Kids say the darndest things

(After I tell him he should turn off his wireless mouse to save the battery:)

“You’re a hipo... hipo... hipo... I don’t know the word. It means you never stick with one answer.”

Hypocrite?

“Yeah – I see it a lot in Peanuts.”

my kids use all the slang now. sometimes i hate it. but sometimes it's great. i made some rhubarb shortcake the other night and my 9-y-o goes 'dad this is bussin bussin'

words cannot describe the pride

Speaking of slang, this low-key SE London exchange took place yesterday:

M: Little children are quite funny.
F: Rude! Rude to say that when you’re near a child.
M: You’re quite a big child now, F.
F: No. Big children are pure teenagers.

‘Rude’ has been there for about a month now, but this was the first appearance of ‘pure’.

picking up the glasgow slang from you surely

He gave his father a telling-off for talking Scottish when he’s in England: “You should only speak English in England, Daddy.” That one was hurriedly turned into a Learning Opportunity.

The absolute 100% best thing he says is ‘tooken’ instead of taken. I hope he never stops.

Opal used to call speaking English as talking “regular” as opposed to Spanish. Also a learning opportunity.

When I was very young I used to think women spoke French and men spoke English, based on my parents

I feel like that makes sense.

Looking at Scholastic book club flyer:

Kid: Well well well! Dav Pilkey had announced he was discontinuing Dog Man books – but here’s a new one. Talk about fake news!
Me: Maybe don’t say “fake news”; that’s something Donald Trump made up.
Kid: Really? But I just came up with it… what do you mean?
Me: (??)Uh, OK… I guess it’s all right.

He also didn’t make it up, he just said it a lot

Really? But I just came up with it… what do you mean?

massive lols at this.

Also tho I’m so glad scholastic book orders still exist…i loved that shit

get that kid some Gordon Kormans

'dad this is bussin bussin'

words cannot describe the pride

:D at this and madchen's

My daughter doesn’t like to be line leader in her preschool class, “because people look at my butt.”

She came home from school today and said a girl kept kissing her, and she didn’t like it:

Well, did you ask her to stop?
“Yes… I told her to save her kisses for her mama!”

Speaking of which I think we had a right of passage…explains “gay” to Opal as when a woman loves another woman (among other things) and she yelled out “I’m gay with mama!”

Then we got to try to explain romantic love…

oh dear lol

lol

save her kisses for her mama!

massive lols at this

this is the best thread. thank you all for sharing.

My boy, who is neurodiverse and then some bless him, is the prince of daft questions. I should have kept a log over the years but as it's getting hot, I keep thinking about this beauty.

'What does sunblock do?'

Not to over-explain but I can't honestly think of a better example of economy of language in action.

Good question imo. Does it sun the block or block the sun? Not obvious. Sometimes the verb goes first: pickpocket, scarecrow.

(Older kid, smiling:) “Daddy, I just ate 50 chips…. do you think I’ll throw up?”

One day of summer break down; how many to go?

He was asking earlier what's the difference btw. a dog pound and an animal shelter – me: I guess nothing, a pound is just an older name for the same thing – him: "Yeah, and we don't even use pounds in the United States, we use dollars." I thought that was kinda funny.

lol that's great

I'm sitting here trying to work at the computer; he's flipping through these I SURVIVED books he borrowed from a friend. Then he keeps coming over and asking me things like: Daddy... Who - or what - attacked New York on September 11, 2001?

Can we, like, have that conversation a little later; and not right at this moment when I'm trying to get this email out, please?

daddy? can jet fuel really melt steel beams?

The boy was cracking me up the other night, saying how embarrassing it would have been for the first pilot had he missed and just gone between the two towers.

"Yes, son, I suppose he would have had some egg on his face."

encourage all parents to tell their kids who weren't born on 9/11 that it's ok to be funny about it

He brought it up again at bedtime (so I had to get into it) – he noted that 2001 was a year before Super Mario Sunshine came out, which I guess is a good yardstick.

It led into talking about other some heavy world history stuff that we had already addressed in a few difficult (for me) but ultimately good conversations around a year ago. He seems to have forgotten most of those details, though, so we had to go over it again. He was more ready to process some of the complexities/ambiguities this time around anyway (as best as I could touch on them in an age-appropriate way).

I never really anticipated having to explain, say, the Cold War as part of my parenting duties, and it’s not the most fun thing… hopefully I’m doing OK at it.

Living through a Donald Trump presidency really accelerated how much my kids learned about politics, the world outside their bubble, etc. Both for better and for worse - probably good to rip the band aid off early about the government being a source of good and having your best interests at heart; otoh, my daughter had a recurring nightmare for a bit where they were under lockdown at school and Donald Trump was the terrorist in the halls shooting.

I remember having to have these conversations - prompted by the attacks in Paris. It was horrible to have to let the awfulness of the world in like that and it led to difficult conversations about ideologies etc. I remember my boy processing 9/11 and saying 'well, they must have had their reasons' and a little bit of me breaking.

There is an evergreen dilemma as a parent between wanting my kids to understand the world with clear eyes, and not wanting to crush their souls. And I'm not even that cynical a person

Climate change is a really big one too

(xp just typed the below, but LS said it much more succinctly)

Yeah it's really hard...

With regard to the wars & "foreign policy" stuff - he's young enough to not really have much of a sense yet of what gov't does (especially in that area) - so I'm trying to give a clear-eyed sense of things, without entirely dwelling on the negative (b/c that feels wrong too, and I don't want him to feel hopeless or cynical). For a sophisticated adult, it naturally feels like anything you may say comes with a caveat or counter-example; but I don't want to keep going down rabbit-holes with an 8-year-old... I feel you have to find a way to address a few basic themes and be truthful without overburdening him.

Yes, that is a huge part of it - it's not always that I want to shelter kids from harsh truths, but harsh truths inherently have a lot of nuance, and often that level of complexity is beyond them.

and I'm not that cynical a person either - if anything I probably reflexively focus on the "good side" too much - but I'm wary of "indoctrinating" him too far in either direction, before he's able to learn & think about this stuff for himself... especially around topics that have huge bodies of historical scholarship and competing theories around basic points, or whatever.

I try to end conversations like that with what we do to help eg. “and that’s why I volunteer at a food bank” or “and that’s why it’s important to speak up when we see people being treated unfairly” or “and that’s why it’s important to buy things that aren’t made of plastic” or whatever. I don’t know if it helps the 7-y-o to end on a note of hope but it makes me feel better about having these soul-crushing discussions.

I like that - kind of the positive version of the George Bluth Sr. thing.

“j cole is an o.g.”

I think my kid is a boomer in training—
We were listening to a Billie Eilish song on the car radio
“Why isn’t she really singing? Why is she just mumbling? She’s probably scared to sing loud because she has a bad voice. Why do they let people who can’t sing on the radio? I don’t want to listen to music. Can we listen to the news?”

My kid said the other day that he thinks “rock music” is “the worst kind of music”…

I would chalk this up as a failure as a parent, but I already know he’s not going to be a music head (which is fine by me).

tell yr kid to meet me in the parking lot >:(

lol

Ha ha!

Now he just told me (in the car), “We don’t want to listen to your middle-aged man music!”

(ironically, this meant swapping a R&B playlist for “Octopus’s Garden”)

lol

irony not identified

"did you know that glenn danzig is 66 years old?"

My friend overhears his daughter playing:

"In THIS hairdressers we can make you bald in one minute"

My 23-month/old daughter keeps saying “I love you p…” (my real name starts with p) and then she takes a pause and says “…pigeons”