Babytalk

                Okies now, something has been bugging me and I want to get it off my chest.  STOP BABYTALKING AT MY KID.   It's annoying at best and oftentimes, downright infuriating.  I know why everyone does it.  It's because Feisty Pants' speech is garbled and her face does not have a lot of the micro-expressions that animate the human face.  So, people incorrectly assume that she is not intellectually intact.  BUT, while it is human nature, it is also infantilizing and disempowering to her. So stop it already.She is going to have it hard enough finding her power, and getting others to see it by the mere facts of being disabled and a girl.  I will simply not allow the world to teach her that she should respond to it like a helpless child for the rest of her life.  We already do the world's girls a disservice with that power limiting crap already.

               So, to that end, it stops here now.  I've asked nicely a million times.  I've parroted my catchphrase matter of factly a billion times. (She's 10 years not ten months.)  It's not working.  Either you are not hearing me or you don't believe me when I say she is in there. I no longer care which.   She is now ten and should be learning to behave in more grown up ways. (Being polite even if upset.  Using her manners correctly.  Behaving even when she doesn't feel like it.  And working to change what she does not like  instead of accepting it or having a fit.)  And since I expect it of my child, I now expect it of all of you too. I don't care if you believe me.  And I don't feel the need to explain that we have lots of evidence to back up our beliefs either. Why should I have to?   Do I ask you for evidence that you are a real live grown up when we encounter you?  If I babytalked at you the way you all seem to be babytalking at her, you would think I was either rude or crazy.     You will act like a frigging grown up too, world.  You will treat others as you wish to be treated.  You will talk to her as if she were a child not a baby.  Or will have to simply understand that you are obviously not capable of logic and explain in my VERY LOUD IRRITATED MOMMY voice that you are acting like a judgemental teenager and perhaps you, world, need to stop and think about your rudeness.  Because, obviously, if we are children for the rest of lives, that is what we should expect from grown ups right???

              Sorry, I don't actually mean to seem so bitchy, but it is enraging.  How dare any of us  assume any human being is incapable of anything, until you have evidence to the contrary?  It's just one more way we try limit another's power and that is simply immoral.  And when the Universe has already limited her power in enough ways, it is simply reprehensible that we would add to those limitations.  So, enough already. Stop it.  (Oh and btw, I hate to admit it, but sometimes when she doesn't answer you, she is ignoring you. I'll work on that if you work on your rudeness.)