MysterionMuffles

Is probably the first movie to disturb me psychologically. Never mind the molestation Nina Seyers receives from her pervy, yet otherwise brilliant director, the movie is a great introspection on narciccism. She sees herself in others but not in a way that respects the oneness amongst, but in a way that she breeds nothing but envy for everyone else who she thinks deserves more than her. Also her sheer determination to be the best ballerina is just sickening to the point that makes you wonder where the line is drawn between passion and obsession. I highly recommend you watch this movie! For a movie based on ballet, it's dark and disturbing. Definitely not a movie you'd share with little young girls--or boys for that matter--who love all things ballet. This ain't your Barbie Ballet!!

Yeah that quote alone is so powerful! Emma Watson with an American accent is also pretty awesome. Perks is actually the first case I've experienced where the movie is better than the book, and that's tenfold! The fact that the book is so bland, yet translated into script form by the same writer is astonishing. He was able to flesh out the characters so much better in the film and give them much more personality.

How about you Darknova? Have you begun to crack out of your shell as well?

Hey man I read your story and it resonated with me. Our pasts are completely different of course, but I could relate on the whole fear of not wanting people to know you have a need for their company. Which is in no way a bad thing if it's positive people you seek. I used to be so rejective of people who called me too often than I could handle. I feel like I'm the most popular antisocial person I know when people call me everyday to hang out when most days I preferred to spend alone. Not outbid spite, just genuine need for internal solace here and there. But of course the line got blurred when I took my personal space...so personally, and so for a long time I would unreasonably put people off until I realized how friendly and inviting I had acted when I was in their company. Possibly to the point that they'd think it was a good idea to contact me everyday. Some were the right people to do so, others weren't. I did go through a phase last year and the year before that where I pursued self knowledge to the point that I saw the disingenuous nature in some of my so called friends. Long story short, I weeded out the people who didn't help me feel good when I expressed my true self, and now I find how much of an honour it is to be not only be needed, but also have my needs met. Which is very infrequent, I still keep to my self a lot, but on occasion I'll spend an entire day with a trusted friend. Whoooo that was long winded, I know I got off topic but your post just made me reevaluate that aspect in my life.

so does this mean this is one of those times that two negatives can make a positive? I make it abundantly clear of my derision towards his actions without taking in account the reasoning behind his own behaviour without giving him the chance to evaluate himself through questions designed to make him question his own emotional scar tissue and the residue left from his own childhood?

I know you're just trying to test my boundaries now by trying to confuse me all the same. You claim NOT to be a victim, and yet you're using my own beliefs against me to make me think that I SHOULD still view you as such. The contradictories your presenting are unverbalizable that I had to make up a word to make up for the mental fart I'm getting from all this. If you truly weren't a victim, you wouldn't be getting this defensive. I mean it this time, I really don't feel like engaging in this with you. Trust me, I've had my share of endless troll battles from video game forums. Video game forums for shittake sakes!!! Those are THE breeding grounds for trolls! I can tell when a block of text is meant to provoke some kind of reaction from me, so I'm not gonna give you that satisfaction.

Oh and boohoo! No manners from you to me? As if you're someone whose acceptance I seek. It's not like you were speaking to me in a mannerly way to begin with and that's fine. I don't know if what I said touched some emotional scar tissue of yours, but rest assured I think it's best that we let bygones be bygones and choose not to interact with each other from now on. I can already feel ugly interactions between us welling up, and I already know how irrationality reactive I will be considering how much our conflict is escalating over nothing.

So you DO admit to some level of victimhood of abuse after all? Meanwhile you flooded my thread with your justifications for children deserving a little smack--because you know it's NOT assault--thus causing a giant derailment from my intended topic at hand. Now I'm not saying you're not allowed your opinion, but I just want to put it out there that after you posted in my thread, I felt like it has gone off topic and because of that, may not receive the advice I'm looking for on my particular problem.

LMFAO what a bitch! I'm not laughing because I'm insensitive, I just find it funny as to how petty of a person could be for doing something like that. On his FB page...are you kidding me?!

Oh, I remember so fondly, lol, pushing my parents to the point of spanking me to see how far I could get them to go before they put there foot down. They' try to reason with me, but I wasn't interested in reason. I just wanted to test boundaries. I don't remember every thinking a spanking was abusive when given to me. I remember thinking, "shit", I guess this is where the line is drawn in my disobedience. That's only my perspective. My sister and I would giggle, and sneak out of our rooms and crawl down the hallway to peek at the late night television my parents were trying to watch in peace, and as husband and wife, and they'd keep telling us to get back to bed. We'd retreat and then like little buttheads we would giggle and keep scootching down the hall. Shit, man, we knew we were testing them, and we knew what was coming. I often think my mother was right, in reflection. She'd finally end up saying "It looks like you need your nightly spanking before you can fall asleep" Why we didn't listen is probably becaue we were very curious on testing boundaries. I've tested boundaries my whole life. That's me. I've never feared my parents. I mean we'd keep doing the same stuff and trying to test, test, test, and we were stubborn, and in no way interested in a lecture about why we should do this or that. We thought that boring. We just wanted to find the edges of what we could get away with. I've talked to so many people that remember the same thing. And in the common family it seems that most people remember that when they were kids they also weren't looking for lectures, or truths. They were looking for boundaries to work. And as I, most of them don't remember there parents in fear, although when they tested the boundary to the point of finding it, they'd run like hell from the coming spanking, lol. But THEN proceed to fight the next small battle of will. Kids have will too, y'know... congratulations, you're a closeted masochist

The difference is staggeringly clear. Spanking no matter the extremity IS the cause of physical pain to alter the mental physiology of the child--and definitely not for their benefit. If a kid is slapped to be taught not to hurt theirselves by touching hot stoves and running into traffic, that means I can tell a woman to make sure she doesn't get raped by suggesting she wear a belt for a skirt and a bandana for a bra, and then take a stroll down dangerous parts of a city at night. Dentistry is intended to teach dental health meanwhile the severity of pain received by the patient solely depends on how severe their dental condition is. Unfortunately for now with our level of dental technology, it may cause some irritation if not pain to have ones teeth cleaned. So we can make do with that. But once again, unless a kid is taught how to take proper care of their teeth, their gums wouldn't be sensitive enough to really feel pain when getting them scaled by a dentist. as for misbehaving children, obviously there IS non painful alternative that some people are too narrow minded to acknowledge. It's called reasoning and education. Slapping a kid for running into traffic just teaches them that pain will be anywhere they go whether they make good decisions or not. It is actually better to explain why they shouldn't do something as opposed to just hitting them for doing it. Otherwise they grow up fearful of decision making because they all lead to something painful.

That elephant story kind of wine something in me. Maybe it's true that we are all born violent, but perhaps it's the caretakers job to reason that aggression out... All until of course future generations naturally evolve to be less aggressive as the last. Not more so as some cultures tend to create. But yeah I would love to know more about examples taken from animals and how role model dynamics between them parallel that of the dynamics of humans.

Wow those were some really interesting articles. That mothers justification for smacking kept me feeling horribly uneasy while reading. I wish I read that first and then the daughter's pov. Violence out of love...what is this demonry?! I felt bad near th end of the daughters article because she started out as sounding very rational but slowly declined into a state of cowardly retreat. She can love her mother all she wants but should she in no way defend her. It was as if her mother started hovering over her shoulder as she wrote it...

Wow what a no brainer that went past me. Of course she throws food around when she's done eating, she's preverbal so she has no other way to communicate that. And it's not like all the time will she throw toys or bowls away, more and more lately she's been learning to let things down gently. To xelent, thanks for your reply. I have evaluated what I said and I've come to realize that my reactivity to my family's insensitivity is brought upon direct contact with their aggression when I was young. The fact that when I would lash out at them before I would be shamed for my behaviour. Sometimes I still do. Couple that with my deep study of a more peaceful way, I just feel like I'd be committing hypocrisy by being aggressive when it comes to telling my family to treat my niece more kindly. I really feel for this child... Her parents are decent individuals in a relationship that could use some work. They are a subpar couple but as parents they have th capacity to be warm, loving and engaging with my niece. It's just a horrible shame that her father can sometimes nearly proudly tell me about hitting her for something as minuscule as tossing a bowl over a high chair, claiming she did it on purpose. When he told me this I joked that she was only five slaps away from becoming a porn star, three if you just want her to be a stripper, or one more if you just want her to be a C grade student when she grows up. Then I went on to tell him how children's IQs drop the more they get hit and all this other new knowledge I wanted to share, however condescendingly. I can clearly see the fallacy of my approach as it lacked a lot of tact. He said "if that's the case, why am I so smart?" Implying that he got abused as a child himself but he turned out okay...which I can honestly say as objectively as I can, that no he did not. I'll refuse to give into my temptation to judge him because I remember how excited he was about all the things he learned about child care when she was only four months old, looong before I ever thought of taking care of my self. And when he plays with her, the amount of laughter he's able to provide for her ... it is truly heartbreaking for me to see him abandon the father he could be. He even posted a video on Facebook of a baby in Malaysia getting beaten up by their mother with a pillow a handful of slaps. His title heading was "can this baby get justice?" Giving me the impression that he has the capacity for empathy for little children and I reminded him of this, yet he tried to justify that when he had slapped my niece's hand on a few occasions, it's just a tiny slap. Like WTF?! I am at a loss of my bearings here...I guess my new updated question to this thread is how do I approach the father about this? Is it even more condescending to bring it up randomly? I think so. But say he mentions it again... Does he have the right to receive empathy from me and simply ask him how he truly feels about the abuse of his child and of his own childhood? I feel like I get nowhere just giving reasons as to why he shouldn't abuse her like that... Instead I feel like I need to be on a more empathetic level as opposed to educative.

Hey thank you very much, especially for that second paragraph. I'm not usually a patient person, but it has been rewarding in taking the time to test my niece's preferences. Like making sure to rewarm her food if she's taking her time with it, because I was assuming she was finished when she kept spitting her pasta out or tossing it over her high chair. I'm starting to understand that toddler's just lack so much impulse control and how deterimental it might be to their health to punish random behaviour. I suppose I could reason after she's been slapped (hoping I don't have to witness it again though) and pretty much lead by example. I mean, she STILL tosses food around even after that incident with my mom, and I was just about to point out to her that hitting her that time was wrong, but I held back. Didn't want to seem arrogant. There was also this one time my cousin's husband was threatening my niece with a slap. Thankfully he's never really hit her (as far as I've seen), but that one time she was "acting out" he was getting agressive verbally (again thankfully not physically) and I told him to relax. He said that he had no other choice, and all I could think of at the time was "she doesn't know any better yet." Again, he's actually a great father 99.9% of the time, just that one instance kind of made me fear for her safety. So what I want to know is, how could I possibly reason with any other family members who get agressive like that? How am I supposed to react? I fear that when I get agressive with anyone who starts to agress against my neice, I'm exemplifying the very thing I'm trying to prevent. Is there really a way to be firm, yet gentle when trying to reveal truth and reason to would-be agressors?

Hey, I babysit for my cousin and I've been trying my best to exercise philosophical parenting with my niece. She's only 14 months old, I don't yell at her, and I certainly don't hit her when she "misbehaves." The only time I feel like I need to use force is when I need to change her diaper or put clothes on her. Usually she complies with a diaper change if I make her laugh first or give her a toy to distract her with, otherwise I regret having to hold her down firmly, but gently because I obviously wouldn't want her running around in her own filth. ANYWAYS, my problem is how the rest of my family is. They all think it's justified to hit her when she tosses food or toys around, or does anything else deemed as misbehaving. What irks me the most is what happened earlier today actually. My mom was feeding her, and my niece tossed morsels onto the floor and my mom slapped her hand. It sure as hell did stop my niece from doing it again, but there was a little time period in which she just sat on my mom's lap all confused before she started accepting being fed from her again. I was on the verge of arguing my mom and telling her how wrong it was to hit my niece, but she said, "there was no other way. At least she stopped throwing the food now, so what else can I do?" That's the question I want to ask, what else IS there to do? How can I teach my niece not to throw toys and food around without using any agression? I feel stupid sometimes for being proven wrong about the ineffectiveness of spanking, when one of my family members end up getting their way because of violence--no matter how small it may seem.