If she didn’t have all of this information beforehand, I am glad that she is getting it now. Especially the information about supressing the ability and how it hurt to take the supressor off. All the information here is really good information, like Tarnagh said. If she didn’t have this information, it isn’t that surprising that she jumped to conclusions. Also why you don’t make uninformed decisions. There is still a lot more that she could learn about echoes, but the information directly about the experience the kids had is the most important. So far, this is the best possible response Todd could have had, in my opinion.
In fairness, just about any decision made by any human is uninformed to some degree or another. No matter how much you research, etc, there’s always some other piece that you don’t know about.
Especially given how much govt secrecy there has been around this particular thing, Mari not having all the information makes perfect sense. But even when govt secrecy isn’t a factor, one can only do so much to have all the information.
That is true, and all too often I have gone down the rabbit hole of research. At the same point in time, there is a level that can be reasonable. I am not blaming Mari for not having the information here, except for maybe talking to the kids alone without someone more knowledgeable and able to explain stuff (aka an adult). To be honest, anyone who might be in care of the kids (ie: the aunts and uncles, grandparents that still have visitation rights etc) should have been read in to the kids’ abilities from the beginning and introduced to adult echoes, and other similar things. I understand that it is a government secret, but if something bad happened while the kids were spending time with them, you would rather that they were informed than not (and possibly posting it online due to freaking out and asking for help). It could be something as simple as you were driving the kids somewhere and a minor car accident happens and startles the kid into doing the glowing eyes, or something more major like a shooter, a tornado, or something. I would think that they might even have someone assigned at the school that is read in on this stuff and follows them around like an ed tech/paraeducators (maybe claim it is due to the bullying or to help the Sarnothi adjust). I could also see it being the type of thing where they aren’t allowed to stay anywhere without a “read-in” adult (grandparent, parent, etc), as in no summer camps, sleepovers or other things without one of those adults present. With Selkie being another species and having food allergies, it actually might make it easier to explain away why a “read-in” person is there.
Of course, they never expected Amanda to get abilities and didn’t think that Selkie did due to the suppressor, so I can’t fully blame them for having rushed bad protocol. Protocol also has to be vastly different now compared to before the internet and other forms of technology. Now, everyone can have a camera or post something online live for the most part. I makes keeping things hidden a lot more difficult. You could have maybe gotten away with just the parents knowing back in say the 1920s, or currently in a rural area in Alaska or some other place with bad mobile and internet connections. With all the technology, you basically need a fairly large inner circle to help protect the kids. (You also can’t just isolate the kids, as people with “suoer powers” and no social skills or experience, especially with those of their own age, sounds like a cataclysmic idea.)
Yes, you can never be perfectly informed, but when someone who knows more about the situation than you do is in literally the next room over, you should take a minute to ask some questions before acting.
Especially when that person is visibly making decisions that you don’t see a logical reason for.
Chesterton’s Fence. If you don’t know why a decision was made, figure/find out *before* reversing it, because you may be about to fuck everything up because the reason was important despite being unintuitive.
I hope you’re not saying she should never give a kid food until double-checking that that specific food is not going to harm them. Pretty sure that was long before “Selkie is a different *species*” became a concept she’d have to wrestle with, and for humans, grape allergies are rare and grapes are a perfectly reasonable basic food once kids are past the stage where they’re a choking hazard.
Double-checking for common allergies (peanuts, for example) makes sense, but being afraid to feed a kid out of the *possibility* it might make them sick, that’s going overboard.
If Mari disagrees with what Todd is feeding his daughter, she should have taken it up with him. Going around his back by making Selkie eat something as soon as he leaves the room is not the right way to handle the situation.
As for not thinking about the concept of Selkie being a different species, Theo figured out the “not human” thing a few comics before the one I linked. That seems to have been outside of Mari’s earshot, but still. (Besides, a human with a bizarre medical condition that somehow causes skin discoloration, webbed hands, and gills might just conceivably also have other symptoms such as weird allergies/intolerances. Seriously, at that point, what are you expecting?)
I’m not Milo but I am suggesting it’s irresponsible to feed a child without asking if they have /any/ food allergies. Too many children die because someone was trying to be helpful and went and fed them basically poison.
When you are caring for a child for the first time that should not be an after thought. Do not give children food if you won’t trust them to tell you what they can and can’t eat. Especially not when the parent is right in the next room over! It just takes a few seconds to ask if the kid isn’t eating things because they are picky or it there’s an actual problem.
It is also good to label things that you bring to share with what allergens it might have in it, especially at potlucks. There can be hidden nuts or other things inside stuff that could be deadly to people. Being upfront isn’t that difficult and can help other people a lot.
Yes! At worst you wasted a little time, at best you saved someone’s life by warning them about a food they might have tried otherwise! I may be biased because multiple people in my family including myself have allergies, some even life threatening, but I can’t understand the push back against letting people make informed choices about their food.
Also as someone with Autism and Adhd I reeeeally get upset when someone thinks tricking or forcing to eat a food they dislike just because they “shouldn’t be picky”. I’ve been in Selkies shoes and thrown up more than once from an adult who felt they knew better than my parents.
I had a friend with a whey allergy. It is amazing how many things it is in, even things that you would think are dairy free. She quite often brings her own food to parties since she can’t trust the food at someone else’s house or at a potluck. She also had a grandma that didn’t believe that she had a bad peanut allergy and would send her to school with a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.
I think Grandma was acting out of fear and ignorance, she clearly cares about the girls but doesn’t understand the Echo powers. she’s a good person but what she said was awful, I’m glad Todd stepped in and set her straight. She looks like she at least realizes what she said was wrong
It’s an odd day, but in my experience one that will happen in every parent’s journey. We get so accustomed to BEING mommy or daddy we forget how to be different when they grow up, and grandparents often miss little differences in HOW their children choose to parent. Theo and Marie are taken this a lot more graciously than some would.
Excellent points, Todd. And probably completely true, considering what we already know of what happened to Selkie because her ability was suppressed.
Grandma doesn’t want the girls to be hurt. Hopefully, this helps her come around. Soon.
If she didn’t have all of this information beforehand, I am glad that she is getting it now. Especially the information about supressing the ability and how it hurt to take the supressor off. All the information here is really good information, like Tarnagh said. If she didn’t have this information, it isn’t that surprising that she jumped to conclusions. Also why you don’t make uninformed decisions. There is still a lot more that she could learn about echoes, but the information directly about the experience the kids had is the most important. So far, this is the best possible response Todd could have had, in my opinion.
This isn’t the first time Mari has made an uninformed decision.
In fairness, just about any decision made by any human is uninformed to some degree or another. No matter how much you research, etc, there’s always some other piece that you don’t know about.
Especially given how much govt secrecy there has been around this particular thing, Mari not having all the information makes perfect sense. But even when govt secrecy isn’t a factor, one can only do so much to have all the information.
That is true, and all too often I have gone down the rabbit hole of research. At the same point in time, there is a level that can be reasonable. I am not blaming Mari for not having the information here, except for maybe talking to the kids alone without someone more knowledgeable and able to explain stuff (aka an adult). To be honest, anyone who might be in care of the kids (ie: the aunts and uncles, grandparents that still have visitation rights etc) should have been read in to the kids’ abilities from the beginning and introduced to adult echoes, and other similar things. I understand that it is a government secret, but if something bad happened while the kids were spending time with them, you would rather that they were informed than not (and possibly posting it online due to freaking out and asking for help). It could be something as simple as you were driving the kids somewhere and a minor car accident happens and startles the kid into doing the glowing eyes, or something more major like a shooter, a tornado, or something. I would think that they might even have someone assigned at the school that is read in on this stuff and follows them around like an ed tech/paraeducators (maybe claim it is due to the bullying or to help the Sarnothi adjust). I could also see it being the type of thing where they aren’t allowed to stay anywhere without a “read-in” adult (grandparent, parent, etc), as in no summer camps, sleepovers or other things without one of those adults present. With Selkie being another species and having food allergies, it actually might make it easier to explain away why a “read-in” person is there.
Of course, they never expected Amanda to get abilities and didn’t think that Selkie did due to the suppressor, so I can’t fully blame them for having rushed bad protocol. Protocol also has to be vastly different now compared to before the internet and other forms of technology. Now, everyone can have a camera or post something online live for the most part. I makes keeping things hidden a lot more difficult. You could have maybe gotten away with just the parents knowing back in say the 1920s, or currently in a rural area in Alaska or some other place with bad mobile and internet connections. With all the technology, you basically need a fairly large inner circle to help protect the kids. (You also can’t just isolate the kids, as people with “suoer powers” and no social skills or experience, especially with those of their own age, sounds like a cataclysmic idea.)
Yes, you can never be perfectly informed, but when someone who knows more about the situation than you do is in literally the next room over, you should take a minute to ask some questions before acting.
Especially when that person is visibly making decisions that you don’t see a logical reason for.
Chesterton’s Fence. If you don’t know why a decision was made, figure/find out *before* reversing it, because you may be about to fuck everything up because the reason was important despite being unintuitive.
I hope you’re not saying she should never give a kid food until double-checking that that specific food is not going to harm them. Pretty sure that was long before “Selkie is a different *species*” became a concept she’d have to wrestle with, and for humans, grape allergies are rare and grapes are a perfectly reasonable basic food once kids are past the stage where they’re a choking hazard.
Double-checking for common allergies (peanuts, for example) makes sense, but being afraid to feed a kid out of the *possibility* it might make them sick, that’s going overboard.
If Mari disagrees with what Todd is feeding his daughter, she should have taken it up with him. Going around his back by making Selkie eat something as soon as he leaves the room is not the right way to handle the situation.
As for not thinking about the concept of Selkie being a different species, Theo figured out the “not human” thing a few comics before the one I linked. That seems to have been outside of Mari’s earshot, but still. (Besides, a human with a bizarre medical condition that somehow causes skin discoloration, webbed hands, and gills might just conceivably also have other symptoms such as weird allergies/intolerances. Seriously, at that point, what are you expecting?)
To be fair, grapes is not a food people are typically alergic to.
Yeah, mom! Geez!
I’m not Milo but I am suggesting it’s irresponsible to feed a child without asking if they have /any/ food allergies. Too many children die because someone was trying to be helpful and went and fed them basically poison.
When you are caring for a child for the first time that should not be an after thought. Do not give children food if you won’t trust them to tell you what they can and can’t eat. Especially not when the parent is right in the next room over! It just takes a few seconds to ask if the kid isn’t eating things because they are picky or it there’s an actual problem.
It is also good to label things that you bring to share with what allergens it might have in it, especially at potlucks. There can be hidden nuts or other things inside stuff that could be deadly to people. Being upfront isn’t that difficult and can help other people a lot.
Yes! At worst you wasted a little time, at best you saved someone’s life by warning them about a food they might have tried otherwise! I may be biased because multiple people in my family including myself have allergies, some even life threatening, but I can’t understand the push back against letting people make informed choices about their food.
Also as someone with Autism and Adhd I reeeeally get upset when someone thinks tricking or forcing to eat a food they dislike just because they “shouldn’t be picky”. I’ve been in Selkies shoes and thrown up more than once from an adult who felt they knew better than my parents.
I had a friend with a whey allergy. It is amazing how many things it is in, even things that you would think are dairy free. She quite often brings her own food to parties since she can’t trust the food at someone else’s house or at a potluck. She also had a grandma that didn’t believe that she had a bad peanut allergy and would send her to school with a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.
I think Grandma was acting out of fear and ignorance, she clearly cares about the girls but doesn’t understand the Echo powers. she’s a good person but what she said was awful, I’m glad Todd stepped in and set her straight. She looks like she at least realizes what she said was wrong
It’s most definitely an odd day when you have to be the parent, to your parents.
Live long enough, or have kids of your own, and you’ll probably have at least one day like that.
It’s an odd day, but in my experience one that will happen in every parent’s journey. We get so accustomed to BEING mommy or daddy we forget how to be different when they grow up, and grandparents often miss little differences in HOW their children choose to parent. Theo and Marie are taken this a lot more graciously than some would.
See Amanda’s maternal Grandmother, who didn’t want to even meet her because she was a Mistake…
Ugh. I’d forgotten about her. I sincerely hope we never see her again.