No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

iwilleatyourenglish

rebecca hazelton is a published writer but can’t even manage to write convincing dialogue for a toddler

truly amazing

iwilleatyourenglish

this is my favorite response to her bullshit tweet

jennytrout

Kids say spooky shit like this all the time when they’re really little, though. Usually, it’s stream of consciousness exactly like that while processing ideas. “Everyone dies one day.” Concept the kid has learned. “Everyone.” Reiterating who dies, though they probably don’t include themselves in that definition of “everyone.” “Even wolves.” Wolves are living things, kid is processing that all living things die. “But not books.” Books are not living things. Books don’t die. “Not words.” Words are not tangible objects, and people keep talking after other people die, so death does not affect words. Final verdict? “Words don’t die.”

It’s one of these things that sounds super profound to us as adults, but that’s because we’re putting our own, deeper meaning on what was a much less philosophical construct. This kid could very well have said all of these sentences in this very order. But they were listing what does and doesn’t die while trying to understand death. They weren’t making some statement about the soul of literature. Our adult brains are inserting that meaning, then declaring that no child could ever have used those words as they cannot apply to anything but our interpretation of them.

Like, it *could* be made up, but declaring that it *must* be made up based on our own perception is just adult egotism dismissing the notion that children are fully capable of utilizing words that we would use. They are. They’re just more concerned with communicating with themselves than with others, because they’re trying to understand the world.

timeforalongstory

That sounds exactly like a thing my son would have said at age 3. So does “poo broccoli”. Not only would he have said both of those things, he would have said them right in a row, and not seen any issue with this.

People who think this is fake have never met a kid.

fantasticwolfpenguin

@derinthescarletpescatarian

derinthescarletpescatarian

The toddler I live with says stuff like this all the time. It’s perfectly “convincing” toddler dialogue. I don’t know what 3 year olds the people in the notes have been hanging around to say they’re not this articulate, they absolutely are. Their pronunciation tends to be pretty shit but their grammar is usually decent and they always say random shit like this. Are you guys actually listening to and talking with your kids or are you just assuming they can’t speak well?

theimaginatrix27

I was an articulate three-year-old. By the time my younger brother and sister were three, they were also quite articulate. My stepbrother and stepsister were aged three and four when I met them and both spoke in full sentences too.

I don’t remember what random things we all said at those ages but I’m quite certain there were plenty. I used to record myself on tape, so I captured a bunch of things I said out loud, including recitations of stories on tapes I had, repetitions of things people had said to me, and the rather memorable instance in which I earnestly promised I wouldn’t swear any more, after never having uttered a swear-word up until that point in my short toddler life, followed immediately by me saying the five worst swear-words I could think of at the time. I even said one of them twice because the first time I stumbled over it. “Fuck” was spoken in a reverent whisper and very quickly because it was the worst one I knew.

derinthescarletpescatarian

That is the funniest shit I have ever heard

postilionstruckbylightning

I have a niece who, when she was about three or four, shouted, “Anyway, God is dead!” in the back of a car. As it turns out, she wasn’t channeling Nietzsche but just misunderstanding the information she’d been given about the meaning of Easter.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Please tell your niece I love her.

jabberwockypie

The “this is clearly fake” people are extremely tiresome.

Kids are wild. My housemate’s 10-year-old nephew talks about politics with her, and it’s very impressive to hear his chirpy little voice going on about current events.

“3-year-old” can mean anywhere from “just turned 3″ to “almost 4″, and for kids, that can encompass a lot of language development in between. Especially if you talk to them.

I was 3 when I had an argument with my grandma that Mary’s name was clearly “Mrs. God”, because if she and God had a baby, and you all told me that you have to be MARRIED to have a baby, then obviously it follows that her name is Mrs. God. (I know this because I had a minor speech impediment at that age, and couldn’t say my “th” sounds, and it was the same Christmas when my uncle was a dick about the fact I couldn’t say “I’m three”.)

thebibliosphere

Kids also parrot shit they hear all the time.

When I was three I supposedly told someone at church, “all the world is made of faith,” which sounds hella profound in that setting until you realize I was quoting Peter Pan by JM Barrie, “all the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”

My tiny little brain just made the connection between the word faith and ran with it.

othercat2

This reminds me that it is very frustrating to see people refuse to communicate with their very young children. “He can’t talk,” they say, while the two year old toddler is very clearly attempting to communicate.

And yes, children do say things that seem incredibly creepy and weird, but are just stream of conscious observations of things they just realize.

elodieunderglass

Yeah, like, this is the primary function of small children. I’ve had to forcibly hold myself back from adding about 10 age-indexed anecdotes of My Child(ren) And Their Gradual Understanding Of Mortality, because it wouldn’t add anything, but please believe that they take me to the cleaners on a regular basis

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.