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Today my son Weston woke up in time for me to say goodbye to him (it's about 50/50 that this is the case). As I said goodbye I opened up the curtains in his room and said "Do you want to wave goodbye to me as I go?"
I go out the door and there's my little boy (2 years old) waving to me from the window. When I get to the car, I find something in there that my wife will need for the day, so I go back to give it to her. When I get back to the door my wife tells me that after Weston waved at me he went and found her and sadly asked "Weston go to work with daddy?"
Splurge of the spring - Deuter Kid Comfort 2 with a sun/rain cover. Tried it out as soon as I got it, kid was psyched. Can't wait for hikes in a month or two.
Just got in that book "Journey" that some folks recommended, and I am crying at work because I thought I recognized that color the bird was, and I didn't dare to hope but there he was at the end and man oh man, is this book for him or for ME?
Journey and Quest are great books. My brother gave them to my daughter for Christmas and she loves them. (And so do I.) I would also recommend the other book he gave, The Book with no Pictures by B.J. Novak a longtime veteran of comedy.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
0
Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
He's not in trouble because I'm not 100% sure but I think my 5 year old might have just said "fuck" at a video game...
That actually sounds useful. I think the teachers for it had a very large amount of latitude for setting their circulums, though, as I don't remember him saying antyhing about algebra.
But there is a way we can find out. Yo: a5ehren
We didn't do math, unfortunately. We did some deep dives in history, but it was mostly just a lot of work for not a ton of gain.
If my oldest is playing a game and gets pissed off it's easy to tell the difference between 'no big deal' and 'you need to stop playing this game right now'
Honestly I have just stressed usage for my kid. When my kid was maybe 3 and was playing with some dolls (an extremely odd thing for my kid) they said damn it or some other bad word. When I went in to correct the behavior my child looked at me and simply said "but I didn't say it to a grown up." After I managed to pick my jaw up off the ground I stated that the rule is to not use it when adults are around. If they know how to use it properly I just can't bring myself to say not to use it.
Okay, so Leah is toddling around now with reckless joy. It's incredibly adorable and supremely terrifying. She's only 14.5 months old and I'm constantly drilling her on the Spider-Man edict. "Power, responsibility, no don't, stop, oh my god, power, responsibility, the dog doesn't like that, I don't like that, power, responsibility, oh dear you are awfully cute, power, responsibility."
+3
Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
My kids call me out when I say a "nonnie" word. I don't say anything very often. I'm very good about keeping my language in check...except for DAMN!
I'm crossing my fingers when I say this but to the best of my knowledge my four year old hasn't repeated any curse words yet. My wife and I have both super cleaned up our language, to the point that it isn't even that hard anymore, but we still slip sometimes and I know it's coming at some point.
0
SkiddlesThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited March 2015
My brother in law specifically teaches my 4 year old curse words in front of us.
A friend of mine had a 9 year old and a couple of 4 year olds. Couple of years ago he got called into the 9 year old's school. The principal or teacher is like
"Your kid said 'shit!' today".
To which my friend goes in genuine bewilderment
Yeah, we don't really clean up our language around Taz. We'll see if it bites us in the ass, but I'm of a mind that by the time it matters, we'll have been able to teach him some manner of control over when and where he curses. If not, well, if he's not using the words hurtfully or to intentionally offend somebody, I'll just have to argue on his behalf when it inevitably offends somebody anyway.
I had a professor with three young kids and his wife asked him to try and cleanup his language around the kids.
He was able to do a pretty decent job, but obviously had some slip ups. Eventually his four-year-old said the word "damn" in front of Mom and she was not pleased.
Prof. Father was torn because he wanted to correct the behavior, but was also proud that he had used the word in an appropriate context.
We don't clean up our language either. He did repeat "crap" a lot and we had to have a long discussion why "oh god" isn't really a curse word but he can't say it at school or around grandparents. I'm sure now he's in fifth grade with his friends they are at the point of using swear words as that's kind of one of those steps in trying to act older, but in front of us he's been pretty good. He did ask if he could use the phase douchenozzle like I do, but I had to turn his request down.
I gave up on trying to clean up my language a long time ago, and I have a filthy fucking mouth. My kids both know the words they're not supposed to use, and are well aware that their mom would flip out if they did.
There was the one evening that my son (four at the time?) sat next to me and repeatedly apologized for saying "fuck" in his head, which led to him apologizing for saying it out loud. I don't even know if he was being a smartass or not.
I'll say, a pleasant side-effect has been my four year old saying things like "oh for goodness sake" and "what the heck" with all of the venom and frustration that the real curses would engender. It's hilarious.
Our kids say "oh my g o s h", but that's from the Lego Movie; we try and keep adult swearing to zero around them because while they're going to pick it up from _somewhere_ soon enough, I'd rather they'd acquired more options before then.
We have been trying to keep things clean language wise with varying success. It's a matter of time before Leah transforms "dog" into "damn" though. Also, I have the George Carlin "All My Stuff" DVD set that I haven't watched since she was born. It's only a matter of time before Leah hears the original Dirty Words routine. Some things are required viewing in my house. I'll wait til I'm reasonably certain she knows all the words already though!
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
My opinion has been that my own language is as blue as the sky, so a certain amount of .. colour ... popping up in my son's lexicon is largely just a factor of time. So if a few four letter words creep in around the edges, that's probably inevitable. However, should I ever catch him using racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discrimanatory or bigotted slurs, then we're going to have a talk. A long one.
I couldn't care less if he uses an explitive as an emphasiser. There's language that actually matters, and treating casual cursing the same as put downs, oppression, and insults just muddies the distinction between behaviour that's simply not polite with behaviour that is actually bad.
I may modify my thinking on this in future, as he continues to develop and grow and use more words, but for now, that's my rule of thumb.
Last night I had my first "dad" dream where I was holding my child and I was so happy I could barely keep my eyes open.
I hope I have that dream a lot. Looking forward to living it!
+10
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
edited March 2015
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
ceres on
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
This sort of thing is why I have mixed feelings about my diagnosis. On one hand, when I was flagged for ADD/ADHD as a kid, it was 100% because the school wanted to medicate me into behaving better. (I refused to pay attention if I already understood the material or found the subject boring. Which was most of the time.) And I absolutely do not need and have never needed medication to be able to focus.
At the same time, I had to ask the woman administering my most recent bout of cognitive testing to move a computer modem under the table because I couldn't focus with those tiny little LED lights flashing at me. I used to drive my college roommate crazy because if I didn't have something to fiddle with in the dining hall, I'd start building towers out of the salt shakers and napkin holders, or just shred napkins until we left. I need complete silence to study. And when I get really focused on doing something, I completely loose all sense of time to the point where I'll "wake up" from that focused-state and three hours will have passed. Those are all arguably clear signs of ADD/ADHD.
Your first paragraph says you don't need medication to be able to focus, but then your 2nd paragraph describes a bunch of ways in which you can't focus at all if some arbitrary thing isn't exactly a certain way.
So probably you do need medication to focus on things the way a person without ADHD does.
Last night I had my first "dad" dream where I was holding my child and I was so happy I could barely keep my eyes open.
I hope I have that dream a lot. Looking forward to living it!
That's a lot better than my dream where I was in my house and all of a sudden there was a baby there and I asked my wife "You had the baby?! When?" And she replied, "Yesterday! You were there! You helped!"
And I was just like "what the fuck are you talking about I don't remember any of this!!!"
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
The bolded portion resonates with me quite a bit. For as long as I can remember, I've been this way. Any task, big or small, that requires any sort of thought/organization/focus I just put off over and over again despite having the time, knowledge, abilities, and tools to get it done. It's only when the anxiety of the potential consequences for not completing a given task completely overwhelms me am I able to get it done. I've spent so many years just working around what I believed was my extreme laziness. Like, for any projects or papers I had in high-school, I would just pay my sister to do it for me. I just played it off like I was too cool to do my school work and she didn't have a job, so she was thrilled to have the cash.
Hell, if we didn't live in the age of automatic bill payments my finances would be a damn mess despite typically having appropriate funds. I could talk for days about the ways I've worked around this since being in the military to not look like a lazy sack.
Now, though, it feels like everything is unraveling. I can't keep up anymore, a huge amount of the things I'm responsible for are woefully behind or late and people are starting to notice. It's also starting to bleed over into home life.
I've only been thinking recently that something might be wrong with me and it's more than laziness. After going back and forth a bunch, I scheduled an appointment with the behavioral health clinic here for next week. I'm starting to get cold feet though. Because of one of my qualifications, if I'm diagnosed with anything or put on medication, my whole chain of command is going to be informed and most likely disqualified (no longer able to be on a submarine). Then I'll have to put up with all of the toxicity that will result from that, namely being asked why I can't "just fucking man up" and other shitty things. Or that I'm "tapping out" because I can't handle submarines anymore. Ugh.
Jesus, I'm sorry for dumping all this in the kid thread.
Anyway, Ryan is almost 15 months and he is just a ball of joy. Runs everywhere and constantly smiling and laughing along with all kinds of adorable baby babble. He's got this thing where if we make him laugh for too long he ends up with the hiccups and it makes us feel a bit bad. It doesn't bother him unless he ate recently, and that'll usually result in a bit of a mess.
This Sunday he's going to get photographed with a bunny. I'm kinda hoping he doesn't try to pet the bunny the way he does our cats. We're still working on the whole gentle petting thing.
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
The bolded portion resonates with me quite a bit. For as long as I can remember, I've been this way. Any task, big or small, that requires any sort of thought/organization/focus I just put off over and over again despite having the time, knowledge, abilities, and tools to get it done. It's only when the anxiety of the potential consequences for not completing a given task completely overwhelms me am I able to get it done. I've spent so many years just working around what I believed was my extreme laziness. Like, for any projects or papers I had in high-school, I would just pay my sister to do it for me. I just played it off like I was too cool to do my school work and she didn't have a job, so she was thrilled to have the cash.
Hell, if we didn't live in the age of automatic bill payments my finances would be a damn mess despite typically having appropriate funds. I could talk for days about the ways I've worked around this since being in the military to not look like a lazy sack.
Now, though, it feels like everything is unraveling. I can't keep up anymore, a huge amount of the things I'm responsible for are woefully behind or late and people are starting to notice. It's also starting to bleed over into home life.
I've only been thinking recently that something might be wrong with me and it's more than laziness. After going back and forth a bunch, I scheduled an appointment with the behavioral health clinic here for next week. I'm starting to get cold feet though. Because of one of my qualifications, if I'm diagnosed with anything or put on medication, my whole chain of command is going to be informed and most likely disqualified (no longer able to be on a submarine). Then I'll have to put up with all of the toxicity that will result from that, namely being asked why I can't "just fucking man up" and other shitty things. Or that I'm "tapping out" because I can't handle submarines anymore. Ugh.
Jesus, I'm sorry for dumping all this in the kid thread.
Anyway, Ryan is almost 15 months and he is just a ball of joy. Runs everywhere and constantly smiling and laughing along with all kinds of adorable baby babble. He's got this thing where if we make him laugh for too long he ends up with the hiccups and it makes us feel a bit bad. It doesn't bother him unless he ate recently, and that'll usually result in a bit of a mess.
This Sunday he's going to get photographed with a bunny. I'm kinda hoping he doesn't try to pet the bunny the way he does our cats. We're still working on the whole gentle petting thing.
Do you guys do the DEOCS survey? I got the impression from that that you are not, at least officially, supposed to get harassed like that.
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
The bolded portion resonates with me quite a bit. For as long as I can remember, I've been this way. Any task, big or small, that requires any sort of thought/organization/focus I just put off over and over again despite having the time, knowledge, abilities, and tools to get it done. It's only when the anxiety of the potential consequences for not completing a given task completely overwhelms me am I able to get it done. I've spent so many years just working around what I believed was my extreme laziness. Like, for any projects or papers I had in high-school, I would just pay my sister to do it for me. I just played it off like I was too cool to do my school work and she didn't have a job, so she was thrilled to have the cash.
Hell, if we didn't live in the age of automatic bill payments my finances would be a damn mess despite typically having appropriate funds. I could talk for days about the ways I've worked around this since being in the military to not look like a lazy sack.
Now, though, it feels like everything is unraveling. I can't keep up anymore, a huge amount of the things I'm responsible for are woefully behind or late and people are starting to notice. It's also starting to bleed over into home life.
I've only been thinking recently that something might be wrong with me and it's more than laziness. After going back and forth a bunch, I scheduled an appointment with the behavioral health clinic here for next week. I'm starting to get cold feet though. Because of one of my qualifications, if I'm diagnosed with anything or put on medication, my whole chain of command is going to be informed and most likely disqualified (no longer able to be on a submarine). Then I'll have to put up with all of the toxicity that will result from that, namely being asked why I can't "just fucking man up" and other shitty things. Or that I'm "tapping out" because I can't handle submarines anymore. Ugh.
Jesus, I'm sorry for dumping all this in the kid thread.
Anyway, Ryan is almost 15 months and he is just a ball of joy. Runs everywhere and constantly smiling and laughing along with all kinds of adorable baby babble. He's got this thing where if we make him laugh for too long he ends up with the hiccups and it makes us feel a bit bad. It doesn't bother him unless he ate recently, and that'll usually result in a bit of a mess.
This Sunday he's going to get photographed with a bunny. I'm kinda hoping he doesn't try to pet the bunny the way he does our cats. We're still working on the whole gentle petting thing.
Honestly, you should not have a 15 month old around a bunny, especially if you're still working on gentle petting. Bunnies are extremely fragile and can die very easily from shaking.
Plus they kick surprisingly hard for such little, fragile things.
I was just a number of weeks ago *officially* diagnosed with ADHD (after about 7-8 months of observation) at the age of 33, and I can only imagine how different my life would be if I'd received the diagnosis 6 years ago.
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
The bolded portion resonates with me quite a bit. For as long as I can remember, I've been this way. Any task, big or small, that requires any sort of thought/organization/focus I just put off over and over again despite having the time, knowledge, abilities, and tools to get it done. It's only when the anxiety of the potential consequences for not completing a given task completely overwhelms me am I able to get it done. I've spent so many years just working around what I believed was my extreme laziness. Like, for any projects or papers I had in high-school, I would just pay my sister to do it for me. I just played it off like I was too cool to do my school work and she didn't have a job, so she was thrilled to have the cash.
Hell, if we didn't live in the age of automatic bill payments my finances would be a damn mess despite typically having appropriate funds. I could talk for days about the ways I've worked around this since being in the military to not look like a lazy sack.
Now, though, it feels like everything is unraveling. I can't keep up anymore, a huge amount of the things I'm responsible for are woefully behind or late and people are starting to notice. It's also starting to bleed over into home life.
I've only been thinking recently that something might be wrong with me and it's more than laziness. After going back and forth a bunch, I scheduled an appointment with the behavioral health clinic here for next week. I'm starting to get cold feet though. Because of one of my qualifications, if I'm diagnosed with anything or put on medication, my whole chain of command is going to be informed and most likely disqualified (no longer able to be on a submarine). Then I'll have to put up with all of the toxicity that will result from that, namely being asked why I can't "just fucking man up" and other shitty things. Or that I'm "tapping out" because I can't handle submarines anymore. Ugh.
Jesus, I'm sorry for dumping all this in the kid thread.
Anyway, Ryan is almost 15 months and he is just a ball of joy. Runs everywhere and constantly smiling and laughing along with all kinds of adorable baby babble. He's got this thing where if we make him laugh for too long he ends up with the hiccups and it makes us feel a bit bad. It doesn't bother him unless he ate recently, and that'll usually result in a bit of a mess.
This Sunday he's going to get photographed with a bunny. I'm kinda hoping he doesn't try to pet the bunny the way he does our cats. We're still working on the whole gentle petting thing.
Honestly, you should not have a 15 month old around a bunny, especially if you're still working on gentle petting. Bunnies are extremely fragile and can die very easily from shaking.
Plus they kick surprisingly hard for such little, fragile things.
My aunt had ducks, and as such they had a little shed full of feed. Well, they started to see signs of a mouse getting to the feed bags and helping itself to dinner. Fortunately, they also had about 8 cats at the time. So every night before going to bed they would put a different cat in the shed, hoping to get rid of the mice eating the duck food.
Night after night they tried this, each morning waking up to find the cat ready to leave the shed, the duck food still being eaten and no dead rodents to show for it. Finally, one morning they found the duck food undisturbed. As they rounded the house to feed their other animals, they found a dead rat in the bunny cage. Apparently this rat had decided to upgrade its dinner from duck pellets to bunny food, the bunny didn't like that idea and kicked the ever-loving shit out of it.
If I learned anything from reading Watership Down it's that Bunnies are brutally violent.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
+6
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Yeah that was my takeaway too. Man, children's books used to be brutal.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Posts
I go out the door and there's my little boy (2 years old) waving to me from the window. When I get to the car, I find something in there that my wife will need for the day, so I go back to give it to her. When I get back to the door my wife tells me that after Weston waved at me he went and found her and sadly asked "Weston go to work with daddy?"
If only you could son. If only you could.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
We didn't do math, unfortunately. We did some deep dives in history, but it was mostly just a lot of work for not a ton of gain.
I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU, DAD!
ACTUALLY...I say DAMN! A lot...I mean, A LOT.
Me: God dang it!
Younger Daughter @ 18 Months: GA DAH MIT!
Older Daughter: Daddy don't say 'God damn it'!
If my oldest is playing a game and gets pissed off it's easy to tell the difference between 'no big deal' and 'you need to stop playing this game right now'
He is a huge asshole sometimes often
There was a pause, and then my son in the backseat blurted out "Oh Crab!"
It's now his favorite swear-ish phrase.
"Your kid said 'shit!' today".
To which my friend goes in genuine bewilderment
He was able to do a pretty decent job, but obviously had some slip ups. Eventually his four-year-old said the word "damn" in front of Mom and she was not pleased.
Prof. Father was torn because he wanted to correct the behavior, but was also proud that he had used the word in an appropriate context.
There was the one evening that my son (four at the time?) sat next to me and repeatedly apologized for saying "fuck" in his head, which led to him apologizing for saying it out loud. I don't even know if he was being a smartass or not.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Totoro time!
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
I couldn't care less if he uses an explitive as an emphasiser. There's language that actually matters, and treating casual cursing the same as put downs, oppression, and insults just muddies the distinction between behaviour that's simply not polite with behaviour that is actually bad.
I may modify my thinking on this in future, as he continues to develop and grow and use more words, but for now, that's my rule of thumb.
I hope I have that dream a lot. Looking forward to living it!
So my response is a combination of "fuck the haters", "being biologically female does not mean I should be flighty and eccentric by default so get your shit together, mental health people", and "overdiagnosing makes this shit not get taken seriously so get your shit together, mental health people".
I actually had a conversation with my prescribing doctor about the girl thing. He was saying that the middle-aged female population is actually the most under-diagnosed right now, because the behavior is so often dismissed as "quirky", and has been for decades by professionals. Because apparently staring at a simple task and crying because you can't make the leap to actually do it despite having the time and tools is quirky? I don't know.
I was tested a number of years back by a grad student under the supervision of my therapist at the time. She used an IQ test which I quickly gamified for myself and blew it away, which of course defeats the purpose.
This sort of thing is why I have mixed feelings about my diagnosis. On one hand, when I was flagged for ADD/ADHD as a kid, it was 100% because the school wanted to medicate me into behaving better. (I refused to pay attention if I already understood the material or found the subject boring. Which was most of the time.) And I absolutely do not need and have never needed medication to be able to focus.
At the same time, I had to ask the woman administering my most recent bout of cognitive testing to move a computer modem under the table because I couldn't focus with those tiny little LED lights flashing at me. I used to drive my college roommate crazy because if I didn't have something to fiddle with in the dining hall, I'd start building towers out of the salt shakers and napkin holders, or just shred napkins until we left. I need complete silence to study. And when I get really focused on doing something, I completely loose all sense of time to the point where I'll "wake up" from that focused-state and three hours will have passed. Those are all arguably clear signs of ADD/ADHD.
So probably you do need medication to focus on things the way a person without ADHD does.
That's a lot better than my dream where I was in my house and all of a sudden there was a baby there and I asked my wife "You had the baby?! When?" And she replied, "Yesterday! You were there! You helped!"
And I was just like "what the fuck are you talking about I don't remember any of this!!!"
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
The bolded portion resonates with me quite a bit. For as long as I can remember, I've been this way. Any task, big or small, that requires any sort of thought/organization/focus I just put off over and over again despite having the time, knowledge, abilities, and tools to get it done. It's only when the anxiety of the potential consequences for not completing a given task completely overwhelms me am I able to get it done. I've spent so many years just working around what I believed was my extreme laziness. Like, for any projects or papers I had in high-school, I would just pay my sister to do it for me. I just played it off like I was too cool to do my school work and she didn't have a job, so she was thrilled to have the cash.
Hell, if we didn't live in the age of automatic bill payments my finances would be a damn mess despite typically having appropriate funds. I could talk for days about the ways I've worked around this since being in the military to not look like a lazy sack.
Now, though, it feels like everything is unraveling. I can't keep up anymore, a huge amount of the things I'm responsible for are woefully behind or late and people are starting to notice. It's also starting to bleed over into home life.
I've only been thinking recently that something might be wrong with me and it's more than laziness. After going back and forth a bunch, I scheduled an appointment with the behavioral health clinic here for next week. I'm starting to get cold feet though. Because of one of my qualifications, if I'm diagnosed with anything or put on medication, my whole chain of command is going to be informed and most likely disqualified (no longer able to be on a submarine). Then I'll have to put up with all of the toxicity that will result from that, namely being asked why I can't "just fucking man up" and other shitty things. Or that I'm "tapping out" because I can't handle submarines anymore. Ugh.
Jesus, I'm sorry for dumping all this in the kid thread.
Anyway, Ryan is almost 15 months and he is just a ball of joy. Runs everywhere and constantly smiling and laughing along with all kinds of adorable baby babble. He's got this thing where if we make him laugh for too long he ends up with the hiccups and it makes us feel a bit bad. It doesn't bother him unless he ate recently, and that'll usually result in a bit of a mess.
This Sunday he's going to get photographed with a bunny. I'm kinda hoping he doesn't try to pet the bunny the way he does our cats. We're still working on the whole gentle petting thing.
bnet: moss*1454
Honestly, you should not have a 15 month old around a bunny, especially if you're still working on gentle petting. Bunnies are extremely fragile and can die very easily from shaking.
Plus they kick surprisingly hard for such little, fragile things.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I rewarded myself with rice krispie treats
My aunt had ducks, and as such they had a little shed full of feed. Well, they started to see signs of a mouse getting to the feed bags and helping itself to dinner. Fortunately, they also had about 8 cats at the time. So every night before going to bed they would put a different cat in the shed, hoping to get rid of the mice eating the duck food.
Night after night they tried this, each morning waking up to find the cat ready to leave the shed, the duck food still being eaten and no dead rodents to show for it. Finally, one morning they found the duck food undisturbed. As they rounded the house to feed their other animals, they found a dead rat in the bunny cage. Apparently this rat had decided to upgrade its dinner from duck pellets to bunny food, the bunny didn't like that idea and kicked the ever-loving shit out of it.