I’m literally so happy to be the “cool auntie” to my nephews. They’ll talk to me about ANYTHING that they wouldn’t talk about to their parents because like, I’m a fuck up. They can tell me their fuck ups because they know that I won’t judge. Also I can’t ground them (technically, according to my sister I can ground them, but that’s for extreme cases). They’ve talked to me about girls, about drugs, about their mental health. I’m completely fine with being that person for them. I’m happy that they have a person like that because I didn’t.
My nephew once said to me when he was about 7 that he has ADHD and that “makes him bad”. He was SEVEN. And I had to sit him down and tell him that, no, he was not bad. That ADHD wasn’t something that wrote you off the page. I told him that I had ADHD (he looks up to me) and he was so shocked and I was like “look. You can do this. You’re not bad. Your mind is just more difficult to manage. And that’s okay. It makes you stronger”
It also made me want to scream so bad because I KNOW he didn’t pick that up from the media. Some shithole teacher probably made a throwaway comment about ADHD and it stuck to him. Bad.
