Littlebat-666 - 🦇

I wish octopus could learn how to read. They could be pen pals with middle schoolers.

We got a grand total of five trick or treaters and I missed them all because I was stuck in meetings 😔

All after I stayed up late last night turning the house into a giant monster.

So if you see this I am mentally handing you a goodie bag. Happy Halloween! 🎃

Beetlejuice (1988)

His name online is @lugositheater

sometimes i see tiktoks on my fyp from this middle aged (i think?) autistic man who fucking loves dracula and every time i see him it makes my day a million times better. i saw one the other day where he was excited because he met his friend for lunch and the building number was 19931 and he was like "1931 is the year the Bella Lugosi Dracula film was released!! so thats how i know today is gonna be a good day 😎" and it was just.... so wonderful to see. the joy this guy feels in his tiktoks is soooo infectious

*guy with an undiagnosed disability voice:* haha it’s kinda crazy how everyone just deals with the constant unending pain but we just thug it out like usual 💯💯💯

Mulling over something right now.

My journey into understanding neurodivergence and my own AuDHD-ness has changed how I doctor, and sometimes I can see this when looking at things like auto text scripts I set up previously.

For example, when it comes to picky eaters, I used to do a lot of education about how to get kids to eat, discussing strategies like gamifying intake of fruits and vegetables, enforcing #-bite rules, and having cutoff times for meals. I also put a lot more weight on having a balanced, whole-food meal. The only thing I discussed that was focused on any underlying reason was involving kids in meal prep, though I didn't necessarily have a reason as to why. And, to be fair, these strategies work for picky, NT toddlers.

Contrast that to today, where I'm asking questions about texture sensitivities and taste preferences. I'm acknowledging that processed foods are more predictable than fresh. I'm discussing meal prep involvement as a means of sensory food play. I'm discussing about how stressful #-bite requirements can be and I'm encouraging having safe foods available and permissable - not as a means of giving in, but to make trying a new food less stressful. I'm also acknowledging that some food is better than no food, as long as we get the basics/macros in as we can always supplement micros with multivitamins.

These are things that weren't taught when I was in medical school or residency. I attended in 2015, just after the DSM changes and the focus then was, and largely still is, eating a "well-rounded", normativized, white, upper-middle class diet. Anything other than that was treated as subpar and is bad medicine, let alone parenting.

You know the other thing? When I started asking, do you know how many of my picky eaters DIDN'T have some kind of sensory basis to their eating patterns? Do you know just how many undiagnosed, unseen neurodivergent kids are out there, masking along, not making waves, with equally ND parents who don't know otherwise?

The number of times I see at least one parent squirm when I start asking the kids, especially older kids, autism symptom questions and autism distinct anxiety questions... Why, if I had a nickel for every time, I would definitely have more than two. It's not a coincidence.

Trick-or-Treating Facts!

Trick-or-treating is a derived from the much older practices of guising, souling, and mumming

guising was a Scottish tradition of children wearing “disguises” to protect themselves from evil spirits, and going door-to-door to receive food or money. it dates back to at least the 16th century!

souling was a British/Irish practice of soulers (mainly children & the poor) going door-to-door and receiving soul cakes (’souls’) in exchange for song & prayer. this practices dates from the 15th century.

mumming was a similar British practice, though more commonly performed on Christmas and Easter. Amateur actors (mummers) would visit houses & pubs to perform folk plays in exchange for money. These often involved sword fights, and occasionally sword dances! 

Immigrants brought these practices to North America, where trick-or-treating itself developed in the 1920s. It’s gained popularity in a number of other countries since them, with different countries developing their own variations, but is still most commonplace in the U.S. and Canada.

Guising, souling, and mumming are still practiced today in certain parts of Britain (and elsewhere), though not on the scale that trick-or-treating has reached. Soul cakes look like this:

Sometimes I hyperfocus so hard on something, I forget I’m a person until someone interacts with me. I feel like some wild animal seeing a human being for the first time. I’m like “oh yeah I’m supposed to speak and stuff”

Bat cat character sheet