Nefara

I've personally only seen kids on leashes in the context I mentioned above, of a large, crowded event where a few bodies moving in the way of your kid will break line of sight entirely. Outdoor festivals, concerts, fairs, amusement parks etc. I have never seen a kid on a leash at a playground or park or bank or grocery store etc. Toddlers are small and if there's a lot of bodies around it would be VERY easy to lose sight of them. If my kid ran off and broke my line of sight of him in a crowd I absolutely would have a moment of panic. Again, I'm not going to judge other parents for finding solutions to problems that don't harm the child.

I got away from my mother at a large event, and left her panicking and organizing other parents to search for me. When they found me she spanked me and yelled at me for running off. It wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last. Obviously hitting me was wrong, but she was terrified of what could have happened to me. If she had just used a tether it would never have happened.

Something's lack of representation in media is not exactly a reliable metric of commonality, if it was, gay people sprang into being in the late 90s.

It's normal enough. I saw a couple of kids on wrist leashes just this weekend at a very crowded outdoor event. The kids were probably about 2 and 3. I have a 3 year old as well, and didn't have him on a leash because he's responsive to my voice calling him and has decent (for his age) impulse control. I didn't judge or have negative impressions of those parents. They were present and just trying to enjoy the event with their kids. It's HIGHLY kid dependent. When I was a toddler, I was the type to just run off in a crowd and I could have saved my mother a lot of grief and panic if she had a leash for me. It's just another tool available to parents.

It's important not to project your feelings as an adult, because you have different assumptions, associations and contexts tied to leashes than a toddler does. Generally, toddlers are taught to have shame or be embarrassed about things, their default sentiment to most things is extremely pragmatic. A toddler on a leash will be focused on the tactile sensation of it on their wrist or body, the effect it has of limiting their movement, and not much else. Think about when you saw those kids on leashes... were they upset about the leash? Were they trying to get out of it? Were they asking their guardians to please take it off? Or were they just kinda being silly kids running around exploring?

Also to this:

If you are taking them to a place where it's dangerous for them to act like children...*then why the fuck are you taking them there in the first place?!*

Sometimes you just have no other option. A fair price for babysitting is $20+ USD an hour. Not every toddler is in or has access to daycare. Not every family has grandparents close enough to drop them off with. Sometimes bringing them along to a place with you is the only way they'll have supervision.

My understanding is that the ADHD brain activity resembles an NT's when they're extremely tired or sleep deprived, with a lot of theta wave activity. Stimulants can help jog an ADHD person's brain into alpha and beta waves, which are associated with relaxation or alertness and focus.

Chocolate, alcohol, video games, and expounding too much about my interests to anyone standing in front of me.

Also, explaining things on the internet...

Pancakes are basically a soft flat quick bread. Breads have been a staple of people's diets for milennia. You get out of it what you put in, so if you want more complex carbs just make them that way.

For "real butter", try specifically a "cultured butter" like Kerrygold. There's butter and then there's cultured butter, and cultured butter has way more of a concentrated butter taste. Your average supermarket butter is basically just milk fat that's been aerated but not aged at all, think of the difference in flavor between mozarella and an aged cheddar cheese. Using a cultured butter for your pancakes is probably the fastest and easiest way to zhuzh them up, along with real maple syrup.

Just ignore us. Consistent eye contact, staring, or obviously paying a lot of unwarranted attention to us is way more threatening than just being big or burly.

Guild Wars 2, it can be extremely cozy in places. Beautiful environments, it lets you run around and just stumble across something to do, and you can get in a groove doing a map meta with a series of events leading to a big boss fight with 50+ people all participating and then you can just run off later harvesting leeks or whatever. I can just zone out watching a show on my other monitor while working on a collection or an achievement or getting flax or something.

My 15 year old self was ambitious, pompous, materialistic and very edgy. I think she'd be disappointed I wasn't living in a castle, and confused as to why I wasn't a high powered lawyer making 6 figures. She would also wonder what happened to our "soul mate" from high school (lol). Honestly I don't care what she thinks, I'm glad my goals and priorities have changed since then.

How nice of them to affirm your gender like that 😂 they were just being supportive!

Oops, fixed

I wonder if she has or had one of the models with the filter trap? I thankfully have one with the composter thing but if I had to clean year old moldy spaghetti remnants out of a filter I can definitely see making that rule.