Ugh I still feel horrible about this. While in college, my best friend introduced me to his younger brother. From his size and what I knew I assumed he was 18-19. Well he teased his brother a bit and I got in on it and was pretty rough on him. Nothing really mean just I knew how to poke at peoples flaws. Beware 2nd year psychology majors… especially when they say they know what your problem is… it takes a few years for them to realize they don’t know shit and they just know how to bug someones insecurities.
Anyways I was pretty rough on him and later my friend even said so, and also let me know he was only 14….
!@$@!$#@$#$ Yeah I immediately told my friend I wanted to call his brother and apologize. I let him know that I was teasing, and didn’t realize how young he was and said he could take that as a compliments because he looked and acted very mature. I also went out of my way to be very nice to his brother over the years.
I quickly went from his brothers most hated friend to his most liked… that was until the younger brother decided to be an ass and skip out on his older brothers wedding because he wasn’t allowed to invite his friends (28 at this time so no excuse)
Absolutely, that would be the “bad” part of treating kids like adults, it sometimes leads adults to forget that they are, in fact, still kids. My two year old neice can be incredibly conversational and perceptive, which tricks you in to thinking she’s more mature than her age would indicate. But the simplest things can cause her to melt down into a crying mess too, just as you would expect for her age, because thats how toddlers work, lol.
You guys keep treating kids like they are made of glass. He should at this point address her inappropriate response and somewhere in the middle of it acknowledge his insensitive comment.
If you constantly worry about how your kid is going to react or deal with minor issues like this you *do* end up with a brittle princess for a kid. Not a good situation.
There have been *many* times where my kid has said, “Hey, that wasn’t a nice thing to say” and upon more discussion I’ve realized the kid was right and apologized.
BECAUSE I don’t worry about it my kid is now much more resilient and doesn’t explode off the handle like Amanda does, and I don’t worry about saying the wrong thing because my kid can 1) handle it and 2) will let me know if I screw up.
Dude. It isn’t inappropriate when it’s a little tactless from adults. Also making fun of kids can go too far sometimes and can friggin’ harm them. Antoine needs to realize that kids aren’t tiny adults.
Also this is pretty mild for Amanda. Usually she’d be spitting and hissing. XD
Inappropriate? He insulted her. While he is probably unaware that his sarcastic reference to “Princess” would be taken that way, his, “is she a CRYER?” was obviously meant to be. Classic example of the big guy picking on the little guy.
So what should she do? Get mad, go over in the corner and sulk all night? Flop down on the floor and kick her feet, while crying, “Uncle Annie’s mean”? Suck it up and pretend it didn’t happen, but hold it closely inside where the hateful words can fester, and let it build through the years, until, finally the hate gets so large that she lashes out, and as the police take her to jail and the ambulance takes Antoine to ICU, everyone stands there in shock, wondering, “What the hell just happened?”
Or do like she’s doing, and use WORDS instead of a baseball bat – “Hey, Dickweed, knock that shit off!!”?
As I’ve tried explaining to my nephew on several occasions, the problem isn’t with WHAT you’re saying, Amanda, the problem is in HOW you’re saying it.
You can tell people to stop something without getting in their face about it. Anger doesn’t have to control you.
Similarly, you can disagree with someone without being a dick about it. Something that society at large seems to find hard to conceive of (or perhaps that’s just the vocal internet part of society).
If she WERE, it would be a HORRIBLE HUMILIATING question, no matter how it was meant. Because you can bet that it would’ve been thrown in her face a zillion times, both by other kids, and by teachers and authority figures — including the occasional bullying teacher.
Got my kid out of THAT class, and the teacher is lucky that I never spoke face-to-face with her after that stunt. *froth*
Showing awareness for the differences in emotional and mental maturity is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Being aware of and understanding how a child who has been severely abused in the past might react differently than a child raised in more healthy environment is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Recognizing that not all people react the same and thus assuming what works ok for one is good for all is not a good policy is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Knowing that what may be normal and acceptable behavior for your current in group may be easily seen as hostile and unwelcome by a newcomer is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Its fine that you were able to find a situation that worked for you and your family, and its fine to share that and say “hey maybe you should try this” or “this is what we did and it worked out well because of A, B, and C”.
But assuming that your situation and its circumstances universally apply to all other people and all situations is not fine. Its not fair, its not accurate, and its not helpful.
I am certainly no fan of Amanda as a character, and I certainly hope there is an appropriate response to her outburst, but saying another person should treat her however he wants is no better than what Amanda is saying “eh its ok I do what I want” and not caring about how it impacts anyone else.
But they aren’t adults. There is a difference between not being patronizing and condescending to them and recognizing that kids function differently than adults.
I’m at a loss as to how being condescending is “treating her like an adult”. If someone said “Is she a crier?” about me to, say, my spouse, my response might make Amanda look sedate. I would experience the question as being treated like a baby or an idiot. People who are treating me like an adult address questions about me directly to me, and anyone treating me with a modicum of respect knows that there are very few circumstances under which asking me if a crier is appropriate. This is not one of them.
mmm
I choose to think that the hair coloring is like a mood ring
see how the color red is over shadowing the other colors?
Rage, anger
the color is …kinda constant but shifts
like the placement for blue and orange are not gonna shift
but colors within single wavelengths of each other will
Go with the flow, dude. Nothing wrong with the color changing a bit as long as it serves the art. There’s a ton of things that look weird when drawn the way they would be IRL.
“Eh I do whatever I want anyway” – Core of Amanda’s problem. The question will be is she capable of comprehending that doing so at the expense of others is a bad thing (i.e. she has empathy and can thus be a good person) or simply doesn’t care (i.e. she is a sociopath).
I don’t think Dave would do that to Amanda. I find it safe to assume that Dave will create drama and smiling resolutions with some tears along the way; but ultimately a fairy-tale ending. I believe we can trust our hearts to his story, this is t s brightly lit film noir like Batman, or the Twilight Zone, in my arrogant opinion.
Oh my money would be on the former rather than the later as well, but who knows, this could be an epic troll job by Dave, never underestimate creatives ability to mess with peoples heads 😉
She ABSOLUTELY can empathize with others — she has done so in the past. She may have disorders that make it difficult to connect with others or what have you, but the possibility that she is a sociopath has been eliminated by previous parts of the comic.
uh-oh. might want to get that swear jar ready, amanda is going on one of her rampanges……and for once there are adults around who´ll act mature about it and react apropriately. that´ll shock her ,-)
I hope she does go on a tear actually. I’ve always said that the best way to instruct someone is by example. Let her lose it and then have the adults handle it in a mature manner. Then when she watches and sees there’s another way, let her ask them questions and have them explain in a normal logical way. Can be quite instructional.
This looks to me like a communication fail on the part of the adults. “Hey, your niece isn’t dead after all and you get to meet her at Christmas!” really should have been accompanied by “but she’s been abused in the past and has some triggers we should be aware of and help her with” in my opinion, and Antoine’s comments imply (to me) that it wasn’t.
This is the thing, yeah. When people have… I feel like I’m missing a vocabulary piece here, because “problems” doesn’t sound correct… anyway, when things about their mental states are likely to cause hurt/harm to themselves or others, then you wouldn’t necessarily share this information with strangers, but you would want to share it with close family to avoid this kind of reaction.
And to allow the adults to work out how best to handle the situation, and not be surprised by it.
Of course, there are also those who figure that just letting people know that there’s something wrong with them causes everyone to treat them differently (“fragile” for example), and that leads to a whole new level of this problem….
On the reverse, I am surprised Todd even knew it would set her off. Don’t recall if she ever went off on that particular wording before or not. I haven’t seen her go berserk really with Andi… Or have I just forgotten?
Also, looking at these two pages side by side, I have to say I really prefer the hand-drawn lines you’ve been doing lately. The varying thicknesses look way more organic.
Yeah I dunno if it’s me or my cheap tablet or both, but when inking digitally I haven’t been able to get the pressure sensitivity to make noticeable differences in the line width. My pens are a bit more responsive in that regard, plus I have four thicknesses to pick from so I can cheat it and draw with a thin pen then go back over the “shadow” areas with a thicker pen.
hey Dave I have a question .. Did Amanda, Selkie & Todd get their hair done professionally? Like does Andi do her own hair or have someone do it for her?
Cause if she does it herself…and she did the kids’ hair, then does that mean that she did Todd’s too and todd let her touch him?
Or maybe he just did his own & I’m overthinking it
Antoine likes pushing people’s buttons. Family people, anyway. He especially likes puncturing pretensions. It’s what he does. They’re all used to him doing that, and he’s used to them knowing he doesn’t mean it in a nasty way.
He was treating Amanda like family — but she doesn’t know this about him. Now we get to see how he handles this. No matter what, we’ll learn something about him. My prediction: he’ll try to find a characteristically ‘Antoine’ way to defuse the situation.
Maybe he’ll even succeed in making her laugh. That would be awesome, if he did. Best uncle ever. Thinking back… I don’t believe we’ve ever seen her laugh or giggle. Not once. Not in a that’s so funny! way.
I do the same thing with my family. It took my niece forever even after being told that I just playfully tease family before she caught on that no, I was not going to stop and no, I don’t mean anything mean. She needed to learn to not take herself so seriously because the world is a big rough place, wear a helmet, and a sense of humor could only help her. She was very brittle, like Amanda brittle until then.
Now she can laugh at herself and she gives me guff as good as I gave and still give her.
Just because you don’t intend it to be hurtful or you intend it in a caring way doesn’t mean it actually is. The feelings of the other person matter and insisting on doing what you want in regards to how you treat other people no matter what they say or feel is very self-centered. That’s like insisting on calling someone a nickname even if they tell you they hate it. It’s basically exactly what Amanda is doing: “Eh,I do whatever I want anyway.”
People still need to learn to have a good sense of humor about themselves. That is priceless and will serve them better than anything else. I would rather have it done in a position of love than on the sneering faces of people that would leave someone bruised, broken, and bloody.
Actually no it wasn’t when I was doing it. Trust me, she took herself WAY too seriously, WAY too brittle, like got angry if you got to the car before she did, so I would jump all the way there and then tap on it like I was playing the bongos. She would yell at me and I would tell her she’s just jealous she can’t play car music.
“People need to learn to have a good sense of humor about themselves”
Or to put it another way:
“People need to be ok with me treating them however I want, regardless of how they feel.”
I agree with Lady O, it still sounds pretty much like bullying behavior when you insist on making fun of someone even when they express to you they don’t like it. You’re obviously free to live your life how you want, but others are free to base their judgements on how you treat others.
And even if your INTENT is good, that doesn’t mean the means you use are good or that the ends justify the means. We have no authority over you (or anyone else in the comment thread really) so you clearly can keep doing what you want to do, but if you havent seen already from Selkie how unwanted and unwelcoming taunting can really affect a person, especially a young one, I’d suggest you re-read it again with that in mind. You may not realize the impact of what you are doing simply because it doesn’t matter to you the same way it might to someone else.
Except my approach with her is games and getting her to play along even if I give her a slightly hard time about it. I don’t see how this is construed as bullying. Like jumping to the car and playing on it like bongos. I wasn’t playing on her like bongos but the car. And she was welcome, more than welcome to join in and play along.
I don’t think she would call me her favorite uncle if I scarred her. She wouldn’t be eager to sit down and play board games (And beat me seven out of ten times fairly) if I had done anything that caused long term damage. Or play video games with me for that matter.
There’s a difference between heckling and playing fun and bullying. Heckling and playing fun can give fond memories and give a girl that’s overly serious a healthy outlook on things. Bullying takes power away and traumatizes the victim. Sometimes it might be a thin line but one that when navigated well can come up with great results.
The principle we’ve decided on for this house, now that grandkids (my niece and nephews) are visiting regularly, is that teasing is fun if both sides are enjoying it, and if one side is not enjoying it, it needs to stop.
Of course, coming from a background where we adults just rib each other all the time, it’s difficult to adjust OURSELVES to meet that standard. And not all the adults are on board (my dad, for example, doesn’t ever seem to realize when his teasing is troubling, and doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem even when we tell him so).
I can relate to Antoine. I used to and occasionally still do something similar with others. After initial introductions and meeting I would try to piss them off. I admit it is immature, yes but I wanted to know their limits and how firmly planted their standards/convictions were and the most effective way to do so was to piss them off or play the devil’s advocate.
I think Antoine is gonna lose his face in a minute. :/
“Is she a crier?” Just like that, infront of the kid?
0/10 experience with children.
Well,he’s young. So either his babysitting years are very far behind him. Or Antoine isn’t very tact? XD
I like to think he is just treating her like a person (a good and bad thing potentially).
Yeah but adults need to be careful with how they tease kids. Sometimes it can be a little harsher than they thought it was.
Ugh I still feel horrible about this. While in college, my best friend introduced me to his younger brother. From his size and what I knew I assumed he was 18-19. Well he teased his brother a bit and I got in on it and was pretty rough on him. Nothing really mean just I knew how to poke at peoples flaws. Beware 2nd year psychology majors… especially when they say they know what your problem is… it takes a few years for them to realize they don’t know shit and they just know how to bug someones insecurities.
Anyways I was pretty rough on him and later my friend even said so, and also let me know he was only 14….
!@$@!$#@$#$ Yeah I immediately told my friend I wanted to call his brother and apologize. I let him know that I was teasing, and didn’t realize how young he was and said he could take that as a compliments because he looked and acted very mature. I also went out of my way to be very nice to his brother over the years.
I quickly went from his brothers most hated friend to his most liked… that was until the younger brother decided to be an ass and skip out on his older brothers wedding because he wasn’t allowed to invite his friends (28 at this time so no excuse)
Absolutely, that would be the “bad” part of treating kids like adults, it sometimes leads adults to forget that they are, in fact, still kids. My two year old neice can be incredibly conversational and perceptive, which tricks you in to thinking she’s more mature than her age would indicate. But the simplest things can cause her to melt down into a crying mess too, just as you would expect for her age, because thats how toddlers work, lol.
You guys keep treating kids like they are made of glass. He should at this point address her inappropriate response and somewhere in the middle of it acknowledge his insensitive comment.
If you constantly worry about how your kid is going to react or deal with minor issues like this you *do* end up with a brittle princess for a kid. Not a good situation.
There have been *many* times where my kid has said, “Hey, that wasn’t a nice thing to say” and upon more discussion I’ve realized the kid was right and apologized.
BECAUSE I don’t worry about it my kid is now much more resilient and doesn’t explode off the handle like Amanda does, and I don’t worry about saying the wrong thing because my kid can 1) handle it and 2) will let me know if I screw up.
Dude. It isn’t inappropriate when it’s a little tactless from adults. Also making fun of kids can go too far sometimes and can friggin’ harm them. Antoine needs to realize that kids aren’t tiny adults.
Also this is pretty mild for Amanda. Usually she’d be spitting and hissing. XD
Inappropriate? He insulted her. While he is probably unaware that his sarcastic reference to “Princess” would be taken that way, his, “is she a CRYER?” was obviously meant to be. Classic example of the big guy picking on the little guy.
So what should she do? Get mad, go over in the corner and sulk all night? Flop down on the floor and kick her feet, while crying, “Uncle Annie’s mean”? Suck it up and pretend it didn’t happen, but hold it closely inside where the hateful words can fester, and let it build through the years, until, finally the hate gets so large that she lashes out, and as the police take her to jail and the ambulance takes Antoine to ICU, everyone stands there in shock, wondering, “What the hell just happened?”
Or do like she’s doing, and use WORDS instead of a baseball bat – “Hey, Dickweed, knock that shit off!!”?
As I’ve tried explaining to my nephew on several occasions, the problem isn’t with WHAT you’re saying, Amanda, the problem is in HOW you’re saying it.
You can tell people to stop something without getting in their face about it. Anger doesn’t have to control you.
Similarly, you can disagree with someone without being a dick about it. Something that society at large seems to find hard to conceive of (or perhaps that’s just the vocal internet part of society).
You may be totally correct. –Just to be safe I’m awarding your comment 600 internet points. … And a cookie
I didn’t get the sense that the “Is she a cryer?” question was meant to be mean at all. It seemed like an honest innocent question on his part.
If she WERE, it would be a HORRIBLE HUMILIATING question, no matter how it was meant. Because you can bet that it would’ve been thrown in her face a zillion times, both by other kids, and by teachers and authority figures — including the occasional bullying teacher.
Got my kid out of THAT class, and the teacher is lucky that I never spoke face-to-face with her after that stunt. *froth*
Really, as things go, that math teacher barely registers as majorly bad anymore. Mrs. V was far worse, for all that she was supposed to be a para.
Yeah, as someone who was (and is) a “crier,” I agree that that’s a totally a horrible and humiliating question.
Showing awareness for the differences in emotional and mental maturity is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Being aware of and understanding how a child who has been severely abused in the past might react differently than a child raised in more healthy environment is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Recognizing that not all people react the same and thus assuming what works ok for one is good for all is not a good policy is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Knowing that what may be normal and acceptable behavior for your current in group may be easily seen as hostile and unwelcome by a newcomer is not “treating kids like they are made of glass”.
Its fine that you were able to find a situation that worked for you and your family, and its fine to share that and say “hey maybe you should try this” or “this is what we did and it worked out well because of A, B, and C”.
But assuming that your situation and its circumstances universally apply to all other people and all situations is not fine. Its not fair, its not accurate, and its not helpful.
I am certainly no fan of Amanda as a character, and I certainly hope there is an appropriate response to her outburst, but saying another person should treat her however he wants is no better than what Amanda is saying “eh its ok I do what I want” and not caring about how it impacts anyone else.
This. Like absolutely this.
Seems like he’s treating her like an adult to me.
Most kids don’t like being treated like kids.
But they aren’t adults. There is a difference between not being patronizing and condescending to them and recognizing that kids function differently than adults.
I’m at a loss as to how being condescending is “treating her like an adult”. If someone said “Is she a crier?” about me to, say, my spouse, my response might make Amanda look sedate. I would experience the question as being treated like a baby or an idiot. People who are treating me like an adult address questions about me directly to me, and anyone treating me with a modicum of respect knows that there are very few circumstances under which asking me if a crier is appropriate. This is not one of them.
Amanda’s hair colors aren’t consistent on this page.
mmm
I choose to think that the hair coloring is like a mood ring
see how the color red is over shadowing the other colors?
Rage, anger
the color is …kinda constant but shifts
like the placement for blue and orange are not gonna shift
but colors within single wavelengths of each other will
Not the first time her hair has showcased her emotions. Canonically.
Yeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, I wasn’t entirely sure how the bands of color would flow, here.
Go with the flow, dude. Nothing wrong with the color changing a bit as long as it serves the art. There’s a ton of things that look weird when drawn the way they would be IRL.
Besides, Amanda’s mood-hair is interesting.
“Eh I do whatever I want anyway” – Core of Amanda’s problem. The question will be is she capable of comprehending that doing so at the expense of others is a bad thing (i.e. she has empathy and can thus be a good person) or simply doesn’t care (i.e. she is a sociopath).
I don’t think Dave would do that to Amanda. I find it safe to assume that Dave will create drama and smiling resolutions with some tears along the way; but ultimately a fairy-tale ending. I believe we can trust our hearts to his story, this is t s brightly lit film noir like Batman, or the Twilight Zone, in my arrogant opinion.
This is not a brightly lit film-noir, … Honestly my spellcheck hates me.
Oh my money would be on the former rather than the later as well, but who knows, this could be an epic troll job by Dave, never underestimate creatives ability to mess with peoples heads 😉
She ABSOLUTELY can empathize with others — she has done so in the past. She may have disorders that make it difficult to connect with others or what have you, but the possibility that she is a sociopath has been eliminated by previous parts of the comic.
This seems appropriate for the last panel too 🙂
https://youtu.be/kCUIzs8i9EU
I think this is more appropriate….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D5tkAUNFa4
Bravo! Well played!
Nah, this one’s better: http://youtu.be/O0Wfx034wl0
And just like that Amanda goes criminally insane.
uh-oh. might want to get that swear jar ready, amanda is going on one of her rampanges……and for once there are adults around who´ll act mature about it and react apropriately. that´ll shock her ,-)
I hope she does go on a tear actually. I’ve always said that the best way to instruct someone is by example. Let her lose it and then have the adults handle it in a mature manner. Then when she watches and sees there’s another way, let her ask them questions and have them explain in a normal logical way. Can be quite instructional.
This looks to me like a communication fail on the part of the adults. “Hey, your niece isn’t dead after all and you get to meet her at Christmas!” really should have been accompanied by “but she’s been abused in the past and has some triggers we should be aware of and help her with” in my opinion, and Antoine’s comments imply (to me) that it wasn’t.
This is the thing, yeah. When people have… I feel like I’m missing a vocabulary piece here, because “problems” doesn’t sound correct… anyway, when things about their mental states are likely to cause hurt/harm to themselves or others, then you wouldn’t necessarily share this information with strangers, but you would want to share it with close family to avoid this kind of reaction.
And to allow the adults to work out how best to handle the situation, and not be surprised by it.
Of course, there are also those who figure that just letting people know that there’s something wrong with them causes everyone to treat them differently (“fragile” for example), and that leads to a whole new level of this problem….
On the reverse, I am surprised Todd even knew it would set her off. Don’t recall if she ever went off on that particular wording before or not. I haven’t seen her go berserk really with Andi… Or have I just forgotten?
Todd’s gotten an idea of her temper by this point.
https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie696/
She also loudly called him a dumbfuck to his face at one point but I can’t find a link to that one at the moment.
Right here
https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie711/
thanks for the find! Was trying to go through this section covertly at work earlier. XD
Also, looking at these two pages side by side, I have to say I really prefer the hand-drawn lines you’ve been doing lately. The varying thicknesses look way more organic.
Yeah I dunno if it’s me or my cheap tablet or both, but when inking digitally I haven’t been able to get the pressure sensitivity to make noticeable differences in the line width. My pens are a bit more responsive in that regard, plus I have four thicknesses to pick from so I can cheat it and draw with a thin pen then go back over the “shadow” areas with a thicker pen.
Makes me wonder if Todd was known for this in his earlier days.
What a brat.
hey Dave I have a question .. Did Amanda, Selkie & Todd get their hair done professionally? Like does Andi do her own hair or have someone do it for her?
Cause if she does it herself…and she did the kids’ hair, then does that mean that she did Todd’s too and todd let her touch him?
Or maybe he just did his own & I’m overthinking it
It’s temporary dye. Todd self applied his to join in the fun, which is why it’s less wild in style than the others.
Antoine likes pushing people’s buttons. Family people, anyway. He especially likes puncturing pretensions. It’s what he does. They’re all used to him doing that, and he’s used to them knowing he doesn’t mean it in a nasty way.
He was treating Amanda like family — but she doesn’t know this about him. Now we get to see how he handles this. No matter what, we’ll learn something about him. My prediction: he’ll try to find a characteristically ‘Antoine’ way to defuse the situation.
Maybe he’ll even succeed in making her laugh. That would be awesome, if he did. Best uncle ever. Thinking back… I don’t believe we’ve ever seen her laugh or giggle. Not once. Not in a that’s so funny! way.
I do the same thing with my family. It took my niece forever even after being told that I just playfully tease family before she caught on that no, I was not going to stop and no, I don’t mean anything mean. She needed to learn to not take herself so seriously because the world is a big rough place, wear a helmet, and a sense of humor could only help her. She was very brittle, like Amanda brittle until then.
Now she can laugh at herself and she gives me guff as good as I gave and still give her.
Just because you don’t intend it to be hurtful or you intend it in a caring way doesn’t mean it actually is. The feelings of the other person matter and insisting on doing what you want in regards to how you treat other people no matter what they say or feel is very self-centered. That’s like insisting on calling someone a nickname even if they tell you they hate it. It’s basically exactly what Amanda is doing: “Eh,I do whatever I want anyway.”
People still need to learn to have a good sense of humor about themselves. That is priceless and will serve them better than anything else. I would rather have it done in a position of love than on the sneering faces of people that would leave someone bruised, broken, and bloody.
Yeah no. This is bullying. And it can have some very emotional issues and it isn’t cool. If they’re not fine with it. Don’t. Do. It. It’s not cool.
Actually no it wasn’t when I was doing it. Trust me, she took herself WAY too seriously, WAY too brittle, like got angry if you got to the car before she did, so I would jump all the way there and then tap on it like I was playing the bongos. She would yell at me and I would tell her she’s just jealous she can’t play car music.
Now when I do that it results in her joining into the music by singing about how I’m a farthead and giggling.
Yeah that sounds like you being a bully. -__-
“People need to stop being sensitive. I don’t like not picking on others who aren’t okay with it.”
“People need to learn to have a good sense of humor about themselves”
Or to put it another way:
“People need to be ok with me treating them however I want, regardless of how they feel.”
I agree with Lady O, it still sounds pretty much like bullying behavior when you insist on making fun of someone even when they express to you they don’t like it. You’re obviously free to live your life how you want, but others are free to base their judgements on how you treat others.
And even if your INTENT is good, that doesn’t mean the means you use are good or that the ends justify the means. We have no authority over you (or anyone else in the comment thread really) so you clearly can keep doing what you want to do, but if you havent seen already from Selkie how unwanted and unwelcoming taunting can really affect a person, especially a young one, I’d suggest you re-read it again with that in mind. You may not realize the impact of what you are doing simply because it doesn’t matter to you the same way it might to someone else.
Except my approach with her is games and getting her to play along even if I give her a slightly hard time about it. I don’t see how this is construed as bullying. Like jumping to the car and playing on it like bongos. I wasn’t playing on her like bongos but the car. And she was welcome, more than welcome to join in and play along.
I don’t think she would call me her favorite uncle if I scarred her. She wouldn’t be eager to sit down and play board games (And beat me seven out of ten times fairly) if I had done anything that caused long term damage. Or play video games with me for that matter.
There’s a difference between heckling and playing fun and bullying. Heckling and playing fun can give fond memories and give a girl that’s overly serious a healthy outlook on things. Bullying takes power away and traumatizes the victim. Sometimes it might be a thin line but one that when navigated well can come up with great results.
The principle we’ve decided on for this house, now that grandkids (my niece and nephews) are visiting regularly, is that teasing is fun if both sides are enjoying it, and if one side is not enjoying it, it needs to stop.
Of course, coming from a background where we adults just rib each other all the time, it’s difficult to adjust OURSELVES to meet that standard. And not all the adults are on board (my dad, for example, doesn’t ever seem to realize when his teasing is troubling, and doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem even when we tell him so).
Thats a healthy way of approaching it.
I can relate to Antoine. I used to and occasionally still do something similar with others. After initial introductions and meeting I would try to piss them off. I admit it is immature, yes but I wanted to know their limits and how firmly planted their standards/convictions were and the most effective way to do so was to piss them off or play the devil’s advocate.