Petition to fucking salt and burn the concept of “attention-seeking behaviour” as something intrinsically bad in children
To elaborate: If a child especially* is seeking attention, it’s because they fucking need some attention. “Attention and interaction from adults” is a non-negotiable neurological need. It is as important as food and water and clothing and a place to pee.
There will be times when a child seeks attention that are Unfortunate, either because now is not a good time for attention, or because the manner in which they are trying to get the attention is Unfortunate. See also “TALK TO ME WHEN YOU ARE ON AN IMPORTANT PHONE-CALL” and “I WILL GET YOUR ATTENTION BY SCREAMING AND BREAKING YOUR STUFF.”
But here’s the trick: if they are seeking attention then, and in that way, that means that they are not getting attention they need otherwise. And not reinforcing the bad behaviour is only half the solution. The other half is giving them attention in other ways and responses to other things.
If the only way that a child gets attention is by acting out? They will act out. Their all-powerful lizard-brains (which are absolutely, in children, VERY POWERFUL) will eventually literally just see the negative consequences of the behaviour as the price to pay for getting the attention their brains absolutely need as much as their bodies need food and water and to take a piss.
You cannot get out of the absolute responsibility to give a child under your care regular positive attention and interaction. If the child under your care is starting to show bad attention-seeking behaviour? That is a fail-proof diagnostic that on some level that child is not getting the attention and validation they need.
This does not mean that you do things that will tell them “yes, behaving this way will get you good attention.” But it does mean that you need to start showing them how to get more good attention from you.
You have to start teaching, “No, you cannot crawl all over me when I’m on the phone – but when I hang up the phone you can come ask for a hug or for me to look at your drawing”. YOU HAVE TO DO BOTH PARTS OF THIS. If you need a child to stop doing things like Making Messes for Attention, you have to start GIVING THEM attention for good things (and you know you might have to start at the very very bottom of the rung with “thank you so much for not making a mess today! Let’s play hide and seek!” Or something similar, but TOUGH SHIT, YOU ARE THE GROWNUP, THEY ARE THE CHILD).
… and if the child in question is younger than 12 (well really 18 at least, but DEFINITELY 12) months just fucking pay attention to them, they don’t have the cognitive capacity to understand putting off fulfillment, ok?
You know what the WORST THING possible for a baby to start doing is? Not trying to get adult attention.
Because that means that their brains have decided that you have abandoned them in the grass for the hyenas to eat, so they’re just going to stop developing and start dissociating. And this ends up with attachment disorders that will actually cause the child great difficulties in later life.
If a baby is crying and honestly distressed, fucking soothe it already.
(nb: yes, to some extent babies do need to learn to self-soothe; this lady has an actually sane article about this process which is a miracle, which gets into more detail about the processes involved and how it is a PROCESS, not just leaving the baby there to cry itself into hysterical exhaustion and teaching it that you won’t respond to its needs. PROCESS.) (nb2: sometimes the sleep/soothe process also gets into genuinely Medically Complicated Territory at which point you should be working with an actual paediatrician with specific training/etc, and you STILL don’t just leave the fucking baby there to scream for hours, trust me).
This has been your swear-filled elaboration of a friend’s aggravation for the day. Tip your server.
*adults also need attention, but adults are, well, adults: it is in fact their own responsibility to figure out how to seek attention from people who have the capacity to give it to them, at times that are good for everyone involved, etc. Children, however, are damn well children and it is the responsibility of caregiver adults to fulfill their needs and TEACH THEM how to fulfill their needs as they grow.
*holds a lighter aloft*
That is such a good rant, I adore it and welcome it and validate it! raising a cub of my own, and caring a lot about attachment theory, has really put this into practice in concrete ways. You can actually OBSERVE the cub needing attention to make their brain grow. (sometimes, when I don’t have anything left to say/give, but the cub needs attention, I just smile and burble repeatedly, “Warm eye contact! Warm eye contact to make your brain grow!! Yeahh! Warm eye contact! Positive attention!” because I’ve run out of things to say, but the baby doesn’t know that yet, ho ho ho)
But Discoursing away from baby development, one thing I always question is the CONTEXT for which people dismiss behavior as attention-seeking. It’s always cast as this terribly bad thing, “attention-seeking,” as if people noticing you is this corrosive thing that damages you and everyone around you. This thing that should be punished, by denying attention, like:
- “Ugh! how dare you exist!”
- “I really hate it when babies have needs!”
- “The worst part is when babies have needs and they EXPRESS them.”
- “She has dyed her hair a noticeable color. Probably because she didn’t get enough attention from her father, and she is now trying to use her hair to STEAL ATTENTION from everybody else.”
- “That outfit, which shows some skin, has attracted my attention – isn’t that awful? They should be punished, for using their visible skin to seek attention.”
- “How dare you blog, where I can find it and see it with my own eyes.”
- “Why are you EXCELLING at something? Ugh! Always doing it for attention.”
- “Why are you FAILING at something? Ugh! Weren’t you getting ENOUGH attention?”
- “That sounds complicated. I think you’re making it up. Making it up for attention.”
- “I went somewhere and – can you believe this – there was a young person, quite a young human, MAKING A NOISE, where I could hear it, and their caretakers did not forcibly stop it from doing so!! Honestly. People should be licensed before they have children.”
- “I just saw a reminder that some people use special accommodation [blue badge/designated parking spot/baby on board sticker/service dog/etc] and I am just so SICK of people rubbing their CONSTANT need for attention in my FACE.”
You know how in Harry Potter, whatever Harry does, his bullies and abusers say that he’s doing it for attention, so they dismiss it and mock it? If he publicly has ANYTHING, from a mild compliment to a broken limb – “Weren’t you getting enough attention, Potter?”
“Look at you EXISTING, Potter. Were you hoping to form some kind of human connection? Did you think you could exist, and occasionally need things? Well, we’ve seen through THAT pathetic ploy. REQUEST DENIED.”
It’s pretty weird, is what I’m saying. It’s kind of a thing that shitty people say.
Anyway, I’ve found it pretty liberating in my life (and good for my mental health!) to question this. Why is attention-seeking positioned as bad? Why is asking for it a good reason to be denied it? Why are certain people denied attention, such that everything they do is cast as a desperate ploy to acquire the attention they are not entitled to? How exactly does the existence of crying baby, a woman’s pink hair, or a blue badge apparently manage to suck all of the air out of the room?
Given that we are social animals who require positive attention to grow, maintain relationships, keep our mental health and do our jobs well, what’s so bad about giving it to people?
Given that so many humans are raised in such a broken way that they seek negative attention – resulting in terrible things and a broken world – what is even so terrible about people explicitly asking for attention in a positive way, with something like brightly colored hair, or by creating a piece of art for others to see?
Why is attention-seeking intrinsically bad?
so here’s some meta: the ones who get angry about attention seeking behavior… are seeking attention by doing so.
i have occasionally pointed out that the things people do/say to hurt you betray what they themselves are most hurt by. what i haven’t said is how i first learned that: by observing how often touch-starved allistics described my touch aversion as ‘attention seeking’ when i was a kid.
me: pls stop touching, i need alone time, for god’s sake please let me leave
them: god you’re so needy you’ll do anything for attention
me: i’m trying to avoid attention… to get attention?
them: well obviously it’s working!
it didn’t take long for me to realize that if they were seeing everything i did as a desperate attempt to get contact, they must be lonely as hell.
Tag: medical stuff
How most people with invisible illnesses are treated by health care “professionals”
The Golden Girls didn’t fuck around
pls watch
honestly i really appreciated this scene when I first saw it bc it took me like two years to get a diagnosis for what’s wrong with me
Dorothy: Dr. Budd?
Dr. Budd: Yes?
Dorothy: You probably don’t remember me, but you told me I wasn’t sick. Do you remember? You told me I was just getting old.
Dr. Budd: I’m sorry, I really don’t–
Dorothy: Remember. Maybe you’re getting old. That’s a little joke. Well, I tell you, Dr. Budd, I really am sick. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. That is a real illness. You can check with the Center for Disease Control.
Dr. Budd: Huh. Well, I’m sorry about that.
Dorothy: Well, I’m glad! At least I know I have something.
Dr. Budd: I’m sure. Well, nice seeing you.
Dorothy: Not so fast. There are some things I have to say. There are a lot of things that I have to say. Words can’t express what I have to say. [tearing up] What I went through, what you put me through—I can’t do this in a restaurant.
Dr. Budd: Good!
Dorothy: But I will!
Dr. Budd’s date: Louis, who is this person?
Dr. Budd: Look, Miss–
Dorothy: Sit. I sat for you long enough. Dr. Budd, I came to you sick—sick and scared—and you dismissed me. You didn’t have the answer, and instead of saying “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” you made me feel crazy, like I had made it all up. You dismissed me! You made me feel like a child, a fool, a neurotic who was wasting your precious time. Is that your caring profession? Is that healing? No one deserves that kind of treatment, Dr. Budd, no one. I suspect had I been a man, I might have been taken a bit more seriously, and not told to go to a hairdresser.
Dr. Budd: Look, I am not going to sit here anymore–
Dr. Budd’s date: Shut up, Louis.
Dorothy: I don’t know where you doctors lose your humanity, but you lose it. You know, if all of you, at the beginning of your careers, could get very sick and very scared for a while, you’d probably learn more from that than anything else. You’d better start listening to your patients. They need to be heard. They need caring. They need compassion. They need attending to. You know, someday, Dr. Budd, you’re gonna be on the other side of the table, and as angry as I am, and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.
Reblogging for any of my mutuals who’ve ever dealt with Dr. Budd.
“Shut up, Lewis”
tbh one last lil irascible radical healthcare-for-the-people rant before I go to bed: I think narratives about the Genius Diagnostician often wind up serving as false propaganda about medicine, and about the abilities of the people who practice it.
in reality the majority of doctors are under an enormous amount of cognitive strain, and the layers of mystique around the profession and its artificial scarcity (limited by residency slots, mostly) are the things that insulate them, that prevent everyone else from recognizing that
and the information that’s available to doctors about things like antibiotic prescription, etc: a lot of it is available to all of us, and while it’s complicated as fuck, and a layperson can’t automatically be assumed to have the reading comprehension ability to understand it, it’s also not impenetrable, it’s not mystical; recognizing what parts of a paper you do and don’t understand is often enough to help you piece together the rest of it; it’s just dry science papers and manuals written in shorthand
so many of us who do have the capacity to read and understand such things wind up assuming that we don’t truly, because Doctors Know Things
but I’ve been burned enough times by doctors not knowing things I knew, and helped enough times by laypeople knowing things doctors didn’t, that I’m starting to see that the wall of that walled garden is not what I thought it was, and the purpose it serves is less beneficent than I once believed.
I wish I could just start appointments by asking “So, do you prefer mildly condescending platitudes, or medications with a bunch of side effects?”, and then people could just tell me, and I wouldn’t have to guess, and they couldn’t get angry if I gave them the one they wanted.
And if they said “Neither!”, I would answer “Oh, so you must want placebo. I know a really great acupuncturist, let me give you her number.”
I’d also include “or (1) actual examination of what you’re doing that makes your life better and what you’re doing that makes your life worse, and how you can do more of the former and less of the latter, and (2) examination of what important life skills you lack, and exploration of ways for you to develop them and/or work around their absence,” with selection of that one to be followed by “okay, let me refer you to a therapist, that’s not really something I can provide in 20 minutes once a month.”
My impression is that the chance of this reducing to “mildly condescending platitudes” varies with the patient’s intelligence and social class, from “wait,you’re saying I should get a good night’s sleep? I never thought of that before!” among confused schizophrenics, to “of course I’ve used black-market d-cycloserine to potentiate the effects of cognitive-behavioral self-help workbooks, what kind of moron do you think I am, you’re wasting my fucking time” among people I talk to on Tumblr.
When I tried the “Wow, you mean diet and exercise help lose weight? Goodness me, in all the years I’ve been fat, I never heard of that, much less tried it!” retort to the “mildly condescending platitudes”, it didn’t end well.
So you’ll have to take the platitudes plus the side-effects if you want any treatment at all. Be nice to get the “talk to me like a human being and even an averagely intelligent one at that” option but doesn’t happen often (did happen with one doctor which is a refreshing change but not too frequent, alas!)
Be even nicer if the “I can’t take that medication you want to prescribe me and are pushing me to take, because it will react badly with a medication I’m currently taking, and no I didn’t just read that off the Internet, the last time I got prescribed that I turned blue in the face and had to be rushed to the ER” option was on offer, but we can’t expect miracles, now can we?
Though re: social class and judgements of status and intelligence, I don’t know if this is more pronounced over here, but because I’m (a) fat (b) naturally talk widda native aksent like, bye, I do tend to get the “plainly thick as two short planks, do the condescending talking down bit and the ignoring what they’re saying bit” unless I use my “the nuns at school taught us elocution lessons” voice and then I get the “hey, evidence of a brain here, talk to them like a real person!” reaction. But it needs to be finely judged, if you show too much intelligence that triggers the “who do they think they are, I’m the doctor here” reaction which also goes badly.
Which is kind of a shame, given that I have the same level of comprehension and intellect in both instances, and only my vocabulary and diction has changed.
I think the problem is that there are lots of genuinely…let’s politely call them “confused” people who don’t realize even very obvious things, and if you don’t know your patients well enough to predict who they are you might as well just give the “eat well, exercise, and get a good night’s sleep” spiel to everybody. But it sure does sound condescending if you’re not the right target.
(and this gets harder when we go into subtler things like “have you tried sleeping in a cool room with good white noise” or “have you tried melatonin” etc)
Again, I wish I could just ask “Are you aware of basic things that it would be very surprising if you weren’t?” but everyone would define this differently and it would be useless.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest the wild’n’crazy notion that if a fat person is going to a doctor semi-regularly (e.g. this is not their first appointment ever with a medical professional), they kinda sorta maybe have heard the “do you realise you are fat?” part before, even if they are as dumb as a rock.
I realise that there’s not really a tactful way of going about it, but suggesting (rather than assuming they have no idea that “eating more = putting on weight”) that if they’d care to discuss their problems with weight loss you might have some suggestions that would be helpful could work out better.
And there are physical conditions which do make weight gain easier and weight loss harder; again, I know that the idea that fat people like to blame their “glands” and it’s only an excuse has some basis in reality, but for instance – when I found out very late in life that I had PCOS and that this contributes to weight gain, I was about fit to kick in a window. Nobody had ever explored this with me before, nobody believed me when I was saying ‘no, honest, I really am trying to diet and exercise and the weight is not coming off’ and all the years since puberty when the weight started to pile on and I was feeling guilty (because “blaming your glands is only an excuse, the reason you’re fat is because plainly you’re eating too much of the wrong food”) and miserable and fighting with my mother over my weight and going on crash diets that didn’t work as soon as I went off “you eat one bowl of soup a day”so the weight all came back and hating myself for being fat and ugly and stupid and all the other things society tells you that being fat means about your character and intelligence – well.
Yes, eating too much of the wrong food is to blame there, but there was a real, physical, not in my control cause there as well, and had I known, that would have made a difference.
tl;dr – yeah, sometimes us fatties are stupid and ignorant and it is eating too much and not exercising enough. But sometimes there are other real medical problems there too.
On the one hand, I totally sympathize with what you’re saying and I understand it must be really annoying.
On the other hand, this has actually been discussed and studied, and current very-carefully-considered recommendations are to say the thing. See eg The Impact Of Physician Discussion Of Weight Loss In US Adults, GPs Should Not Worry About Offending Obese Patients Study Finds, et cetera.
As always, none of these studies is unimpeachably super-impressive, but considering the low risk I think it’s fair to do this even on weak evidence.
I am not convinced the risk is low. I’ve seen someone specifically instructed by a doctor to immediately discontinue physical therapy and exercise because it was resulting in muscle mass gain which was increasing BMI. I’ve also seen someone need a year of asking doctors about unambiguous medication-side-effect weight gain before a doctor actually condescended to even read the side-effect list for the medication and admit that this could be related.
In short, the risk is not “the risk of offending the patient”. The risk is doctors persistently completely disregard any and all information about a patient that fails to conform to the “fatty is lazy and stupid” narrative.
That risk is what people are concerned with. We are not talking about merely-annoying. We are talking about refusal to provide basic medical care at all to fat patients. We are talking about actively life-threatening advice given to patients.
In short, I think the study results are sort of irrelevant to what people are talking about here. They’re covering “is it possible that you’re fat because you eat too much”. Other people are talking about spending months to years going through tests and results and everything with a doctor looking at weight, saying “well, weight is still high, therefore everything you’ve said about exercise and diet is lies”.
… And that is something that I have seen so consistently, from so many overweight people, that I am starting to strongly suspect that refusal to provide basic medical care to fat people may be a statistically significant contributor to the computed “risks”. Like, I do not actually know a fat person who has not been outright refused medical care for something not-weight-related based on “but you’re fat”.
just moving along like everyone else 