.........

I stay away from my account for days at a time and let Tumblr run out of queue posts so frequently because I don't have the energy or patience most days for the shit I have to deal with over here. Twitter still gives me shit about my posting habits when they're no different from a dozen other people's Twitter habits and THEY don't get forced to prove they're not spammers with some ridiculous phone call code bullshit!

Then there's an increasing number of utter shitstains and wankers on Tumblr. Quora's moderators are a bunch of whiny nicenik babies. Photobucket's idiotic new policies have broken a dozen things of mine that I still haven't gotten around to fixing.

There's an apartment inspection tomorrow. They tried doing it last week, tried doing it without warning anyone except in the stupid newsletter that nobody reads, rather than putting up the "24 hour of entry" notices they're required to do by law, and someone - no idea who - basically told them to shove it up their asses, so they're finally doing it by the book now. As much as I love Portland, this is one time I miss Iowa. I'd never even HEARD of apartment inspections, except before moving in and after moving out, but out here they do it between 1 and 7 times a year (I wish I was exaggerating!) because apparently the Oregon government has never heard of the concept of "renter's rights" before.

Livejournal having been taken over by the Russians means our posts are subject to their homophobic and transphobic laws, the fucking bastards. I hope Putin and his entire government die horribly, eaten alive by starving orphans.

Donald Trump is still in the White House like the human equivalent of a monkey flinging shit at everything and everyone, which of course is the fault of Russia as well.

Then there's the usual stuff: depression, poverty, not enough food, the summer going back and forth between "The sun is rubbing its crotch on your face" to "Jack Frost is a workaholic working on his vacation time."

That, and I just get tired of being angry so often. Literally everything annoys me to some degree or another, it's like my nerves were flayed alive years ago and they've never healed.

Honestly, I'm starting to think that retreating utterly into a world of my own making to the point of barely functioning at all - like I did when I was a kid - is sounding more and more like a good idea all the time. Sadly, I think that ship was sunk a long time ago.

UGH

Why do extroverts always insist on repeating the same information a thousand times until you just want to run away to get away from the verbal diarrhea?

Advice

Treat your children like human beings worthy of the same respect you’d give an adult, respect their privacy, and always have a reasonable explanation for why your rules are rules. “Because I said so” or anything remotely like it is NOT a reasonable explanation; a reasonable explanation is something like “We don’t run into the street because you could get hurt by a car if you do, and we’d have to take you to the hospital.”

On a related note, don’t spank children, that’s child abuse. There is NEVER a good or appropriate time to spank a child. If they’re old enough to understand reason, you can explain to them why what they did is wrong. If they’re not old enough to be reasoned with, they’re not going to understand why you’re hurting them.

The “respect children as human beings” includes letting them have their own fashion choices, respecting that some foods will just taste horrible to a child and not to an adult because children have more taste buds than adults do,

It also includes recognizing that they don’t know what you know and thus you can’t assume they know something. Keep in mind that the only information the kid has to go on is usually what you provide them. An example of this is that if you have a rule, say, that they shouldn’t run in the house, they might not realize that the definition of “running” includes jogging or leaping like a bullfrog, and thus if they jog or leap like a bullfrog, and you didn’t include those in the definition of running you provided them with, the only reasonable response to this is to admit you made a mistake and calmly explain to them that the rule includes no jogging and no leaping like a bullfrog.

Don’t try to mold your kids into clones of yourself. On that note, read the first four chapters of “Down Among The Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire for a truly superb example of how to royally mess up a child for life by trying to turn them into mini-me’s.

As to respecting their privacy: the surest way to produce a child who will do everything in their power to hide as much of their life from you as possible, and thus you will never see the trainwrecks coming, is to invade their privacy. And the surest way to produce a child who will come to you willingly with problems in their life is to respect their privacy. NEVER invade their privacy, not even a little, past a certain age (first grade, I think? Not sure.). Invading the privacy of a preteen or teen is especially dangerous; even one instance of doing it will utterly ruin their ability and willingness to trust you.

Don’t make idle promises. If you promise a child something, you’d better either make good on the promise or have a spectacularly good explanation for them as to why. Broken promises break trust, and broken trust makes broken kids.

In their tantrum ages, do not give in to the tantrum, not even once. Give in even once, and it’s all over; you might as well re-name them Dudley Dursley. My parents gave in to my bratty sister’s tantrums (well, Mom did) and to this day my sister remains an insufferable selfish lout.

Instead, what you do is you wait for the tantrum to end, and explain that if they want something, they should use their words if they can, and that they have to be polite. It helps even more if you require they give you a well-reasoned plea for why they should get The Thing, whatever it is. (For instance, letting them have a pet only when they can demonstrate that they can take good care of the pet.) Part of respecting children is teaching them how to respect you. (And fear is not the same thing as respect. Not even close.)

There was more, but I just ran out of energy.