Why only six colors in their hair? The visible spectrum has seven – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. It actually looks like you left out blue, as the next-to-last color appears too dark. Like you went “green, indigo, violet”.
no it isn’t… PINK is the fake color… if you take a “color wheel” and vary the proportions of the primary colors, you CAN get indigo… but you will NEVER get “Pink“…
The color wheel shows only the edges of this, but for many colors you need to add some white. Pink is inwards from the lower right corner: red, white, and a little magenta.
Indigo is considered a separate part of the spectrum primarily because Newton believed the number seven held mystic significance. He decided there should be seven colors, and he and a friend set about figuring out where to place them.
Thanks for explaining– I didn’t have the energy to at 4:30am. Also, there’s the possibility that what we call colors has shifted over time– I can accept there being seven distinct parts if it goes red orange yellow green cyan (what Newton may have called “blue”) blue (what Newton may have called “indigo”) purple.
If you are talking about the real colors it’s actually CMY (cyan, magenta, and yellow) with the secondary colors of RGB (red, green, and blue). Orange isn’t in the picture till you hit tertiary colors.
Let me tell you as an artist so much that was driving me crazy when it came to painting all made sense once I figured that out.
I hope it’s clear that I wasn’t talking in terms of the color wheel.
I do find it interesting what you (and other, obviously) identify as as “real” colors. My dad is in the printing industry, so I would always see this different examples of how the CMYK model printed out.
Also, I did tech crew in high school, and it was interesting to work with the colored lights and understand colors and color interaction that way. (RGB model)
There’s two sets of real colors. One is the colors of light (RGB) that can combine to make all the other colors; the full combination is white. The other is the reversal, which filters out bouncing light, the full filtering being black (and most black pigments don’t get anything like the full black of Vantablack, which bounces so little light that humans can’t perceive the texture of anything coated with Vantablack.
That filtering is the CYM and, since we find it easier and cheaper to produce a full black with simple black ink than with any combo of the above, Black.
Red and Green light together can make Yellow light. Green and Blue light together can make Cyan light. Blue and Red light together can make Magenta light. And, so I understand it, the printer colors filter out opposites, so Cyan filters out Red, Yellow filters out Blue, and Magenta filters out Green. I might be mistaken about which colors filter what.
That’s also why when you’re designing art, you need to figure out early whether you’re designing for something shown on a digital screen or made in physical media — because the color tools are completely different.
Also, I think it was SciShow that did a special on the color wheel and how we ended up with Newton’s mystic seven instead of the more reasonable six divisions.
Also also, “It’s made my mixing colors of light” hardly qualifies as “It doesn’t exist.” Honestly. Pink is a term for a variety of shades of light red, some with purple in them, much as lavender is a term for light purple, tan or beige a term for light brown.
The thing I find odd is that we have distinct, commonly known terms for a few colors’ lighter shades, but not for all of them — there’s no common single-word term for light blue, light green, light orange. And yellow’s light enough by itself that even though lighter shades exist, I don’t think they mentally qualify as un-yellow the way pink is not red and lavender is not purple.
There actually is common terms for light green in the design industry and funnily enough they’re based on plants. Basically items that some one can point to and say “that color”. The name for light green is “celery” and if it has a bit of grey in it it’s “sage”.
BTW a very light yellow is “cream”, again something you can point at. Most people don’t think of cream as a yellow though.
And yes, there are certain color names such as Sage (one I knew) and Celery (one I didn’t), but by “common” I meant like ones most people would understand if you said it (without interpreting it on the spot relative to an existing object) and be able to use when describing it.
When it doesn’t look like a light yellow (whether from yellow or buff) it goes under the general heading of “off-white”.
off-white
[awf-hwahyt, -wahyt, of-]
adjective
1.
white mixed with a small amount of gray, yellow, or other light color.
Why would you exclude descriptions “relative to an existing object”? It is how we got the name orange after all.
Origin of orange
Old French
1300-1350
1300-50; Middle English: the fruit or tree < Old French orenge, cognate with Spanish naranja < Arabic nāranj < Persian nārang < Sanskrit nāraṅga
I have to say, I do find pink to be interesting, just in that I find it more distinct a tint than lavender, for instance. Just like, if people were supposed to wear purple for a class color day or something, and someone showed up in lavender, I’d be like, “Yeah, okay.” If they were supposed to wear red and showed up in pink, I’d be more, “:/”
Now like you said, some hues of pink are not simply tints of red, so that might have something to do with it. On the whole, I think it’s primarily linguistic/cultural.
I read a really fascinating article the other day about how humans didn’t really see “blue” until very recently. One example they gave was somewhere in Homer, where he talks about “wine-colored” seas.
It’s also beginning to be shown that people of other cultures, especially tribal ones, don’t see colors the same way either. They cannot differentiate between, say, blue and red, but two almost identical shades of green are as different as night and say to them, because they have our have not been taught the difference.
It almost makes me want to not teach my children colors for a few years, just to see what they think is the same or different.
It’s not that they don’t see them the same way, physically. It’s that they don’t distinguish them as distinct colors, like how we classify lime green and forest green under green. Knowing nothing of Ancient Greek, my guess would be that the colors of wine and the ocean fell under the same color umbrella, though they may or may not have had more specific words to describe wine-shade and ocean-shade. Either way, if they see them next to each other
they know they’re different, it’s just that their language/culture considers them similar enough that they can use the same word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution
I can’t find the chart I really like, and as it says there the order they’re learned in is looser than the original theory outlined, but the whole thing is fascinating. The blue-green spectrum especially seems to have a lot of interesting variance.
https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
This seems relevant too. People don’t care too much about shades. They may use some of the more popular shade names, but for the most part they just use ROYGBP and pink. (ctrl-f indigo to see snarky comment on that)
A related example is Japanese, which has separate words for both green and blue, but due (probably) to the word now used for blue originally covering green as well, there are lignuistic remnants of pretty clearly green things (traffic lights, for example) that are called “blue”.
And the other way too. Where you were talking about similar shades of green. I know some languages (Russian I think?) do distinguish light and dark blue, for example, where to us they’re both blue.
But it’s about the way a language categorizes colors, not really about how they see them or that they don’t know the difference.
but is it _indigo and blue_ or _blue and cyan_? Color names across languages are fucked up
(also, light ‘darkblue’ and dark ‘lightblue’ are totally a thing, so it’s less dark/light and more saturated+purplish / unsaturated+greenish) (but yeah once you start getting into their dark/light shades territory is when native speakers’ heads also begin to spin)
Makes me wonder if people from pigment-poor areas brought to our color-rich world would respond like those guys who put on EnChroma glasses for the first time.
It took me a second… not because I am not old enough but because its that out there…
If I missed it I would have to surrender my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
For presents, my beau likes pretty bows. If I don’t do it up right, I might get some ribbin’ about the ribbon, too. Then she’ll try to guess what’s inside, so she’ll shake it, and do some rapping on the wrapping.
Actually, homonyms are spelled the same but pronounced differently, homophones are spelled differently but pronounced the same. Both kinds are super fun though.
Homonyms? Gawd hates those unnatural things. Next thing you know there will be thespians in our schools matriculating in front of everyone!!!1!eleventy!!!
I will be great getting back to the Selkie part of this story, but I love the way this story is turning out and Amanda’s and Andi’s chemistry together. They remind me a little of a childhood friend and her mom (who was also a single mother).
Dave, I have noticed that Andi’s first reaction to this type of behavior of Amanda — possessive, clingy-angry, demanding — is to buy her things. What is Andi’s income? Or, I should say, perhaps she hasn’t learned there are other child coping skills that lending to her “gimme!” bursts? I’ve been waiting for this but have not seen it. Not saying Andi needs to tell her she needs to earn things yet, because obviously Andi has a lot to recoup with her, but, like, I really wanted Andi’s last line to be more like, “I was gonna give it to you anyway!” or “Well, I’m gonna let you have it because it puts two things I love together.” Or… something. Or even just a parental chuckle? But Andi goes right into offering to buy her one, even after tempting her back into the fold with the promise of presents. I am thinking this is just an Andi thing she’ll have to deal with later on and am not criticizing the writing:) Just pointing out an Andi-thing.
I had a moment claiming something from a parent actually not long ago. My mom had been to a thrift store and she found herself a neat old watch, a type of pocketwatch that was held in a leather box. It was a masculine design, but she isn’t a girly girl woman. She was showing it to me and I asked if I could see it. As soon as she handed it to me, I declared it mine and put it in my pocket.
Andi might be thinking it’s just that situation and she isn’t intending to react the way she did. Though she does tend to use money like that. Something she might have picked up from Patricia since I don’t think the woman exactly won people over with her wonderful personality.
I actually read it as kind of affectionate. Amanda isn’t always so good about displaying affection for others. However, in my personal experience, children often like to “take” things belonging to people about whom they care. My niece loves to wear her mom’s shoes and play with the things in her purse; she also is kind of obsessed with the rings I always wear and often likes to wear my necklaces. (I actually sometimes have to hide my jewelry if I take it off because otherwise my niece will appropriate it!) When I was a kid, I remember very well that my mom had one particular sweater and a red leather checkbook cover that I wanted more than ANYTHING. I would play with them whenever she would let me – and sometimes when she wouldn’t! It wasn’t that either or them were that exceptional; it was just that they were *hers.*
I also didn’t read too much into Andi saying she could buy Amanda a new hat. It seemed to me that it was basically her way of saying that she was cool with Amanda claiming it. Also, it’s the holidays, so she probably has buying presents on the brain.
I’m not an expert on adoption, but I’m pretty sure there are financial checks to make sure the adopter can support a child. I *do* know that, where I live (NYC), there are VERY strict laws that require an adoptive parent to rent/own a living space large enough to make sure the child has their own room. So I’m guessing that Andi makes enough money to at least buy a new hat. 😉
In Andi’s case, she sacrificed her own sleeping space so that Amanda could have her own bedroom. Eventually they will have to move to a larger apartment.
My point was I am fine with Amanda’s behavior but Andi’s reaction I am not. If my kids wanted my hat or coat or shoes, I’d humor them, not offer to buy them a new pair of shoes when their own are perfectly fine and, no, they can’t actually keep mine either. They wanna be close/show affection and I get that. That’s perfectly acceptable, but on no less than three occasions, Andi has offered to simply buy said affection. I will have to look up when each occurred but there are at least three of them, counting this one. That is a bad habit I hope she recognizes.
Amanda also has had people in the past use ‘stuff’ to try to win her over, as with the handheld game device she broke when she found out someone else (Selkie, I think) was getting adopted. So it’s not too much of a surprise that this is her reaction; she’s been somewhat trained to it. (And it’s not hard for a kid to pick up on that.)
I think it’s been pretty clear since the initial furniture-buying step that buying stuff is the only parental bonding thing that Andi actually knows how to do. Not that it’s the only thing she *does*, mind you, but the only parent-child interaction she feels confident with.
But she has also shown restraint – there was one comic after a blowup where Amanda wanted a huge list of expensive items, and Andi (having promised shopping) still said she could only pick two.
I’m not sure Andi’s bonding strategy of ‘buying stuff’ is necessarily coming from flaws in her own upbringing. I mean, yeah, it might be, but she has probably also noticed that it works better with Amanda, in her present state, than it ordinarily would with kids in general.
All too often the parental message kids get from a shower of material gifts is, “Meh, can’t be bothered to give you time, attention, or love, so here, take all this expensive stuff instead.” Of course that is horribly damaging.
However, Amanda’s most recent experience has been in the orphanage, where physical needs were met, but her personal possessions were so pitifully few they would fit in a small backpack. To her, right now, having nice things of her very own has to be a source of joy — a sign of autonomy, of being respected, of freedom.
It shouldn’t go on indefinitely. At the moment, though, it gives needed healing.
^^^ this. Normally, kids of Amanda’s age have a lot more stuff to call their own – if only old things and broken toys forever abandoned, but still THEIRS. And I strongly suspect Amanda had some of those in her horrible adopted home, but they all got ripped away from her when she got ‘given back’. There’s a void there, a hole where the idea of her actually having / being entitled to having her own -stuff- beyond simple necessities and 1.5 toys/keepsakes should be.
Yeah, I think this is a reasonable way of looking at it. One of the keys of parenting (and a factor missed by those who aren’t parents) is that what works best for one child might not work at all for another child, and what creates negatives in one child won’t necessarily create negatives in another. Gotta take context into account.
I’m hesitant to put hard numbers on Andi’s income, but in general I’d say she makes less per year than Todd but enough to provide for her and Amanda. She’s not making enough that she would have been approved for an adoption through normal channels. She only has Amanda because of the parentage claim; if she had tried for a normal adoption she likely would have been denied due to her income.
You did well to show that with the one room apartment, also you cant realy put hard numbers on someone who is paid by commission or open sale of pre-made pieces. But I would say Andi would be making the bulk of her yearly income in the November and December months from people buying art as gifts and displaying art at end of year functions. So don’t worry Andi being on a lower income then Todd is represented in the comic if you reread it a few times looking for details.
Surprised she’s not all over the “presence/presents” thing. Maybe she’s too young for that kind of wordplay yet?
This could have gone worse. Although it remains to be seen what Amanda’s going to say once they’re back in mixed company again.
It’s not that surprising. I knew the difference when I was seven.
Or just doesn’t care for puns.
Or has more on her mind right now. lol
Something I’ve been wondering for a while.
Why only six colors in their hair? The visible spectrum has seven – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. It actually looks like you left out blue, as the next-to-last color appears too dark. Like you went “green, indigo, violet”.
I do like that you have them in order, however.
Indigo is a fake color anyway.
no it isn’t… PINK is the fake color… if you take a “color wheel” and vary the proportions of the primary colors, you CAN get indigo… but you will NEVER get “Pink“…
That’s because the color wheel is flawed. Here is a better chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorfulness#/media/File:Excitation_Purity.svg
The color wheel shows only the edges of this, but for many colors you need to add some white. Pink is inwards from the lower right corner: red, white, and a little magenta.
Indigo is considered a separate part of the spectrum primarily because Newton believed the number seven held mystic significance. He decided there should be seven colors, and he and a friend set about figuring out where to place them.
Huh. Learn something new every day. I always thought indigo was in there just to make “ROY. G. BIV” pronounceable.
Thanks for explaining– I didn’t have the energy to at 4:30am. Also, there’s the possibility that what we call colors has shifted over time– I can accept there being seven distinct parts if it goes red orange yellow green cyan (what Newton may have called “blue”) blue (what Newton may have called “indigo”) purple.
If you are talking about the real colors it’s actually CMY (cyan, magenta, and yellow) with the secondary colors of RGB (red, green, and blue). Orange isn’t in the picture till you hit tertiary colors.
Let me tell you as an artist so much that was driving me crazy when it came to painting all made sense once I figured that out.
Really great explanation-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQqxN8LpGzw
I hope it’s clear that I wasn’t talking in terms of the color wheel.
I do find it interesting what you (and other, obviously) identify as as “real” colors. My dad is in the printing industry, so I would always see this different examples of how the CMYK model printed out.
Also, I did tech crew in high school, and it was interesting to work with the colored lights and understand colors and color interaction that way. (RGB model)
Color is cool.
There’s two sets of real colors. One is the colors of light (RGB) that can combine to make all the other colors; the full combination is white. The other is the reversal, which filters out bouncing light, the full filtering being black (and most black pigments don’t get anything like the full black of Vantablack, which bounces so little light that humans can’t perceive the texture of anything coated with Vantablack.
That filtering is the CYM and, since we find it easier and cheaper to produce a full black with simple black ink than with any combo of the above, Black.
Red and Green light together can make Yellow light. Green and Blue light together can make Cyan light. Blue and Red light together can make Magenta light. And, so I understand it, the printer colors filter out opposites, so Cyan filters out Red, Yellow filters out Blue, and Magenta filters out Green. I might be mistaken about which colors filter what.
That’s also why when you’re designing art, you need to figure out early whether you’re designing for something shown on a digital screen or made in physical media — because the color tools are completely different.
Also, I think it was SciShow that did a special on the color wheel and how we ended up with Newton’s mystic seven instead of the more reasonable six divisions.
Also also, “It’s made my mixing colors of light” hardly qualifies as “It doesn’t exist.” Honestly. Pink is a term for a variety of shades of light red, some with purple in them, much as lavender is a term for light purple, tan or beige a term for light brown.
The thing I find odd is that we have distinct, commonly known terms for a few colors’ lighter shades, but not for all of them — there’s no common single-word term for light blue, light green, light orange. And yellow’s light enough by itself that even though lighter shades exist, I don’t think they mentally qualify as un-yellow the way pink is not red and lavender is not purple.
That missed parenthesis will haunt me for days.
Sigh.
There actually is common terms for light green in the design industry and funnily enough they’re based on plants. Basically items that some one can point to and say “that color”. The name for light green is “celery” and if it has a bit of grey in it it’s “sage”.
BTW a very light yellow is “cream”, again something you can point at. Most people don’t think of cream as a yellow though.
Cream can be light yellow, or light brown, depending on what paint can you’re looking at… *shiftyeyes*
But then, get the right tone of brown pale enough, and it’s not far off yellow anyway.
I understand “cream” to be a light PEACH.
And yes, there are certain color names such as Sage (one I knew) and Celery (one I didn’t), but by “common” I meant like ones most people would understand if you said it (without interpreting it on the spot relative to an existing object) and be able to use when describing it.
Sorry but cream has never been light peach.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cream?s=t
cream
[kreem]
noun
…
6.
a yellowish white; light tint of yellow or buff.
…
adjective
20.
of the color cream; cream-colored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_(colour)
When it doesn’t look like a light yellow (whether from yellow or buff) it goes under the general heading of “off-white”.
off-white
[awf-hwahyt, -wahyt, of-]
adjective
1.
white mixed with a small amount of gray, yellow, or other light color.
Why would you exclude descriptions “relative to an existing object”? It is how we got the name orange after all.
Origin of orange
Old French
1300-1350
1300-50; Middle English: the fruit or tree < Old French orenge, cognate with Spanish naranja < Arabic nāranj < Persian nārang < Sanskrit nāraṅga
I have to say, I do find pink to be interesting, just in that I find it more distinct a tint than lavender, for instance. Just like, if people were supposed to wear purple for a class color day or something, and someone showed up in lavender, I’d be like, “Yeah, okay.” If they were supposed to wear red and showed up in pink, I’d be more, “:/”
Now like you said, some hues of pink are not simply tints of red, so that might have something to do with it. On the whole, I think it’s primarily linguistic/cultural.
That’s a good point. And Mom has said that the thing about Pink is that, unlike all the other lighter shades of colors, it doesn’t go with Red.
I read a really fascinating article the other day about how humans didn’t really see “blue” until very recently. One example they gave was somewhere in Homer, where he talks about “wine-colored” seas.
It’s also beginning to be shown that people of other cultures, especially tribal ones, don’t see colors the same way either. They cannot differentiate between, say, blue and red, but two almost identical shades of green are as different as night and say to them, because they have our have not been taught the difference.
It almost makes me want to not teach my children colors for a few years, just to see what they think is the same or different.
It’s not that they don’t see them the same way, physically. It’s that they don’t distinguish them as distinct colors, like how we classify lime green and forest green under green. Knowing nothing of Ancient Greek, my guess would be that the colors of wine and the ocean fell under the same color umbrella, though they may or may not have had more specific words to describe wine-shade and ocean-shade. Either way, if they see them next to each other
they know they’re different, it’s just that their language/culture considers them similar enough that they can use the same word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution
I can’t find the chart I really like, and as it says there the order they’re learned in is looser than the original theory outlined, but the whole thing is fascinating. The blue-green spectrum especially seems to have a lot of interesting variance.
https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
This seems relevant too. People don’t care too much about shades. They may use some of the more popular shade names, but for the most part they just use ROYGBP and pink. (ctrl-f indigo to see snarky comment on that)
A related example is Japanese, which has separate words for both green and blue, but due (probably) to the word now used for blue originally covering green as well, there are lignuistic remnants of pretty clearly green things (traffic lights, for example) that are called “blue”.
Huh…that may explain why Maito Gai calls himself the blue beast in some episodes of Naruto. Always thought it was the creators being silly.
And why some traffic lights in manga/anime actually _are_ blue instead of green. Don’t know if that happens in real life Japan.
And the other way too. Where you were talking about similar shades of green. I know some languages (Russian I think?) do distinguish light and dark blue, for example, where to us they’re both blue.
But it’s about the way a language categorizes colors, not really about how they see them or that they don’t know the difference.
but is it _indigo and blue_ or _blue and cyan_? Color names across languages are fucked up
(also, light ‘darkblue’ and dark ‘lightblue’ are totally a thing, so it’s less dark/light and more saturated+purplish / unsaturated+greenish) (but yeah once you start getting into their dark/light shades territory is when native speakers’ heads also begin to spin)
Makes me wonder if people from pigment-poor areas brought to our color-rich world would respond like those guys who put on EnChroma glasses for the first time.
“I claim this hat in the name of Mars! Isn’t that lovely? Hmm?”
Pffffwah. ? nice
It took me a second… not because I am not old enough but because its that out there…
If I missed it I would have to surrender my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
For presents, my beau likes pretty bows. If I don’t do it up right, I might get some ribbin’ about the ribbon, too. Then she’ll try to guess what’s inside, so she’ll shake it, and do some rapping on the wrapping.
Actually, homonyms are spelled the same but pronounced differently, homophones are spelled differently but pronounced the same. Both kinds are super fun though.
Homonyms? Gawd hates those unnatural things. Next thing you know there will be thespians in our schools matriculating in front of everyone!!!1!eleventy!!!
Not to mention all the mastication.
No! Not the mastication! That leads to digestion, or perhaps even regurgitation.
Indeed! And look at all these young people nowadays, watching all their YouTubes and engaging in flagrant public acts of philanthropy!
Not quite. According to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homonym the word can refer to either a homophone or a homograph. If you want to specifically refer to words spelled the same but pronounced differently, I think you want https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heteronym
Amanda’s growing up!
I will be great getting back to the Selkie part of this story, but I love the way this story is turning out and Amanda’s and Andi’s chemistry together. They remind me a little of a childhood friend and her mom (who was also a single mother).
Dave, I have noticed that Andi’s first reaction to this type of behavior of Amanda — possessive, clingy-angry, demanding — is to buy her things. What is Andi’s income? Or, I should say, perhaps she hasn’t learned there are other child coping skills that lending to her “gimme!” bursts? I’ve been waiting for this but have not seen it. Not saying Andi needs to tell her she needs to earn things yet, because obviously Andi has a lot to recoup with her, but, like, I really wanted Andi’s last line to be more like, “I was gonna give it to you anyway!” or “Well, I’m gonna let you have it because it puts two things I love together.” Or… something. Or even just a parental chuckle? But Andi goes right into offering to buy her one, even after tempting her back into the fold with the promise of presents. I am thinking this is just an Andi thing she’ll have to deal with later on and am not criticizing the writing:) Just pointing out an Andi-thing.
I had a moment claiming something from a parent actually not long ago. My mom had been to a thrift store and she found herself a neat old watch, a type of pocketwatch that was held in a leather box. It was a masculine design, but she isn’t a girly girl woman. She was showing it to me and I asked if I could see it. As soon as she handed it to me, I declared it mine and put it in my pocket.
Andi might be thinking it’s just that situation and she isn’t intending to react the way she did. Though she does tend to use money like that. Something she might have picked up from Patricia since I don’t think the woman exactly won people over with her wonderful personality.
I actually read it as kind of affectionate. Amanda isn’t always so good about displaying affection for others. However, in my personal experience, children often like to “take” things belonging to people about whom they care. My niece loves to wear her mom’s shoes and play with the things in her purse; she also is kind of obsessed with the rings I always wear and often likes to wear my necklaces. (I actually sometimes have to hide my jewelry if I take it off because otherwise my niece will appropriate it!) When I was a kid, I remember very well that my mom had one particular sweater and a red leather checkbook cover that I wanted more than ANYTHING. I would play with them whenever she would let me – and sometimes when she wouldn’t! It wasn’t that either or them were that exceptional; it was just that they were *hers.*
I also didn’t read too much into Andi saying she could buy Amanda a new hat. It seemed to me that it was basically her way of saying that she was cool with Amanda claiming it. Also, it’s the holidays, so she probably has buying presents on the brain.
I’m not an expert on adoption, but I’m pretty sure there are financial checks to make sure the adopter can support a child. I *do* know that, where I live (NYC), there are VERY strict laws that require an adoptive parent to rent/own a living space large enough to make sure the child has their own room. So I’m guessing that Andi makes enough money to at least buy a new hat. 😉
In Andi’s case, she sacrificed her own sleeping space so that Amanda could have her own bedroom. Eventually they will have to move to a larger apartment.
My point was I am fine with Amanda’s behavior but Andi’s reaction I am not. If my kids wanted my hat or coat or shoes, I’d humor them, not offer to buy them a new pair of shoes when their own are perfectly fine and, no, they can’t actually keep mine either. They wanna be close/show affection and I get that. That’s perfectly acceptable, but on no less than three occasions, Andi has offered to simply buy said affection. I will have to look up when each occurred but there are at least three of them, counting this one. That is a bad habit I hope she recognizes.
Amanda also has had people in the past use ‘stuff’ to try to win her over, as with the handheld game device she broke when she found out someone else (Selkie, I think) was getting adopted. So it’s not too much of a surprise that this is her reaction; she’s been somewhat trained to it. (And it’s not hard for a kid to pick up on that.)
I think it’s been pretty clear since the initial furniture-buying step that buying stuff is the only parental bonding thing that Andi actually knows how to do. Not that it’s the only thing she *does*, mind you, but the only parent-child interaction she feels confident with.
But she has also shown restraint – there was one comic after a blowup where Amanda wanted a huge list of expensive items, and Andi (having promised shopping) still said she could only pick two.
I’m not sure Andi’s bonding strategy of ‘buying stuff’ is necessarily coming from flaws in her own upbringing. I mean, yeah, it might be, but she has probably also noticed that it works better with Amanda, in her present state, than it ordinarily would with kids in general.
All too often the parental message kids get from a shower of material gifts is, “Meh, can’t be bothered to give you time, attention, or love, so here, take all this expensive stuff instead.” Of course that is horribly damaging.
However, Amanda’s most recent experience has been in the orphanage, where physical needs were met, but her personal possessions were so pitifully few they would fit in a small backpack. To her, right now, having nice things of her very own has to be a source of joy — a sign of autonomy, of being respected, of freedom.
It shouldn’t go on indefinitely. At the moment, though, it gives needed healing.
^^^ this. Normally, kids of Amanda’s age have a lot more stuff to call their own – if only old things and broken toys forever abandoned, but still THEIRS. And I strongly suspect Amanda had some of those in her horrible adopted home, but they all got ripped away from her when she got ‘given back’. There’s a void there, a hole where the idea of her actually having / being entitled to having her own -stuff- beyond simple necessities and 1.5 toys/keepsakes should be.
Yeah, I think this is a reasonable way of looking at it. One of the keys of parenting (and a factor missed by those who aren’t parents) is that what works best for one child might not work at all for another child, and what creates negatives in one child won’t necessarily create negatives in another. Gotta take context into account.
I’m hesitant to put hard numbers on Andi’s income, but in general I’d say she makes less per year than Todd but enough to provide for her and Amanda. She’s not making enough that she would have been approved for an adoption through normal channels. She only has Amanda because of the parentage claim; if she had tried for a normal adoption she likely would have been denied due to her income.
You did well to show that with the one room apartment, also you cant realy put hard numbers on someone who is paid by commission or open sale of pre-made pieces. But I would say Andi would be making the bulk of her yearly income in the November and December months from people buying art as gifts and displaying art at end of year functions. So don’t worry Andi being on a lower income then Todd is represented in the comic if you reread it a few times looking for details.
Ah, but then she would not be TAKING your hat.
She could be planning voodoo magic to get revenge at Andi. You do need some tissue from the victim like hair.