vampireapologist:

so i saw a discussion about feeling empathy toward children where an adult was explaining that they were worried something might be wrong with them bc they couldn’t feel empathy toward children and ultimately always sees them as “little adults” and didn’t want to comfort and nurture or protect them because all they saw was “someone who’d be an adult one day.”

and everyone went on reassuring them that nothing was wrong with them, they just weren’t a naturally parental person, which is fair and true!

but I didn’t see anybody making what I feel is the most important point, which is:

regardless, you still have to pretend empathy for the child.

No, you don’t have to have your own child, you don’t have to go out of your way to interact with children, and nothing is “wrong” with you if you largely find children annoying. you can tell your adult friends “I don’t have any patience for kids and prefer to not be around them,”

but if you view children as “little adults,” you HAVE to then logically say “but they’re not. they’re children, and I’M the ACTUAL adult, and it’s MY responsibility to treat them well and be nice when I’m around them.”

and I don’t want to see any comments like “must be nice to be neurotypical” on this, because I’m not, and there’s no mental illness that makes it okay to treat others badly, sorry. You have to be nice to children.

It’s just literally human decency. It’s one of the most simple rules of our species. Just be good to children.