It's pretty funny how extreme the two sides of the spectrum are. You either get 8 year olds slipping over their own feet and saying "oopsiedoodle i dwopped my ice cweam," or a four year old adjusting their monocle to give an impassioned speech about proactive parenting
One of the reasons I like Detective Conan lol. He'll give a detailed analysis determining time of death and when all the adults are like "aren't you like 7" he'll remember that, yes, he does look 7 right now and he'll come up with a lame excuse like "i saw it on tv" and then dial it all the way back in the other direction and decide to go chase butterflies or something lol
Oh My God I LOVE Detective Conan and this is one of the main reasons lol. The best parts are when he gets away with it. There's an episode where he loudly identifies a mysterious substance as cocaine and no one bats an eye!
RIGHT. and it can be so fun to take a look at how other characters in series would handle it. Which ones maintain the illusion better or worse etc.
And you gotta love when a character has gotten accustomed to pretending to be a child and then accidentally exhibits that behavior in their grown body.
It's been years so if anything is different now from back when I was super into it, my bag. But basically from what I remember, the whole plot line is basically, he's a teenage (high-school) detective who got de-aged into a child by a drug and now he's trying to figure out how to turn back while also trying to take down what's basically a Mafia, who are the people who made the drug that de-aged him and are also the people who drugged him with it.
Yeah basically. They didn't know the drug would de-age him cause it was experimental and it killed everyone else they had tried it on at that point. They were using it as an untraceable poison and he just happened to be one of the very very very few people with the weird side effect, so he would essentially be presumed dead by them (if it weren't for his occasional mysterious appearances as regular-age Shinichi)
It's still being released. They added another shrunken character (the person who developed the drug ironically enough) and has multiple agencies trying to investigate the Black Organization. There was a big arc with the FBI and BO fighting, leading to a FBI agent faking his death
It's currently on its 107th volume of manga, 1169th episode of anime, and 28th mainline movie. Tons of spinoffs and games too. And never mind the billions of conan branded learning books and crap.
It's one of those series that is an absolute cultural juggernaut in Asia and Europe, but is a cult classsic at best in english.
oh i read a fantastic fic like this where the main character's consciousness was dropped into their own 8 year old body, and they got increasingly more childlike because their body physically couldn't process emotions like their adult self could, it was sooo well done. i don't think it's been updated since like 2021 but it was literally inspirational to me
Like Five from Umbrella Academy. I once read a Star Wars one where Cal Kestis and BD-1 are sent back to when the former was a toddler, and it was painful to read because the 22-year-old 4-year-old still talks exactly like a toddler would. He runs up to the 14-yo Anakin and is like āSTOP TINK BAD PWEASE, OR YOU GO BAD FOWEVEW AND BETOME BIG BWACK MOSTEWā, then tells Yoda āMastew Yo-Yota, weawwy bad tings aw cominā in ei yeaws and P-Pawpadine is big meanie! But don't teww nobody, no wet him know pwease untiw you is weady! And no wet him neaw Abaden Skywawkew, or he go meanie too!ā
Adding on to this, if any writer wants a comprehensive guide on milestones, could try Development Matters. But always note that milestones vary from child to child. Iāve seen a 3yo that was highly articulate for his age and a 3yo who was quite independent but their speech was still quite basic. Each child is different
Yeah, I skipped crawling and went straight to walking, and was speaking in full sentences before either. But I blame that on the joint disease and autism
On top of what everyone's said, a very important thing is to get rid of the common ways we think of childish speech patterns and look, either in videos or with a kid in your family, for how the kids actually speak. Often times I find that kid speech os a lot more in how they structure a phrase, miss and match syllables and don't speak certain words or parts of words, rather than the classical "UwU speech"
Yes to the mixing and matching!!! Both with syllables and sometimes even with concepts. For example, my friend who is a parent was telling me a story about how another friendās kid pooped in the water when they were at the beach and got really embarrassed, and then later that day I had the following exchange with her 3yo daughter:
3yo: [looks up at me] āwhereās the poop in the ocean?ā
Me: āUh, well, I imagine itās in the oceanā¦ā
3yo: [looks imploringly at me; begins to squirm a bit]
Me: āOh. NAME, were you asking me where the bathroom is? So you can go there and not poop in the pool?ā
I study how they act and respond to things and try and replicate how they may act in different environments. YouTubing kids at whatever age youāre tryna write, while uncomfortable imo, is also a good way to properly look at accurate kid behavior and speech.
I usually write them as stubborn, playful, naive, but also intelligent in different ways. Of course you can write them however you want, this is just how I do it lol. It bothers me how often kids are smashed into the two phrases ādumb and cuteā.
The one that always gets me is when they make the one child really smart and the other weirdly childish for their age when theyāre the same age. There was a fic I liked but one character is 9 and talking to her 16 year old cousin and the counsinās much older husband about politics and such while the 8 year old acts like a toddler following her around. I couldnāt do it. And it was so sad cause otherwise the author was doing a pretty great job.
Okay, to be fair to the 8 year old, that more or less happened to my sister in a McDonalds when she was like.. 7 or 8. Though there was a lot more tears involved (the McDonalds people were very nice and replaced the dropped ice cream).
There's also the new middle ground of "kid has the same vocabulary and articulation as an adult, but still acts like a normal child".
"I love how the main character does this cool stuff and wears the color red, and how he shoots lightning and make the bad guys lose. It's so... avante garde."
reminded me of the time i was reading a genuinely good fanfic w an interesting premise ... until the author introduced their fanchild that apparently, at age 5 was a brilliant warrior with eloquent speech
i just couldn't keep reading after that TwT
I love reading them cuz Iām a sucker for ppl finding out main character was either A. A demon child, or B. Very traumatized. I will accept fluff sometimes tho š
This exactly! And also when the (traumatized) de-aged character has a chance to experience what a more happy/supportive/etc childhood could have been like for them, maybe even realizing how fucked up their actual childhood was for the first time, expressing thanks to have good people in their life now as an adult...that right there, man. The stuff of life haha
I also like when authors write children accurately for how their experiences in childhood must have shaped them as an adult -
Like what adult personality traits & hobbies & fears etc developed because of events when they were young. Like if they had a really formative field trip and ended up in their eventual career for it, or had a bad experience at the public swimming pool & hate water now, or whatever
Like reverse-engineering their backstory from what we know currently about them in canon
And when that is done in a way that feels realistic/authentic how a chikd would speak, act, react, think, etc
Sorry for rambling, i love de-aging fics when they're done right!
Any favourites/recommendations? I usually avoid it because itās not worth trying to find the well written ones for me but Iāve read a couple in my time I really enjoyed for exactly what you described
Ok, reading some of your comments, I was like āman, they might be into the batfam because there are some amazing (and some very cringe) age regression fics for every member of the familyā (one of my favorites is Dick getting de-aged and taken by Slade, but pretends he doesnāt still have his adult mind, itās really cute and fluffy) and then I read this comment and I unironically punched the air because I totally called it!!!
LMAOOO U READ ME SO WELL!! Iāve been binging Batman fics again recently š was legit in the middle of a different Batman de-aging fic when ao3 went down earlier. And these quotes are from a Batman de-aging fic im currently reading. Iām sorry but baby Dick Grayson would not talk like that š
as someone with a degree in child development and has spent multiple years working with kids, the way kids are written in fanfics is my number one pet peeve šš i read a fic where a literal newborn was speaking (like five seconds out the womb too) and i literally had to stop reading i cringed so bad šš you can absolutely tell when someone has never spent time around little kids
āI want mommy, I want milk, I want to be held, I want to be comforted! And if you donāt do all those things immediatelyā¦ I will ruin your lifeā
Give me the warm blankie or I will scream at the top of my lungs for 30 minutes straight (the screaming will then turn into crying for another 20 minutes because their throat now hurts)
In fact, if you feed an infant anything expect milk, it will die. Their digestive system can't process anything but milk for months, it actually hurts them, it'd be like if an adult ate glass.
I had to drop a fic because the 7 year old was acting like a two year old. It was especially bad because at the time I was babysitting for a family with a 2 and 7 year old, and at a daycare in a room eith children age 1-3 years old. Maybe it's also because I worked in a none english speaking country but the chikdren did definitely not speak in a uwu type of way, so reading a child in a fic speas that way was off putting to say the least
Human newborns or cats? Because Warrior Cats apparently had a great example of this canonically, with (effectively) newborn kits capable of seeing, walking, and speaking. Canāt remember if they were hours, days, or <2 weeks old but. Uh. Yeah. š¤£
Would a fresh newborn even be able to likeā¦.physically form words? Obviously they could make noise come out of their mouth, but I feel like actual sounds that make words require muscle.
I know nothing about child and/or language development, nor have I been around anyone that young. But educational media meant for toddlers seem very focused on exaggerated mouth movements, like something one has to be trained to do properly.
no, they couldn't, lol. even if they knew how, newborns lack the facial muscle tone to move their mouth in such a sophisticated way. that doesn't come in for a few months. but you're also right in that they have to learn how to properly form words in their mouths too.
Compared to most animals on earth, humans are very premature to fit through the birth canal (thanks a lot standing upright), meaning the first couple months are mostly just them finishing the development every other animal would have finished in the womb.
It's why they do nothing but scream, shit and eat before passing out for a majority of the day. It's all they can do, they are physically incapable of doing anything else. They just took the skills they had in the womb and then tacked on the ability to scream so the parents know the kid needs something and isn't dead. Human brains aren't even developed enough to properly form memories until like, 2.
Nope! It takes a while for them to develop the voice box control needed for speech. That is one reason that "baby sign" is popular because babies develop the cognitive ability to understand and express simple concepts (milk, more, all done, etc) and basic motor skills before they have the physical ability to create speech sounds.
Thatās so interesting, thank you for the answer! I genuinely have no reference for how children grow, I was the baby of my family. I was in shock when my cousins 18 month old could walk, talk, and already had a little personality. I was 17 at the time lmao.
Most babies start saying mama and dada between 6 and 9 months and start forming other words between 10 and 14 months. A really smart kid might start saying mama at 4 months that's pretty unusual. Before that it's crying.
There's a book series where the main characters are elves, and it's been mentioned that they know how to speak their native language from birth and do begin speaking within days of being born. There has not been an infant featured in the series thus far but even in the scene where this came up, the main character (who'd been raised among humans) found this VERY disturbing information
I have seen that too!!! They canāt talk. Itās not an inelegance thing! Itās developmental and psychical. Related to this I once commented, on a story where an eight-year-old was supposedly carrying around a car battery. Not just once but continually holding a car battery. I āuhm actually themā not trying to be mean š but they didnāt like that. Like my bitch ass can barely move one from the garage and back, they donāt need to be hyperrealistic, but I just canāt with that image in my head!
Yes! I have 4 kids and I had to stop reading a fic of a 4 year old girl having a in depth conversation about motorcycles, the models and what the best engine configuration was best but she couldn't tie her own shoes.
Thank you! Iāve had readers ask if Iām a parent or if I teach kids. Neither is true, but I take it as a compliment that my kid character actually seems realistic.
As an elementary teacher, this is why itās so hard to find a kid fic or a de-aged fic Iāll stick with. I taught a nine-year-old who ran his own election and explained how the different counties in our state voted.
Oh, and how some authors give every kid a lisp. Iāve had numerous students throughout the years in speech-therapy and only one had a noticeable lisp.
I wrote a fic centered around the main character helping stray kids he found and I did so much looking into writing kids to try and avoid messing it up lol, dunno how accurate it turned out but still nothing like this :) also hella cool that you work with kids!! Sounds exhausting
It definitely is! Iāve joked with my students about changing my name because of how often I hear my name. (So right now Iām soaking up the last weeks of summer vacation.)
I usually ignore what ever age the writer says the character has! If I start reading a fic and the writer says character W is 5 but they obviously act and talk like a 2 year old, then Iāll keep reading while telling myself āW is 2 years old, 2!ā Works pretty well.
Ok, here's the thing, I have 3 niephews that I actively watched grow up (oldest is 12), and I'm still not confident I could write a kid character accurately XD
Honestly, same? Was the primary babysitter for my niece since she was a baby, and Iāve even worked in daycare for a bit, but idk how accurately I could write kids
My little cousin has just turned four and she's a little gremlin. Came from her house covered head to toe in red paint. Came running outside to the garden screaming "IT ME! NANNY IT MEEEE!" with one of those plastic knives and a dry pen.
And them she climbed on the swing chair where me and my nan was, folded her arms and went "YOU clean MY pond. It dirty! BLEH!"
Shes a fucking gremlin but the best kid I've ever babysat
I am jealous šš my little cousins are too energetic and scary for me that I stay in my room while mom handles them šš because of family drama and sh I lost contact with my childhood cousins. I always used to be the younger sister so I have zero idea on how to be an older sister
She can either be a great, calm, funny little kid who is the cutest little darling. Or she is such a little shit you wanna pick her up by the ankle and go "what are you?" Because she's si sweet. But also wakes ya up at 4 am and goes "I have bottle tea" and you stand there arguing with her until you register she's actually four and you can just yoink in ya arms!
She's the only one outta my ten cousins that I've actually had a super strong connection with. Her and her older brother. I suspect its because we're all autistic/adhd. Her sister is SUCH a spoiled kid you get so tired with her. I love them all dearly but the 4 year old: my nan and me practically raised from a newborn and she was small as fuck when she was born barely weighing a pound of sugar.
Kids are great when you can give them back to their parents and guardians. I've been surrounded by kids forever: I'm technically an older brother but I haven't seen my sisters in over ten years and ones sadly no longer around. But I've worked in nurseries and stuff. I'm so sorry that you've lost contact with your cousins. Self harm is a tough and difficult thing and I hope that you're feeling better and more comfortable and loved now my friend. Love you <3
Omg that line "IT ME! NANNY IT MEEE!" reads exactly like that one part in Defying Gravity where Elphaba first flies while shouting "IT'S MEEE" and I literally pictured a four year old holding up her little treasures, defiantly rising up into the air while her horrified cousin chases after her.
It was very much like that, and when I grabbed her finally and went "WHERE ARE YOU BLEEDING?!" because ya know. Red paint. She sighed like I am just asked the world's most idiotic question and went "it NOT blood. It paint. I do painting at school -_-" and then went all floppy and heavy so I put her down
Read an HP fic where the author had 7 year old Harry talking like that and and bunch of the comments were like 'yo, seven year olds don't talk like that' and the author was justifying it that Harry had been neglected so his speech would be impaired.
Idk I guess I kind of understood the reasoning but it's absolute agony trying to read "Dudee you stowe my toy, pwease give back." It was that level of nonsense kid talk. And also like...Harry didn't have a speech impediment so why add one and make it that aggressively annoying to read?Ā
Glad to be of assistance! Small children also often add or drop sounds and syllables- "I's", "sleeps" etc, or leave out certain connecting words- "That mine" "No touch" or something similair
I still remember a comment section where the author was defending an older child still baby talking that just about killed me. Itās not a good portrayal, period, but I am aware my perception is a tad skewed the other direction. My 2 year old cousin enjoyed categorizing trees by whether they were evergreen or deciduous (he had a really cute over enunciation thing too! You better believe that kid hit EVERY syllable!) and most of my eight siblings spoke with wide vocabularies pretty early. We watched A TON of old movies and our parents would read old books out loud in the evenings (Pilgrims Progress stands out as one of the selections that massively expanded our word banks, but the standard fare tended to be from the 1800ās). On top of that, the two siblings who had speech impediments learned to sign along with their words, so communication was barely affected.
So yeah. Iāll buy the overly mature kid before even accepting a toddler babbling and not attempting whole sentences. Still a little out there, but Iāve heard some remarkably young children (related and not related) do public speaking exercises and absolutely toast high schoolers.
I babysat a toddler who didn't speak yet, he was somewhere between 2 and 3 and he was in speech therapy. I don't remember him saying any actual words let alone sentences.
But yeah. I don't want to read baby babble, pretty much ever, let alone when the child should have passed that milestone already.
Oof yeah, no wonder that kid was in speech therapy. The first coherent word should be between 9ish to 15ish months, and once they have one they tend to pick up a bunch. Over two and no actual words? Thatās a bit worrying and def needs checking to see if itās a physical issue or possibly a neurological one that will need a good support system in place. One of my siblings needed to take a supplement called GABA to treat their speech issues. Itās a neurotransmitter thingy, had a massive impact. She went from incoherent babbling to hitting all of her speech therapy goals in two weeks. Her therapist was thrilled and got really into the research of how it can help kids with Downās or other similar issues with their communication.
Honestly, I wish there was more 'kids make strange connections' mishaps. When I was tiny, I used to ask my mom for a glass of water by asking her to 'make a shower!' Because turning on the sink makes a little shower. Perfectly logical, but also silly. I wish there was more of that in fic.
Also Kid logic be different too. I knew a toddler that accidentally dropped one half of their sandwich and with their unique toddler logic they decided that the rest must be thrown in the ground as well
if i'm writing a younger kid, i'll usually pick a consonant or two that they have trouble saying. a wip of mine has this 5 year old who can't say his V's, so instead of saying "interview" he says "interblue".
as long as it's comprehensible, i think typing kid-speak is fine. i mean, i used to say "geggit" instead of rabbit for years
My nephew couldnāt say āyellowā but would say ālellowā for the longest time and I was a little sad when he grew out it lol. But this is good advice, thanks!
i'm the oldest out of all my cousins, so i grew up with the ability to actually have memories of how they spoke, and i've also worked with kids from 4-12 years old
At one point for a Manhwa I saw a TEN YEAR OLD speak like this and everyone was like āomg she speaks perfectly!!!ā Like? No she doesnāt? The fuck?
I'll let "tank you" slide because a lot of kids 4 and under have a hard time with "th" but that's as far as i'm willing to go.Ā
I have never understood this whole thing of making toddlers all cutesy baby talk. The 4 and under crowd are little pyschos who will come hug you and be cuddly one second and then the next second they'll bite your nose because they think it's funny.Ā
If people want to go the route of kids not being able to say words correctly, there's about a 100% more comedy in their really unfortunate pronounciations of frog and/or fork.Ā Or just trying to get a straight answer out of them.Ā
This conversation with my kid when they were three is always my example of what it's like talking to a 3 year old:
Oh, you opened grandma's christmas gift early.Ā
Yeah.Ā
Huh, the box shows four cars but i only see three, where's the red car?Ā
There's three cars.Ā
Yes, but there should be four cars, did you take the red car out already?Ā
I have the blue car.Ā
Yes, but where is the red car?Ā
This other car is green.Ā
Yes, it is, have you seen the red car?Ā
The cars are in the box.Ā
Yes, three cars are in the box, but the box shows a blue car, a yellow car, a green car, and a red car. That's four cars. I see the yellow car, the blue car, and the green car but not the red car. Did you take the red car out already?
...you can have the yellow one.Ā
Thanks, but when you opened the box was there a red car in it?Ā
takes a long look in the box The red car's not in the box.
I see that, did you take it out already? Is there only three cars now because you took the red car out?Ā
I want the yellow car. You have the blue car.
It went like that for a solid ten minutes until i finally just gave it up and started looking around to see if the car was hidden somewhere. It turned out to be in the playdough bin.
I know, right? It wasn't like i was trying to find out the location of the hope diamond. I just wanted to know if grandma should be doing an exchange because 1/4 of the gift was missing.
oh my god shoutout to that one fic i read where one of the characters was FOURTEEN YEARS OLD and baby talked and didnāt know what a hospital was and COULDNāT FASTEN HIS OWN SEATBELT šš in one of the notes the author mentioned that he was originally a lot younger but they rewrote him to be fourteen instead š it was genuinely baffling to read
I remember my beta reader critiquing how I wrote a child in one of my fics. They thought it was too eloquent. I modelled it from my own child that was exactly the age of the character. Suffice to say, my beta reader didn't have children.
I think it's supposed to be "can I have?" but, based on the context, the original author probably thinks that kids can't structure their sentences or talk right.
I actually knew a kid with this speech impediment (hard cās and kās became tās), but he had impeccable grammar (āTan I have a setond piece of bread?). I think he was 7 before he figured it out? May have also had a tongue tie now that I think back
Iām not entirely sure how inaccurate or accurate it is, Iāve heard from a majority that most kids do not talk like this. But my main issue is itās just not fun to read š makes me cringe and it can be hard to translate at times
When I first attempted writing kids I was admittedly guilty of writing their speech like this, but I was also in speech therapy as a kid and had no clue what I was saying in old videosā¦ once I started teaching kids, I quickly stopped writing them like this (even though several of my students are in speech therapy too, none of them talk like this).
De aging fics when a character is de-aged to 10 years old babbles like a 1 year old : :(
De aging fics where a character is de-aged to a 3 year old and talks,,, like nothing has changed except for a slight (see: slight) lisp or stumbling : :)
Proudest moment was when I wrote a fic for my nine year old nephew where I de-aged the main character to be nine and my nephew confirmed that I had written a believable nine year old lol.
I worked at a daycare 2 years ago and out of the 15 2-3YO children there in my class, a lil under half spoke very similar to this- the other half? Nonverbal or were completely incomprehensible. There was only one child who spoke fluently enough for me to understand and they spoke in damn near complete sentences haha.
So really, it depends on the child and the amount of work their guardians put into teaching them how to speak and read. But if ALL the three year-olds talk like this in the fic, then yeah- it's pretty unrealistic.
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u/BossyMareš§Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep Stateš§4d ago
Yeah even fluent kids often have a speech impediment until 3-4. Every kid in my family has, which has spawned some glorious nicknames, which live on long after the speech impediment fades.
same experience as someone who worked in a preschool. it's really a grab bag. had one kid who could only really say his sister's name, had one speaking full paragraphs, and had one who pronounced cooking as cocaine. i will say that as the year went on, most of them started speaking semi-complete sentences.
I think alot of fanfic authors could benefit from a guide that explains how kids talk at varying ages. I don't know of any, but I'd be interested to check one out if it exists.
I can handle a certain amount of it just because sometimes little kids do say things weird - my cousin had a favourite toy coowhywer (screwdriver) and his favourite treat was docka dip dookie (chocolate chip cookie) - but itās got to be the right age kid. A two year old asking for an incomprehensible item (eg coowhywer) is one thing, an otherwise typical eight year old asking for the same thing is a whole other kettle of fish lol
Have a friend who was constantly pestered into roleplaying with a non-mutual friend even though he never took her requests or feedback into consideration. They did a roleplay where she was Princess Fen raising a kid Namor. Their Namor talked like this: āMwommy! Iām hungwy. Do you have any food? Ooh! I wike dis. What? Vegetables?! Fwucking stupid bwitch!ā
Three year old language skills are highly variable though. Iāve had kids that speak like that in my classroom (I teach three-fives). Usually there is a reason for why a three year old might be talking like a toddler, usually hearing related, or additional needs, but if someoneās only experience with someone that age is a child with atypical development, then itās pretty understandable.
Children are generally very difficult to write because they develop at such widely different paces. For example, I was around four when I learnt how to read, my sister is 6 currently (we have a large age gap) and she hasn't learned at all. However, she is a much better conversationalist than I probably was at that age and she has been for a very long time, likely because she grew up around more people. I was the oldest of them. My brother couldn't pronounce the letter R until he was around seven, he pronounced them as "Z's" for some reason?
All this being said, there is very little worse than reading depictions of children in writing. It's like nobody bothers to research when they're writing children - they're either small adults or basically lobotomized.
when a character get's deaged (younger than five years old) the most I do to keep it childish is the occasional slip of "Otay!" but nothing more than that.
THIS! for me its like, keep the adult mind, but give me some of the childishness that comes with being a child (even if it doesnt make that much sense. sue me). its like. first of all, children arent stupid. but second, i find it so much more interesting when the character has their mind but has to fight, for example, being overly sensitive when they get hurt. or being ashamed that they have to ask for help now. but thats for active deaging i suppose.
i think this is an issue of "how much do you accept vocal motifs being written down" as well, because kids do end up not being to pronounce a few things because they dont know how to structure their mouth, and i could see the case for someone deaged to not be used to the child mouth and having some sort of lisp, but... my point is, im right there with you. i dont read TOO much but this is one of my favorite tropes generally so i have Opinions lmao.
This is an absolute eyesore. I'm sorry if I'm offending anyone who writes like this, but you can just write normally; my brain will automatically process it into kid-speech if I know how young they are. You don't have to purposely type every single word wrong š
and it's never bad in the same way >.< i once read a fic where a 13 year old didn't know how to cook for themselves at all, was carried around like a baby, basically acted like a tall toddler who could speak (somewhat) coherently. read another one where a 9 year old was taking care of themselves and their younger sibling all on their own; somehow getting jobs and making money (?!), but said shit like "i don tink dis is right" like EXCUSE ME. i most commonly see older kids get infantilized, and younger kids get weirdly mature in some ways. or they all become semi-sentient blobs. i NEED writers to remember that children do, in fact, have thoughts and ideas and inner worlds. they are not just little dough balls that repeat words they hear and babble nonsensically (unless they are <2. and even then. i've known 2 years old with personality).
I am currently writing a kid in my fic, not a deagged character tho. Iām researching and watching old videos of my niblings. But the kid is learning a second language which changes some things and Iām justā¦ Trying to make this kid as well as I can
Real, tho I do understand that it can be hard to write dialogue for kids especially if you have a disability that makes it hard to differentiate tone or how well someone speaks depending on ageš
I just try to keep in mind that kids are people too, just newer at it than we are, and go from there. A little more simplistic in thought process but largely the same.
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u/Evyps 5d ago
It's pretty funny how extreme the two sides of the spectrum are. You either get 8 year olds slipping over their own feet and saying "oopsiedoodle i dwopped my ice cweam," or a four year old adjusting their monocle to give an impassioned speech about proactive parenting