monalisamusings:

Respect one another <3 

I find it kind of horrific to see things like this reblogged with tags including “relationship advice,” “relationships,” and “love.”

The original list is about how to take care of your introverted child.  It is parenting advice.  That’s why it includes things like how to reprimand them, or enable them in making friends (or not), and other things that a caretaker/authority figure has to know how to do responsibly.

The second list is an MS-PAINT attempt to match the visual style of the first, made by someone who doesn’t have access to quite as tasteful of a font, and I don’t know the source of its pieces of advice but it doesn’t seem to have the same focus on parent/child dynamic.  My forensic internet eyeballing tells me that it was made by a different person from the first, but I don’t know that either source is more or less credible.

Here is something that is important, though.

When you are a child, your parents are responsible for taking care of you in the ways that these lists address.

When you are an adult, you are responsible for taking care of yourself in the ways that these lists address.

It is important to let your friends know about your boundaries and what works for you, and good friends will also learn things like “oh so and so hates surprises” or “so and so would love to go to this party” from things that you tell them, and show them, in the course of your friendship.

But clinging to a personality type that was designed by child psychologists to help parents be nurturing, as your identity when you are an adult, and spreading around a handy reference to let the world know how to take care of you is self-absorbed and asks your friends to infantilize you.

You are your guardian now.