fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6789 ]

[ SECRET POST #6789 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6789 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #971.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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02. https://i.imgur.com/E2mIvDQ.png

Yes! I was reading a fic the other day and they were picking this child character up all the time and carrying her around and basically treating her like a toddler and she spoke in a very childish toddler way, so I was just picturing a toddler. Later in the fic they mention that she was 10. 10!

I know it's worse for me because I actually work with kids, but gods people you could do your very basic research for these things. It's not hard.

I'm confused that this is even something that needs research, like is it common for people not to remember what being 10 was like??

This is both funny and kind of nuts to me because... research? Don't people encounter kids on their own even enough to notice this stuff? I had younger siblings.

I'm a single person, I keep to myself a lot, I don't want children and don't seek out interactions with them, I never even did babysitting as a teen, and I work at a veterinary clinic, so no, I'm not regularly exposed to children. I do have a younger sibling but childhood was 30+ years ago so uuuuh my memories may not be reliable on the matter.

And it still doesn't hurt to double-check what you think you know!

I think even people who are around kids all the time wouldn't necessarily find it easy to write a kid of a specific age. Someone could teach first grade and be around all the 6 year olds but not be sure how to write a 10 year old or a 4 year old. Do you remember exactly what your younger siblings were like when they were exactly 6, enough to write a believable 6 year old that can't be mistaken for a 10 year old?

I wouldn't recall all the exact details of what a six year old is like, but I'd know enough to realize that a 6 year old with normal development is not going to sound like a 2 year old.

The question was though, are memories based on "having siblings" enough to write an age-accurate child? The secret's OP used an extreme example but a 6 year old being different from a 10 year old is also an extreme example and I bet lots of people even if they have had siblings wouldn't get it quite right.

Seriously, parenting websites are legion and most of them have a section on developmental milestones.

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(Anonymous) - 2025-08-08 22:14 (UTC) - Expand

I'm around a mixed age range of kids all the time but a lot of them have cognitive and/or physical disabilities and even when I've seen their info in the last few days I'm so, so bad at remembering their actual names and grades. There are only three ages to me:

Squirrely (4-7, struggles to sit still or focus, leetle enough that their feet swing in the chairs)

Kid (7-13, has more mental resources/abstract understanding than a Squirrel but not necessarily more focus, has not yet hit their second growth spurt. Feet hit the ground from chairs but they're still shorter than adults)

Teen (12-17, close to my height or possibly taller. may or may not be trying to act Cool)

but sometimes their are kids who mess up the categories, like the 10 year old who's extra short due to developmental stuff and also has ADHD who I always read as being borderline squirrel/kid and therefore closer to 7-8, or the 13 year old who hasn't hit his growth spurt yet and also has a lot of learning difficulties and so reads to me as the Same as the late elementary/8-10 year olds even though he's several years older.

*their AGES and grades, orz

names I remember

No siblings here, and all my cousins were older than me by over a decade.

First time I encountered someone below 5, I was 13 and babysitting, and hardly interacted with them as they slept through the night. I've never interacted with anyone under 3, except making funny faces at them in supermarkets.

Some of us just don't have that kind of life.

Yeah this is why I don't like to read fics where there's child characters.

And then I go and write an entire novel where the main character is a child, starting with her at 3 years old and ending at 14 8| yes I'm a hypocrite.
However thanks to that, I do have at least some idea of what sort of research it takes to pull off a somewhat convincing child character (and I did have to do research, as I'm not around children a lot in my day-to-day happenings), so I know how easy a lot of this stuff is to find out, which means I can tell very quickly who didn't research for shit :}.

This drove me nuts on House. Cuddy adopted a kid who was supposed to be three, looked five and acted one (she couldn't talk for example). This came off completely like the kid was developmentally disabled and nobody seemed to be aware of this.

That was easily the worst kid on tv at the time. I should have stopped watching a few seasons before but that season is what finally did it for me.

I don't think I made it that far. I gave up the show before that I'm pretty sure because I don't recall an adopted kid, just her attempts at pregnancy.

the later seasons of that show were such a trainwreck!

Aw man, 3 year olds are total chatterboxes, too. A lot of what they say can be pretty weird, but they definitely talk!

Yeah, if it's presented as typical or a good thing. I mean, there are some parents that do not pay attention to the recommendations and keep their kids bottle-fed (or even breastfed), until two or three, usually not exclusively, but sometimes. And it is fairly common for kids to return to toddler behaviors due to a new child or a big change or some other emotionally distressing situation, but it shouldn't last very long, or if it does, it should be followed up on with a developmental specialist, a child psychologist, or the like.

I've always kind of thought that there are some people who sort of see kids as something more like accessories, and just expect them to play that role in their lives no matter what.
(My sister is fifteen years older than I am and still talks to me in baby talk, despite many requests that she stop, I started asking her to when I was five. So we have a very poor relationship and I might be a bit cynical in this area.)

You ever try googling "What age does a child do X" on the internet? Good way to end up on a watchlist or have Chris Hansen bust open your door, or worse start receiving mailers from NAMBLA. Who needs more junk mail?

Lol, that isn't true at all. That is a very common phrase and subject for people to look up. Why would, 'What age does a child start speaking in full sentences?" trigger anything?

The CIA has added you to their friendslist.

I feel like it's not really easy to research most aspects of what kids are like outside of being around them. It's also sort of complicated with some things.

For example, it was hard for my parents to get me off the bottle. I was like 4 or 5 before I stopped crying for a bottle of milk. My younger sister at about 14 months wanted to use cups because she saw the rest of us use cups so it was easy to transition her to sippy cups and off the bottle.

Oooooh big same! Some people clearly haven't the faintest idea of what children are like at various ages and it shows! If a 9 year old is still doing nothing but baby talk and is unable to pronounce words or use full sentences, that 9 year old had better be developmentally disabled because that is NOT how a neurotypical 9 year old acts! That always really rubs me the wrong way when I run into it, especially if it's NOT fanfic or some type of smaller production. Like if I'm reading a book that has been edited and published, someone should have noticed that and said hey, is this kid 9 or 3, because there's a difference.

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