5 Problems with "Cute" Inner Kids

During the time that I've been involved in age play roleplaying groups, I've encountered quite a large number of "cute" inner kids. These "cute" inner kids are those who place a distinct strain on the group with behavior that the player finds endearing but which is upsetting to other members and the flow of the group.

There are a few notes that I've come up with regarding these "cute" inner kids that I'd like to share with you.

1. "Cute" Inner Kids are almost always brats. Most of the "cute" inner kids who have filtered through my ageplay groups are brats whose keepers feel that their behavior is acceptable due to the fact that they are simply so "adorable" that they should be instantly forgiven and the adult should make things right. They're those kids who remind you of the biokid who can flash a smile and instantly get her way, or who always finds a way to take more than he gives.

1.a. This is a problem because most age players want to be punished for misdeeds. This leaves the people playing the guardian role very confused. If they spank the "cute" inner kid, then a tantrum of epic proportions results and the guilt trip is laid on, putting the responsibility on the adult to make things right for the inner kid. I've encountered this specific problem with inner kids both in online role playing groups and in real life, and I usually choose to disassociate from them.

2. "Cute" Inner Kids don't relate well to other inner children. Like the majority of brats, their purpose for being appears to be to lean heavily on the adults and not to interact with other children. They are very often bullies who push other people (child and adult) around when they don't get their way, but it's very difficult to figure out what their needs are, because they are constantly changing. Other inner children have a difficult time relating to this kind of behavior and generally ostracize the "cute" IK because they aren't fun to play with.

2.a. This is a problem because it places an additional strain on adults to interact with the "cute" inner child. When other inner kids can't find reasonable interactions with the "cute" inner kid, the "cutie" begins to put pressure on other members of the group to post with them. In the absence of interaction with their fellows, they need somebody to post with, and therefore the adults become the "go to" source for entertainment for this very stressful inner child. Along with the high brats, this is the sort of Inner Kid that generally makes adult players leave groups or shut them down when they are the management.

3. "Cute" Inner Kids like to run, with the expectation of being chased. These are the children who take off running when an adult calls them in from play time, tossing a big grin over their shoulder that cries "chase me! chase me!" They are the inner children who hide in their closets when a punishment is imminent, forcing the adult to drag them out by their arm in order to give them the punishment that they were begging for in the first place. They are kids who have such a high expectation of being found "adorable" that adults will do anything that they bid them to do, in order to reward their cuteness.

3.a. This is a problem because running threads are very stressful for adult players. Whenever a child runs away from a punishment or when he is called in from playing, the adult player is forced into a situation where she has to stop everything else that she's doing, and chase that kid down. This is also one of very few situations where power playing seems to have been deemed unacceptable when it comes to the adults, but where inner kids find that it's perfectly fine for them to dodge a grab by an adult without the consent of the adult player. In this way, the "cute" inner kid breaks several group rules for the sake of their cuteness.

4. "Cute" Inner Kids tend to have higher expectations of the group administrators and adult players. Most "cuties" seem to think that they have a greater right to expect that their threads receive faster replies than the threads of "non-cuties." They are highly competitive for quality time with the group's adults and demanding when they don't get exactly what they think they deserve. They post fast (often long posts, written quickly) and expect an immediate reply even when their roleplay partner has ten other threads ahead of theirs to reply to. When asked to wait, they often become belligerent.

4.a. This is a problem because group administrators and adult players do a lot of work for the group and "cuties" are rarely grateful. Most adult players and administrators also have inner children of their own that they want to have time to post. The demands being made by the "cute" inner kids take precedence since it's easier to post to them and quiet them down than it is to stall their threads while the admins or adult players post their inner kids.

5. "Cute" Inner Kids often feel that they have priority over less cute inner kids. They will post repeatedly, in multiple threads, taking up a lot of available thread space and refusing to post their required adults when their kid threads are receiving replies fast enough to keep them from having to log out. These "cuties" believe that the entire rest of the group is highly dependent on their presence in the group and that without it the group will fall apart. The adult who is currently in the process of spanking them is desperate for their next post, even though she hasn't had a chance to post her kid in three days while keeping up with the "cutie." 

5.a. This is a problem because it builds resentment for the "cutie" and makes other players not want to play with him. Then, when other players cease to play with the "cute" inner kid, he applies more pressure shortly before making a passive aggressive exit to the group, followed by spreading the word to his friends that the group isn't a very good place to be. 

The solution to all of these problems is for the keepers of those "cute" inner kids to take a step back and view the situation from the point of view of the people caring for them. Women usually have a harder time with "cute" inner kids than men do. Both biological genders are inclined toward having "cute" inner kids. 

This situation requires a good, long look in the mirror to determine whether or not you are a force that is dragging your group down or if you are a force that is building it up and making it an enjoyable place for everyone to play. If your inner kid is placing a strain on group administrators and other member adults, then it's time to reassess the way that you play and the places in which you are playing.

What do you do, as an admin or adult player, when you encounter a "cute" inner kid in a group you're in? What's your solution? Do you muddle through and continue spanking? Ignore their threads? Ask them to leave? Please share!

When There's Not Enough Adult to Go Around

I've been running age play and spanking groups for over fifteen years now. While I've loved every minute of it, the fact is that no matter how well run the group is, at some point there simply are not enough adults to go around. In the year and a half that Birchwood Isle has been open, I've learned a lot about the strain that is placed on group managers to provide the number of adults necessary to maintain a group while still keeping up with a high level of role play and quality discipline.

Over the past year and a half that we've been running our group, my co-admin and I have learned to be very reliant on one another. Members come and go, and when it comes to finding long-term placements for long-term kids, we often try to put them with our own adults in order to ensure lasting placements. This means that if we feel that a child character has "staying power" they usually find a quick home in a family that is controlled by one or both of us.

The problem arises when we begin to realize that not only are our own child characters getting flushed out in this process, but that we cannot possibly maintain a high level of quality in our discipline and parenting when we're taking care of dozens of (external) children ourselves. Our goal as admins should never to be to totally avoid the other members of our sites in order to play with one another, but instead to find a balance that allows everyone involved to make the most of their play time and helps the members and the admins to get the most enjoyment out of the game.

Our current solution to this problem is to actively seek adults before we take on any more children. With the two of us running the two children's homes on the island and being in control of roughly two dozen entire families between us, we desperately need help. At the moment our strategy is to put out advertisements looking for adults to fill the roles that we have available and then to accept those applications which look good to us. Hopefully if we can build solid cooperation and a team of people truly willing to work with the kids (and not just who create adults to buy more kids), we will have a group that works together to make this the best experience for everyone involved.

For right now, if you're interested in applying to play an adult character at Birchwood Isle, please click here.

What kinds of solutions do you have to your problems as an admin? Do you have ideas to help solve the problem of too few adults in a group with too many kids?

Discipline in Age Play

Last week I posted a new poll asking how you feel about discipline in your age play. I was prompted to do so based on the fact that I've been noticing that a lot of groups don't allow any kind of discipline at all, and if they do, physical punishment is clearly off limits.

As you may recognize from the title of this blog, I believe that spanking and age play go hand in hand. I have always made that connection, but then again, I'm a spanko and not just some person who has IKs. For a long time I have associated spanking and age play with one another. I don't age play because I am a spanko, nor am I a spanko because I age play. The two are separate, and yet related for me. I know that others differ. There is a member of our group at present who does not enjoy spanking, and that's okay.

My question for you, then, is whether or not you feel that discipline in ageplay is acceptable.* If you have not seen it already, the poll is on the right-hand sidebar. Feel free to answer the question there. What I'm really looking for, however, are some comments on this post. How do you feel about discipline in your ageplay? Love it, leave it, hate it? Use the poll for your simple answers, but give me some details in the comments. I want to know why you don't like discipline if you don't. I'm a spanko -- I'm much more interested in the reasons why you wouldn't enjoy discipline than why you would.

* I can make some assumptions about you based on the fact that you're a member of this group, but I'd like to get a discussion going here.

Character Abandonment

So far, this blog has dealt mostly in the discussion of features of the role play rather than addressing matters of age play, emotionally real inner children, and re-parenting. For those who are looking for information about reparenting and age play in terms of the emotions and effects of our inner children, you are in the wrong place. Try the blog I co-author with Kit: Lessons Learned from Our Inner Kids.  There are some topics, however, which cross over and cover both areas of interest to potential readers of this blog, and the matter of character abandonment is one of them.

I am not going to go into vast amounts of detail regarding the nature of emotionally-real inner children. There are other places and times for that and I may edit this post in the future with more information that will help you to better understand.

What I want to talk to you about today is character abandonment in ageplay groups. It happens all the time. You're playing a child (possibly an emotionally real inner kid) and one day, you meet the adult of your dreams. She has every characteristic that you like in a parent. She is loving and kind, but firm in her discipline. She knows just when to let you get away with misbehavior and when to crack down on you. You even love the way that she disciplines you and you're sure that she's "the one." You begin to develop feelings for this person, and you may even begin to feel irrational. You love her, and you want her to love you back.

With (in our case) or without (as is the case in most groups) administrator approval, you proceed with the adoption. You are glowing. It's going to be wonderful. You've finally found the mommy for you. You know that things are going to be okay from now on. Your inner kid will be eternally satisfied and able to be herself with this mommy. You have no more worries at all.

Then she changes. Maybe she has an inner kid of her own, or she's just growing worn out taking care of you. Maybe the discipline disappears altogether, or, more likely, it becomes more harsh. Where you could get away with "just being a kid" now your mommy punishes you if you look at her funny. You're hurt, and you're confused, and you're likely to be afraid to ask what's going on because you know what's coming next...

She leaves. There is probably no verbal warning at all, just the signs that you've been seeing coming at you for so long. And then, like a puff of smoke, she's vanished. She may tell you that she can no longer handle your child, or she may simply leave the group for greener pastures never to instant message you again. All that matters is that she is gone.

In most cases, this type of event occurs when someone leaves the group. It's something that good administrators are always on the lookout for. We (that is, Kit and I), like to see members join us who are looking forward to being with us and our group for an extended period of time of many years (i.e. as long as we plan on being around). While we know that this isn't always possible, it is important to us that we foster not only one another (as you'll see on our blog) but the members of our group and the group itself. This is your job as an administrator: keep the riffraff out!

When a member leaves your group, they leave a ripple effect. If they are a parent, they leave behind children who will suffer a feeling of abandonment. Even the most hard-core spanking groups have members who are otherwise "fragile" in terms of their connection to their child characters. But the children left behind aren't the only issue. There are spouses, and friends, and a story needs to be developed in order to explain your leaving. A skilled administrator can set this up in a way that allows welcome members to return or which alienates those who are not welcome. We recently had to do the latter on our group.

Bear in mind that exiting child characters also have an effect, even if they do not have families. They will likely have friends who are being left behind, and there is a similar wake of devastation that affects those who remain.

Nobody in their right mind believes that you should stay in a group forever (unless you are part of the management team). If you aren't happy, there is no reason why you should stay. But I do believe that your first step is to try to resolve your differences with the staff of the group and then to do the best that you can to sever yourself acceptably from the characters you are involved with. Have a good fight with your friends. Divorce your spouse. Leave appropriately and without leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces that you left behind. Wrap your threads up, be polite, and remember that one day you might want a recommendation from the people you're hurting. They'll hurt either way, but if you are polite and appropriate in the way you disconnect yourself from them, you are far more likely to build fences rather than burning your bridges.

Foster Forest Ad, May, 2011

Is it time for another ad for the best ageplay and spanking role playing play by post on the Internet? Boy does time ever fly! It's been two whole months since my last ad was posted, so I guess that it must be just about time, right?

There has been some confusion over the last few weeks as the group has grown by leaps and bounds. Amazingly, in the one month when I chose not to post an ad, the group gained seven new members! We lost three of them almost as quickly as we gained them, but that means that we are four members up from the last ad that I posted, for a total of ten members. We seem to hover right around this number for whatever reason, but it seems to be working for us, so I am certainly not going to complain!

There are two things that occur to us about the "drive bys" that we've been getting at Foster Forest. The first thing that occurred to me was that perhaps it was due to the fact that we allow explicit sexuality. This is fairly unusual, and while we only allow it in adult/adult and teen/teen (or the rare YA/teen) relationships, I can understand how this might be off-putting to anyone who doesn't expect it. That's why I'm putting it out there now.*

Recently, one of the members who has since left us complained that we aren't clear enough about how flat out busy Foster Forest is. So let me try to be as clear as I can. I'm going to even use bold type because this statement is made all over Foster Forest and in every ad that I've ever posted: We do over 250 posts a day (average). Let me stress again. I'm talking about every day and not every month, or week. We may be the most active group of our kind on the Internet. I know for sure that we are the best. If you cannot keep up with that level of posting, this probably isn't the best group for you, though we do have slower members and it seems to be working for them!

Another thing that seems to be causing some contention right now relates to the nature and definition of an emotionally real inner kid. Click the link to view our definition. Ours is the only one that matters for the purposes of Foster Forest. You cannot bring your character into our group and change it. You won't be happy, because we won't change just to suit you. While we try to be accommodating, our definitions do matter.

For more general information about Foster Forest, please view our About Foster Forest link on the main blog. This will tell you more about what makes Foster Forest the best re-parenting (and spanking) group on the Internet!

We are currently accepting children (4-12), teens (13-17), young adults (18-21) and adults (22+) into our community. We are especially in need of younger children. Right now we have very few children under the age of 13. The group is more suited to teens than to littles, but we'd like to see this balance out! 

We do have plenty of adults to take care of your IK! But we'd still love to meet your adult just so that we can keep our balance! :)

*All of our members are over the age of 18, of course. It's the characters who aren't necessarily.

You've Received a Correction... How You Respond Matters!

As a member of a role playing group, it is very likely that at some point, you will receive correction from the administrator or moderators. When this happens, the way that you respond to the staff is very important to what happens next!

Let us use my example of metagaming, since I've been talking so much about that recently. The administrator of your age play rpg has just come to you in a private message and has asked you to please refrain from characterizing characters you don't own. She cites specific examples of how you are doing this. Maybe you've mentioned that John is a great fisherman or that Sara can't really sew all that well (even though she's been making her own clothes for years).

The conversation might go something like this:

ADMIN: "There have been some complaints about how you said that Sara can't sew very well. It's bothering a few people. This is considered metagaming because you're changing a character without the permission of the person who owns that character."

YOU: "Oh. I hadn't really realized that I was doing that. I'm really sorry. I'll double-check my posts next time."

This is the right way to go about receiving a correction. No feelings need to be hurt in this case, and life goes on.

However, if the conversation goes like this, then you must understand that you are probably lining yourself up for disappointment:

ADMIN: "There have been some complaints about how you said that Sara can't sew very well. It's bothering a few people. This is considered metagaming because you're changing a character without the permission of the person who owns that character."

YOU: "Well Sara messed up that outfit that she made for Patty. So she can't really sew."

ADMIN: "But that isn't really up to you to decide, is it? Would you like it if the person who plays Sara decided that your character Greg was really clumsy? Or a bad basketball player? Or that he couldn't swim?"

YOU: "That's not what I'm doing. Sara messed up that outfit for Patty. Remember?"

ADMIN (getting frustrated): "Yes, I do remember that. But I'm asking you to please stop doing it. Sara's keeper gets to decide what her talents are, not you. She may have improved her sewing ability since then, or it might have been a one time mistake. Stop doing it. I'm asking you to stop doing it."

YOU: "Okay."

I assume at this point that you can see how an administrator might be frustrated with this conversation, and might be telling themselves in the back of their mind that they need to watch this person for metagaming in the future, because it could be an ongoing problem and the player may need to be more forcefully (physically) corrected with a temporary ban or moderated posts if they are available.

Interestingly, in the first case I, as an admin, would be more likely to give the person more chances than in the first case, because it's obvious that they understand that they did something wrong and they are going to try to correct it. We currently have a member at Foster Forest who consistently does this, and this person is a pleasure to have around and is not at risk of further discipline at all because they are genuinely trying to work with us.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that the member in the second example will often continue to exhibit the same behavior with whatever the original problem was. In one case we had someone who was bratting in the extreme, and we had to correct them. This person's response to correction was so bad that their response itself got them banned.

The key factor here is to be gracious. The administrators of your group work their tail ends off to bring you the best group they can. That means keeping negativity and drama out of the group whenever possible. It means taking care of fairly large numbers of sensitive people, and trying to do so diplomatically. It means doing unpleasant things, like handling the correction of adults who should know that following the rules is a requirement of the game.

Show the staff of your group respect. This is imperative. Respecting the staff of your group may make the difference between receiving a private and a public correction (because sometimes having "witnesses" is a good thing) and it might make the difference in whether or not you find yourself getting banned.

Accept correction gracefully. If you don't understand what you're being corrected for, ask. If you're still confused, ask for another person to explain it to you. Most groups have more than one staff member and we all communicate differently. There is no shame in asking!

No Foster Forest Ad for April

Generally speaking I post the Foster Forest ads in the last day of the previous month. In this case, that would be today. March has been a particularly tough month at Foster Forest, however, and I feel that it would be inappropriate to invite people into the group while we're really just picking things up again and getting moving in an upward and onward direction.

Look for May's ad on April 30th!