Body positive book for toddlers!

[WomanBornNotWorn]

Great idea - helping small children

mobile.twitter.com/Transgendertrd/status/1199056010520023040

A food bank would be a lovely idea actually, or maybe a women's homeless shelter or refuge since there will be women there with kids.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies. I bought this book on a whim after reading the thread title. It arrived today and I can honestly say it's the most beautiful book we've got. My four year old loved it. The illustrations are gorgeous and the text is so positive. My little boy related to every picture on every page. The authors and illustrators clearly know and understand young children exceptionally well.

That's lovely!

Especially since people are saying it's a pretty looking book, so more gift-y than the average.

Hooves I have multiple disabilities as do my children, and I live in constant pain and will for life, along with the medications I need to take and all the side effects. Plus was a victim of csa and all the body blaming ptsd I got from that. But my body grew and birthed and fed my daughters, I may hate parts of my body but can celebrate that one. Even when I am frustrated and hurt by the reality of my body I’m still well aware it’s my body, I may have been born into a broken body but it’s not the wrong one.

This book sounds very much like the let toys be toys campaign. So boys can play dolls and wear pink and paint their nails and make glitter pictures and grow long hair, and that means they are a boy who likes those things. So countering a lot of the social messages that suggest if a boy likes these things they must be a girl born into the wrong body.

That's great to hear Snazzygoldfish .

VMisaMarshmallow

So will you be reducing your meds and having manicures instead? Apparently that's all we women need to do.

But my body grew and birthed and fed my daughters, I may hate parts of my body but can celebrate that one. Even when I am frustrated and hurt by the reality of my body I’m still well aware it’s my body, I may have been born into a broken body but it’s not the wrong one.

And I'm pleased that you can find something to be positive about but I can't.

My body is wrong and I can't see a time when I'll ever stop looking for ways to fix it. I simply cannot contemplate the next 40 years living like this and worse.

VMisaMarshmallow
Thank you for sharing that.

I may have been born into a broken body but it’s not the wrong one.

I can't think of anything less empowering than telling someone their body is "wrong".

I can't think of anything less empowering than telling someone their body is "wrong".

If my body isn't wrong why am I being offered constant treatments to try and fix it? Drugs to treat Crohn's disease, surgical options to remove diseased bowel, immunosuppressant injections or infusions to dampen down arthritis, joint replacement surgery to replace the diseased joints. Of course my body is wrong if it needs this much intervention and I think I'm perfectly entitled to describe it as such.

Goading doesn't work on me, just FYI as a general announcement.

I'm not goading I'm explaining how trite fucking platitudes about being empowering and self care fixing serious medical conditions sucks when your life is fast disappearing down the toilet due to your body letting you down.

Just completed my order of two more of these. I wonder how big the print run is?

Not showing on my library's database yet but will keep an eye out.

Twitter said this morning that they were out of stock.

Kant I’ve found Margot Sunderland’s therapeutic stories very useful with my girls who have asc/pda/adhd. They aren’t about bodies though, but deal with emotional literacy in a beautiful and accessible way imho. My kids don’t let me even say words like anxious or angry, so approaching emotional regulation and resilience is really tough for us, and these books have helped. We have the whole collection now and teeny weeny is a special favourite of mine for my kids (it helps with being terrified of everything, and shows the character getting smaller and smaller due to fear, and then bigger again when friends come to help). The frog and the moon smile and the day the sea went out and never came back are both especially touching (for children longing for a parent whose left, and the second one is the loss of a parent). How Hattie hated kindness we love too, because my girls are often very hard on themselves and struggle to accept kindness from others when in the midst of emotion overload, so of course don’t find it easy to internalise gentle self talk also, and ruby and the rubbish bin is a really great one also, helps articulate feelings of low self worth and shows how she learns to feel better but also how those bad feelings don’t ever go away, but that she ends up with kind coping mechanism to help her sooth herself when those feelings creep up on her. They are really accessible books imho and if you want there’s parent versions also, but obviously those are way heavier reading and much more expensive.

If you think your child might have an underlying neurodevelopmental disability the best book you can read by far is the explosive child.

My order arrived yesterday - nieces getting an early Christmas present. Though I may have to warn the parents first that I'm dropping transphobic terrorist material on them!

Apparently another print run is on its way, and orders still being taken.

Rachel and Jessica - definition of brave, knowing the onslaught you were likely to get and, in no surprise, are getting.

And to TT and their Christmas elves helping to get those orders off.

How have we moved so fast from Let Toys be Toys and Clothes be Clothes (which I note one objector looks like they used to support) to 'how dare you present children liking different things, clothes, activities and be OK with their bodies'?

NB: That's a rhetorical question for many who've been here a while! We know how and why.

It takes a while to wrap your head around, the fact that there are some people who'd actively prefer children to be unhappy and alienated from their own bodies.

It's where the whole consumerist thing kicks in - be alienated from your body, and then let me 'make' you a new one for megabucks!

I'm so happy the book is on a second print run! I am thrilled to know there are so many children out there who will be able to enjoy it.

I also have empathy for one of the people in particular lashing out in the twittersphere against this book. I stress empathy, and in no way endorsement of their actions.

If this subject is very, very close to home and family, a-la-Susie-Green type of close, as a parent you're probably doing your very best to protect your own family the best way you can.

And depending on who the people you've turned to for support in that situation (ie Mermaids, GenderedIntel) you're going to have a particular worldview. Particularly if you've blocked anyone who doesn't affirm your worldview and that of your friends.

To an extent that you probably can't lift back out of the situation and see a wider picture.

You might not be able to see that support for your own child in their chosen path may a) affect a wider group of people because of what your individual child wants, in terms of access to single-sex space, etc and b) taps into an ideology which is currently damaging other children and young adults, particularly females.

And you probably can't see that your argument that calls Rachel's work part of An extreme ideology that explicity targets children and includes the claim that Rachel is denying autistic people can have agency over who they wish to be is starting to stray into suggesting that you should always validate, creating a fantastical land of 'agency' that denies reality. And is the extreme ideology.

The messages of this book must be hard to argue against without arguing against yourself.

Or without explosing an truly shaky-foundational ideological, political stance, as Jo Swinson's interview this morning exposed.

All you have left in your toolbox is lashing out.

Explosing?! A new word, explosive exposing.

Exposing

Though I quite like explosing!

The world could do with more explosing at the moment!