Japan. School children with umbrellas visiting a temple. 1977.
Japan. School children with umbrellas visiting a temple. 1977.
wizard children need their parents signed permission to go to perfectly safe village full of candy shops next to the school but not to enter a tournament in which you can most definitely die
I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world’s birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: ‘What did you expect the Moon to be, square?’ Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that we don’t know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile?
Your child pours all the toothpaste into the sink. Your kid cuts their own hair. Your baby gets into your lipstick and decides to put it on the dog. Your child cries because their crush doesn’t like them. That’s kids will be kids.
Your child calls other children homophobic, racist, or misogynistic slurs. Your child steals or tells other children that they’re not allowed to play in certain areas. Your kid punches their crush when that child doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. That is NOT “kids will be kids” and you as the parent or teacher need to put a stop to it.
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆
•support dark skinned natives
•support light skinned natives
•support white passing natives
•support natives whose first languages are their tribal languages
•support natives who cannot speak their tribal language
•support native children who have to teach themselves about their tribal culture
•support natives living on reservations
•support native kids who get asked if their parents live on a reservation
•support native kids who are taught to be embarrassed and ashamed of their heritage
•support métis people who might not know their heritage
•support métis people who aren’t native passing
•support native people who stick to traditional hair and dress styles
•support natives who practice their tribal religion
•support natives who follow mainstream fashion
•support natives who are told they’re “too Indian”
•support natives who are told they’re “not Indian enough”
•but above all, listen to what we have to say about our cultures, our histories, our future, our issues and our people.
this is the first post i have EVER seen about native americans, i really appreciate this
*support Afro-Natives who are told they’re “lying” about their heritage and experience colorism they don’t fit the “look”
Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.
if you want to avoid the world’s aggressive gendering of your infant, consider skipping the pink dresses or blue coveralls in favor of dressing your baby solely in tiny halloween costumes
strangers on the sidewalk: aww, is it a boy or a girl?
you: uh…it’s pretty clearly a DINOSAUR
file under: things we will most certainly do with our children
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
what if the reason nobody can tell fred and george apart is because they really are interchangeable
not in a ~it doesn’t matter~ way but like. molly and arthur used to worry that fred and george might turn out to be squibs because they weren’t doing any accidental magic as children, but they were, THEY TOTALLY WERE, it just wasn’t anything flashy, instead they were just like idly switching bodies all the time
and like sometimes it doesn’t make much of a difference, whatever, wake up in the opposite bed you went to sleep in, but it gets like dangerous and weird if you’re on a broom or in the pond or letting your mum teach you to cook or trying to be mad stealth, so for a long long time everybody presumes they’re clumsy maybe-squibs and that they’re doing their twin lying thing when they try to explain what’s going on, so they learn to handle the issue their ownselves
they just. don’t go anywhere without the other. they start each day deciding which body is going to be which (because at this point they really don’t know which body is technically fred and which is technically george), and they learn to reorient FAST when they switch, and what things set them off, and eventually they learn how to act like nothing’s up even when one of them’s in the air and one’s on the ground or whatever, and then they burn past that til they can finish each other’s sentences — til they can switch midsentence — til they can play beater together — til they can switch in a split second in the middle of a game — til there’s room for other kinds of accidental magic to start showing up
at hogwarts they keep each other awake in history of magic by switching back and forth. in potions they take turns brewing and keeping lookout for the slytherins. in transfiguration and charms they keep their grades up because one of them will always get a spell right on the first try so they switch and make it look like both of them do and then they practice on their own later in private. it keeps the mystery alive.
at first they thought lee was just a lucky guesser but no, lee can always tell one twin from another twin — it’s not exactly telling fred from george, because while they are definitely two distinct personalities neither one of them feels like fred all the time or george all the time — but lee knows who he argued with yesterday or who he lent his notes to or who’s best to ask for help in astronomy and who’s best at runes.
the weasleys are pretty bad at it for the longest time, but then bill comes home from his first year cursebreaking and he can tell, and over a holiday he teaches his trick to charlie so charlie can tell. alicia and katie and angelina can tell. the twins honestly don’t know if oliver can tell or not; so long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to on the quidditch pitch he doesn’t really care about much else. harry can tell. luna can tell. tonks can tell.
the problem is there’s no way for this to end happily
YES THERE IS
THERE IS INDEED A WAY FOR THIS TO END HAPPILY LISTEN UP
so after fred dies, george hates being trapped in one body, feels claustrophobic, misses fred so much he thinks it might drive him insane
but then one day
george blinks and he’s somewhere he wasn’t a second ago, he’s in a place full of white light and he can’t orient himself, can’t ground himself, feels dizzy and sick and overwhelmed but it only lasts for about thirty seconds.
then he’s back in his own body.
and he looks down at his chest, his legs, his arms, there’s an ear missing so it’s definitely still his living body, but there’s something written on his arm, scrawled in messy quill ink.
“i love you. i miss you.”
george flips out, washes off the ink and immediately writes a message in reply— “how’s death going?”
he walks around with that message written on his arm for weeks, always keeping a quill pen somewhere nearby, waiting, waiting, before it finally happens again. the switch. george is alive, so he can’t handle being in the afterlife, he feels dizzy and sick and it’s the worst feeling in the world, but it doesn’t last long, and when he gets back to his living body, there’s a long message from fred waiting on his right thigh, the ink still drying.
this goes on for years, never as often as either twin would like, but it’s enough. fred helps george figure out how to propose to angelina, fred helps plan the wedding. sometimes it’s fred in george’s body when angelina kisses her husband. sometimes she suspects, but she doesn’t mind in the slightest.
it gets easier as george gets older. the times when he switches into fred’s afterlife don’t hurt as much. he almost feels comfortable there, almost feels oriented. he knows he’s getting closer to dying.
then when george is past ninety, lying on his deathbed, he writes a careful message on his palm. “i’m coming soon. where are you?”
they switch, it lasts for almost five minutes this time, and when george gets back into his own body, he sees the instructions fred wrote over his heart.
“you’ll wake up in king’s cross station. take the second train and get off at the third stop. i’ll be waiting.”
THIS IS THE BEST GODDAMN HARRY POTTER HEADCANON I HAVE EVER READ I AM C R Y I N G
Oh my god. I don’t know what to do with all these feels
This ruined me :(
Nostalgia
A subtle scent draws you in,
Into a wormhole; a leap through time.
The wholeness of a passed rain on an Autumn day.
Sweet perfume hanging in the air around you and your nose.
Warm feelings flood through every nerve in your hand..
Between the gaps of your fingers and the inside of your palm.
A cool draft across the back of your neck sends goosebumps down your back.
Children chatter and shout as they pass a ball back and forth.
Millions of blades of grass dance from side to side in harmony, to some unsung tune.
The ringing of the telephone at your desk draws you back to reality.