Life skills

I guess the first order of business is to thank everyone for reading last weeks post and the two comments this warm week or at least it was as I type this and not necessarily just down to the suns rays!

Yes, I know this blog is kind of weird compared to most of the others you've seen listed cos it's a slice of life, emotions and smacked behinds wrapped in one and odd life stories tossed in usually cos there's a connection.

A ton of stuff you might take for granted just wasn't in my life.

Take the kitchen for instance. 

Cos I'm not good on my feet with my physical disabilities and not terribly co-ordinated, where as most people would of gravitated to it whenever anything was being made and perhaps of carried things basically I was told to stay out of there.

That meant in the absence of anything else I hadn't any knowledge of something as rudimentary in my late teens as how to make a cup or coffee, make toast with a grill, wash up and so on.

Because I find carrying things difficult, nobody took the trouble to show my how I could carry at least a few things or how to set a table.

In a way I didn't have a place in the home, certainly didn't have any responsibilities and upon seeing that it was said "doesn't do...".

Looking at that illustration even though it's pretty much of the fifties in a lot of ways feels...bitter-suite.

I'd of loved to had been dressed in almost matching dress, with a Mom who would have me in their teaching me these things and having made progress, helping me take some responsibility for doing things in the home so I could at least do something to look after myself.

Ironically it's taken caregivers mixing a chunk of that and some ol' school discipline at times to help me move on so I can do a few things and they have expectations for me just do them without reminders. 

On relationships and life

While I was away this weekend an account of which can be found Here  I found myself thinking about the role of relationships in my life.
Relationships not least family ones have  played a negative part in my upbringing from distancing, not willing to get close to me or to encourage me to get closer, being more overly affectionate as well as a sense of suspicious  between family members that just corroded any meaningful sense of trust and security I ever had.
Living in a world where you always watched your back, where telephone conversations were bugged, people lurked behind doors listening in  and mail read took its toll on me even to the point I was writing or drawing stuff about it in my teens on correspondence and never kept a formal diary in case it was read which it would.
That's one of differences now cos I do but it's more online journalling it may be such as with my main blog an account of a day out or interests related or more about my moods and emotions cos it me understanding them and helps with having some record I can refer to.
One of the things that has altered for me now is how it is I am expected to co-operate and behave with other people and that's been a thing that's talked about here so when I was away I was expected to help with things such as setting the table, washing up and generally helping out.
I am also expected now to help in the kitchen with making whatever we are going to eat even if some tasks may be done for me because I am expected to use my abilities to contribute whatever my disabilities may prevent.
If I do something wrong that I know I shouldn't like trying to cut things on the top of the sink where I'd either mark it or risk injuring myself which I did, then I was spanked there and then for it to ensure I learn from it which I was
What I longed for as an adult little girl is the simple love and affection of a forever mother and father figure who will help me feel loved, wanted and secure so I can grow.
Was that too much to ask?
I think after thinking over how things have been not this weekends time spent with one who does looks after me the answer has to be no because they are actively engaged in making me grow, feeling secure but at same time prepared to discipline me.
It was and is what I truly needed.

Triggered and trying to pick up the pieces.

The week was due to end on something on high and anyone that read the post on Friday  on the other blog may well of been forgiven for thinking that  as I looked at how over the years I had actually developed and as a result of that the blog had reflected those changes in me.
Some of those things included people who were going to have a more parental input in my life to help me better manage it because I was struggling with it providing guidance and oversight and also by consent, spanking me which has worked well.

 It's perfectly true to say emotionally and psychologically, many of us carry some baggage around with although for most it's something they have control over but for some of us it goes much deeper than that.
You might think you have it safely contained where it doesn't cause you any problems however this sort of traumatic events can jolt you back back very much in that moment reliving those raw terrifying emotions, freezing you, leaving you shaking badly.
For me personally I do go 'mute' in stressful situations, I stare out oblivious to what is going on around, I just shut down and curl up. It's a vulnerability I have to live with when I'm so overwhelmed I can't act to look after myself.
That's what makes a triggering episode like the one I had on Thursday really bad bring back painful memories of witnessing verbal abuse and physical violence at home and of inappropriate physical contact outside of it. It goes that much deeper than just something you'd rather never happened.
I supposed in a way it had to happen at a site very much for adults because with my mixture of learning/developmental disabilities I don't really slot into sites well because I do need generally a higher degree of moderation and 'hand holding' than most sites expressly for adults offer but either that sites that do are strictly under 18 or more general ones where some topics would (understandably)  be off limits.What I need more - an more older kid style of site -  but for over 18's doesn't exist.
It just happened that in innocuously questioning a part of the main site entrance,  it opened up discussion things that directly triggered emotions from those experiences that left me shaking in my tummy  just even typing it.
I just feel at the moment typing this I need  to try to get this under some control and a part of that is to take a break from the site in question until I feel ready to log back in seeing posts without all these memories flooding back.
I think the whole topic that lead to this needs to resolved, "put to bed" so the thread and everything in it can just float away or be closed off.
For me at some point when I feeling better than I am presently, I would like to work toward some permanent closure  with the individuals concerned and  not just from a personal point of view  that's obviously a very important for me but also for them to try to work through their feelings on what happened and how it's left things.
To me it is that within my limitations, I do need when I'm better to resolve all of this in a mature way rather than just avoiding people who I did really like and mostly likely never saw where things would end up.

Away day schooling

It's a bit of a while since I wrote anything around the re-creation of schooling a form of words I'm now a bit more for as "school based role play" for me implies in part I am role playing the child at school and with me this whole whole thing is more like I have that child running 24/7 in me.
Effectively you've created a school with all the things I recall of my education that I just attend.
One of the things I did involved having a math  lesson taught to me by a person being  a teacher doing what was called "chalk and talk" where they would talk away but write important concepts and any questions on the chalkboard for you to do.
For my part I was dressed in a traditional black tunic (Brit speak: "Gymslip") with tie and school socks at a equally traditional wooden desk with a  hole for in, grooves for your pens and a lift up slightly sloped lid that before flat "Go-Pak" stacking school furniture such as tables became popular you had together with matching wooden chairs with an S shape bottom.
Like most I was taught metric units as my home country went metric during this period  although for somethings imperial never went away like road distances and part of this lesson covered an introduction to Imperial weights and measures that I had to sit and write down from the chalkboard including the questions set on each unit.
This covered ounces, pounds, stones, hundred-weights  and tones when it came to Mass, inches, feet, yards, cubits, chains and miles in linear measurement.
I also had set some multiplication and division work too that I had to copy, answering all the questions.
The work from the point of view of presentation, neatness of writing and showing of workings out was examined in addition to marking the answers to questions set and my attitude toward studying.
My work was then written on in red pen.
Overall I hadn't done too badly but I had made a few mistakes down to not being as careful as I should of been as when asked to show how I got the answer where I had made mistakes, I did get it right first time so it wasn't a question of not knowing or comprehending.
Because it was that and nothing to do with my actual learning limitations which are NEVER a reason to, I was instructed to bend over the desk at each unit where this had occurred to be spanked either by hand or for one which was more around not paying sufficient attention to the work, the tawse.

This needless to say did hurt persisting for some time but to be honest, it is what lead to it that really is more the problem: I don't take the care I could to produce work that limitations aside I am actually capable of, that reflect my abilities rather than my disabilities.
In that sense what might in the past of been called "school based role playing" has real benefits in helping to change because it identifies in real-life situations those attitudes and behaviours that need correcting and delivers the lessons that in all honesty people who were less centred around the dis in my disabilities excusing me and more on abilities and training me to use them properly in same way my peers were really should of done.
For me then this bit of the weekend away was really beneficial.

Past childhood into new adult-childhood

In some ways this post is a complementary post to this post The return of the original Famous Five  on Monday's  regular blog really because reading is a part of my regression, a getting back to my natural child-like state that puts me in Little Space as such as it is about maintaining my limited ability to read and from that to learn about new things and new words.
Sometimes people argue about  you can't have parts in your Little Space that are not of the era you were brought up in as if they are not emotionally an authentic part of you so that if say you were brought up in say the nineteen fifties, you cannot have plushies or have say books from other eras.
In my regressed world you can add some things into it so say dollies can be complemented by say a Care Bare or Hello Kitty Plushie because it's function and utility to is the same, you play with it, it comforts you as hold and hug it as the inner child you are.
In much the same way to read say the books of Jacqueline Wilson is a part of understanding a part of contemporary childhood with the objects and experiences our age in it, that can aid me understand more of this age I'm travelling through as the hybrid adult-child I am.
The core though is very much routed in era I was brought up in not least the extent to which the stories I read or were read to me reflected the social norms around us even though things were and did change over time and in that context re-writing them so much of the social structure is missing but the dialogue sounds dated even for those of us who lived through the nineteen seventies and eighties just muddles it all up.
One might as well say for arguments sake have " Noddy goes to school" re-written by (insert editors) based on a story by Enid Blyton  as miss out the whole section when in the class room a slipper is hanging by the chalkboard and when a child is naughty, is instructed to fetch it but hesitates, Noddy (trying to be obliging and not realizing what it symbolizes) says "I'll fetch it for you miss!" because that was just how it was like in the first year of Infant school where we got a few spanks in front of the class as we all learned school discipline as a class.
Such things were and are part of the authentic emotional sense of the inner-child me tapping into my experiences and to part of how we were brought up and part of Caregiver to little re-parenting.
Consider this quote:
 
"Big-Ears the goblin was always on the look-out for anything he could take. Sometimes it was an apple off a barrow, or off somebody's tree. Sometimes it was a biscuit from the counter of Mr. Butter the grocer's and sometimes a few flowers from a garden.

He was too clever to be found out, which was a pity, because a good spanking would have done him a lot of good, and might have stopped his bad ways. But nobody ever spanked him or locked him up for a night, so Big-Ears grew worse and worse. "

 It's from the "Hi Feather-tail!" Noddy story in Enid Blyton's Sunshine collection where clearly we are talking about teaching Big-Ears right from wrong from an early age in they way that was the norm then. No 'but they have (insert) syndrome so they can't help it and there is an implicit idea that it's the adults who are to work on managing your behaviour so you learn to however difficult it may be. You learn social limits, not be exempted from them.

It is very relevant because truthfully I had the same traits as Big-Ears, was pretty good at not being found out so my behaviour had gotten worse and worse in my hybrid adult-child life and why it is spanking has been put back into it, to re-parent me in the way we were expected to so so adult-child me learns to conform.

Or take the following exchange from Claudine at St Clare's one of six novels in the St. Clares girls boarding school series Enid wrote:

"If I wasn't in the fourth form I'd give you the hardest spanking you've ever had in your life, Angela. A good spanking would be the best thing you could have."

"Nobody has ever laid a finger on me in my life."
The first person speaking is Carlotta, the wild ex circus girl who is a Prefect and that is Angela's  retort.
 This like the other quote has now been removed from current editions on sale  but it rings very true in that Prefects and Head Girls did have that delegated authority with one threatening me with quite a spanking if I was caught smoking in school.
It also had to be said, it wasn't just them that did, so did teachers.
My work for a period had fell from  mediocre at best level - my school reports are a source of shame -  to that of not paying any attention and failing on several occasions to complete homework with clear warnings so I was kept back one lesson by my Geography Mistress Miss Thomson who took me into a store room and gave me a quite hard spanking because she felt it was what I needed as I was at risk of flunking my upcoming final examination. It was the best thing that happened to me because I actually passed it even though my work was usually poor and my other grades were up.
That was the kind of thing that was not so much the core plot but very much in the background of those stories I loved by Enid Blyton such as the girls boarding school  Malory Towers, St. Claire's series and referenced in the Famous Five.
For being there you got more of a feeling of how each character felt, empathizing with them in their situations that you also knew of that either wholesale deletion of a paragraph or  replacing the word with a say scolding doesn't work because expecting a scolding feels different than say expecting a spanking.
What happens is therefore more believable for being set with the social expectations and sanctions of that very era where pretty much everything else is at odds with Twenty-first century  Britain anyway.
It is in the form of novels, a depiction of the world that in the past I was brought up in so in their attempt to render a depiction of the past in terms that are seen as 'right on' so-called 'politically correct' is in so may ways a tampering with our recollection not just of these texts and how they they were a part of our lives but also of our recollection of the world as it was as that child around seven to thirteen as we lived it.
Grown ups are more than entitled to debate the rights and wrongs of our era (although a return to that era's values and sanctions is helping me no end) but in airbrushing the world we knew, they are not simply disrespecting us who loved reading these books at the time, enjoying re-reading them later in life, they fail to give a basis to explain to newer young readers the difference between now and then, muddling up the past.

Standards and their origins

One of things that does matter is telling the truth not that going by popular opinion  is it something we expect from people in positions of power such as business leaders or politicians although I feel our expectations ought to higher even if at times dashed.

The must basic reason for this is we have a need to feel the other person has a sense of honesty and integrity about them, that what they say is based on reality rather than either wishful thinking or something having no basis at all in fact.

Most of us can understand  and relate to what are sometimes called 'magical thoughts' where belief is suspended because the illusion of say" seeing an elephant fly" is preferable to us than the reality which is of course that they cannot. That whole notion is very child-like and because we saw it in our imagination it may feel real but isn't.

Telling the whole truth is something we can all struggle with especially if by doing so it shows us  in a poorer light so we do not so much say something it isn't true: we omit that which  shows our culpability and responsibility for what really transpired.

If there is a hierarchy when it comes to this it is the outright lie, the very thing that had no basis in reality at all that takes pole position.

We use it to place ourselves where we were not, to claim credit for things we did not do, to transfer the blame from us to others when we have done wrong and remove ourselves from situations where we had a responsibility but chose not to exercise it.

I am - and my Caregiver amongst others expects me to -  tell the whole truth at all times and whenever I'm not there's no question of not being punished because of its seriousness.

On my attitudes

There are plus points to being very much a adult child not least when like for me it is developmentally what you are but it also means I have the same sorts of reactions as a child in certain situations leading to situations that can be trying.
One area of attitudes I do have problems in is regulating my emotions  being impulsive, quick to act and quick to just say things without understanding what is wrong with the way I'm saying it if not the words.
I tend to raise my voice to people who contradict my wants, not paying any attention to them or not  respect any authority so I challenge, make excuses for not going along with it and delay what I am told to do to 'get out of it'
I don't do as I'm told.
I appeal to authority figures but only obey you after making the appeal and then my appeal is demanding and disrespectful of your authority.
Generally I'm not prepared and willing to obey either way and accept your decision with a good attitude.
Some of this has been reinforced through being encourage to stand my ground  against anyone who'd treat me badly because of my disabilities and I'm used to going on the defensive feeling you're picking on me or feeling you should cut me a special deal.

I need you to teach me how I am to treat you and anyone else in my life who has authority over me, setting the standards and reinforcing the boundaries so I learn to instinctively respect them which I don't now.
I need you to scold and correct me so I learn what I was meant to had done when I was younger and be prepared to spank me without fail so I understand the consequences of my failure to recognize your authority over me.

Disability and discipline

There is one subject that I'd like to talk about on this blog which I do have views on.

 

While good arguments can be made for punishing people for things they could do but didn't especially if they had negative consequences for others, I do feel it is wrong to punish somebody for something that they had little or no control over such as stammering, being unable to write neatly, forgetting because of memory problems and so on.
This was something I did see occasionally in school and quite often in the workplace where it was just presumed everybody there had no disabilities and from that there were no excuses period for not being able or struggling with a task.
What as individual you needed was either support in the the task or or some extra tuition to master a task on a one to one basis which was something I had to fight tooth and nail for even at the risk of alienating some colleagues who though this help for me was somehow a threat or  unfairness to them.
Not  work reviews that seemed to be every other week sapping your confidence or any chastisement that if we'd of just refused to do right would of been justified and disability shouldn't prevent you for getting it.

On character

 

When you scratch the surface, although I may know of the world, fundamentally I'm  an innocent  little girl who just likes to suck lollipops, skip enjoying cute things and having fun than the things older teens and adults generally get up to who deserves to have that respected.

I may get things wrongs and sometimes be naughty but not a bad little girl at heart, far from it.

Tales I read from the past

This was an original paperback book from my childhood which being in the early 70's as a bit gaudy from an aesthetic point of view and probably more  with a nod and a wink to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and rather like that it has a more tale.
More accurately it has moral tales because it is a series of 30 short tales of children being naughty though I venture to suggest in 2009 someone has given them a condition or syndrome rather than using the other 'n' word.

The original hard back illustration by Eileen Soper.
In it children see character acting up, just as a child you would with the consequences unfolding and some sort of punishment being metered  at the end because it was written for more six to eight year olds to help show what was and was not acceptable behaviour.
It can be seen as a replacement for the old stodgy Victorian morality tales for being funny and engaging more with a child's imagination.  
A key feature is that the a strong sense of just punishment is included that children strongly identify with.
The fact I've kept it so long is an indication of the extent to which I feel it is relevant to me and the failure to learn to behave in a mature way.

Wheat from chaff

Facing up to your responsibility as a parent  may be difficult but having to discipline us may mean you see where you're insufficiently grown up yourself because you can't see why you need to raise a child and have that Adult sense of responsibility to it and not be it's best friend.

 This was a conversation I never had with either of my parents and I hate to say it, you can tell by how I relate to people apart from my attitudes and behaviour as I tend to think you're totally onside with me no matter what or you really hate me cos you're not letting me do what I feel like.
Childish I know, getting me into trouble I can't seem to stop this immaturity by myself. (sighs)