fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5186 ]

[ SECRET POST #5186 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5186 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #742.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

06. https://i.imgur.com/Qh2tciF.jpg

Yeah, same. Sometimes it's just really obvious how little they know.

To be fair, unless you're involved in a kid's life to some meaningful degree it's hard to know these things. A succinct summary of an average day in an (x) year old's life isn't necessarily easy to come by, or if you do find one you have no way of knowing how generally applicable it is. Parenting is definitely 90% learn on the job.

There are so many mommy blogs and parenting forums, and most of them are viewable to anyone. And that's assuming that you've forgotten your own childhood or it was atypical to the point of thinking 7 year olds are frequently required to take naps in the middle of the day. It's not exactly hard to know these things, it just requires a little bit of research.

And that's assuming that you've forgotten your own childhood or it was atypical to the point of thinking 7 year olds are frequently required to take naps in the middle of the day.

NAYRT - Yeah, this is the part I never understand. Do people honestly not remember being a child? My memory is pretty solid from about five years onwards. And I remember enough of my thought processes and experiences at four to get a passable sense of how I functioned. I get that not everyone has memories from before they turned three, but I'd think that most people would be able to remember being six or seven with a decent amount of clarity.

DA I mean, my memory of childhood is pretty fuzzy until 9 or 10.

And I remember enough of my thought processes and experiences at four to get a passable sense of how I functioned. Haha, nope. Sometimes people talk about early childhood memories and I'm like idk what I was doing, eating dirt? Good thing my sister has the memory of a steel trap to remind me of embarrassing moments and things I did wrong. 🙄

Individuals with extensive trauma and certain kinds of neurodivergent conditions (ADHD, for instance) may have a "Swiss cheese memory."

I attribute memories to the wrong part of my life constantly, and if I play it back my life is more a series of flashbulb impressions than a continuous reel of film. I'm mostly unable to remember when those flashes occurred unless I actively rebuild the memory from context clues. Which means I might be able to do it, but with great effort.

(Apropos of nothing, I have great working and long-term memory. My episodic memory is the only one that's complete crap.)

NAYRT

Er. I've got absolutely no clarity from before ten, maybe. Memories, sure, particularly of scenery, rooms, places, but of the day to day or thoughts I had at the time? Nothing.

Vastly different experiences...

I'm 38, and I have almost no memory of being a child or what my thought processes were like. I'm the youngest in my family by a decade+ and was always around adults except for school, so I'm not sure I would trust my personal experience as a 'normal' one anyway.

you would be wrong

I have virtually no memory of my childhood. Mom blogs are not great sources of info for writers on day to day minutiae of kids lives.

They really are not. And I'm sure plenty have conflicting parenting philosophies.

Dude... what parenting media are you consuming where they are not talking about day to day minutiae of their kids' lives? Hell, just go to r/askparents and ask some parents if you don't want to sort through a blog or forum on your own. If you're the kind of writer who doesn't research anything first, that's fine. It's fanfic, not a thesis. But the information is there and accessible if you actually want to look for it.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-03-19 02:16 (UTC) - Expand

I have like... maybe 1 memory per year lol. My mind must routinely purge everything it deems unimportant.

That said, parenting blogs are not the best place for biased information. Nevermind that you could throw a rock and not hit two parents who have the same philosophy on the same thing, all kids are not a monolith either when it comes to behaviours etc.

unbiased* whoops.

"Do healthy 7 year olds usually take 2 hour naps in the middle of the day?" isn't exactly "what's the best way to discipline my child?" You're not going to get a philosophical debate, because the answer is clearly no. You're acting like children are some kind of magical creature where no records exist on how to find or keep one.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-03-19 02:21 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-03-19 02:29 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-03-19 18:24 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-03-19 02:26 (UTC) - Expand

Then... ask a parent you know? I find it very hard to believe that these people don't know anyone with children.

Not really. Mommy blogs are a dime a dozen. It took me ten seconds to Google "typical day of a 7 year old" and find this and it's even up to date with COVID-19 and staying home for school. Not to mention there are other developmental resources to guide parents and tell them what to expect from a kid that age. "No way of knowing how generally applicable it is"? Get outta here. They could try using logic and common sense, for starters.

https://www.purewow.com/family/daily-schedule-for-kids

Or, you know, most people should be able to remember that they didn't take A TWO HOUR NAP after school when they were 7.

People are just bad or lazy at research.

Seeing all the replies above...is no one going to mention Piaget? Okay, I'll allow that not everyone has studied psychology or developmental psychology or teaching, but, apart from mommy blogs and memories, I'd argue that looking up the developmental stages of childhood help provide a good framework for how kids think and act (and the milestones they typically would be reaching by X age).

It's the kind of thing that's helpful in figuring out how (again, typically) a kid's speech pattern would be (provided they're exposed to human contact and conversation) and even behaviors! And behaviors you might find in kids who haven't had a typical situation. Developmental psych and textbooks on teaching (esp. different age groups -- because what a kid can understand or process, and how they understand it and process it is influenced by whichever period/stage in their development, in addition to environmental factors that influence said development, amongst others) are available online. For free. So are articles, and different research/case studies etc.

What I'm saying is, unless there's a reason for it, I don't like it when people write 7 to 10 year old kids still using baby talk and the like. And as far as a nap at 7 years old, I was in first grade -- there were no naps-- at least not in my school.

All this to say, research! I hope this might have been helpful for anyone who had been toying with the idea of writing kids in a story but wasn't sure where to look/what to google (piaget's theory of development/ you can check out Erikson too, but Piaget is the most well known/used)

Be careful with Erikson.He subscribed to the 'autism is down to poor mothering' bollocks.

AYRT

Yeah, good point -- i mentioned him as he is brought up, but most modern understanding of development is based off of Piaget. So, if I could edit - strike out Erikson! Thanks for the catch!

+100000

Counterpoint: realistic children are bleh and child-rearing is mostly drudgery and only fulfilling for those who actively seek it for themselves. So in fiction, I mostly look for depictions of children on the far-removed end of realism.

People hate the sassy, precocious fictional child but I love that kid. You know what would suck in a story? The realistic kid that asks you the same question a thousand different ways.

Yeah, personally I usually like the "quiet, wise child with the inexplicable maturity of an adult" trope, particularly if the kid is either the child of genius parents or a mysterious foundling. But I hate when a child character is given mannerisms/behaviors/etc that are distinctly too young for them with no explanation. I am so repulsed by that "cutsey" stuff.

But probably there are people out there who feel the opposite way. They just want kid characters to be young and cute and take naps and carry around stuffed animals and suck their thumbs and mispronounce words and squeal thinks like, "Daddy! Kisses!" as much as possible.

So I guess there's always the strong chance that you're alienating some of your readers, one way or the other.

Kids are like magnets. No one knows how they work!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only