Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
Child abuse. I thought it was normal to threaten children with violence for noncompliance. I thought it was normal to be afraid to misbehave or be suboptimal in school at the threat of violence.
When I was much younger: that normal people could see much further than me.
One of my oldest memories is going into a McDonald’s for the first time with glasses; I stopped and read the entire menu, because I couldn’t believe normal people could read it as soon as you walked in. I always had to get up to the counter to make it out.
I got a lot better in school after that!
Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Dude tells you he’s gay, immediately turns you trans. The danger is real, people! 😭
if my grandma were to be believed my dad’s babysitter when he was 4 years old infected him with homosexuality then he passed it onto his children because one (me) is trans and the other is bisexual
She’s not very harmful about it but is just really damn confused lol
So if I get this right, your dad turned homosexual from his babysitter… Then proceeded to have two, presumably biologic, kids?
presumably biologic kids
Yeah, my dad fell for the “get a woman to protect you from same sex attraction” propaganda. Over the years he changed his mind and learned that it’s not something to be ashamed of, but he was in a relationship with kids now.
when I came out and my mom was very verbally abusive he kinda had the realization that the relationship wasn’t benefiting the children either. Also my mom was very very controlling over who he could talk to/make friends with.
He is currently in the process of a divorce after 22 years and is coming to terms with how he let fear control his life for that long.
It’s kinda sad.
Nah the dad was too strong to be brainwashed by the babysitter’s sexual deviance. But those poor baby sperm overhead everything and became infected with the gay.
These must be the so called trans reading bed time stories turning kids gay i keep hearing so much about. /s
Small towns are terrible for this. And racism
There’s a reason cities are more liberal. Turns out being surrounded by different cultures, races, sexualities, and beliefs shows you that maybe they’re not so different. In a town of 15k middle American white folks, it’s hard to see another culture equally, let alone at all.
Same thing with college. There’s no such thing as a liberal or democratic college. It’s just that people are simply surrounded by other people. You learn all of those weird rules and things you were taught don’t actually hold up, and that everyone is kind of the same
Grew up semi-rural south and same thing but my parents took me to see The Birdhouse for some reason (I was 14) and I was like “OH!”
Not gay myself, but thankfully I did not grow up to be the bigoted person my parents wanted me to be.
it was semi-common in the early 2000s in cities, but not anymore after 2010.
That not everyone secretly wanted to be a woman.
Well, not the women, obviously, because they’re already women.
Lucky bastards.
Oof yup that was a doozy
I’m still not entirely convinced tbh. I mean women are cute and just great and men are…
Men can be great too, and being a man has lots of perks (beyond even those imposed by patriarchy). Look for allies and you will find them in all gender flavours.
oh for sure. Wasn’t being serious, dysphoria is there and makes me basically think of existing as a man as hell and finding out that’s not everyone was interesting to say the least.
Oh plenty of things:
having respect for others
being honest
helping the needy
fair pay for fair work
honestly considering others’ perspectives
loyalty
Basically every virtue I was ever told was worthy to embody has been used against me as a weapon or a tool
And of the hundreds of people I know IRL less than 10% give any of these internal value or even attempted to put into practice
And here I’ve been a sucker all my life doing the proper social contract thing because I don’t like the way the world is shaping up and getting CONSTANTLY bent over for it
Nobody “dresscoded” me at home. As soon as I was old enough to pick my own clothing, I could. What skirts or jeans or dresses I wore was my choice completely. My school also didn’t care much.
Blew my mind when I realized how many other girls had to sneak out with their clothes because the parents had a rule against tight jeans or whatever.
I still think my parents were right with this one. The kids with the strictest rules were always those with the craziest outfits. Can’t blame them, I’d have done the same.
When I was a teen, I believed in that too. The most strict parents had the most wild kids.
As an adult, it’s now verified.
My parents were the chill, openly weed-smoking guys that wouldn’t rat you out to your parents if you needed help (like a place to stay while coming down or whatever)
This policy was explicitly because my dad worked yard supervision at the local elementary schools and 100% knew that those with the strictest parents were the ones who needed it the most as they had nowhere safe to go. The abused kids were second, many of them were neglect babies in our area so they got fucked up and went home to parents who didn’t care
I went to a charter school for my freshman year that was mostly full of people who were kicked out of the school they kick you out of if you’re a problem child. Almost all of them were children of parents who worked long-ass days and came home to be strict as fuck
Why were you at the charter school with all the naughty kids if your parents were super chill allies?
New school, so it was their (bad kids) only option, parents were trying something out because they got sold on it
Ended up being a bad idea overall for many reasons, that was a big one
I, as a boy, ran through my cousin’s to change my clothes on my way to the bus.
Don’t do this to your kids if you think that was wrong, lol. I know people who grew up like this, complained to me and then started to behave the exact same way with their kids later on.
Yeah I don’t. My kids love these stories of me dodging my dad’s insecurities, they wear whatever they want. And they mostly wear t-shirts and jeans.
My mom used to pick out clothes for me as a little kid before school, and I’d come downstairs in completely different outfits.
The class president of my senior class would bring his “punk” clothing in a backpack and change in the school bathroom every morning. Blew my mind. My parents couldn’t give a shit what I wore.
My family was super meat-centric for all holidays except Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Any meal where it’s physically possible to barbecue, we would. And a family barbecue meant hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, pork steaks, and beef steaks – one of each per person, plus a couple of extras. Sides were German-style slaw and potato salad. Buns were not included, but my grandma would always put a stack of white bread on the table (she was the only person who ever ate it).
When I started dating my husband and took him to a family holiday, he was shocked by the fact that my whole family was eating hamburgers and hot dogs with flatware instead of on buns. And he was actually sad at the lack of side dishes.
When I went to one of his family barbecues, I was sad that there was just one hamburger per person (already on a soggy bun) and a ton of weird casseroles.
eating hamburgers and hot dogs with flatware instead of on buns.
That sounds so German. I know the bun-less burgers as “frickadellen”, my own parents (both German immigrants who met each other over here) used to make them fairly frequently.
Interesting, in NL frikadellen are more like ground-up-meat long sausages.
and in Russia the word stands for meatballs
TIL
There is no c in Frikadelle.
That does sound a bit one sided. If you ever (want) to learn how to cook, you’d be amazed what you can do with vegetables, other than boiling them. Those can be truly inspirational and unique. Will be tough to sell to your family though haha.
I mean. Coleslaw or other slaw, potato or pasta salad, pickles? Mashed potatoes? Those are all good American BBQ sides.
Getting locked in the basement without water, or thrown out into the streets for half a day, when you misbehaved as a child.
If I may ask, where are you from?
Germany
I mean, yeah? Is that really so bad. I guess it depends what the intent was. The town I grew up in was pretty tame, and the room I’d get locked in without food or water if I’d misbehaved had books
Today you are learning it’s not normal to lock children away with no food or water.
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I was locked outside of the house for long periods of time and had to drink from the garden hose / garden faucet, and pee in the bushes. We also had like 10+ apple trees. It wasn’t that bad. A bit boring sometimes.
But that’s because it was outside and I could get my needs covered and meet friends.
Locked inside without these needs covered for extended periods is a lot worse in my opinion. Even cats and dogs have those needs covered.
It’s also about the lack of freedom when locked inside.
I would not treat my own children like I was treated, and especially not like you were.
Yeah, I just remember it being boring too. I’m also not really a person who can’t go a few hours without water, so I never felt I was being neglected.
I dont think I’d lock my kid indoors, but I do admit that when it happened to me after I’d been fighting my siblings or something, it was just treated as a time where I would chill out and read a book to wind down. Once dinner was ready, I’d get called for dinner, and everything seemed normal.
So I’d probably try to create a cool down zone with my kids if I ever have them, maybe a comfy chair they’re not allowed to leave for a few hours?
Children (humans) should always have access to clean water. That is not normal in the slightest. A time out shouldn’t include torture.
I agree that “people should have access to clean water”. Let’s not confuse sending a child to their room to wind down when they’re throwing a fit with torture.
No one takes harm from lack of water in a mild climate over the course of a couple hours. The reason it’s bad to lock a kid in the basement (or any other room) is that you’re taking away their freedom (which may be, to some point, justified and correct) and potentially making it harder for them to trust you. However, kids also need to learn that there are limits to how you can behave, and consequences for breaking those limits. Where the limit between “reasonable consequences for teaching children” and “trust-breaking punishment” lies is a fair discussion to have. No need to pull “locking a kid in their room is torture” into it.
I don’t think it counts as locking them away without food or water if they don’t become thirsty or hungry while grounded. Grounding my son for an hour, technically he has no water or food, but if he asked for it I’d give it to him.
Exactly “locking away without food or water” makes it sound like the time perspective we’re talking about is long enough that access to food and water are necessary within that time span.
I would say you should never lock away a kid for so long that they need access to food and water at all.
No, that’s mostly fair, and it wasn’t my point to state that sending a kid to their room equals torture. But I hope you can understand that witholding water is not a good thing, ever. Kids might not express (or fleven feel) the thirst. And that can definitely be a bad thing. Take into account possible emotions that involve crying or just warm weather etc. and they could easily get dehydrated. Losing just a few % of bodyweight water can be negatively impacting already.
We seem to agree here: I’m by no means advocating that you should ever explicitly withhold water from a thirsty kid. I just think a lot of people here have gone over-the-top regarding how horrible it is to send a kid to their room without putting a bottle of water in there first. It’s not like feeling thirsty for a bit or getting slightly dehydrated is in any way detrimental to anyone’s health. People get thirsty and lightly dehydrated all the time, either on hiking trips or because they forgot to bring water for something that lasts a while.
The important thing, as I see it, is that you never put the kid in a situation where they honestly begin to doubt whether you care about their well-being and are going to look after them.
Average lemmy.ml user be like:
I mean, yeah? Is that really so bad. I guess it depends what the intent was. The town I grew up in was pretty tame, and the room I’d get locked in without food or water if I’d misbehaved had books
I think how rough the punishment is really depends on how long you strand the child for
half a day seems like peanuts though – though I guess it really does depend how the kid feels about it
Dude no! Like a 15 minute time out is ok. But if they ask for water they should be given it. Locked away alone in a room without supervision for hours? No. That is not normal. At all.
Like a 15 minute time out is ok.
Locked in a room or locked out of the house? That is not okay, regardless of how long it is.
Please dont ever have children. This is sick.
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
My wife went through something similar. Took until she was in her 30s and we were pursuing IVF for someone to take her seriously and actually do the investigation to realize she had crazy scarring from endometriosis causing all kinds of issues.
It’s insane to me how much the modern medical community seems to normalize or straight up ignore this shit, like you said.
I realize we could have pushed harder, but when multiple doctors tell you “yeah, some women just experience periods differently, here’s 500mg Naproxen to help you through” you tend to believe it.
My pop history theory is that it’s a latent cultural memory of the Biblical tradition. Remember how Eve was cursed with the pain of childbirth after giving Adam the fruit? Western culture has a history of seeing women’s pain as a result of this ancient curse. Now, I imagine few doctors today are explicitly thinking about the Garden of Eden when diagnosing patients, but the cultural memory remains, if greatly diluted and distorted.
I’m so sorry. I hope that the two of you are doing well.
It’s an actual tragedy how women’s health is dealt with. They get brushed off because “women have been giving birth for hundreds of thousands of years!”, ignoring that it’s the number one thing that kills women!! So our reproductive health and concerns are ignored while the ability to reproduce is put onto a pedestal.
I fucking hate it.
alot of doctors are jaded asf, even to the point of laughing you out of thier office. i think women are often ignored for symptoms of pain.
Sucks when doctors just assume things, it can cost lives.
It’s barbaric. They assume that if you’re girl/woman, most problems are basically “female hysteria”!
Not even “it could be [blank], you might want to keep an eye on that and report back if it doesn’t go away.” Nope! Diagnosis: dramatic.
And women die from this shit. Or become disabled / handicapped. Or it affects their long-term future if they want children. It’s awful.
Some people did a thing with a specially configured tens machine where the woman would turn it the levels up and up until it was at the level of their normal period pain and then the man would go through the same levels stages and be gasping and writhing before it got there.
Turns out men have been massively underestimating period pain for centuries.
That said, some women experienced far, far higher levels than normal and were encouraged to take that data to a non-dismissive healthcare professional.
As a dude, I want to believe that it’s less than it is because that’s just wholly unreasonable that women have to put up with that.
They’re were a lot of men who insisted on immediate medical attention who got told that their partners had tried that and absolutely nothing would come of it.
Poor you! It must have been terribly frustrating that the doctor wouldn’t take you seriously. Seems to be a frequent thing women go through in the medical world. Hope you’re okay now.
Thank you.
Birth control was my savior and actively allowed me enjoy life again. 💕
Amazing! I wish it worked for my GF but that gave her (we found out very late), terrible side effects.
Hey, I know this is random, but was the pain, like, in the lower abdomen and like… Not really a muscle cramp, but deeper?And did physical activty make it better or worse? Asking for a friend. 👀
Pain was deep, ye. Can’t answer the question about physical activity because it rendered me unable to do any! But, yes, exerting any kind of physical effort seemed to make it worse.
I would lie on the cold bathroom floor every month with a heating pad / hot water bottle on my stomach, but it gave little relief through the simultaneous hot flashes and cold sweats.
Two things that actually helped somewhat if I could catch it hours before it started were: eating bananas (I suspect potassium helped with cramping), and, weirdly… drinking pickle juice. Idk what that was about, but it worked.
But have “your friend” get checked for endometriosis and PCOS!!! That shit can actually escape your uterus and scar up / destroy your other organs!!! No joke!!!
She might just do that because your experience sounds very similar to her “stories.” She also can’t move when it happens and is left pretty hobbled until it passes, but moving makes it worse… So I’ve heard. 👀
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Knee pain. Everyone told me it was normal growing pains, until one little league coach notice I run weird. Queue years of doctors and specialists and tests and scans and surgeries, and now I’m a 40 something guy with advanced arthritis that could have been much much worse if left untreated.
way to go attentive little league coach!
also wtf parents?
My parents took me to see doctors, who told them it was just growing pains and suggested I exercise more to lose weight. I saw three specialists and had a bunch of xrays before anyone noticed the shady spots on my cartilage. Osteochondritis Dissecans occurs in 15-30 people out of 100,000, and most of the primary care doctors I’ve had in my life had never heard of it.
I can’t blame my parents for that. I can blame them for a lot of things, but they did their best.
“Well it’s not hurting me so it can’t be that bad.”
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
I remember one day realizing it was odd that my dad would hug my mom but my mom would never hug him back. She would just stand there and let him hug her. Yeah he was an abusive husband and I was very happy for her when she finally left him after over a decade!
Struggling not to act on my impulses all the time, doing foolish things before thinking and not being able to go more than a brief period without embarrassing myself. I thought everyone dealt with impulse control issues. Oh hey Adhd, nice to see you.
Meditation helps with this. Well at least it’s better than nothing. Well at least you can feel superior over others because you meditate.
Meditation helps with this.
I know you mean well, but it bothers me whenever people say this. “Just clear your mind” - says the person who thinks everyone’s mind works like theirs. I’m tired of being told that the solution to the thing I can’t do, is to try to do the thing I can’t do.
I don’t disagree but I will say I’ve found an adhd friendly meditation technique that helps (doesn’t cure). I walk or bike and let my mind wander and wander until it has wandered itself out. It takes practice but it helps me.
My mind wanders with ease, that’s the problem. My mind wanders whether it’s an appropriate situation or not, both when I need to focus on something (like during a film or a presentation) and when I need to NOT be focusing on something (like when I’m trying to fall asleep.) I suffer from insomnia because of it.
On numerous occasions, people have suggested meditation to me as a way to practice “clearing” thoughts from the mind. They may admit it “takes practice,” but they assume everyone can do it, which makes it all the more frustrating when your brain seems incapable of shutting up. It’s like the “I know you’re depressed, but have you tried being happy?” of ADHD.
Ah, lol, meant it as a joke. I apologise if it seemed “just get a planner, duh!”
I have ADHD(enough to disrupt life quite a bit), and you are right, it is very difficult to just concentrate. I hate concentrating, it’s frustrating and I lose every time.
But for me, none of the medicines available to me work or help any of the problems with ADHD and I don’t have money for it. So I’ve been deciding to raw dog life and instead meditation in part has helped me with handling some things.
I’ve been meditating for past 6 months straight now (not very successfully). But I continue to do it because of the discipline’s gentle nature. There are no hard and fast rules. I can be meditating and it won’t be what most people call meditating but it helps me calm down and I like that. Brief moments/seconds of calmness are worth it for me.
And over time, while reading up more about meditating, I’ve learnt that it’s also very very normal for the mind to wander, that’s like the default mode for it. More so for people with ADHD. I think you aren’t supposed to be perfectly focused (at least for most people). All you are supposed to do is to acknowledge what you feel and try and move on and feel what you are feeling in the moment without any judgement. It’s very difficult and not being able to do it is fine. Over time, you get a little better at it while you incur other benefits of Meditation.
It’s more than just trying to attain peace, it’s about learning to be gentle with yourself, giving yourself time for yourself, living in the moment and enjoying what little time you have.
Meditation can mean to be different things for different people.
I was lucky or call it unlucky to have had found the time to add meditation into my daily routine(life reasons). And even now it’s difficult to do every day, with what the ADHD not rewarding me to do it. For this, the work around is to do it as much as you can but consistently and being okay with missing out on days. (It’s not do or die, it’s the cumulative effort). Do it for 5 minutes or three minutes, not more. Forget about doing it for hours or something, consistency matters more than the time you put in.
There’s also different methods to choose from, some are easier for folks like us. I haven’t gotten into any of those, but I see people discussing it often to know. I would highly recommend the free app - medito. It has a lot of different options, courses to follow and is very beginner friendly. There’s no shady backdoor, you won’t be pushed into buying anything. Though It’s run by an NGO and they will ask for donations time to time.
If you have a quiet and calm place to do it, I’d highly recommend that. It really helps when the environment isn’t fighting you. I forget example recently did it twice in the forest and It was beautiful.
Also this is just my experience, try and see what works for you.
As somebody with diagnosed ADHD, it doesn’t work to “sit down and meditate” if I’m not rnaodnly finding myself in a setting where it would be a guided meditation where somebody else would lead. I am saying randomly because due to the fact that I cannot sit down and just do it, I don’t have much experience doing it, thus its hard to make the practice an interest and therefore ultra hard to make it a routine or a something I’d do. I could want to do it super bad but I won’t.
I would feel stressed attempting to relax and spending the time to meditate.
Yes I’ve been trying for close to 20 years. The only thing that works is to meditate while doing a physical activity. Something repetitive and my brain will eventually get quite. Once I stopped trying to do it the neurotypical way, it got much easier.
True.
What helped me is doing it in small sessions. Like only for 5 minutes or just 2-3 minutes or just doing breathing exercises and not doing the mindful part.
Before sleep worked best when I was super tired, sometimes I just fell asleep while meditating and that was really sweet. You can do it lying down as well.
But yeah, not going to lie, it’s difficult to get that “mindful” state.
