Post

So I have realised I've hit a weird milestone in my move outside of the US. We have been here for over 2 years. Which doesn't seem like a lot to me, but for my kids? Who are now 8, 8, and 11? It's probably difficult to remember times before they were here. So when I read books to them... 1/🧵

There is this funny barrier that I recognise... Imperial vs Metric measurements. My brain pretty much operates in Imperial. Feet, Inches, Miles, Pounds. Yep, that's how my brain thinks about things. But my kids? I have no fucking clue. So when I'm reading their books to them, I realize... 2/🧵

So there's an interesting divide that is building up, my kids are going to be metric-centric, where it's going to be difficult for me to deal in those numbers without a mental translation first. Ironically, this whole thing reminds me of when I noticed that my braid defaulted to "him" when 4/🧵

talking about a character in a kid's book whose gender is never explicitly mentioned. I've made an effort to go out of my way to stop myself, and flip that expectation. I want my daughters to default to assuming characters in books are female like they are. 5/🧵

This is going to sound weird, but I really want them to have that subconscious experience I had growing up, where the protagonist matches my gender whenever they read a thing. It is valuable for them to read a bunch of different POVs. 6/🧵