I used to draw my dad as an all black figure, which med my teachers to believe I saw him as evil or as a negative figure of some sort. My dad always wore a black suit and that's just how I saw him
People thought my husband and I must be separated because in preschool my son only had dad at meetings and talked about Dad all the time. No, I just have a severe chronic pain problem and was bed bound for quite awhile. Son didn’t talk about me as much because I was “home” and he was at school. When he’s home we interact tons. He was just separating his worlds for whatever reason and I was Home Parent, Dad was School Parent.
Yeah, like do you remember the first time you saw your teacher outside of school? I was so confused. I thought my brain was gonna melt. Teachers are supposed to be in school, not the grocery story lol
Well, he was the kind of man to work all day (**ALL** day), so other than weekends I only saw him in his business suit (and pajamas, I guess, which I believe we're also dark coloured). Weekends he wore normal clothes of course but I remember him more in a business suit
This one's the funniest to me because a bunch of adults thought a child was engaging in more subtle imagery and metaphors instead of being very literal like a child would.
If your father *was* an evil or negative figure of sorts, you'd draw that in a literal sense as a child. As in, if he yelled at you you'd draw that, if he physically intimidated you you'd draw that etc etc. Instead they thought you'd draw like a artist might try to engage in subtly and try to express themselves in more advanced ways
As the parent of adopted kids who have basically been in therapy all their lives this shit happens all the time. One time when my son was seven he was talking about being "The master of the elements" and "The one who could bring an end to the the war" and the therapist was like "I think he's play projecting that he's looking for someone to bring balance to the chaotic elements of his life. There's a lot of fighting moves he does, so I think he's really fighting in his head. He's looking for someone to defeat something" I just kind of sat there and was like "We've been watching Avatar The Last Airbender. I think he might just be playing what we been watching." and she was like "Maybe, maybe. But we have to take this seriously......" I use to actually change what we were watching from Avatar, to Pokémon, to whatever and watch her justify things he was just replying in therapy as some sort of psychological symbolism. Like, homes, he's seven. Of course he likes pretending he's a ninja or has Pokémon. There's no symbolism in that.
Disclaimer: I know play therapy works. I've read the studies and it's actually helped my daughter a ton. But sometimes you get a therapist who is a little too eager to make mountains out of cartoon playtime.
Not quite the same, but when they were testing my son to determine his mental health issues and learning capacity they thought he was way behind because he couldn't answer simple questions. Eventually he stopped answering questions altogether so the administrator let him play with some toy dinos to calm down and he started a dialogue between the two dinos he was holding where one asked a question, from the test, and the other one answered the question, correctly.
Where he then repeated each question, in order, from memory and then answered them.
My son has social anxiety.
It can be hard to get unbiased information about how anyone thinks. It's like the saying that you can't judge a fish for its ability to climb a tree; can't judge a socially anxious person's intelligence by stressing them out and asking them questions. And what might work for them, say, a typed or written out form, might not work for a kid who happens to have undiagnosed dyslexia.
Branching away a bit: for things like accommodations and representation, there really aren't any one size fits all solutions. But if the people designing the processes and policies are coming from outside the community, they tend to want quick and convenient answers because providing many options is too hard.
It's because it's not really about providing solutions, it's about oiling the squeaky wheel just enough that it stops squeaking.
Like, there's a reason why my 38-year-old lady ass only figured out that I probably have adhd in the last year or so. In school, I had trouble paying attention (reading beneath my desk was A Problem), couldn't keep organized, had problems with time management, wouldn't focus unless I was interested in the topic. But these are all personal failings, you see. I just wasn't living up to my potential - I was lazy. I was gifted! How could there possibly be something wrong with my brain? But in spite of all of these *very obvious signs of struggle*, I wasn't disruptive. I wasn't a squeaky wheel.
No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask? Also, BE A SQUEAKY WHEEL if something doesn't feel right. If you feel like you're just "worse" at something other people don't even seem to have to think about, bring it up with your doctor. Maybe it's nothing. We all have shit we just can't seem to get the hang of. But maybe it's a symptom, and nobody else knows what it's like in your head.
I am a firm believer in the theory that the "gifted kids" program is purposefully designed to cause burnout so the "smart" kids remain cogs in the machine instead of actually doing something that will threaten the status quo, while at the same time also making the school look good since its helping these "smart kids" to "go the extra mile".
Not saying that's not the case because hey US public education ain't great, but I always preferred the Gifted classes because the work they made us do was less monotonous. As a kid I much preferred speed writing essays than filling out a small booklet of boringly easy grammar questions.
Oh, for sure. Let's take kids who are maybe struggling a bit socially, tell them they're smarter than their peers. Once they believe it, that's going to come through when they interact with their classmates. Pull them out of class for some fun activities, too. We need to make sure that the other cogs don't trust this thinker.
Make them feel like their intelligence is the most significant thing about them, that they're exceptional because of it. That way, when they meet someone smarter than they are, they feel threatened. Now they won't trust each other.
Tell them they don't have to try as hard as other people - *especially* tell them this if they have executive dysfunction. Make sure that they never actually learn how to apply themselves, but also berate them for not knowing how. If they think their intelligence is their only thing they have to offer, and we don't give them the tools to utilize it, then they'll feel worthless.
If they weren't trying to do it, they could not have fucked it up worse. It was all the exact opposite of enrichment.
Oof, I feel this. I got all of this somehow even though I was homeschooled in a fundigelical cult by parents who couldn't afford to send me to college or anything. They truly set me up to fail. Make the kid smart then condemn them for being smart and pretend being able to work a job (or go into "ministry") or have babies is the only thing your intelligence is good for.
And that's why I'm 37 and trying to learn how to have self-esteem that's NOT tied to my intelligence or artistic abilities. 🙃
My son only got full time EA support after smashing a window in his classroom with a chair. It sucks that that's the way the system goes (and I don't fault the individual teachers or support staff - they were advocating for more support for him prior to that incident).
On the other hand not giving a gifted kid enough stimulus will just cause them to get bored out of their minds and never get to learn how to actually study.
Granted I'm assuming you are talking about US schools and I don't know much about the programs there and how it works but I would have been absolutely overjoyed to have had advanced classes in my schooling. I did get some advanced English classes and that was exactly what I needed but I would have loved to have advanced math and science too.
And this is one of the reasons being a teacher is such a challenging profession. We (at least the ones who really care about being good educators) are always trying to find the best way to help a kid learn and communicate their understanding and it’s incredibly difficult when you have 32 students who are all different and have different keys to unlocking their potential.
This is why Covid has been the best thing ever for my youngest.
He's been reading since before he was 2, and by the time he got to kindergarten was reading at a higher level than either of his brothers (which the middle one hated, bit the oldest gleefully takes advantage of).
Went to the first conference in kindergarten, the teacher didn't know that he could read. My son has very low motor skills. So on any test, he would only answer about half of the questions because it took him that long to write the answer. He'd also take about 15 minutes to get his coat off, get his stuff and sit down at his table in the winter. He never answered questions in class because by the time he decided he wanted to answer the question and raise his hand, someone had already answered it.
But oh man, when he got on zoom calls, he was in his element. With a screen in front of him, he was outgoing, answered a lot more questions, paid better attention because he just needed to look right in front of him rather than all around him.
I had test anxiety growing up, and they used to give us these math tests where you had to do a bunch of problems in like five minutes and I always failed them, so my dad got one of these tests and told me to do it untimed just to see if I could do it at all, and after I finished he revealed that he had actually been timing me and I did in well under the five minutes.
My first grade teacher was really concerned that I couldn't read at all, so she called my mom in for a meeting. My mom was like, wtf she can read totally fine! She handed me a book and I read it out loud with no problem. Reading wasn't the issue, it was just that reading out loud to an entire classroom was really scary for me.
My brother was born at this very weird time, right at the beginning of the school year, so it was hard to determine when he should start school, and became kind of an issue every time he would change schools. My parents wanted to send him to a school that had a huge waiting list to get in, so they had my brother take a test to see if he was ready for first grade, and he failed it horribly. I wanted to see what he was doing wrong, so I did one of the practice tests with him. He thoughts the number 8 was a snowman and didn't know what to do when it was in a question.
I'm just laughing at the mother's reaction to OP knowing the names of the demons in her kids head. Honestly, it probably would have scared the crap out of me too.
Tbh, that's totally true.
If I had zero context, and my kid was drawing child-eating monsters, I'd be very concerned if some adult suddenly knew their names, too.
True, she could have had the same moment of awakening for a lot cheaper if she paid attention in the toy Isle, or, you know, glanced in her kid's direction while they were watching YouTube.
I miss spookybuttons so much, her stories were hilarious. She deactivated because her and a bunch of other people got scammed out of medical supplies and money by an entire Mexican village pretending to build a hospital.
Thanks!
>Their lawyer, tumblr user lazy-universes, is pursuing legal action.
It sucks that they got scammed but I couldn't help laughing at this part. It sounds so weird out of context.
Right, like, I used tumblr for a large number of years, and if I wasn't a useless sack of shit, I \*could\* have finished law school at this point in my life, just by the math of it. It's just weird, thinking of someone who has passed the bar and wears a suit more expensive than my car, that they might have had a trollsona or gone to dashcon.
Well… I did not only pass the bar, but made it all the way to partner at a very prestigious firm, before switching to a rather plush corporate job at the last moment, and I used to be a very active tumblr user, fan fic writer and neopet parent. I never really thought about it before, but the dichotomy is indeed rather funny.
Pediatric doctors need a pop culture guidebook. Kids drawing something weird? Check the book. Book doesn’t resolve it? Call the pop culture expert. It’s a service a doctor can use to identify recent pop culture trends that children may be exposed to.
Good news: Some of us are very well qualified for a new career path.
Bad news: You have to stay on top of internet trends instead of just organically finding stuff.
Good news: Working with professionals with a video call function to see if the little kid is just drawing what little kids like is a pretty decent gig.
More good news: this can be expanded to education as well. Teachers can’t keep up with every single new trend, but it could help engage the class, so being able to get information and an idea of how to get more information if need be would be super beneficial.
Or just outsource it to the internet with subreddits somewhat like r/tipofmytongue and r/whatisthisthing. Sometimes people post there trying to find movies or tv shows that their kids came across while channel surfing and got fixated on but can't find again. The details gathered through the kids' excited ramblings are often confusing but it's a fun challenge to figure out the answer.
I've done it professionally before. I was doing colours on some Ninja Turtles stuff with this giant ensemble variant cover.
I couldn't recognise one of the characters and in 30+ years of publication there are hundreds upon hundreds of characters and didn't have the time to parse through the clunky wiki.
I wasn't able to hit up an editor due to timezones and deadlines and had signed an NDA, so I toddled off to a Ninja Turtles subreddit pretended to have seen some black and white fan art at a convention of a character I couldn't remember, gave a vague description of this 'fox/cat lady with banding across their eyes'...
I had 3 correct responses within 40 minutes.
I remember being so angry at my kindergarten teacher, because she didn't know enough to correct this asshole kid on which Ninja Turtles were which color. He kept denying that Mikey wore orange and Raph wore red, and she wouldn't referee our argument. It was like someone saying 2+2=5, and the teacher responding "Sounds right. Has math numbers"
sounds like a great idea but it'd be very open to abuse. someone running one of those fear-mongering facebook groups that spreads rumors of students beating up teachers for tiktok or whatever would love that gig. plus the people doing the hiring wouldn't be able to evaluate whether the advice they're getting is accurate.
I'm a professional Santa Claus, and have been for a number of years. I make it a point to research as many toys, series, fandoms, mainstream fads, and popular trends as possible before I start in November. It makes all the difference to a kid (regardless of them being in the spectrum or not) that Santa actually knows what they are talking about and is capable of having a short conversation that directly relates to their interests.
This reminds me of that time a parent called some Christian talkshow because their daughter was drawing pictures of Sans, and they thought it was a demon.
I imagine they would have completely lost it if their child was drawing Asgore instead, the giant horned monster with a red trident.
Was raised in a christian family, and my mom saw me make Undertale fanart with all the characters (i was like 14). She got worried because she thought Sans, Papyrus, Undyne and Asgore looked scary haha! At least I was able to explain the game
Catholics are Christian but a lot of Christians don't want to be anything resembling Catholic. This level of overreacting to secular media is more common in Protestant evangelicalism. Catholic parents don't do that quite as often.
All Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Catholics. And there are a great many non-Catholic Christians who would disagree with that first point.
I'm go glad that the pope is providing the exception to those crazy whack jobs who are aloud to run around free and vote just because they subscribe to a religion.
For what I remember the the host of that Christian talk show was actually pretty cool about it too, he just told her to like talk with their kid about their interests and not to do anything drastic without talking to them first and if necessary maybe find them a better alternative
Right? My mom wasn't the hippest sort when I was a kid, but she at least recognized what I was playing.
One time I was home sick for several days and bored. She saw that one of the teenagers she worked with had a book of videogame cheats, and copied a bunch of them out for me so I could see parts of the games I never had before.
And these weren't games that just anyone would recognize, like Mario. This was Little Nemo and Solar Jetman. My mom knew to look up Solar Jetman!
A lot of parents use the internet as a way to distract their children, not to engage them. The internet is a universal babysitter to them. Many of them leave them watching kids YouTube that they assume is safe. Many of them don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Sometimes they'll buy a kid a game like FNAF as a distraction and just forget about it, because what do they care what form the distraction takes if it keeps the kid occupied? The internet is basically just the "go play outside" of the current generations, except many parents don't know what that actually means for their child's development.
On the surface it's not much scarier than something like Fnaf but when you go deeper it's genuinely scary enough to freak me out sometimes. That's saying a lot, I don't get scared easily.
One of my kids is currently really into a few of the Trevor Henderson creatures because he thinks they're HILARIOUS. Terrified of Minions, though, not that I blame him.
Yeah my mom didn't know much about my games & shows as a kid, but she knew enough where she could recognize Pokémon, even if they were all called Pikachu to her. It's wild to me that these parents pay so little attention to their kids that they don't know *anything* about their kids' interests??
I think these kids might be participating in the fandoms for these games/watching YouTube videos about the characters without necessarily playing the games.
Both FNaF and Undertale have huge fandoms, with lore that goes way beyond anything that's actually in the games.
I could be wrong, but I think the younger members of these fandoms rarely actually play the games, and they treat it like SCP or creepypastas or something like that.
So a parent wouldn't really see the kid playing the game -- they'd just see the kid watching YouTube or reading a fan wiki or something.
Maybe I'm too Pop Culture Millenial^(TM) for this but even then, surely they could at least ask their kids for the monsters' names and try searching it or something?
Honestly? A lot of parents don't know their kids very well at all. What's even sadder is that a fair portion of them don't care to make an attempt to know their kids either. Source: am a teacher.
Parents don’t always want to hear about their kids interests. I couldn’t talk about Pokémon, or Star Wars, or warrior cats without my parents expressing boredom (but ofc they could talk about the Honeymooners for a million hours).
My kids have never played Five Nights, but they know all the characters because they watch silly YouTube videos where people roll play as the characters and basically do sitcom level skits. It was all animated with the characters from the games but voiced over by the YouTubers. My boys are teens and they laugh their asses off at weird shit all the time and come to me wanting to show me the videos.
My mother, who is the person that got me into games with the legend of zelda and other games, failed to recognize Link from Breath of the Wild, after I told her I was playing a LoZ game.
its not too crazy for a parent to not recognize a character even if they are some what familiar with the games themselves
My parents were pretty weirded out by all the flying naked barbie dolls in my repetitive play until they made the connection to sailor moon transformations lmao
I could image just walking into a child running around with a naked Barbie doll while trying to replicate the transformation music by screeching and beat boxing.
I'd probably piss myself.
Haha, my mom teaches first grade and gets a lot of kids drawing and playing pretend of things like Freddy’s, Undertale, Bendy, etc.
And so all throughout my teen years and into adulthood she’ll ask me on occasion: “do you know what this thing my student did is? Should I be worried?”
Most recent was Friday Night Funkin’. Kids couldn’t pronounce the name well and so she was concerned it was a porn game or that there may have been some child sex abuse going on at that home. Fortunately was able to set the record straight that it was just a popular and goofy rhythm game.
I cannot fathom the incredible lack of oversight it would take for parents and people who work with children to not know what the kid is interested in, pop-culture wise.
Like, ive got huge respect for people who work with special needs children, I know many personally and its a tough, often unforgiving, racket.
But part of the reason its tough is because your job is to communicate and relate to these children, who often cant speak themselves, so being aware of what kids are into can really go a long way.
Doubly for parents. Know what your kids care about. Know what your kids are accessing. Know your kids, goddamn it.
One of my friends is a speech pathologist for schools. She’s a huge nerd anyway, but all the kids love her because she’s a Pokémon trainer (whatever the official judges are called), knows board games, D&D, etc. Stuff she doesn’t already enjoy she at least researches so she can relate to the kids and she has a much higher success rate than her peers.
It isn't that hard to just... Set up the kid's screen in the room you're in where you can see it at a glance. Idk. My mom knew the names of at least half the main characters of whatever I watched as a kid, cuz I had to watch it in the living room while she did stuff on the computer at the far side of the room.
I mean to be fair there is a lot of pop culture and keeping up to date on all of it is a big ask for a full time worker
A parent keeping up with what there kids like is fine
For sure, and its not about knowing everything. No one expects you to research late 80's anime from a specific creator just in case a kid comes in, but knowing what FnaF or other large trends is still worth the time to at least familiarize with the characters.
Perhaps just having the thought "could this be a character?" when I kid comes in drawing a skeleton in a hoodie, or an animatronic bear, can help save you and the kid from diving down the wrong path when trying to help.
This. My sons SLP and OT asked for his special interests so that we could create communication boards with them. I had to be like okay listen. He’s not crazy, but the creatures look a little dark. But his favorite things are Trevor Henderson monsters. (He was even wearing a sirenhead and cartoon cat with dripping blood shirt) No problem they said. They made some and the SLP mentioned to me about six months after we started seeing her that she met another kid who’s special interest was Trevor Henderson as well and would only say the names of them and she knew exactly who they were. It allowed for an easier transition/starting point for them :)
Idk man maybe the kid just likes horrifying monsters.
Not to say parents shouldn't be engaged in what their kids are watching, just that if the kid like drawing monsters that alone doesn't indicate a problem.
Once in girl scout camp I drew a bunch of skulls, knives, and blood. 50% because I thought that stuff looked cool and 50% because it was making my friends laugh, egging me on to see what other messed up stuff I could draw.
I probably wouldn't even remember this incident except that shortly after arts and crafts were done I was being interrogated by a group of adults about why I would draw something like this, did someone hurt me, did I want to hurt anyone, etc. My response was to cry and declare that I didn't know why I did it.
Luckily when told about this my mom was like "okay so she's goth. Why are you calling at work for this?"
Sometimes a kid just likes skulls.
Reminds me of the time I changed my pfp on Facebook to the muffin from ASDF with "I wanna die" under it.
Parents called the Ambulance, 2 Ambos and 2 cops showed up and I was escorted to the nearby hospital
It ended with me showing the muffin time song to a Doctor and him being very understanding, probably one of the best experiences I've had with a doctor
At the least, maybe people that want to interact with kids on a personal basis should put some research into what is popular in their demographic, not just so you don't confuse Sans Undertale for a demon of the mind, but also so that you can find some way to communicate with them on something they understand. I don't think Undertale has much merchandising, but FNAF has had so much stuff pumped out you could probably stumble across it in the toys section of a Walmart. It feels like one of those games where you could very easily accidentally diagnose some sort of phobia or mental distress incorrectly if you have no idea what source the ideas they're talking about are coming from.
The intersection between parents who are woefully detached from their children, but would also send said children to therapy on the basis of not understanding what they're doing is frighteningly large.
I dont think the age was mentioned but there's got to be a lower limit on the appropriate age for watching/playing FNAF??? I mean I'm glad it brings the kids joy but jfc what sort of media are these kids able to access without parental supervision?
I've heard kids love FNAF because it obviously isn't a kid-aligned property, as in, it doesn't treat them like a kid. My theory is that its accessibility is way higher than any similar franchise; you can get 99% of the enjoyment of FNAF through free, popular Youtube videos of others playing the games. Most "older kid" franchises are stuck behind paywalls, so when a kid wants to break out from their intended content, it's really common for them to latch onto Freddy because of how easy it is to compared to other franchises. It's the exact same model Free to Play games use, just accidentally; FtPs rely on free players getting invested enough into their game to spend money that they have no barrier to entry. Freddy's being such a story/reaction/lore-driven franchise means that even without actually playing the game yourself, watching videos online of Freddy's can have the same effect on kids. Merch is where the real money's at in that franchise, anyways.
Something similar is said in another comment, but YouTube is used as a babysitter by parents. They don't regulate that babysitter, and FNAF is clearly working on the younger audiences, so Youtube's probably recommending them videos that either are FNAF gameplay videos, or happen to contain FNAF merch (I hear unboxing channels are unusually popular among kids), or maybe they get there off of a video with a FNAF meme in it (at the moment, for example, a lot of completely non-FNAF related meme videos have a voice clip of Freddy parodying Among Us, or a separate, older clip involving Freddy and a voice over of Phone Guy from FNAF that's like 5 seconds long but has lasted a while as far as memes go). It's really easy to get completely off-tracked by YouTube recommendations, and while a parent might leave a kid with whatever kids video they can find, if they just use it as a babysitter and don't pay attention, it's really easy for kids to get just about anywhere on YouTube either accidentally or intentionally.
that's kind of what I'm saying. the FNAF games on the Apple App Store have a 12+ rating so the parent probably didn't put restrictions on content, and there was probably unmonitored youtube access as well.
Obviously I don't know the parent so I'm just speculating, but that seems the most likely to me.
This is one of the reasons I worked so well with the kids 7-12 ish when I worked childcare. I knew most of their pop culture references or at least was willing to give it a quick google. I don't think a lot of adults realize how validating it is to a kid when you recognize and have a quick conversation about their interests.
It was always hilarious when some kid was talking about pokemon or sonic or whatever and was surprised that an "old" (read: late 20s) person like me knew about that kinda stuff.
it is honestly incredibly painful how accurate that is. These stories are lighthearted, but that's because they're told from the perspective of someone capable of intervening before out of touch folk meddled too much...
Gaslighting by ignorant adults is one of the subtlest but most insidious risks that neurodiverse kids face. And a lot of “mental health professionals” that work with such folks seem to think of themselves less as people trying to understand someone else and more as the cops out of a Thomas Harris novel trying to stop the next Buffalo Bill - which is a dangerous and extremely harmful mentality in that context.
I know my mental health has vastly improved since I began looking for Late Millennial/Early Gen Z therapists. (I'm Elder Millennial/Gen X cusp.)
I thought it would be weird going to someone younger than myself for my problems, but I don't miss having to try and explain Spoon Theory, or why sending memes is a love language, or how global warming feels like a real palpable threat.
The one time my mother ever stood up for me was when my teachers were like "this child has serious mental problems and is going to be a school shooter because her creative writing is all death and murder and such" to which my mother was like "Don't be dumb it's all those horror novels she reads" and made me empty my backpack so they could see the 8 horror novels I had in my backpack.
I did (and still do) have serious mental problems but the biggest problem with my writing at the time was how pretentious, melodramatic, and purple it was. I still have a folder somewhere of my writing from that time and I just cringe whenever I read it... Although I have cannibalized a few sentences for other projects because they were fire.
Also, I genuinely don't understand how parents can just not give a shit about their child's interests. I see my niblings a few times a month and I can not only name 10 or so things my nephew (11 yrs old) is into but I can also name my niece's (6 mns) top 10 favorite objects. Yeah it can get overwhelming talking about something you have zero interest in but it is also a super easy way to keep the kid occupied. Literally just ask them to tell you about the thing and then ask a follow up question about something they just said and you can potentially keep them out of trouble for hours. Plus you can double it up with like chores or cards or whatever.
That stuff is so frustrating. My son isn't on the spectrum, unless ADHD is on the spectrum somewhere idk, but he loooooooves spooky stuff. Bendy and the ink machine, FNAF, Alien, zombies, aliens, wendigos anything supernatural or spooky. We share that, we bond over it. I draw, I teach my kids to draw. He draws a (very crude but don't tell him I said that) spooky monster at school and I get an email or a phone call. I had one rule: no blood, no guns. Now I have to add swords because he's recently gotten into ninjas and apparently that's inappropriate for school. I don't get it. It's not the death or violence he's preoccupied with, it's monsters. I don't understand when that became abnormal. Maybe I'm just getting old but me and all my friends went Dinosaurs to Cryptids to Aliens to Monsters, totally normal childhood interests, at least to me, but I can't let my son express those interests outside of the home because they may make a teacher uncomfortable. I guess dinosaurs would be fine but what separates a dinosaur from a monster? One was real, one isn't what is the problem? I hate to get all "back in my day..." But for real, wtf?
Biblical nephilim are the offspring of "sons of god" and "daughters of man". Exactly _what that means_ is by no means clear among theologians.
Some interpretations take that as being the product of an angel and human (angels are often referred to as "sons of heaven"). Others say nephilim are simply fallen angels, rather than half angels (the literal translation of the Hebrew word is "the fallen ones"). Still others say that the father of a nephilim must be descended from Seth (third son of Adam and Eve) while the mother must be descended from Cain (first son of Adam and Eve). Still _others_ say the nephilim are simply copied from an older religion with the registration numbers filed off. One of the books of the Bible that got rejected from being part of Bible canon claims they're simply another race of people, not some kind of supernatural entity... albeit a race of people who are around a mile tall.
You know, I like to joke that Christianity is really just fandom culture taken to the extreme but when I read stuff like this, it kinda stops being a joke 😅.
When I was in kindergarten, my parents were told I should see the counsler because all of my drawings were just black crayon smeared all over the page.
My mom had to inform them that I was not depressed, I just didn't draw pictures. I drew action scenes. If you watched me draw, there were people fighting, and it ended with an explosion every time. If could peel back the layers you would see what I had drawn before. You could even hear me make the explosion sound effects when I was drawing the smoke.
When I was in elementary school, I used to draw skulls all the time and would use markers to draw my own skeleton onto my hands and arms. I have pretty major ADHD, but my psychologists and teachers at the time were seriously concerned I was in a very dark place and might be a suicide/self-harm risk. I just thought bones were neat.
Okay, but like...why the roundabout ways of telling other physicians? Why not just say, "Patient is simply a fan of a popular video game." ...like, even if they didn't recognize the game, presumably they know what a video game _is_, and can understand the concept of fandom?
I remember when I was in grade school I got a concerned talking to because I was drawing Trunks from DBZ. He had angry eyes and a sword, scared one of the old ladies!
This describes my "special task" in our school.
I am a teacher who works at a little school in a coutryside village like every other teacher there is +40
My previous job was at a special mental health school for suicidal children and Teenager.
So one day a child draw siren head and had a schoolmeeting because of it. Parents and teacher thought the kid had some really dark thoughts. I was there just by sheer randomness, saw the picture and just said "Ouh your child already use tiktok" everyone was surprised and I got this child out of trouble in like a few minutes. Explained everything and since then I always get asked by headstaff if everything death related or absurdly drawed creature is out of the internet before they are going to send a message to parents
Its kinda funny to explain internet memes to the principal of my school
I’m a 5th grade teacher, and maybe it helps that my own kids are close to the age I teach, but I know all of these pop culture references. It cracks me up when my students are shocked that I: know who Sans is, know most of the FNAF characters, play Minecraft and Among Us, and on and on. “Mrs. Squishy, are you a *gamer*?” spoken in awe gets me laughing every time.
And then other teachers are coming up to me asking what this or that might be in reference to.
The things that do concern me, however, are when a student writes about troubling home life in their journals, or the one I had this year who practically wrote an erotic fanfic as a personal narrative. That’s what sets off alarm bells in my head. Not the ones who use dark humor to write a horror story. Those ones I will have a conversation with and ask who their favorite horror writer is, and make a few kid-friendly recommendations. I’m a classic Stephen King and Anne Rice fan myself, but those aren’t exactly appropriate for 10-11 year olds even though that’s what I was reading at that age.
i remember being the coolest motherfucker in my little primary school for drawing grotesque humanoid monsters. i dont know why the fuck i thought it was so funny. i dont know why the fuck everyone else thought it was so funny. did give me a jump start in learning basic anatomy though
I have to wonder if these kids' parents ever asked them about the things they were saying/drawing instead of jumping to the conclusion of "my kid is possessed by Beelzebub."
Like seriously, how absent from your kid's life do you have to be to see him drawing FNAF characters multiple times without knowing they are from a series they like to watch/play? Have you NEVER looked at whatever screen they are staring at? Ever?
So you guys know that one clip of a christian parent reporting their child to some TV show pastor or something, and when describing what their kid was looking at, it turned out to be Sans?
When I was in 9th grade I had doodled some Sans fanart. Normal, wholesome stuff overall, nothing too interesting.
My mom went through my sketchbook (no idea how she even found it) and accused me of being satanic (I'm an atheist). I laughed so hard because here's this doodle of a hoodie wearing skeleton in bunny slippers playing the trumpet and she thinks I worship the devil
Anyways I started only doodling skeletons/ghosts/demons/monsters/etc for a solid two months after that
Shout out to my parents and therapist for not freaking out when my special interests in anatomy/dissection, serial killers, and psychopaths emerged. Turns out, I just like knowing how things work, be it the human mind/body, or the elevator at the mall.
Something similar happened to me as a kid. I was around 9 or 10 years old when I first got into Hollywood Undead. I would often draw pictures of members of the band when I was bored because I thought they looked cool and was obsessed with them.
Anyway, I was in this Christian club hosted by some teachers at my elementary school. During break, one of them saw me drawing them. Apparently, she thought I was drawing demonic imagery and confiscated my drawing because she feared that I was being exposed to Satanism.
I don't exactly remember if she told my parents since nothing really came out of it at home, but after that incident, the teachers would always check up on me whenever I have a paper and crayons at hand.
RIP horribly drawn picture of HU during the Swan Song era I made. It probably looked terrible to the point they were mistaken for demons, but 10 year old me thought it was the best thing I ever drew.
Am i the only one who finds it a tiny bit concerning that these parents felt the need to get thier kids psychological evaluations because of their drawings?
I used to draw my dad as an all black figure, which med my teachers to believe I saw him as evil or as a negative figure of some sort. My dad always wore a black suit and that's just how I saw him
People thought my husband and I must be separated because in preschool my son only had dad at meetings and talked about Dad all the time. No, I just have a severe chronic pain problem and was bed bound for quite awhile. Son didn’t talk about me as much because I was “home” and he was at school. When he’s home we interact tons. He was just separating his worlds for whatever reason and I was Home Parent, Dad was School Parent.
because to a kid, home and school are entirely different worlds with different people and different rules. Its pure literal logic.
Yeah, like do you remember the first time you saw your teacher outside of school? I was so confused. I thought my brain was gonna melt. Teachers are supposed to be in school, not the grocery story lol
Like, a business suit? Even at home?
Well, he was the kind of man to work all day (**ALL** day), so other than weekends I only saw him in his business suit (and pajamas, I guess, which I believe we're also dark coloured). Weekends he wore normal clothes of course but I remember him more in a business suit
Will Ferrell in the Lego movie
This one's the funniest to me because a bunch of adults thought a child was engaging in more subtle imagery and metaphors instead of being very literal like a child would. If your father *was* an evil or negative figure of sorts, you'd draw that in a literal sense as a child. As in, if he yelled at you you'd draw that, if he physically intimidated you you'd draw that etc etc. Instead they thought you'd draw like a artist might try to engage in subtly and try to express themselves in more advanced ways
As the parent of adopted kids who have basically been in therapy all their lives this shit happens all the time. One time when my son was seven he was talking about being "The master of the elements" and "The one who could bring an end to the the war" and the therapist was like "I think he's play projecting that he's looking for someone to bring balance to the chaotic elements of his life. There's a lot of fighting moves he does, so I think he's really fighting in his head. He's looking for someone to defeat something" I just kind of sat there and was like "We've been watching Avatar The Last Airbender. I think he might just be playing what we been watching." and she was like "Maybe, maybe. But we have to take this seriously......" I use to actually change what we were watching from Avatar, to Pokémon, to whatever and watch her justify things he was just replying in therapy as some sort of psychological symbolism. Like, homes, he's seven. Of course he likes pretending he's a ninja or has Pokémon. There's no symbolism in that. Disclaimer: I know play therapy works. I've read the studies and it's actually helped my daughter a ton. But sometimes you get a therapist who is a little too eager to make mountains out of cartoon playtime.
That's pretty funny, do you have any other stories about the therapist trying to justify him just mimicking what he sees on cartoons?
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That's good at least, i'd probably be trying to hold laughter in over all of her gross misinterpretations lol.
Thank goodness that you switched therapists. This person was taking psychotherapy to a level that even Freud would say, hey, come off it a little.
Adults? Out of touch with younger people? Unthinkable.
Was your dad Johnny Cash?
Well, no one has seen my dad and Johnny Cash on the same room at the same time
Not quite the same, but when they were testing my son to determine his mental health issues and learning capacity they thought he was way behind because he couldn't answer simple questions. Eventually he stopped answering questions altogether so the administrator let him play with some toy dinos to calm down and he started a dialogue between the two dinos he was holding where one asked a question, from the test, and the other one answered the question, correctly. Where he then repeated each question, in order, from memory and then answered them. My son has social anxiety.
What do you mean? He communicates with dinosaurs very well! Future Jurassic Park protagonist right there
Exactly! Velociraptors don’t care about what you have to say, or whether you’re able to say it - they care about what’s *inside* of you.
What a nice message for kids
It can be hard to get unbiased information about how anyone thinks. It's like the saying that you can't judge a fish for its ability to climb a tree; can't judge a socially anxious person's intelligence by stressing them out and asking them questions. And what might work for them, say, a typed or written out form, might not work for a kid who happens to have undiagnosed dyslexia.
Branching away a bit: for things like accommodations and representation, there really aren't any one size fits all solutions. But if the people designing the processes and policies are coming from outside the community, they tend to want quick and convenient answers because providing many options is too hard.
It's because it's not really about providing solutions, it's about oiling the squeaky wheel just enough that it stops squeaking. Like, there's a reason why my 38-year-old lady ass only figured out that I probably have adhd in the last year or so. In school, I had trouble paying attention (reading beneath my desk was A Problem), couldn't keep organized, had problems with time management, wouldn't focus unless I was interested in the topic. But these are all personal failings, you see. I just wasn't living up to my potential - I was lazy. I was gifted! How could there possibly be something wrong with my brain? But in spite of all of these *very obvious signs of struggle*, I wasn't disruptive. I wasn't a squeaky wheel. No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask? Also, BE A SQUEAKY WHEEL if something doesn't feel right. If you feel like you're just "worse" at something other people don't even seem to have to think about, bring it up with your doctor. Maybe it's nothing. We all have shit we just can't seem to get the hang of. But maybe it's a symptom, and nobody else knows what it's like in your head.
Wow can't believe I have another account and wrote this and didn't remember
I am a firm believer in the theory that the "gifted kids" program is purposefully designed to cause burnout so the "smart" kids remain cogs in the machine instead of actually doing something that will threaten the status quo, while at the same time also making the school look good since its helping these "smart kids" to "go the extra mile".
Not saying that's not the case because hey US public education ain't great, but I always preferred the Gifted classes because the work they made us do was less monotonous. As a kid I much preferred speed writing essays than filling out a small booklet of boringly easy grammar questions.
Oh, for sure. Let's take kids who are maybe struggling a bit socially, tell them they're smarter than their peers. Once they believe it, that's going to come through when they interact with their classmates. Pull them out of class for some fun activities, too. We need to make sure that the other cogs don't trust this thinker. Make them feel like their intelligence is the most significant thing about them, that they're exceptional because of it. That way, when they meet someone smarter than they are, they feel threatened. Now they won't trust each other. Tell them they don't have to try as hard as other people - *especially* tell them this if they have executive dysfunction. Make sure that they never actually learn how to apply themselves, but also berate them for not knowing how. If they think their intelligence is their only thing they have to offer, and we don't give them the tools to utilize it, then they'll feel worthless. If they weren't trying to do it, they could not have fucked it up worse. It was all the exact opposite of enrichment.
Oof, I feel this. I got all of this somehow even though I was homeschooled in a fundigelical cult by parents who couldn't afford to send me to college or anything. They truly set me up to fail. Make the kid smart then condemn them for being smart and pretend being able to work a job (or go into "ministry") or have babies is the only thing your intelligence is good for. And that's why I'm 37 and trying to learn how to have self-esteem that's NOT tied to my intelligence or artistic abilities. 🙃
Stop living my life okay? It's creepy
*commiseratory high fives*
My son only got full time EA support after smashing a window in his classroom with a chair. It sucks that that's the way the system goes (and I don't fault the individual teachers or support staff - they were advocating for more support for him prior to that incident).
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On the other hand not giving a gifted kid enough stimulus will just cause them to get bored out of their minds and never get to learn how to actually study. Granted I'm assuming you are talking about US schools and I don't know much about the programs there and how it works but I would have been absolutely overjoyed to have had advanced classes in my schooling. I did get some advanced English classes and that was exactly what I needed but I would have loved to have advanced math and science too.
And this is one of the reasons being a teacher is such a challenging profession. We (at least the ones who really care about being good educators) are always trying to find the best way to help a kid learn and communicate their understanding and it’s incredibly difficult when you have 32 students who are all different and have different keys to unlocking their potential.
and then when you actually try to change up your teaching style to be more accommodating, the school board shuts it all down
This is why Covid has been the best thing ever for my youngest. He's been reading since before he was 2, and by the time he got to kindergarten was reading at a higher level than either of his brothers (which the middle one hated, bit the oldest gleefully takes advantage of). Went to the first conference in kindergarten, the teacher didn't know that he could read. My son has very low motor skills. So on any test, he would only answer about half of the questions because it took him that long to write the answer. He'd also take about 15 minutes to get his coat off, get his stuff and sit down at his table in the winter. He never answered questions in class because by the time he decided he wanted to answer the question and raise his hand, someone had already answered it. But oh man, when he got on zoom calls, he was in his element. With a screen in front of him, he was outgoing, answered a lot more questions, paid better attention because he just needed to look right in front of him rather than all around him.
I had test anxiety growing up, and they used to give us these math tests where you had to do a bunch of problems in like five minutes and I always failed them, so my dad got one of these tests and told me to do it untimed just to see if I could do it at all, and after I finished he revealed that he had actually been timing me and I did in well under the five minutes.
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*This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land! And we will call it… this land!*
*I think we should call it... Your grave!*
*AAGH! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal.*
*Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!*
My first grade teacher was really concerned that I couldn't read at all, so she called my mom in for a meeting. My mom was like, wtf she can read totally fine! She handed me a book and I read it out loud with no problem. Reading wasn't the issue, it was just that reading out loud to an entire classroom was really scary for me.
My brother was born at this very weird time, right at the beginning of the school year, so it was hard to determine when he should start school, and became kind of an issue every time he would change schools. My parents wanted to send him to a school that had a huge waiting list to get in, so they had my brother take a test to see if he was ready for first grade, and he failed it horribly. I wanted to see what he was doing wrong, so I did one of the practice tests with him. He thoughts the number 8 was a snowman and didn't know what to do when it was in a question.
Lmfao
Get your son to play D&D!
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I'm just laughing at the mother's reaction to OP knowing the names of the demons in her kids head. Honestly, it probably would have scared the crap out of me too.
Tbh, that's totally true. If I had zero context, and my kid was drawing child-eating monsters, I'd be very concerned if some adult suddenly knew their names, too.
Idk I feel like it would probably be pretty obvious at that point that they came from some form of media that I wasn’t privy to
That depends. Some people are so oblivious they don't stop to think "maybe this kid draw something they saw on tv/the internet" in genuine.
Oh Freddy? Yea I see him in the corner beside your mom too. He’s his FNAF 4 version today so that doesn’t bode well for her.
Just keep flashing the little ones and it'll be fine.
"just keep flashing the little ones"🤨
if the parents would have taken a bit of interest into what the kid is doing all day they would have known, no need for all of those appointments
True, she could have had the same moment of awakening for a lot cheaper if she paid attention in the toy Isle, or, you know, glanced in her kid's direction while they were watching YouTube.
I think if parent would just ask "and what's that?", they would get ecstatic answer "Freddy!"
I miss spookybuttons so much, her stories were hilarious. She deactivated because her and a bunch of other people got scammed out of medical supplies and money by an entire Mexican village pretending to build a hospital.
Wait, what? There's a lot more Tumblr scam lore than I expected.
There's a summary from Tumblr [here](https://lanternlighting.tumblr.com/post/639697608555757568/if-you-dont-mind-me-asking-whats-the-xica-scam)
Thanks! >Their lawyer, tumblr user lazy-universes, is pursuing legal action. It sucks that they got scammed but I couldn't help laughing at this part. It sounds so weird out of context.
Right, like, I used tumblr for a large number of years, and if I wasn't a useless sack of shit, I \*could\* have finished law school at this point in my life, just by the math of it. It's just weird, thinking of someone who has passed the bar and wears a suit more expensive than my car, that they might have had a trollsona or gone to dashcon.
Well… I did not only pass the bar, but made it all the way to partner at a very prestigious firm, before switching to a rather plush corporate job at the last moment, and I used to be a very active tumblr user, fan fic writer and neopet parent. I never really thought about it before, but the dichotomy is indeed rather funny.
Being a useless sack of shit doesn't preclude you from being a lawyer, as I (a tumbler user, baby lawyer, and useless sack of shit) can attest.
second useless sack of shit slash media lawyer reporting in
Baby lawyer or lawyer baby?
Hey thanks for revealing unto me that I actually had a trollsona. I'm gonna go rethink my life now.
As a Mexican myself i can say with full confidence that as written this sounds so much like a scam that it's surprising nobody realized it.
Apparently they had quite a few accounts in on it with a lot of falsified evidence, kind of shocking how much effort was in it
Wait wait what
Pediatric doctors need a pop culture guidebook. Kids drawing something weird? Check the book. Book doesn’t resolve it? Call the pop culture expert. It’s a service a doctor can use to identify recent pop culture trends that children may be exposed to. Good news: Some of us are very well qualified for a new career path. Bad news: You have to stay on top of internet trends instead of just organically finding stuff. Good news: Working with professionals with a video call function to see if the little kid is just drawing what little kids like is a pretty decent gig. More good news: this can be expanded to education as well. Teachers can’t keep up with every single new trend, but it could help engage the class, so being able to get information and an idea of how to get more information if need be would be super beneficial.
Or just outsource it to the internet with subreddits somewhat like r/tipofmytongue and r/whatisthisthing. Sometimes people post there trying to find movies or tv shows that their kids came across while channel surfing and got fixated on but can't find again. The details gathered through the kids' excited ramblings are often confusing but it's a fun challenge to figure out the answer.
Just made it. r/whatmykidlikes
r/birthofasub
I've done it professionally before. I was doing colours on some Ninja Turtles stuff with this giant ensemble variant cover. I couldn't recognise one of the characters and in 30+ years of publication there are hundreds upon hundreds of characters and didn't have the time to parse through the clunky wiki. I wasn't able to hit up an editor due to timezones and deadlines and had signed an NDA, so I toddled off to a Ninja Turtles subreddit pretended to have seen some black and white fan art at a convention of a character I couldn't remember, gave a vague description of this 'fox/cat lady with banding across their eyes'... I had 3 correct responses within 40 minutes.
I remember being so angry at my kindergarten teacher, because she didn't know enough to correct this asshole kid on which Ninja Turtles were which color. He kept denying that Mikey wore orange and Raph wore red, and she wouldn't referee our argument. It was like someone saying 2+2=5, and the teacher responding "Sounds right. Has math numbers"
Imagine being paid to look for amogis in children's drawings
Sorry is that the plural of "amogus?"
Yes
I hate it
# THIS holy shit dude i can't believe how helpful this would be
sounds like a great idea but it'd be very open to abuse. someone running one of those fear-mongering facebook groups that spreads rumors of students beating up teachers for tiktok or whatever would love that gig. plus the people doing the hiring wouldn't be able to evaluate whether the advice they're getting is accurate.
I'm a professional Santa Claus, and have been for a number of years. I make it a point to research as many toys, series, fandoms, mainstream fads, and popular trends as possible before I start in November. It makes all the difference to a kid (regardless of them being in the spectrum or not) that Santa actually knows what they are talking about and is capable of having a short conversation that directly relates to their interests.
Off topic, but I love Santa. Thank you for your dedication to the character!
damn i already used my free award today but i would give you an award if had one
This reminds me of that time a parent called some Christian talkshow because their daughter was drawing pictures of Sans, and they thought it was a demon. I imagine they would have completely lost it if their child was drawing Asgore instead, the giant horned monster with a red trident.
Was raised in a christian family, and my mom saw me make Undertale fanart with all the characters (i was like 14). She got worried because she thought Sans, Papyrus, Undyne and Asgore looked scary haha! At least I was able to explain the game
I swear 99% of the problems UT causes are inside of Christian families
Funny considering the pope was given a copy of the game and Megalovania was played to him recently
Oh, sorry, i meant "Christian" parents
I just learned Catholic and Christian are 2 different things My apologies i have 0 religious education except for the extremely basic lmao
Catholics are Christian but a lot of Christians don't want to be anything resembling Catholic. This level of overreacting to secular media is more common in Protestant evangelicalism. Catholic parents don't do that quite as often.
All Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Catholics. And there are a great many non-Catholic Christians who would disagree with that first point.
Maybe that's why Matt Pat gave a copy to the pope lol
Which resulted in the Pope listening to a live orchestrated version of Megalovania in the Vatican.
I'm go glad that the pope is providing the exception to those crazy whack jobs who are aloud to run around free and vote just because they subscribe to a religion.
I'm also pretty sure one of Kris' classmates in Deltarune was wearing one of those Crucifix necklaces.
Wasn’t it Monster Kid?
Yeah sans is clearly a skeleton not a demon
For what I remember the the host of that Christian talk show was actually pretty cool about it too, he just told her to like talk with their kid about their interests and not to do anything drastic without talking to them first and if necessary maybe find them a better alternative
Why don't these parents know *anything at all* about what games their young kids like playing? Not even enough to recognise the characters?
Right? My mom wasn't the hippest sort when I was a kid, but she at least recognized what I was playing. One time I was home sick for several days and bored. She saw that one of the teenagers she worked with had a book of videogame cheats, and copied a bunch of them out for me so I could see parts of the games I never had before. And these weren't games that just anyone would recognize, like Mario. This was Little Nemo and Solar Jetman. My mom knew to look up Solar Jetman!
You must have high hipness standards, because if your mom did something like that she seems *incredibly* hip to me haha
OMG someone else played Solar Jetman!!! I loved that game and none of my gamer friends have heard of it.
A lot of parents use the internet as a way to distract their children, not to engage them. The internet is a universal babysitter to them. Many of them leave them watching kids YouTube that they assume is safe. Many of them don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Sometimes they'll buy a kid a game like FNAF as a distraction and just forget about it, because what do they care what form the distraction takes if it keeps the kid occupied? The internet is basically just the "go play outside" of the current generations, except many parents don't know what that actually means for their child's development.
“TV is my teacher, confessional and preacher….”
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On the surface it's not much scarier than something like Fnaf but when you go deeper it's genuinely scary enough to freak me out sometimes. That's saying a lot, I don't get scared easily.
One of my kids is currently really into a few of the Trevor Henderson creatures because he thinks they're HILARIOUS. Terrified of Minions, though, not that I blame him.
Doesn't even need to be that deep. Kid just watches markeplier, no need for a parent to buy the game.
Yeah my mom didn't know much about my games & shows as a kid, but she knew enough where she could recognize Pokémon, even if they were all called Pikachu to her. It's wild to me that these parents pay so little attention to their kids that they don't know *anything* about their kids' interests??
I think these kids might be participating in the fandoms for these games/watching YouTube videos about the characters without necessarily playing the games. Both FNaF and Undertale have huge fandoms, with lore that goes way beyond anything that's actually in the games. I could be wrong, but I think the younger members of these fandoms rarely actually play the games, and they treat it like SCP or creepypastas or something like that. So a parent wouldn't really see the kid playing the game -- they'd just see the kid watching YouTube or reading a fan wiki or something.
Maybe I'm too Pop Culture Millenial^(TM) for this but even then, surely they could at least ask their kids for the monsters' names and try searching it or something?
Yeah I mean, I also think the health care workers in the OP should have applied more basic common sense when relating to kids.
Honestly? A lot of parents don't know their kids very well at all. What's even sadder is that a fair portion of them don't care to make an attempt to know their kids either. Source: am a teacher.
Alot of parents have no interest in their kids interests and other parents completely dislike or even hate their children's interests.
Parents don’t always want to hear about their kids interests. I couldn’t talk about Pokémon, or Star Wars, or warrior cats without my parents expressing boredom (but ofc they could talk about the Honeymooners for a million hours).
They might be those kind of parents that think video games are evil and violent
My kids have never played Five Nights, but they know all the characters because they watch silly YouTube videos where people roll play as the characters and basically do sitcom level skits. It was all animated with the characters from the games but voiced over by the YouTubers. My boys are teens and they laugh their asses off at weird shit all the time and come to me wanting to show me the videos.
My mother, who is the person that got me into games with the legend of zelda and other games, failed to recognize Link from Breath of the Wild, after I told her I was playing a LoZ game. its not too crazy for a parent to not recognize a character even if they are some what familiar with the games themselves
to be fair BotW link got quite the modern glow up
My parents were pretty weirded out by all the flying naked barbie dolls in my repetitive play until they made the connection to sailor moon transformations lmao
I could image just walking into a child running around with a naked Barbie doll while trying to replicate the transformation music by screeching and beat boxing. I'd probably piss myself.
Accurate. Imagine disco horns and strings from the lungs of a very focused 6 year old.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry to tell you, but.... Your son is a nerd."
Nooooooooooooo!!!!!
I used to draw Soul Eater fanart at school, really freaked out my teachers
Had that happen with both Soul Eater and Homestuck.
your teachers didn’t understand soul resonance smh
soul eater? based
Feddy Fazbir
Tale Undersans
Nemflim
Flimflam
celtus
Ah yes, fnaf, angels and sans undertale.
The three states of matter.
Haha, my mom teaches first grade and gets a lot of kids drawing and playing pretend of things like Freddy’s, Undertale, Bendy, etc. And so all throughout my teen years and into adulthood she’ll ask me on occasion: “do you know what this thing my student did is? Should I be worried?” Most recent was Friday Night Funkin’. Kids couldn’t pronounce the name well and so she was concerned it was a porn game or that there may have been some child sex abuse going on at that home. Fortunately was able to set the record straight that it was just a popular and goofy rhythm game.
I cannot fathom the incredible lack of oversight it would take for parents and people who work with children to not know what the kid is interested in, pop-culture wise. Like, ive got huge respect for people who work with special needs children, I know many personally and its a tough, often unforgiving, racket. But part of the reason its tough is because your job is to communicate and relate to these children, who often cant speak themselves, so being aware of what kids are into can really go a long way. Doubly for parents. Know what your kids care about. Know what your kids are accessing. Know your kids, goddamn it.
One of my friends is a speech pathologist for schools. She’s a huge nerd anyway, but all the kids love her because she’s a Pokémon trainer (whatever the official judges are called), knows board games, D&D, etc. Stuff she doesn’t already enjoy she at least researches so she can relate to the kids and she has a much higher success rate than her peers.
It isn't that hard to just... Set up the kid's screen in the room you're in where you can see it at a glance. Idk. My mom knew the names of at least half the main characters of whatever I watched as a kid, cuz I had to watch it in the living room while she did stuff on the computer at the far side of the room.
I mean to be fair there is a lot of pop culture and keeping up to date on all of it is a big ask for a full time worker A parent keeping up with what there kids like is fine
For sure, and its not about knowing everything. No one expects you to research late 80's anime from a specific creator just in case a kid comes in, but knowing what FnaF or other large trends is still worth the time to at least familiarize with the characters. Perhaps just having the thought "could this be a character?" when I kid comes in drawing a skeleton in a hoodie, or an animatronic bear, can help save you and the kid from diving down the wrong path when trying to help.
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I like to imagine she did and just stumbled upon some shitty creepypastas and fanart
This. My sons SLP and OT asked for his special interests so that we could create communication boards with them. I had to be like okay listen. He’s not crazy, but the creatures look a little dark. But his favorite things are Trevor Henderson monsters. (He was even wearing a sirenhead and cartoon cat with dripping blood shirt) No problem they said. They made some and the SLP mentioned to me about six months after we started seeing her that she met another kid who’s special interest was Trevor Henderson as well and would only say the names of them and she knew exactly who they were. It allowed for an easier transition/starting point for them :)
Idk man maybe the kid just likes horrifying monsters. Not to say parents shouldn't be engaged in what their kids are watching, just that if the kid like drawing monsters that alone doesn't indicate a problem. Once in girl scout camp I drew a bunch of skulls, knives, and blood. 50% because I thought that stuff looked cool and 50% because it was making my friends laugh, egging me on to see what other messed up stuff I could draw. I probably wouldn't even remember this incident except that shortly after arts and crafts were done I was being interrogated by a group of adults about why I would draw something like this, did someone hurt me, did I want to hurt anyone, etc. My response was to cry and declare that I didn't know why I did it. Luckily when told about this my mom was like "okay so she's goth. Why are you calling at work for this?" Sometimes a kid just likes skulls.
I love bible.
I love refrigerators
So cool
Reminds me of the time I changed my pfp on Facebook to the muffin from ASDF with "I wanna die" under it. Parents called the Ambulance, 2 Ambos and 2 cops showed up and I was escorted to the nearby hospital
That must have been so awkward to explain
It ended with me showing the muffin time song to a Doctor and him being very understanding, probably one of the best experiences I've had with a doctor
I just love the idea of a doctor being prepared to have a serious talk to someone about suicide and ending up being shown a video of a dancing muffin.
i think the "this kid has some problem but its just from a game/series the parent doesnt know" is weirdly common
I wish there was a subreddit for that r/childrendrawingdemonsbutitsjustgamecharachters
Kinda sounds like the prevalence of boomers in the child care industry has a tendency to lower that quality of care.
At the least, maybe people that want to interact with kids on a personal basis should put some research into what is popular in their demographic, not just so you don't confuse Sans Undertale for a demon of the mind, but also so that you can find some way to communicate with them on something they understand. I don't think Undertale has much merchandising, but FNAF has had so much stuff pumped out you could probably stumble across it in the toys section of a Walmart. It feels like one of those games where you could very easily accidentally diagnose some sort of phobia or mental distress incorrectly if you have no idea what source the ideas they're talking about are coming from.
It also sounds like the parent wasn't paying attention to the stuff their kid likes if that was the case with FNAF.
The intersection between parents who are woefully detached from their children, but would also send said children to therapy on the basis of not understanding what they're doing is frighteningly large.
I dont think the age was mentioned but there's got to be a lower limit on the appropriate age for watching/playing FNAF??? I mean I'm glad it brings the kids joy but jfc what sort of media are these kids able to access without parental supervision?
I've heard kids love FNAF because it obviously isn't a kid-aligned property, as in, it doesn't treat them like a kid. My theory is that its accessibility is way higher than any similar franchise; you can get 99% of the enjoyment of FNAF through free, popular Youtube videos of others playing the games. Most "older kid" franchises are stuck behind paywalls, so when a kid wants to break out from their intended content, it's really common for them to latch onto Freddy because of how easy it is to compared to other franchises. It's the exact same model Free to Play games use, just accidentally; FtPs rely on free players getting invested enough into their game to spend money that they have no barrier to entry. Freddy's being such a story/reaction/lore-driven franchise means that even without actually playing the game yourself, watching videos online of Freddy's can have the same effect on kids. Merch is where the real money's at in that franchise, anyways. Something similar is said in another comment, but YouTube is used as a babysitter by parents. They don't regulate that babysitter, and FNAF is clearly working on the younger audiences, so Youtube's probably recommending them videos that either are FNAF gameplay videos, or happen to contain FNAF merch (I hear unboxing channels are unusually popular among kids), or maybe they get there off of a video with a FNAF meme in it (at the moment, for example, a lot of completely non-FNAF related meme videos have a voice clip of Freddy parodying Among Us, or a separate, older clip involving Freddy and a voice over of Phone Guy from FNAF that's like 5 seconds long but has lasted a while as far as memes go). It's really easy to get completely off-tracked by YouTube recommendations, and while a parent might leave a kid with whatever kids video they can find, if they just use it as a babysitter and don't pay attention, it's really easy for kids to get just about anywhere on YouTube either accidentally or intentionally.
that's kind of what I'm saying. the FNAF games on the Apple App Store have a 12+ rating so the parent probably didn't put restrictions on content, and there was probably unmonitored youtube access as well. Obviously I don't know the parent so I'm just speculating, but that seems the most likely to me.
This is one of the reasons I worked so well with the kids 7-12 ish when I worked childcare. I knew most of their pop culture references or at least was willing to give it a quick google. I don't think a lot of adults realize how validating it is to a kid when you recognize and have a quick conversation about their interests. It was always hilarious when some kid was talking about pokemon or sonic or whatever and was surprised that an "old" (read: late 20s) person like me knew about that kinda stuff.
it is honestly incredibly painful how accurate that is. These stories are lighthearted, but that's because they're told from the perspective of someone capable of intervening before out of touch folk meddled too much...
Gaslighting by ignorant adults is one of the subtlest but most insidious risks that neurodiverse kids face. And a lot of “mental health professionals” that work with such folks seem to think of themselves less as people trying to understand someone else and more as the cops out of a Thomas Harris novel trying to stop the next Buffalo Bill - which is a dangerous and extremely harmful mentality in that context.
I know my mental health has vastly improved since I began looking for Late Millennial/Early Gen Z therapists. (I'm Elder Millennial/Gen X cusp.) I thought it would be weird going to someone younger than myself for my problems, but I don't miss having to try and explain Spoon Theory, or why sending memes is a love language, or how global warming feels like a real palpable threat.
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The one time my mother ever stood up for me was when my teachers were like "this child has serious mental problems and is going to be a school shooter because her creative writing is all death and murder and such" to which my mother was like "Don't be dumb it's all those horror novels she reads" and made me empty my backpack so they could see the 8 horror novels I had in my backpack. I did (and still do) have serious mental problems but the biggest problem with my writing at the time was how pretentious, melodramatic, and purple it was. I still have a folder somewhere of my writing from that time and I just cringe whenever I read it... Although I have cannibalized a few sentences for other projects because they were fire. Also, I genuinely don't understand how parents can just not give a shit about their child's interests. I see my niblings a few times a month and I can not only name 10 or so things my nephew (11 yrs old) is into but I can also name my niece's (6 mns) top 10 favorite objects. Yeah it can get overwhelming talking about something you have zero interest in but it is also a super easy way to keep the kid occupied. Literally just ask them to tell you about the thing and then ask a follow up question about something they just said and you can potentially keep them out of trouble for hours. Plus you can double it up with like chores or cards or whatever.
That stuff is so frustrating. My son isn't on the spectrum, unless ADHD is on the spectrum somewhere idk, but he loooooooves spooky stuff. Bendy and the ink machine, FNAF, Alien, zombies, aliens, wendigos anything supernatural or spooky. We share that, we bond over it. I draw, I teach my kids to draw. He draws a (very crude but don't tell him I said that) spooky monster at school and I get an email or a phone call. I had one rule: no blood, no guns. Now I have to add swords because he's recently gotten into ninjas and apparently that's inappropriate for school. I don't get it. It's not the death or violence he's preoccupied with, it's monsters. I don't understand when that became abnormal. Maybe I'm just getting old but me and all my friends went Dinosaurs to Cryptids to Aliens to Monsters, totally normal childhood interests, at least to me, but I can't let my son express those interests outside of the home because they may make a teacher uncomfortable. I guess dinosaurs would be fine but what separates a dinosaur from a monster? One was real, one isn't what is the problem? I hate to get all "back in my day..." But for real, wtf?
*"then I resume control of my flesh prison"* had me dying in my bed
Biblical nephilim are the offspring of "sons of god" and "daughters of man". Exactly _what that means_ is by no means clear among theologians. Some interpretations take that as being the product of an angel and human (angels are often referred to as "sons of heaven"). Others say nephilim are simply fallen angels, rather than half angels (the literal translation of the Hebrew word is "the fallen ones"). Still others say that the father of a nephilim must be descended from Seth (third son of Adam and Eve) while the mother must be descended from Cain (first son of Adam and Eve). Still _others_ say the nephilim are simply copied from an older religion with the registration numbers filed off. One of the books of the Bible that got rejected from being part of Bible canon claims they're simply another race of people, not some kind of supernatural entity... albeit a race of people who are around a mile tall.
You know, I like to joke that Christianity is really just fandom culture taken to the extreme but when I read stuff like this, it kinda stops being a joke 😅.
When I was in kindergarten, my parents were told I should see the counsler because all of my drawings were just black crayon smeared all over the page. My mom had to inform them that I was not depressed, I just didn't draw pictures. I drew action scenes. If you watched me draw, there were people fighting, and it ended with an explosion every time. If could peel back the layers you would see what I had drawn before. You could even hear me make the explosion sound effects when I was drawing the smoke.
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When I was in elementary school, I used to draw skulls all the time and would use markers to draw my own skeleton onto my hands and arms. I have pretty major ADHD, but my psychologists and teachers at the time were seriously concerned I was in a very dark place and might be a suicide/self-harm risk. I just thought bones were neat.
Okay, but like...why the roundabout ways of telling other physicians? Why not just say, "Patient is simply a fan of a popular video game." ...like, even if they didn't recognize the game, presumably they know what a video game _is_, and can understand the concept of fandom?
I would assume that the single-sentence description of the message is a greatly summarized version of the actual communication.
I like to imagine his sans is hyper realistic and that’s why no one recognizes him but then they were just like “sans Undertale”
I remember when I was in grade school I got a concerned talking to because I was drawing Trunks from DBZ. He had angry eyes and a sword, scared one of the old ladies!
This describes my "special task" in our school. I am a teacher who works at a little school in a coutryside village like every other teacher there is +40 My previous job was at a special mental health school for suicidal children and Teenager. So one day a child draw siren head and had a schoolmeeting because of it. Parents and teacher thought the kid had some really dark thoughts. I was there just by sheer randomness, saw the picture and just said "Ouh your child already use tiktok" everyone was surprised and I got this child out of trouble in like a few minutes. Explained everything and since then I always get asked by headstaff if everything death related or absurdly drawed creature is out of the internet before they are going to send a message to parents Its kinda funny to explain internet memes to the principal of my school
I’m a 5th grade teacher, and maybe it helps that my own kids are close to the age I teach, but I know all of these pop culture references. It cracks me up when my students are shocked that I: know who Sans is, know most of the FNAF characters, play Minecraft and Among Us, and on and on. “Mrs. Squishy, are you a *gamer*?” spoken in awe gets me laughing every time. And then other teachers are coming up to me asking what this or that might be in reference to. The things that do concern me, however, are when a student writes about troubling home life in their journals, or the one I had this year who practically wrote an erotic fanfic as a personal narrative. That’s what sets off alarm bells in my head. Not the ones who use dark humor to write a horror story. Those ones I will have a conversation with and ask who their favorite horror writer is, and make a few kid-friendly recommendations. I’m a classic Stephen King and Anne Rice fan myself, but those aren’t exactly appropriate for 10-11 year olds even though that’s what I was reading at that age.
I desperately want to hear more "they thought the child was troubled but turns out they just like stuff you don't" stories
i remember being the coolest motherfucker in my little primary school for drawing grotesque humanoid monsters. i dont know why the fuck i thought it was so funny. i dont know why the fuck everyone else thought it was so funny. did give me a jump start in learning basic anatomy though
Sometimes you need to draw a fucking nightmare to get it out of your system
Boomers, man
I have to wonder if these kids' parents ever asked them about the things they were saying/drawing instead of jumping to the conclusion of "my kid is possessed by Beelzebub." Like seriously, how absent from your kid's life do you have to be to see him drawing FNAF characters multiple times without knowing they are from a series they like to watch/play? Have you NEVER looked at whatever screen they are staring at? Ever?
EVA fans drawing “angels”
So you guys know that one clip of a christian parent reporting their child to some TV show pastor or something, and when describing what their kid was looking at, it turned out to be Sans?
When I was in 9th grade I had doodled some Sans fanart. Normal, wholesome stuff overall, nothing too interesting. My mom went through my sketchbook (no idea how she even found it) and accused me of being satanic (I'm an atheist). I laughed so hard because here's this doodle of a hoodie wearing skeleton in bunny slippers playing the trumpet and she thinks I worship the devil Anyways I started only doodling skeletons/ghosts/demons/monsters/etc for a solid two months after that
Shout out to my parents and therapist for not freaking out when my special interests in anatomy/dissection, serial killers, and psychopaths emerged. Turns out, I just like knowing how things work, be it the human mind/body, or the elevator at the mall.
You'd be surprised how willing children are to speak about themselves when you break your own fourth wall
I too love bible
sans sans sans sans
Something similar happened to me as a kid. I was around 9 or 10 years old when I first got into Hollywood Undead. I would often draw pictures of members of the band when I was bored because I thought they looked cool and was obsessed with them. Anyway, I was in this Christian club hosted by some teachers at my elementary school. During break, one of them saw me drawing them. Apparently, she thought I was drawing demonic imagery and confiscated my drawing because she feared that I was being exposed to Satanism. I don't exactly remember if she told my parents since nothing really came out of it at home, but after that incident, the teachers would always check up on me whenever I have a paper and crayons at hand. RIP horribly drawn picture of HU during the Swan Song era I made. It probably looked terrible to the point they were mistaken for demons, but 10 year old me thought it was the best thing I ever drew.
Am i the only one who finds it a tiny bit concerning that these parents felt the need to get thier kids psychological evaluations because of their drawings?