids are just like that, but my other kids are not like that.
I teach art professionally, so I thought that maybe I would teach her art. Mostly she wants me to give her a piece of paper and a pen, and then cuts it up into hundreds of tiny shapes, and draws things for her dolls on them, and leaves piles of tiny bits of paper all over the place, over and over again. Sometimes I try to teach her something specific, and she just kind of turns away and goes to work on the snipping and drawing, in a way that feels more like how I experience teaching the autism groups. If I give her a little handmade blank booklet, she'll replicate a Disney storybook, then another, then another, until I refuse to give any more paper. Sometimes she does things at school like hiding under a table rather than putting on her coat, or refusing to leave with us because the teacher is otherwise occupied and unable to dismiss her officially.
When Z was a baby, she had a terrible time with bottles, and my husband had to drive her to my job on my lunch break to breastfeed her in the car. She screamed and screamed, and had a terrible time learning to sleep. I wondered how the human race had managed to endure up to the present day. If she woke up, she would be up for two hours, and shriek at top volume if put back to bed.
Z likes to run in circles around the center of the house for over half an hour at a time, up to hours sometimes, especially when she was younger.
My other children are not like this. My second child is getting near four and can't talk properly, but is very socially warm.
I dunno, children are confusing.
Yes, this is a common conversational failure mode. I have repeatedly requested that some work meetings that inevitably end up that way feature a talking stick. The people who do most of the talking did not see a problem and declined. They may have thought I was joking, but I was not joking. I used to work somewhere that actually used a talking stick, and liked it a lot.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure there are characters like that in Dickens at least, probably Austen, so if it's cultural it's been infecting England for hundreds of years. Was there anyone like that in Tolstoy? It seems like there would be.
The cultural technology that combats it not extending social invitations to the bores, but all social invitations have depleted, so it's a much weaker signal than it used to be.
Gaashk
5d ago
This is what I’ve seen from the Zoomers lately. K-pop Demon Hunters captures the desired affect perfectly.
Millennial women are sometimes still wearing skinny jeans but in a dated way, sometimes carpenter pants, but do seem to be struggling with developing a mature style. I’ve been wearing sleeveless grey or navy dresses over button up blouses this fall, and it’s fine, but not very fun.
Gaashk
8d ago
I have mixed feelings about this.
As you alluded, it isn't clear how many jobs are civilizationaly load bearing to begin with. Mine certainly isn't, unless you count having and raising children, and, no, that isn't counted at this point, in these discussions. Depending on what they are, it's not clear how many people can or should do them. Mr and Mrs Tinkerbell collectors might not be able to do them even if they were in good health (again, depending on what they are). 200 years ago almost everyone would be farming and making textiles, and since farming and textiles have become relatively niche, it's unclear how many of the "jobs" that have replaced them amount to watching one another's children and walking one another's dogs. We're apparently close to automating even emails and spreadsheets.
If I had heard about this 100 years ago, I would have supposed people would work a lot less, or we would have something like a UBI, but that's not what we have. Maybe we have bullshit jobs and gaming the system instead? Which isn't great, plenty of people are upset about the current state of affairs. I don't particularly want my kids to spend 40 hours a week, for 40 years doing fake work, that seems in some ways worse than farming and textiles, but it seems to be the direction we as a civilization are heading in.
Gaashk
17d ago
This is part of why I strongly prefer handcrafts to puzzles. I've been enjoying learning to make wire wrapped tumbled stones. My husband is tumbling them, and I am wrapping them.
Z also has trouble figuring out who we're talking to, even when we're all in the room together, and we're clearly looking at and turned towards one daughter or the other. Her little sister can keep track easily enough.
More options
Context Copy link