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Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

147 points by DoreenMichele 5y ago

xt00 5y ago
I sort of wonder if the crazy conclusions are on the parents side or the kids side..
- theonlybutlet 5y ago
  Pretty much agree, like the original post, I can't see how her son remembered all these irrational things they thought when they were 2 years old.
Causality1 5y ago
Maybe it's due to my lack of experience raising children but a lot of this seems very bizarre. A sixteen year old remembering events from when they were three? Staying up till three AM talking to their parent? Being scared of other people seeing them as stupid before the age of three? The article doesn't come out and say whether this child was diagnosed by a professional but it seems obvious to me that they should've been. I hope they received treatment and beneficial accommodations.
- josephg 5y ago
  The specifics all sound borderline traumatic for the child, so if he remembers anything at all he'll remember these events in particular. I've got plenty of memories from about the age of 5 - almost all of them scary or embarrassing for little me. And I'm nearing 40. When I was 16 could I still remember stuff from the age of 3? I wouldn't be surprised. I remember loving ducks and trains for some reason when I was about that age. But I don't have a lot of specifics.
  - philipswood 5y ago
    Yeah, fear-tinged memories seem to stand out: I can remember being in my parent's bed on a moonlit night, them asleep, being scared at the shadows of the trees on the windows. The shadows looked like monsters. This happened in a small town we moved from when I was 4 or 5. Strangely a lot of these memories were "un-indexed". I had no association to recall them with until my son was about that age and when he had similar experiences I recalled mine.
- simonh 5y ago
  I’m afraid it’s your lack of experience with kids. Mine are 16 and 17 now and all this seems perfectly credible. Kids often get bent out of shape by things in their childhood. It’s part of growing up, and part of the job of a parent to spot these things and figure out what to do about it.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal. Seems almost incredible.
- smcameron 5y ago
  I remember things from when I was that age (not a lot, but a more than most people for sure. And I'm in my 50's) I think it varies from person to person. My brother remembers nothing from that age.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  There's probably some genetic switch flipped or something. I can remember back to age 9 months. I tried writing out all my early-childhood memories (< age 5 years) once when I was in college and got to about 10 screenfuls worth (encompassing only up to age 3), at which point I got bored and figured I'd just post what I had to LJ. My sister has similar, though not quite as vivid, recollections. I'd heard all my friends saying they basically couldn't remember anything before age 10, and I thought "bullshit", but apparently they're the ones who are normal and I'm the one who's a psychological oddity. I have one therapist friend who said that early memories are a sign of trauma, but then I've also had therapists that say early memories are a sign of giftedness. Maybe these are one and the same, and developing consciousness and memory too early is its own form of trauma. It's been fascinating to watch long-term memory develop in my son, though. When he was about 20 months old, we went on a walk by a house in the neighborhood that had a half-eaten pizza box strewn across its yard. We went back two weeks later, and he asked "Where's the pizza?" I was like "What pizza?" until I remembered what it had looked like a couple weeks before, and was like "It got cleaned up. How did you remember there was a pizza there?"
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I'd heard all my friends saying they basically couldn't remember anything before age 10, and I thought "bullshit", but apparently they're the ones who are normal and I'm the one who's a psychological oddity. That doesn't seem normal, either. I mean, they couldn't even remember a friend they had from first grade? Maybe they weren't prompted adequately.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Misattribution in pattern-matching is common and necessary to construct and improve workable inner models of self, others, and the world. This requires training ("pre-training" or guidance from a more omniscient-esque knowledge agent), trial-and-error testing, and feedback to attain mastery (accurate and precise pattern-matching). Think of it analogous to genetic programming of the olden days: 1) Create an arbitrary model (code that results in answers of "is it safe?" "is it helpful?" etc.) 2) Test it 3) Find parts that work and parts that are broken 4) Mutate mostly the broken parts 5) Repeat until funding runs out It's better to fail-safe being afraid of something if you don't understand it because life is fragile and many things could eat you/hurt you. And, young ones don't have that same experiences or defenses of full-grown, mature (-ish? because they're parents) adults.
aszantu 5y ago
Got lots and lots of traumatic memories from childhood. The conclusions were. I'm on my own, i have to be strong. I want to be a warrior/hunter so i can provide for myself. Im responsible for other ppls emotions.
blarg1 5y ago
I vaguely remember when I was less than 4 years, where things had a dream like quality. A butterfly landed on my shoulder and I didn't see it take off so I thought it had gone through my skin into my body. Freaked me out a bit :(
xchaotic 5y ago
This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.
- freetime2 5y ago
  > This did not become a long term issue for him. I made sure he felt safe during this minor ladybug invasion and when he got older he figured out where and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and it was never a big deal. But it could have been, especially if I had not made sure to make him feel safe and protected and take his fear seriously even though I knew there was no real threat. I also got a helicopter parenting vibe from this article. Particularly the way she seems to be crediting her parental decisions with the child not developing “long term issues” from having some ladybugs in their bedroom. I don’t have any issues with her decision to let her son sleep in her bedroom for a couple days (and I might have done the same). She just seems to be overvaluing the importance of her response in this situation, and undervaluing kids’ natural ability to develop and outgrow their fears.
  - toxik 5y ago
    It’s very common for people to overvalue their own contribution to positive outcomes. I know I do, sometimes I can see myself doing it, but it doesn’t take away the feeling that it’s true. I see it in my parents-in-law too, they think they taught my kid do something new or they saw a behavior first where we (the parents) have seen it for forming weeks. I think it’s important to let it pass, it helps us feel involved and meaningful.
- jgilias 5y ago
  This is a bit unfair though. The general advice I've seen is that if a kid doesn't start forming simple sentences by the age of three, parents should start looking for help. Reason being, a delay in speech development may later lead to other problems, among them life-long speech impediments. As a stutterer myself, I can attest that having these are no fun. Also, pre-school is beneficial for development in general. They start learning how to function as part of a wider society there. The only 'mistake' I can identify in the article was going for the 'on-off' pre-school regimen. According to some experts in child development I've spoken to (Montessori method), predictability of routine is paramount to healthy development. If the child is 'on-off', he/she doesn't really become a core part of the 'pre-school society', has trouble making friends, and in general it messes with their little heads that there is no predictability on how their day or week is going to go. But helicopter parenting? No, not really.
ramshanker 5y ago
I blogged about myself-8-year-old memory when I was 17 (Year 2006). TLDR was >>> The only way of becoming a king is to learn more and more MATHS. I associated Kings with some sort of personality who is very-very good at maths , whose question no one can solve in his empire except him . <<< :D More at following link. http://blog.ramshanker.in/2006/03/child-imasination.html http://blog.ramshanker.in/2006/03/child-imasination.html
iamflimflam1 5y ago
I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass really works. Frustratingly I don’t think they really understood why I was so fascinated by it.
- andi999 5y ago
  Sounds not less intuitive than the band gap explanation. How did you explain color tinted windows?
  - lugged 5y ago
    Colored cogs.
  - animal531 5y ago
    My mother and I had a multi-year argument going about a house we drove past (when I just entered school). One of us argued that they had color tinted windows, whereas the other argued that it was just the color of their curtains.
- barrkel 5y ago
  Even weirder is how glass is partially reflective. What mechanism lets some light through but sends other light off in such a regular ordered way?
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Crystals are by definition ordered by a very regular pattern. I don't fully understand the mechanism, but I'm not surprised that it exists.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
ups101 5y ago
Around age 7 my daughter showed ocd like behavior (incessant scratching her arms) when she realized loosing connection during chrome casting meant the device kept playing. We had to unplug the chromecast device and inspect it, lying there dead and silent on the table, to settle her down. Same thing when our pc was updating, saying “please do turn off computer” and then _proceeding to reboot on its own_ at end of update. She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening (!…). as a toddler she would shake from fear if curtains were gently blowing - we figured she thought someone was standing there and tried to inspect it together to no avail. only recently we understood she in fact feared the house would blow away. Equal parts worried and proud of my little tin foil hat in the making :-).
- soulofmischief 5y ago
  To be fair, many people think it's not OK for Google to be listening, and you should be careful not to accustom your daughter to tech surveillance.
  - borski 5y ago
    Sure, but if she has generalized anxiety, adding more to the plate in the form of “oh, also Google wants to throw you in prison eventually” is just not worth it right now :) I’m exaggerating for effect, because kids do
    - soulofmischief 5y ago
      I'm not withholding these details from my children.
- pantalaimon 5y ago
  > She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening granted, that one doesn't seem so unreasonable
  - 5y ago
jgalt212 5y ago
> One recurring theme: Bright kids of a certain age are just smart enough to jump to crazy conclusions rooted in lots of knowledge for their age but little real world experience. Are they describing pre-schoolers, or the hybrid VC / thought leaders of X. With X being the particular publishing heavy firm you find most annoying at the given time.
darkerside 5y ago
I don't think these phobias are probably rooted in as much reason as ascribed in the article. We have instinctive emotional reactions to things like bugs. When an adult asks us for a reason, we find a pattern and supply it because it seems to make grownups happy.
aliasEli 5y ago
One of my early memories was of a very big statue that was standing on a cube that was almost the same size as me. I must have been less than four, because we moved to a different place after that. Years later I visited the same spot, the cube was about 50 centimeters high.

147 points by DoreenMichele 5y ago

xt00 5y ago

I sort of wonder if the crazy conclusions are on the parents side or the kids side..

theonlybutlet 5y ago
Pretty much agree, like the original post, I can't see how her son remembered all these irrational things they thought when they were 2 years old.

Causality1 5y ago

Maybe it's due to my lack of experience raising children but a lot of this seems very bizarre. A sixteen year old remembering events from when they were three? Staying up till three AM talking to their parent? Being scared of other people seeing them as stupid before the age of three? The article doesn't come out and say whether this child was diagnosed by a professional but it seems obvious to me that they should've been. I hope they received treatment and beneficial accommodations.

josephg 5y ago
The specifics all sound borderline traumatic for the child, so if he remembers anything at all he'll remember these events in particular. I've got plenty of memories from about the age of 5 - almost all of them scary or embarrassing for little me. And I'm nearing 40. When I was 16 could I still remember stuff from the age of 3? I wouldn't be surprised. I remember loving ducks and trains for some reason when I was about that age. But I don't have a lot of specifics.
- philipswood 5y ago
  Yeah, fear-tinged memories seem to stand out: I can remember being in my parent's bed on a moonlit night, them asleep, being scared at the shadows of the trees on the windows. The shadows looked like monsters. This happened in a small town we moved from when I was 4 or 5. Strangely a lot of these memories were "un-indexed". I had no association to recall them with until my son was about that age and when he had similar experiences I recalled mine.
simonh 5y ago
I’m afraid it’s your lack of experience with kids. Mine are 16 and 17 now and all this seems perfectly credible. Kids often get bent out of shape by things in their childhood. It’s part of growing up, and part of the job of a parent to spot these things and figure out what to do about it.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal. Seems almost incredible.

smcameron 5y ago
I remember things from when I was that age (not a lot, but a more than most people for sure. And I'm in my 50's) I think it varies from person to person. My brother remembers nothing from that age.
nostrademons 5y ago
There's probably some genetic switch flipped or something. I can remember back to age 9 months. I tried writing out all my early-childhood memories (< age 5 years) once when I was in college and got to about 10 screenfuls worth (encompassing only up to age 3), at which point I got bored and figured I'd just post what I had to LJ. My sister has similar, though not quite as vivid, recollections. I'd heard all my friends saying they basically couldn't remember anything before age 10, and I thought "bullshit", but apparently they're the ones who are normal and I'm the one who's a psychological oddity. I have one therapist friend who said that early memories are a sign of trauma, but then I've also had therapists that say early memories are a sign of giftedness. Maybe these are one and the same, and developing consciousness and memory too early is its own form of trauma. It's been fascinating to watch long-term memory develop in my son, though. When he was about 20 months old, we went on a walk by a house in the neighborhood that had a half-eaten pizza box strewn across its yard. We went back two weeks later, and he asked "Where's the pizza?" I was like "What pizza?" until I remembered what it had looked like a couple weeks before, and was like "It got cleaned up. How did you remember there was a pizza there?"
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I'd heard all my friends saying they basically couldn't remember anything before age 10, and I thought "bullshit", but apparently they're the ones who are normal and I'm the one who's a psychological oddity. That doesn't seem normal, either. I mean, they couldn't even remember a friend they had from first grade? Maybe they weren't prompted adequately.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Misattribution in pattern-matching is common and necessary to construct and improve workable inner models of self, others, and the world. This requires training ("pre-training" or guidance from a more omniscient-esque knowledge agent), trial-and-error testing, and feedback to attain mastery (accurate and precise pattern-matching). Think of it analogous to genetic programming of the olden days: 1) Create an arbitrary model (code that results in answers of "is it safe?" "is it helpful?" etc.) 2) Test it 3) Find parts that work and parts that are broken 4) Mutate mostly the broken parts 5) Repeat until funding runs out It's better to fail-safe being afraid of something if you don't understand it because life is fragile and many things could eat you/hurt you. And, young ones don't have that same experiences or defenses of full-grown, mature (-ish? because they're parents) adults.

aszantu 5y ago

Got lots and lots of traumatic memories from childhood. The conclusions were. I'm on my own, i have to be strong. I want to be a warrior/hunter so i can provide for myself. Im responsible for other ppls emotions.

blarg1 5y ago

I vaguely remember when I was less than 4 years, where things had a dream like quality. A butterfly landed on my shoulder and I didn't see it take off so I thought it had gone through my skin into my body. Freaked me out a bit :(

xchaotic 5y ago

This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.

freetime2 5y ago
> This did not become a long term issue for him. I made sure he felt safe during this minor ladybug invasion and when he got older he figured out where and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and it was never a big deal. But it could have been, especially if I had not made sure to make him feel safe and protected and take his fear seriously even though I knew there was no real threat. I also got a helicopter parenting vibe from this article. Particularly the way she seems to be crediting her parental decisions with the child not developing “long term issues” from having some ladybugs in their bedroom. I don’t have any issues with her decision to let her son sleep in her bedroom for a couple days (and I might have done the same). She just seems to be overvaluing the importance of her response in this situation, and undervaluing kids’ natural ability to develop and outgrow their fears.
- toxik 5y ago
  It’s very common for people to overvalue their own contribution to positive outcomes. I know I do, sometimes I can see myself doing it, but it doesn’t take away the feeling that it’s true. I see it in my parents-in-law too, they think they taught my kid do something new or they saw a behavior first where we (the parents) have seen it for forming weeks. I think it’s important to let it pass, it helps us feel involved and meaningful.
jgilias 5y ago
This is a bit unfair though. The general advice I've seen is that if a kid doesn't start forming simple sentences by the age of three, parents should start looking for help. Reason being, a delay in speech development may later lead to other problems, among them life-long speech impediments. As a stutterer myself, I can attest that having these are no fun. Also, pre-school is beneficial for development in general. They start learning how to function as part of a wider society there. The only 'mistake' I can identify in the article was going for the 'on-off' pre-school regimen. According to some experts in child development I've spoken to (Montessori method), predictability of routine is paramount to healthy development. If the child is 'on-off', he/she doesn't really become a core part of the 'pre-school society', has trouble making friends, and in general it messes with their little heads that there is no predictability on how their day or week is going to go. But helicopter parenting? No, not really.

ramshanker 5y ago

I blogged about myself-8-year-old memory when I was 17 (Year 2006). TLDR was >>> The only way of becoming a king is to learn more and more MATHS. I associated Kings with some sort of personality who is very-very good at maths , whose question no one can solve in his empire except him . <<< :D More at following link. http://blog.ramshanker.in/2006/03/child-imasination.html http://blog.ramshanker.in/2006/03/child-imasination.html

iamflimflam1 5y ago

I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass really works. Frustratingly I don’t think they really understood why I was so fascinated by it.

andi999 5y ago
Sounds not less intuitive than the band gap explanation. How did you explain color tinted windows?
- lugged 5y ago
  Colored cogs.
- animal531 5y ago
  My mother and I had a multi-year argument going about a house we drove past (when I just entered school). One of us argued that they had color tinted windows, whereas the other argued that it was just the color of their curtains.
barrkel 5y ago
Even weirder is how glass is partially reflective. What mechanism lets some light through but sends other light off in such a regular ordered way?
- darkerside 5y ago
  Crystals are by definition ordered by a very regular pattern. I don't fully understand the mechanism, but I'm not surprised that it exists.
  - agumonkey 5y ago

ups101 5y ago

Around age 7 my daughter showed ocd like behavior (incessant scratching her arms) when she realized loosing connection during chrome casting meant the device kept playing. We had to unplug the chromecast device and inspect it, lying there dead and silent on the table, to settle her down. Same thing when our pc was updating, saying “please do turn off computer” and then _proceeding to reboot on its own_ at end of update. She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening (!…). as a toddler she would shake from fear if curtains were gently blowing - we figured she thought someone was standing there and tried to inspect it together to no avail. only recently we understood she in fact feared the house would blow away. Equal parts worried and proud of my little tin foil hat in the making :-).

soulofmischief 5y ago
To be fair, many people think it's not OK for Google to be listening, and you should be careful not to accustom your daughter to tech surveillance.
- borski 5y ago
  Sure, but if she has generalized anxiety, adding more to the plate in the form of “oh, also Google wants to throw you in prison eventually” is just not worth it right now :) I’m exaggerating for effect, because kids do
  - soulofmischief 5y ago
    I'm not withholding these details from my children.
pantalaimon 5y ago
> She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening granted, that one doesn't seem so unreasonable
- 5y ago

jgalt212 5y ago

> One recurring theme: Bright kids of a certain age are just smart enough to jump to crazy conclusions rooted in lots of knowledge for their age but little real world experience. Are they describing pre-schoolers, or the hybrid VC / thought leaders of X. With X being the particular publishing heavy firm you find most annoying at the given time.

darkerside 5y ago

I don't think these phobias are probably rooted in as much reason as ascribed in the article. We have instinctive emotional reactions to things like bugs. When an adult asks us for a reason, we find a pattern and supply it because it seems to make grownups happy.

aliasEli 5y ago

One of my early memories was of a very big statue that was standing on a cube that was almost the same size as me. I must have been less than four, because we moved to a different place after that. Years later I visited the same spot, the cube was about 50 centimeters high.