[ SECRET POST #5186 ]

[case]

⌈ 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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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. 🙄

[(Anonymous)]

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.)

[(Anonymous)]

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...

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

you would be wrong

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm confused that you seem to think i'm someone who is actively trying to research this.

And believe me there are plenty of conflicting parental approaches. It's a whole new world of cliques. Parenting media is often either an attempt to portray a family as some kind of pastoral ideal or playing up epic fails for laughs. Besides every kid is so different, working out what is unusual for a kid and what's average just.isn't that straightforward. You could get 100 responses on reddit and still not hit the right notes.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

unbiased* whoops.

[(Anonymous)]

"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.

[(Anonymous)]

Except some kids do. It's not USUAL, but it can happen. Kids sleeping patterns are very individual. My kid was sleeping through the night by 9 weeks, unusual but not unheard of. My friend's kid only sleeps 5 hours a day and has done since the age of 3 - again weird but not unheard of. My other friend's kid would happily nap for 2 hours in the middle of the day and they're 10.

Kids are variable. It's only through having one and interacting with other parents that you really get a feel for what's normal and unusual. And the problem with normal is there are so few kids that actually fit it.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, I agree with AYRT. When you're writing a child character in fiction, aim to represent the norm unless you have a specific reason not to. Like, if you specifically want to signal that the kid is unusually advanced in an area, then sure, write them as unusually advanced in that area. But if you write your child character as routinely taking two hour naps in the middle of the day, it will come across like you're infantilizing them and don't have much concept of what is developmentally typical for a child of that age.

[(Anonymous)]

Not the point I was making. Of course you represent the 'norm', it's just that's hard to divine unless you're actually a parent.

[(Anonymous)]

Da but it’s also such a specific assumption to make that it seems possible they wouldn’t have read anything contrary? Like people write “I put my kid down for a nap” but they don’t note an exact timing and someone figures “well my naps are an hour and kids sleep more, right” and writes that in. It’s a bit silly blind spot to not check it but I can see how it got assumed. (Or they had a bad sense of their own naps as kids - I was shocked as a kid when I was told that our nap time at school was only 15 minutes, I thought we had been sleeping for at least 30-45 minutes each time and would probably have believed it to this day.)

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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.