When Your Science Curious Toddler Redefines Family

[u/tamere66676]

[u/MarsMonkey88]

Toddlers don’t know what’s socially normal or not, so they say things weird all the time!

[u/Not-A-SoggyBagel → u/MarsMonkey88]

They say the weirdest things, because they don't know they are weird. The worst thing is when they walk right up to other people and say the weirdest things.

I took a friend's kid to the grocery store recently. Lost sight of her for one second but she returned and she pointed at a lady saying very loudly, "That lady smells! Why she so smelly?" The woman looked mortified.

[u/Federal_Platform_746 → u/Not-A-SoggyBagel]

Apparently when I was a tot, my mom and I were at a restaurant and this lady was kn front of me and I loudly said she had a big bum bum. My mom took me outside so fast. She was so embarrassed

[u/megatheridium → u/Federal_Platform_746]

A big bum bum, you say...

[u/Federal_Platform_746 → u/megatheridium]

See i say it, and now I feel like Elfo

[u/Willow-Whispered → u/MarsMonkey88]

As a toddler, my room was painted with a mural from the book Rumble in the Jungle, and there were monkeys on the wall. I pointed out a lady who looked like one of the monkeys on my wall (something about her face shape apparently. I have no memory of this) and said MOMMY THAT LADY LOOKS LIKE A MONKEY. She was Black. My mom was mortified but I was two years old and someone had the same face shape as a painting on my wall and I just had to point it out

[u/HesitantBrobecks → u/Willow-Whispered]

My sibling once said - very loudly - that they "don't like brown people", on a bus full of people of varying races, when they were like 3 or 4. Obviously they must have heard something like that somewhere, but I PROMISE you all it was NOT from our family!!! And they definitely don't still think that way!

I really do believe it was just a case of a child not understanding the words fully tbh - one of our little sisters is half Nigerian, and a boy at school once told her he didn't like her because he doesn't like the colour brown, and honestly as fucking awful as that was for her to experience, it really does just seem to be kids not actually understanding what they're saying (most of the time, anyway) (also, they made up pretty quickly and he was never intentionally nasty to her, genuinely just think he, being about 6, didn't have a clue that he was saying anything significant)

Oh and for a WAY more wholesome one, in a similar vein to the other reply here, I was possibly hyperlexic, which meant that some time shortly before I went 2½, while my mum was pregnant with my sibling, when the woman doing an ultrasound one day described my fetus sibling's head to me as "a circle", I replied with "actually, it's an oval" (I ofc do not remember this, mum however does 🤣)

[u/Willow-Whispered → u/HesitantBrobecks]

Have you seen the video of that little girl saying she doesn’t want to wear something bc she doesn’t like brown, then realizing what she said and assuring her mom “but I like your hair though!”

[u/Chuckitybye → u/MarsMonkey88]

My mom taught my oldest sister to say "popliteal fossa" when she pointed to the back of her knee. Toddlers are little sponges and also very odd

[u/The-NHK → u/MarsMonkey88]

Nah fuck it let's all call each other humans. Time to normalize toddlers.

[u/Stanek___]

Incredibly plausible, I probably did similar shit as a toddler lol

[u/Iforgotwhatiusedlmao → u/Stanek___]

Yeah my youngest started doing this for a while and I thought it was hilarious. Kids don't know this is weird and might not know the word "person" is better for the situation.

[u/kioku119]

Sounds completely normal to me.

Also, I liked calling aquaintences human in collage to be silly ("hello human!"), but I know that's unrelated ;p

[u/MyLifeisTangled → u/kioku119]

*college

[u/PrettyEquipment1809 → u/kioku119]

• Acquaintances (maybe ask for a refund?) 🤭 just teasing you. LOL

[u/Laiskatar → u/kioku119]

"Greetings, Inhabitant of Earth"

I greet my friends like that as a joke

[u/kioku119 → u/Laiskatar]

Nice, lel

[u/BuckGlen]

Ive seen this with autistic kids where they think they're being proper and will use words that are "correct" but not in the right context. Oddly refering to people as "human" is the one i remember most vividly, but ive also heard it with "wow that person has alot meat" in refrence to someone whos fat.

[u/ViSaph → u/BuckGlen]

I am autistic and did stuff like that all the time as a kid. My first words were "what's that" and my mum can't even remember when I started saying mama because it was so far down the list of things I said lol. Kids are weird, autistic kids even more so.

[u/somewhatfoolish]

My toddler cousin literally does the exact same thing

[u/DrainianDream]

Saying things that are technically correct while being socially out of pocket is toddlers’ entire thing.

[u/bluetipbox1]

My kid would do this all the time, it made me laugh and I'd tell him people are going to think we're aliens. I still refer to this phase now that he's a little older; "lay down like a human please" when he's laying sideways across the bed at bedtime, "speak like a human please" when he's mumbling

[u/Artislife_Lifeisart]

I'm just going to crop out the bottom, cause that guy is a tool.

[u/bird_on_the_internet]

“Cute anecdote fabricated for media vitality, but it didn’t happen” 🤓☝️

I gonna steal this guy’s fucking lunch oh my god

[u/Webdriver_501 → u/bird_on_the_internet]

I think it says more about these people than they realize, that when they see something interesting happened in someone's life, they immediately go "You made that up for attention.".

If you can't imagine anything of note ever happening in your own life, and can't relate to the idea that someone might just want to share something interesting that happened to them without it being an attempt to grab attention, the issue is with your device.

[u/Chaos-Corvid]

Apparently I was like this when I was super young, I don't remember much of it myself.

[u/RoosterSaru]

I purposely used fancier/more scientific words for things when I was 4-7 because I thought it would make me sound older.

[u/_AlwaysWatching_]

I worked at a daycare, used to tell the kids to walk "like normal people" because some of them would take "walking feet" as an admonishment to begin griddying or something.

One of the kids was walking out with her mom, mom scolded her to walk, she asks, "Like a normal person?" Mom's face was priceless 😂

[u/Dullea619]

I think the reason they don't believe this is because "human" is a hard word for toddlers. I would imagine that it probably sounded more like "uman". Also, children typically don't use the "th" sound until 5 to 6. Either way, it's plausible that a form of this was said and that she just translated it to the audience.

[u/AerwynFlynn → u/Dullea619]

Possibly. I know my hubs and I say my daughter is saying “ball” but it sounds like “BAH!” Toddler speech development is wild

[u/HesitantBrobecks → u/Dullea619]

I said the sentence "actually, it's an oval" (in correct context) shortly before I was 2½, so saying "human" is very believable...

(I don't remember, obviously, but my mum witnessed it and definitely does remember)

[u/Thrbt52017 → u/[deleted]]

Hey, just so you’re aware “average” is actually average. Many kids develop sounds earlier and many developed them later.

Both the OP story and the one you replied to are very plausible, especially in families that talk to the kids like adults and talk often. Both of my kids developed sounds and communication earlier than their counterparts. I am a chatty Cathy by nature, talked to them literally all day, talked to them like I was talking with other adults (no baby voice).

Just because something is average doesn’t mean it’s impossible for others to be above or below average.

Edit to add - talk with any pediatrician or child development specialist, they do not like to harp on about “averages” because a lot of children do not fall exactly in those numbers. They only use them to gauge if a child is underdeveloped enough to need intervention.

[u/Any-Variation4081 → u/Dullea619]

Both of my children spoke very clearly at very young ages. I always got compliments from friends and family, strangers, even doctors. I took a ton of child development classes and spent a lot of time raising my younger family members. If done correctly you can teach children to talk well and quickly. Honestly some of the techniques i used work well with animals too. Like using the annoying baby voice for example. The voice works wonders. What doesnt work is baby talk. Like saying "wittle" instead of "little". Do use the voice but pronounce the words very clearly. Also talk to them a lot. A lot. I used to tell my kids every little thing i was doing. "Mommy is going to make a cup of coffee. Im going to grab a cup and then walk to the coffee pot". Showing them what words mean over and over again is so important. A lot of people just dont talk to their kids and they dont learn to speak properly until school.

[u/purpleplatapi → u/[deleted]]

Typically. It's right there in your sentence. You're talking about averages and treating it like the baseline. It's like if I said my cousin was 6 ft 5 and you said that's hilarious, adult men are typically 5 ft 9 so the idea of you having a tall cousin is honestly just laughable.

[u/kthejoker → u/Dullea619]

I guess if you're an idiot stuck on how people tell stories vs literally what happened?

When my son was 2 he had a robot toy. He would tell us all the time to "look at the robot"

It sounded like "look ah da wobuh"

If I was telling you this story in real life or social media which way do you think I would tell you?

[u/Dullea619 → u/kthejoker]

I agree with you. I thought the story was cute, and I would much prefer you tell the story without me needing to distinguish what was said. I also definitely believe a toddler would call people "human."

[u/ImportantChemistry53]

Is it on purpose that the guy speaks as if he was her child?

[u/daneeyella]

My 3 year old used to say humans instead of people when he told us stories.

[u/EasyGoingKeanu]

r/iamverysmart

[u/ihavehair17393]

i used to do shit like that, this one is very believable 😭😭

[u/EatThisShit]

My son is seven and still sometimes forgets that, in context, "person" is usually the right word, not "human".

[u/Gohan_is_Revan]

Ive done this for years since I was in elementary. Now it's funny.

[u/SageDarius]

My 4 year old went to some wax statue museum in Fort Worth. He saw Captain America and it made an impression. Now anything that even remotely looks like an American Flag is a 'Captain America Flag' or a 'Captain America shirt'

So yes, totally believable toddler behavior.

[u/scarypeppermint]

Anyone who’s been around a toddler for more than 5 mins knows this is very believable

[u/FixergirlAK]

Normal toddler, check. Reddit bro acting like a toddler though he's never met one, check.

[u/-TheLoveGiver-]

Bro I was this kid. I did shit like this all the time, I literally asked for science books for my fourth birthday. It's not that implausible.

[u/Starving_Phoenix]

I've litterally taught toddlers who do this. This is very easy to believe.

[u/Lost_My_Brilliance]

when i was a toddler, my parents couldn’t take me to the grocery store, because every time i saw a product i recognized, i would loudly recite the commercial/jingle, and get upset when my patents weren’t convinced to buy it. this is entirely plausible. 

[u/demonbroski]

I think people like this call things fake just to be contrarian and get people riled up. It's just something in the way they word it, like they recently learned a bunch of big words and put them together in a way that sounds smart to them