Motherhood (not yet!)

[azurelunatic]

From the discussion here...

I can follow kid-logic to some extent, but not quite enough. Not yet. My empathy's not quite on enough yet to do that. Wide-open, for me, is very scarily little, even with Darkside, unless he's broadcasting loudly...

...and I can't stay open. I think that's the key point there. If I am that wide open, which I think I was for a few months somewhere back there, I can't let anyone touch me except a select few, or even get near me. For a while, I would only let Shamash, Darkside, Adam, Dawn, and Neighbor touch me, and then only sometimes. I got panic attacks otherwise, nasty human-too-close claustrophobia.

I don't need that much empathy to work with older kids.

I'm going to have to work on narrowband empathy shields. I have a great one with Darkside: when it's not blocked off (we each have complete control over filters on our own side of it) we are completely wide open to each other, and no one else. Not even someone else who's logged in to one of us can access that link: it's been tried, and they were booted, quite roughly. Heck, when Dagger tried to link with Darkside's "Peter Pan" subset, she was booted.

I guess I'm going to have to get used to progressively younger children, so I'll know I'll be able to deal with babies when I do have one.

Comments

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Consider that with motherhood, you begin at the begininng, with the child. You know how their logic works because you have watched it evolve. Before they can speak, you know what will make them happy or angry. So it's not that it requires empathy. Empathy is what you need when you don't know the full circumstances of someone's life. But young kids -- you do know most of it, and they're willing to tell you what you don't know.

[azurelunatic]

Good point.

My attitude towards children has been gradually mutating over the years. At fourteen I knew I never wanted any. Now I'm thinking I might adopt. In another seven or eight years, I might perhaps be ready to reproduce.