8 tweets · April 2023 · 14 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
@BrandonGoldman I was being a bit sloppy here, as evidenced by the back & forth. hard to capture the nuance I want in a few tweets. the kid is definitely learning emotional awareness, but he's under subtle performance pressure as well afaict (which tiktok is surely reinforcing, if indirectly)
@BrandonGoldman the mom's feeling may have been hurt by his "I don't need you", but if so she doesn't appear to me to be actually showing it in how she speaks, so there's something odd there. there's not a real bid for "hey, notice me", it's sort of a politeness-based word-game, afaict?
@BrandonGoldman but seems to me her saying "you hurt my feelings" is based on a *conscious* misinterpretation of the kid's intent
@BrandonGoldman kid was saying "I can do this myself" and in the process used some words "I don't need you" [to help]. was the kid actually pushing her away emotionally? did she not understand that? afaict if she didn't understand she's a fool or has a weird trigger that's hers to metabolize
@BrandonGoldman now, it's true that if you use sloppy words you'll hurt people sometimes, but it's on both people to do what they can to notice the underlying intent and not get caught up in the words
@BrandonGoldman if she'd made a joke about it, that would have maybe been a fun way to tease him about the implications of "I don't need you" being a bit too general of a statement like "oh, you don't need me? you're all grown up and ready to live on your own? okay, well, don't forget to call!"
@BrandonGoldman but EVEN THERE it's still a deliberate misinterpretation of the kid, and unless the kid can TELL that you're playfully deliberately misinterpreting, and laugh with you about it, THIS CAN BE STRESSFUL I need to know that I get to mean what I mean
@BrandonGoldman anyway, I clearly have baggage coming up around this myself from times I felt misunderstood and didn't feel able to get clarity on it, so maybe this is my shit to deal with 😅😅 hope this clarifies some stuff!