BS: Children can be creepy

Subject: BS: Children can be creepy
From: GUEST,Futwick
Date: 30 Apr 13 - 07:48 PM

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbellassai/the-creepiest-things-a-child-has-ever-said-to-a-parent

Subject: RE: BS: Children can be creepy
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 01 May 13 - 04:12 AM

Very creepy, but I wonder if some of these children had seen programmes/videos/cartoons unbeknown to their parents and had formed their ideas from that. Even if they had been guarded from such stuff, maybe their little friends' parents hadn't been so vigilant. Also, children think quite logically, so putting your mummy in a jar to keep forever and not finding a jar big enough seems perfectly logical and sensible to a young child. Bones, blood, body parts etc don't carry the connotations they do in an adult's mind. As a child of about four, I was convinced I was two people, the alter ego being a much older person, a young woman with a similar name. This lady spoke to me and seemed often to disapprove of my behaviour. My sister had a very bad imaginary friend called Martin who scribbled on her wallpaper and told her to wee in her bed. I think these events were quite normal psychologically, but interesting for our parents!

Subject: RE: BS: Children can be creepy
From: Becca72
Date: 01 May 13 - 09:02 AM

Very creepy but #6 cracked me up. Sounds like a conversation my sister and I would have.

Subject: RE: BS: Children can be creepy
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 May 13 - 10:12 AM

If you look seriously at how many of the kid comments are structured, and overlook to some extent the individual elements used in the structure, most of them are pretty typical "language experiments" that most kids get into at the ages in the examples. Combining a kind of idea found in an ordinary statement with a variety of different subject/object/verb sets is one way of learning how to communicate.

As amply demonstrated by a number of those who post quite regularly in BS here, the ability to create sentences with almost no understanding of what they mean is a quite common skill that has very early roots in childhood learning and sometimes is very persistent. (You know who I mean, I'm sure.)

The understanding of when you've said something with meaning and separating those from the times when you're speaking nonsense is more difficult, and not always something that happens; and we sometimes fail (or neglect) to recognize "child-speak" when it comes from some who have failed to grow up even though they "look bigger." (op.cit previous ref to regular posters here)

Some of the quotes are obviously just "cute" and some are a little "bizarre," but of course there's no context to the quotes. For a couple of the really "creepy" ones there's some suggestion of a a possible "unusual influence" that a doting parent might like to look for (hopefully for elimination/correction, if anything is found) but none of them look particularly unusual for kids of the ages included.

Many of the times parents (especially young ones - first-timers esp.) think the things kids say are unusual (or unusually cute) are only viewed as they are due to a lack of understanding of what's normal in the youngest ones. And of course, by the time they learn to recognize the "normal" for what it is they quite often decide to have greatly reduced further exposure to little tots. (note very slight sarcasm)

John