Parents Who Tell Their Kids To Stop Showing Off

I'm not a fan of parents who tell their kids to stop showing off. Without good reason at least. Like an oncoming car or approaching cliff edge which their child is unaware of while performing a pole dancing routine they copied off a drag queen on YouTube. 

Parents who forbid their children from expressing themselves fully because they fear other parents will think they've been teaching their kids about the virtues of boastfulness I feel kill part of the magic in being a child. Each time they choose to blunt their child's desire to express, they pull them one step closer to the drab, grey predictable world they exist in and hate, precisely because it's drab, grey and predictable. 

If it's possible for you to do so, then encourage the freedom in expressing creative impulses throughout your child's life. If your child happens to sing like a strangled cat, then provide guidance and assistance, or point them to someone who can. That way you also get them out of the house for a couple of hours each week at singing lessons, which lowers the chances of you strangling them yourself!

A parent who chastsises their child for not already being good at something they have a passion for I doubt has any appreciation of the amount of time and effort needed to excel at anything. If they did then they wouldn't do something so ignorantly cruel.

To any kids happening to stumble upon this while browsing through your mum or dad's phone - ignore them. Carry on expressing yourself even if they order you to stop. Or ask them why they think you ought to. If they drop some Grade A  codswallop like, "Because I said so!", then I'm sorry, but your parents are assholes.

Showing off your talents, showing the world what you're capable of, isn't a crime because it may cause others to feel inadequate about what they can't do. It's they who needs to grow up. Or should that be, grow down? Obviously, don't be a knobhead yourself and refuse to share the secrets of what you're doing if someone intrigued happens to ask. You have a duty to share the good things you find out in life.

I daydreamed once about creating my own juvenile prison for youths who were super talented, but their refusal to acknowledge or nurture and develop their strengths I deemed as being criminal. Youths were sentenced to a spell inside my jail, where tutors and expert practitioners would find ways to allow them to exploit their squandered talents to the utmost. An organically programmed pathway which grew the potentials of these obviously brilliant youths, would constitute their punishment.

But it's the adults who need to rediscover the joys of knowing and assuming nothing again. The joy of being unafraid to approach life naively. Something they may now regret having discarded because they listened to society's insistence that "they've grown beyond that childish phase now. It no longer serves your purpose". Erect a firm middle finger to any person or society which tells you this, then go retrace your steps to reclaim what has been lost before it's too late.

A person should be the sum of all they've ever experienced, rolled into one. Nothing should ever be thrown away.

Greta Thunberg - Perhaps it will befall the person with autism to do what is necessary to save us all

It strikes me as significant the fact that today's youth climate change strike taking place in over 100 countries was conceived and driven forward to this point by a person with autism. It's significant that it took a person with a so-called disability to display the necessary level of single-mindedness to act for the benefit of all, which I'm hoping serves to empower others to have the courage to act upon their own deep convictions despite perhaps feeling they are the only ones willing to do so.

Over the past 15 months that I've been working with adults with severe autism, many of their traits I've come to see as evolutionary strengths I've wanted to instill in myself - one of which being the importance of always remaining faithful to what really matters most - ignoring the distraction of the chitter-chatter and inconsequential small talk of others and pursuing that which leads to a feeling of true contentedness.

Every single person with autism has been uniquely configured, and so it's almost impossible to make any generalisations about what makes them tick, but from the 8 residents I've been fortunate to work with, every single one simply has no interest in comparing themselves to others. Every single one of them has no issue expressing how they feel at any moment in time regardless of how it may appear to onlookers. And in the increasingly ambiguous and confusing reality we inexorably create for ourselves, it's been massively stabilising to find myself each day in an environment surrounded by people whose actions and intentions I can believe 100% - because when you live in a sea of uncertainties that tosses you around mercilessly, you need an anchor to help keep you steadfast throughout it all.