Having good intentions doesn’t mean that you can’t also get intrusive where it’s not welcome. Maybe especially where it involves situations you don’t have enough information about to reasonably draw conclusions
There are also reasons I do try to stay vague where it involves other people’s personal business. No matter how close they are, or how hard that is sometimes. It’s not my place to spread that around. Especially having been on the wrong end of that way too much growing up.
Having good intentions doesn’t mean that you can’t also get intrusive where it’s not welcome. Maybe especially where it involves situations you don’t have enough information about to reasonably draw conclusions
I may have mentioned before that Mr. C has half-jokingly said more than once that maybe he should take a cheap flight to Stockholm to buy some trousers that fit. Because he’s far enough outside the norm here, needing only like a 44/34 now, that it’s been proving harder than it should. (Larger waistband and inseam both on the same garment? Tricky where average male height is like 5’7" and people tend toward way smaller frames than either of ours.) He had much better luck finding things that worked just at Target or similar when Previous Job kept sending him to the US, but that’s been a while now.
Anyway, he did end up with at least one day free in Stockholm on his way to Helsinki for Worldcon. And, running pretty low on pants that didn’t have holes in them, he took the opportunity to buy a couple of pairs while he was back home!
Spoiler: they really really don’t fit better 😦
The ones he set off in for another work trip this morning looked even more uncomfortably tight than the new pair I’d already seen. The two-tone effect on these really did not help visually, though.
They also illustrate one major problem: relaxed cuts are just not in now. And that’s really suboptimal for Mr. Burly Viking here. (And not just him, I’m sure.)
I didn’t say anything about either pair, as seriously as anything I could think of failed the “is this helpful?” test. Yeah, he is no doubt extremely aware that those pants are tight. He’s the one who bought and is wearing them, on his own body. As the best he could find in a pinch, but still.
I really didn’t fall for him because of his fashion sense, which is his business. But, those new pants just do not look comfortable at all–besides terrible on.
So, I’m going ahead and looking for some different options now, on the basis that more hopefully better-fitting pants probably wouldn’t be unwelcome when he is basically down to those two new pairs for now 😵 I mean, I try extra-hard not to be intrusive with stuff like that, unlike my mother, and may well err toward the other side sometimes with boundaries. (Like with that hair matting incident, yeah.) But, it does seem like he really could use some help finding more clothes now.
Trying one strategy I’d considered before, to hopefully address some specific fit problems: clothing designed with larger thighs in mind. He may not have been working out much for a while now–and was never that seriously into it– but he basically has a power lifter’s legs by default.
Directly leading to the more recent persistent problem with ripping the seats out of his britches because they don’t have enough thigh room, yeah. Which I wouldn’t have thought of as a reason for trouser malfunctions, with pretty much the opposite fit issue here, until he mentioned it. *wry smile*
But, they make clothes for this. It’s one hell of a note when even basic cargo/outdoors type pants (which he started wearing largely for the more relaxed cuts) have gotten slimmer enough cut that this has even turned into a problem.
What I’ve seen so far aimed at athletes have mostly not been much if any more expensive than he’s been paying at Orvis for pants that last maybe a couple of months before the seat goes. And less than that after a repair. (He’s been fixing them a lot, which is only a stopgap measure besides aggravating. Only works so many times, too, without resorting to big ugly patches.)
Not to mention these newest Horrible Trousers from Haglöfs, which don’t actually have prices listed on their site but couldn’t have been cheap for that appalling fit. No idea about durability yet, but jfc those are bad enough already.
Even if the specialist fit ones were twice the price, it would be totally worth it though. Here’s hoping I can find some that do work better. And that he won’t mind the intrusion that much, considering the trouble he’s been having finding suitable ones on his own.
The only people who get upset when you set boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none.
(Some. Some people will get upset because they did not know your boundary was there and they thought they were being good and they were actually violating your boundaries the whole time and they didn’t know and they are sad. And hurting someone you care about is upsetting. )
The only people who get upset when you set boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none.
Every time I see a kid wearing ear defenders, I wonder whether that kid has the ability to consent to other people knowing that they’re autistic.
Like, you see a kid wearing ear defenders, you know that they’re autistic.
I, a complete stranger, now know this personal piece of information about that kid.
But did that kid have the ability to consent to whether or not I knew that information?
Like, ear defenders are a good strategy to stop kids from having meltdowns.
So are noise cancelling headphones.
So is not going to the shops when it’s busy.
Like, I’m not talking about kids wearing them to the park, I mean seeing kids being dragged around busy department stores on a Saturday morning.
The kid’s not there because they want to be, they’re there because the parents wanted to go to John Lewis instead of Amazon.
Was the kid given an option? Besides “ear defenders or meltdown and get shouted at for not wearing the ear defenders”, I mean?
And like, yeah, sure, kids shouldn’t be told to hide their autism and they shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of it, but it’s still personal information. It should still be their choice whether or not I – a stranger on the street – know that about them.
Idk, I’ve been seeing it more and more often when I go shopping on the weekends and I can’t help but wonder…
Shopping is kinda a necessity. And not all parents have the ability to find/afford someone who can watch their kid while they go shopping. While parents should aim for a time where shops are not busy, again, it’s not always possible. Shops are busy because Saturday/Sunday is a time where many ppl do not have to go to work.
I also think that while you and I would know that the kid was probably autistic, this is because we are autistic. Kid could also have SPD, or just be sensitive to noise. Unless the stranger was familiar with autism, I’m not sure they would know for sure. And the only way to completely hide a child’s disability would be not to take them out imho. As long as the child isn’t uncomfortable, and the parents reasonable (not some ungodly long shopping trip/takes breaks/knows when to stop), I’m not sure why it would be bad. Especially if parents try to make the trip enjoyable.
I agree autonomy is totally important, so forcing your kid to go out unnecessarily. esp when it’s causing pain is a no-go.
I guess my main problem is “why not headphones”?
And I must stress, I mostly see this in very obviously middle class families and I live in a big city with access to any number of cheap “we’ll deliver whatever you want to your house for you” services.
I live right on the edge of town and am broke and I can still get pretty much anything I want delivered to my house within 24 hours. Like, it’s literally cheaper than the bus fare to get into town and I can’t afford a car. Shopping, in this city, really isn’t a necessity unless you want some really boutique stuff.
When looking at those really middle class parents, I can practically hear “Oh well, we don’t want little Montague listening to music when we’re out because we don’t want him to have any electronics that might rot his brain, like an mp3 player or mobile phone. He’s going to be exposed to nothing but paper books and The Outdoors.”
Like, we can talk about expense all we like, but autism is mostly* diagnosed in middle class kids with the “I only feed my child organic” yummy mummys who think giving kids electronics is EEEVIIIIILLL.
So, yeah, I realise “John Lewis” is a local reference, but put it this way, I have never bought anything from there in my life because the price tags give me headaches, so when I see a mother with a “can I speak to the manager” haircut dragging around a kid with ear defenders on through there, it doesn’t exactly paint a picture of “poor woman didn’t have another option”.
*I do mean “mostly”, not “all the time” and again, it’s the middle class parents I’m seeing this with
(Where “middle class” in British terms would correspond to “upper middle class” some other places. Which might be obvious from some of the rest of the description, but yeah.)
As came up in a reply too, with this particular example I’m not sure that very many members of the general public would have the knowledge to associate a kid wearing ear protectors with autism. Unless they were autistic too, or close to someone who is. Possibly more likely to assume it is just some type of wireless headphones, otherwise.
Given how easy it is to avoid trips to places like John Lewis, as you say, I am even more concerned about the levels of consideration for the child’s needs, getting dragged around shops while obviously uncomfortable for the parents’ convenience. Headphones or ear protectors aren’t likely to make the whole experience entirely non-stressful. Even if that’s enough to prevent full-on meltdowns in the store, that doesn’t mean the child isn’t still stressed.
That was one thing my family got mostly right, way back when, without knowing exactly what was behind the problem. At least before I got old enough to be expected to have learned better, they tried to keep shopping trips with The Meltdown Kid along necessary and to the point. Everybody was happier that way. That was also mostly doable (for working class people) even before it was nearly as easy to get so many things delivered at little or no extra cost.
If they had known to try noise reducing aids, and were maybe operating under the impression that this totally solves the problem? (I.e., usually prevents total meltdown behavior as the main perceived issue.) Who knows.
That said, while I’m not sure if in this particular example, people would see ear protectors and immediately think autism? This does raise some interesting points around children and privacy.
I mean, I grew up with very little reasonable expectation of having any say whatsoever over who was given access to what information, especially where health/disability issues were concerned. No matter how heavily stigmatized the thing might be, that did not get treated as my own personal info that I should have any say over whatsoever. (And still probably wouldn’t, after too many years as an adult.)
This is a way more common approach to respect for privacy than it should be. Especially where children and/or disability and medical stuff are concerned–even before they’re combined. It’s really not good.
So, I am usually even more inclined to err on the side of assuming a very limited need to know, dealing with another person’s privacy. And I can understand why this scenario might not sit totally right, from that standpoint. Complicated.
A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.
“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”
Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.
My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.
“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”
Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.
“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.
And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?
I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.
Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!
Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.
The people that I’ve trusted most in my life have been the people totally aware of their ability to hurt me. They aren’t ashamed that they have it; they just choose not to use it. My foster dad was the only person I fully trusted until I was 25, and he’s a military combat veteran with PTSD. I think a lot of what made him so trustworthy for me was that he was never upset when I was startled or uncomfortable with him; he just factored that into his plans. “I’ll explain it, but to adjust your stance more I’d have to come in and move your legs.” “You can sit on this couch with me, or drag over that chair.” “If you’re okay being around people with guns, you can come to [event], otherwise I’ll see you on Thursday.” And we’re from a social context where some people just DO have those triggers, and you accept that and Don’t Fucking Touch People When They Can’t See You. My own startle reflex is from childhood bullying, but it blends in pretty well with a found-family of military veterans and trauma survivors.
So I mean, there are ways to tone down a startle reflex, which are mostly just “ways to get PTSD treated” but I for one? Chose to actively keep my startle reflex even as I went through other treatments (medication, therapy, EMDR, yoga, etc). I’m generally a pretty passive and gentle person IRL, since I’ve worked to be very soothing and calming to other trauma victims in my work, but that means my boundaries get trampled a lot. If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
So you know, this is me and the choices I’ve made–choices like “not dating anyone until I was 29 and finally found someone 100% okay with my boundaries”–but I’d tell your boyfriend to learn to deal with it? If you were a combat veteran who startled every time he dropped something loud, I bet he’d have a lot more sympathy for you and not make it All About Him. I mean, I get that it sucks to make a gesture of intimacy and connection and have it rebuffed, but the point is: IT’S NOT ABOUT HIM, BECAUSE IF YOU KNEW IT WAS HIM YOU WOULDN’T FLINCH. You say yourself that it’s about being aware that it’s him touching you! It’s knowing, “This is my boyfriend, whom I trust; a serial killer hasn’t wormed his way under my couch and decided to wrap an arm around me.”
So maybe he needs to work on better signalling his presence the way my found family does, like audibly making sounds when he’s coming up behind you (scuffing his feet as he walks, jingling keys, humming or whistling), approaching from within your field of vision before he touches you, or moving from a known area of touch for a new one (so if, say, he’s standing next to you, instead of just throwing an arm around your shoulders, he touches a near part of you with his hand, then slides it across your shoulders, so you’re always aware of what’s happening.)
Maybe HE lives in a world where people can be 100% trustworthy? Maybe he lives in a world where it’s reasonable to be hurt when people don’t automatically interpret everything you do as benign. But I’ve lived with being traumatized for so long, and lived around traumatized people so long, that I’m like, “That sounds like an interesting place, I wonder what colour the sky is there.” Like… you don’t think he’s bad or malign or going to kill you (one PRESUMES), but at the same time, you live in a world where the people you’re socially close to and comfortable around CAN hurt you, and your definition of “trust” is always going to mean choosing to be around them despite knowing they can hurt you. It’s not very possible for you or your body to just un-know that.
And in the end it ABSOLUTELY would not cool or fair if you end up in a situation where HE can show upset and discomfort with your emotional expressions, but YOU cannot show upset and discomfort with his, and his unhappiness is more important than yours, and you’re the one working to silence your discomfort for the good of the relationship but he’s not working to change his behaviour and deal with his emotions to make you happy. He needs to take his sadness over your “not trusting” him and go, “Okay, it’s not me, so now I’m just sad that my girlfriend had these negative experiences, but I will use that sadness to make sure I act in a way that feels safer and more comfortable to her.”
If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
…..huh. My response is generally to freeze up until I can get out of the situation somehow (and I may not even notice that’s what I’m doing until after the fact). I don’t have a typically overactive startle response (usually). Perhaps I should stop letting my brain use that as “see you’re just faking.”
Yeah fear responses are actually tripartate: flight, fight, FREEZE.
@star-anise tends towards the flight-type of startle – jump/flinch AWAY, etc. I … have in fact nearly broken people’s noses because I have the fight-type – “KILL THE THING THAT TOUCHED ME”, and even though I’ve gotten a good handle on it so that I don’t HARM people without at least a split-second’s thought (enough to parse “do I know this person/was it probably a total accident/is killing Allowed here”), the hostility is still. Um. APPARENTLY VERY OBVIOUS.
But a fuck of a lot of people freeze, too. Especially people who’ve learned/been conditioned to know they CAN’T either fight or flee. Like all responses in some situations it can be vital, and in a lot of others is Less Useful.
It’s specifically Less Useful when you’re trying to establish working safe boundaries in situations where people genuinely can’t hit you with a mallet. Which is most of the situations one is in on a normal day to day basis.
So.
(Ok really on time out now. >.>)
A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.
What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.
It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.
Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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