me, finally getting a chance to say something I’ve thought about for twelve days straight: oh, hey, that reminds me, funny thing, this just came to mind but
The fantastic cat cafè Temari no Ouchi (translated to ‘strange cat forest’) in Tokyo looks like something out of a Studio Ghibli anime.
The cats have ample space, and if they feel overwhelmed they can easily run to the back, where there’s a staff-only section. You can choose to just sit and play with the cats, or order something.
The food will be decorated according to the current season in addition to being kitty themed.
sometimes I remember that I’ve had the same blog for my entire tumblr career and that there are backlogs and backlogs of cringey shit from my various regrettable phases just there for anyone to see if they want and I feel as if someone has tred across my grave
Achievements of people born into excessive wealth mean nothing I’m sorry
it’s so interesting so many people keep repeating this same line of “it’s not like they could control where they were born”. and yet. absurdly rich folks do not take that into consideration when poor people need something they don’t immediately have. it’s always “well work for it! work for your food/water/shelter/health” there’s never any consideration to what life that poor person was born into even though they never had any control over it either. interesting how wealthy people feel comfortable playing that card.
This line of thinking is common with white privilege too.
So many Pro-Spanking advocates talk about how they “Deserved” to be hit by their parents because they were “a bad kid.” And it makes me so sad.
You weren’t.
You weren’t a bad kid, and you didn’t deserve to be hit. Maybe you were a difficult kid, maybe you struggled with boundaries or rules or expectations. Maybe you had bad behavior much of the time. But you, yourself, were not and are not a BAD person for that, and you didn’t EARN violence. You didn’t have it coming. It shouldn’t have happened to you.
Sometimes kids need to be bopped Not hit violently. Just bopped, when nothing else you try is working.
No. Children do not NEED to be hit, for any reason. Children never deserve violence.
Anecdote time. I was spanked as a kid. Well, “spanked” was the word my mother and her sister used for it. Sounds like I was being lightly hit on the bottom by my mother’s hand, doesn’t it?
What my mother actually hit me with was a thick leather belt cut into strips. She called it her cat-o-nine-tails. And she hit hard enough to leave welts on my back and my ass that lasted for a week. If she was in an especially mean mood–which happened a couple of times–she walloped me with the buckle end. The buckle was huge and outsized with sharp edges and had a long tongue that left gouges. If I got cut or gouged during the spanking, I was not supposed to bandage the wounds or to ask my aunt to bandage them. I found that out after asking my aunt for such help once because I didn’t want my clothes sticking to the wounds. My mother threw a shit fit that is perhaps better left to the imagination. Truthfully, I don’t remember what she said; I only recall her unholy rage and her conviction that I deserved it.
That was the norm when I was a kid. Every kid that I knew–boys and girls–was hit. Few parents of my friends “spanked” with hands. I can recall several mothers sitting in the kitchen of a friend’s family and boasting over coffee about how many yardsticks they had broken against their daughters’ backs or legs. Fathers talked openly, even proudly, about “belting” their sons with actual belts.
This wasn’t seen as abuse, although every kid I knew hated being hit and hated their parents for hitting them. Some of us begged our parents not to. Others tried to run away. Still others had anxiety attacks whenever their parents got angry. None of it mattered.The euphemistic “spanking” was continually presented to us as good, if strict, parenting. And after all, weren’t there days that kids were completely unreasonable and nothing else would work? And you couldn’t really expect adults to talk to kids as if they were people, could you? That, we were told,would be a waste of time. The best thing to do was simply to admit you deserved it and accept the spanking. And not to cry afterward, because crying was for babies. (My mother’s policy was that if a blow from her belt made me cry, she would hit me even harder until I admitted that there was nothing to cry about and stopped.)
I stole the belt belt one summer day when I was ten. I wrapped it around the inside of a garbage can and concealed it behind three heavy bags of trash. My mother put it out for the garbage men the following morning and never knew it. She spent months looking for it; I saw the signs when she searched my room. But it never occurred to her that she herself had thrown it away, and since she assumed that she’d get it back eventually, she never bothered to replace it. And I, of course, never told her; by that time, I felt that I was justified in doing whatever I had to to survive her silences and rages.
“Spanking” didn’t teach me or my friends to behave, or to be better disciplined, though for years I believed both because thinking of it as normalized physical abuse was unbearable. It taught us that adults were irrational and untrustworthy, and that even the best of them wouldn’t step in to prevent cruelty or injustice. It taught us to repress our tears and to believe that we deserved to be beaten (the word we used among ourselves to describe spankings). We learned to conceal our words and thoughts and actions from people who were supposed to love us purely for our own safety. We found out that our parents were, in many respects, no different than the bullies our own age that we loathed.
I don’t believe that those lessons benefited my generation one bit.
And I think now what I thought as a child–there has to be a better way of disciplining or punishing a child than hitting them.
If you can train a dog without violence, you can raise a kid without violence.
If you can’t train a dog without violence, you shouldn’t have kids.
Obviously violently beating your child and hurting them is fucked up but tbh a light smack on the hand can be a good way to get your point across when kids dont listen
It is wholly unneeded and ineffective. Do not hit your kids. Even ~only a little~
You know what else is a good way to get your point across?
TALKING TO YOUR KID LIKE A FUCKING PERSON
Discipline and abuse are two sides of a very fine line.
When I was a young child and did something stupid, I was either spanked with a belt or had the SHIT slapped out of the back of my hand. Each time, it was done only once, MAYBE twice if I fucked up particularly bad like cursing at my parents, disrespecting my grandmother/grandfather or other shit I vaguely remember doing. I’m 22 years old now and looking back, I sincerely have to thank my parents. Yes I was talked to, I was told the rules and the consequences, and when I broke them -anyway-, I got punished. It got the point across REAL quick, and I never did it again.
I know that it was NEVER done out of malice or some sadistic desire to hurt a kid, it was done to teach me a lesson so I would grow up and actually be respectful.
I’m not going to ever condone the extent of what happened to the person in the big post above me, and I agree that some people don’t even need that kind of discipline, but some kids need a slap when rules are repeatedly broken.
No child NEEDS to be slapped. Especially with a fucking belt.
A light swat on the bottom doesnt hurt. I had to swat my moms friends toddler lightly on the hand because an (at the time) one year old doesnt understand they can get cut by a knife if they grab your food randomly. I had told her no three times and she still reached for my steak. A two year old wont understand shouting if they dart into the street. They dont know yet that cars are dangerous. You have to either harness them or yank them back by the arm. A three year old might still not be mature enough to realize the stove is hot, especially if they were always kept out of the kitchen. In that instance, getting burned is enough. A four year old might think jumping off the swings is cool. Theyll never do it again if they twist their ankle. Theres many, many ways pain can teach children a lesson, from a swat on the hand to an injury sustained from stupidity. Sometimes pain is the best teacher.
A “light swat on the bottom” CAN hurt. And the idea that children are better off if their parents cause them pain is, frankly, fucked up.
Experts at the University of Michigan and University of Texas looked at decades of research from 75 studies involving more than 160,000 children.
“We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents’ intended outcomes when they discipline their children.”
Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence.
“We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”
For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning against spanking, and many countries have laws against it. A 2007 UN convention has said corporal punishment violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects children from “all forms of physical or mental violence,” and should be banned in all contexts. Psychologist Alan Kazdin, the director of the Yale Parenting Center and former president of the American Psychological Association, has admonished that spanking is “a horrible thing that does not work.” It predicts later academic and health problems: Adults who were spanked as children “regularly die at a younger age of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses.”
Did you even read my response?
Which part do you think I neglected to address?
Because my argument is that spanking kids DOES hurt them. It has long term impacts.
And honestly, if the only way you think you can teach your child to avoid getting hurt is by deliberately hurting them? That’s bad parenting.
valar apologist 