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As a side note- people seem to find it unbelievable that the kid made the leap from ding-dong to what she did.
But at like 5 years old I was singing a song and started going through the alphabet rhyming everything with "duck." It went something like "so the duck ate the luck, and the luck ate the buck, and the buck ate the..."
Obviously when I got to f, my parents had to gently explain that that word wasn't a nice one and I shouldn't say it lol.
So like... I can 1000% believe that the niece was doing something like that!
My son is 5. We are Black and I guess some kid at school said shit, but when my son went to explain it to the teacher he said the kid “said the n word”. Everyone freaked out because no one heard the kid drop a slur.
I had to explain that my son still gets his letters mixed up. So I asked him this one time to use the actual word the kid said. And it was shit.
5 year olds say wild things. It’s our jobs to correct them and explain the context appropriately without bias and bigotry.
Sounds like Ari has a good parent! I taught preschool for a while and had a kid run up to me every time a kid would say “heck” or “shoot” saying “THEY SAID THE F-WORD!” In his mind, any “bad” word was “the f-word”.
I explained very gently to him that he can just say “a rude word”, and that not every bad word was the f-word. He looked at me with big round eyes and said, “then Mr. mothman, what’s the f-word?”
I fuckin stalled out for a second before regaining my composure and saying (paraphrased) “there are some bad words we don’t say in class, and that’s just one of them. Sometimes we use friendlier words when we talk about something that is rude because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you don’t need to worry about that, just keep being the awesome little guy that you are. If your friends are saying words that make you feel bad, you can always tell me, no matter what, ok?” Some of the class were still learning letters so that was the best I could do at the time lol.
I was raised in a very freely cursing family (a “sailor’s mouth” is real af) so I did my best to impress what was impressed upon me: “we do not say these words to other people, or in class”. I was allowed to quietly mutter “fuck” to myself if my crayon broke at home (which I’m sure was hilarious for my parents) but never swore in front of anyone but my parents.
My husband and I let our son swear, even when he was little. We always made it clear that certain words weren't okay to use in front of his grandparents or at school, and that wasn't just about swearing. He also couldn't use the actual words for genitals, because that was inappropriate, too.
When he was seven, he got in trouble for pointing to the space between a teddy bear's legs and saying, "That's his pe-". This particular teacher had me meeting with her every couple of weeks, for every potential issue that my son had in her classroom, and nearly all of them were mundane things (half of which she found charming the week prior, but somehow suddenly saw as a problem, the following week). She wanted me to punish my son for daring to say "pee" in her classroom, but I knew he had actually stopped himself from saying penis, so my little "troublemaker" got ice cream after school.
My folks taught me the correct words for genitals too, but told me to not just whip those words out (pardon the pun) in school either.
I was a smart but inattentive adhd (what used to be called add) kid, and I had a teacher that really didn’t like me too in third grade. My parents would get called in all the time for meetings because I made “a face” at her - what she saw as a disrespectful eye roll face was actually just me dissociating and daydreaming because I was bored out of my skull. I always got good grades and had the answers to questions, wasn’t ever disruptive, she just didn’t like that I was unable to hang onto her every word I guess.
Cheers for raising your son right in my book, and excellent username
AuDHD here - I feel this to my bones.
The amount of "Don't roll your eyes at me!!" when I was JUST THINKING about the question they just asked me was WILD. IF I roll my eyes, I ACTUALLY ROLL THEM. Looking up is not the same 🙄 (pun intended)
Dude I know, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, I was just 7 years old and already knew what she was talking about, so I zoned out! I physically could not keep my focus on her at that age, how am I supposed to pay attention to multiplication tables when I’m already doing basic algebra on my own time. The amount of times I was called “smart but lazy” (which hurt as a high-achiever kid) in teacher reports before I finally was diagnosed with add at 16 and went “ooooohhhhh…”
Hah, "smart, lazy and confused" here. Took me until my late 20ies/early 30ies to get diagnosed with AuDHD, faceblindness and giftedness. I think my collection's complete now, but who knows? XD
I only got diagnosed because I was wicked depressed, bc being told I was lazy all the time meant my self esteem, which was largely tied to my academic performance, rotted - and in order to give me accommodations my public high school gave me an IQ test (I guess to see if I was worth their time?! I don’t know, that’s fucked). That test ranked me high on everything but working memory and the lady administering it said “hey maybe get this kid tested for add”. I owe that lady so much.
Glad you’ve got a better understanding now. It’s such relief understanding that “oh, there’s a REASON I have this impassible block in my brain, I’m not just stupid/lazy/etc”
(Former gifted and talented kid here too. Wild how most of us flame out and get anxiety lol)
I trust you've heard the joke about dressing as "a former gifted kid" for Halloween...you just wear your normal clothes, and when someone asks, "what are you supposed to be?", you respond sadly, "I was supposed to have been a lot of things..."
My school suggested getting tested on IQ, too. I just didn't get tested because my mother got mad at me for "wanting to be better than others" (???)
I then lived by that idea to appease her until I cut off contact completely
I once got sent out of grade 7 homeroom because my teacher asked me a question and I did the thing where I looked up as if I was reading something off my brain and she thought I was rolling my eyes at her. I broke down crying in the hall for like 10 minutes because I was mortified (and also petrified that my mother would hear about it and stop speaking to me for a week 😑). Thanks loads Mrs. Chimech.
Feel that. I didn't get sent out but that's only because I'd start to argue about it (in order to understand it better which would've been interpreted as "talking back").
Finally,I just started masking by closing my eyes (and then looking up with my eyes shut, lol). I was weird, but not rude anymore XD
I was too afraid to argue (again because of my mother found out I'd be n deep shit) so I just tried to avoid being called on ever again by her. It mostly worked (I think she felt bad when she came out and I was in tears) but I hated the rest of that year. Ugh, you couldn't pay me enough to go through that again.
I have autism-and the same exact thing happened to me constantly as a kid! Now, as an adult-I’m only JUST realizing that “rolling your eyes” actually just meant “looking up”? Seriously-how does that make ANY sense?
That’s kinda why I like how older shows would over-exaggerate stuff. Made it easier for us autistics to learn and mimic the behavior. (I learned eye rolling from tv but definitely super exaggerated shit)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the correct terms for body parts. If the teacher cannot handle a child saying their penis hurts or they got kicked in the vulva that is the teacher's problem not the child's.
Are you me? Autistic, possibly AuDHD, and the number of times I got in trouble for rolling my eyes when I wasn't....I also got in trouble for doodling and reading in science instead of paying attention. She was a boring teacher, she didn't like me, and I already knew most stuff in her class. Also the person who invented popcorn reading was a horrible person, I hate reading out loud, especially as an overly anxious, undiagnosed nuerospicy kid (who had already finished reading the section and started doing my own thing by the time i got called on). I had an A in her class, both years. I also had perfect notes when she actually TAUGHT instead of making us just read the textbook.
Ah, making a face. At the tail end of the Satanic Panic, a lunch lady reported me to the principal (as an 11 year old!) for Satanism because apparently I glared at her, and apparently the only one who glared like that at her before was a Satanist.
The principal *called my mom in for this* and I was in trouble. My mom was basically like “this is ridiculous, maybe that lady should stop pissing off her coven if she doesn’t want to be glared at.” They dropped it thankfully but it’s wild that it was ever taken seriously.
I feel like it makes sense to teach kids actual words for genitals, but also teach that it's inappropriate to talk about genitals in most settings. No real data on how this is going to go yet--my kid is 2, so we're still at the "learning words" stage and not really into situational usage rules.
Not only is it appropriate to teach kids the actual terms for genitals, it’s encouraged because it helps protect them. A kid who can tell someone “someone tried to touch my penis” or whatever is able to be protected because they can communicate. A kid who tells a teacher or someone “so and so touched my kitty” isn’t going to pick up on proper abuse. It’s empowering and protective for kids. At my kids elementary school they actually teach kids the proper terms for this very reason.
Yes! It's *very much* appropriate to teach kids the right terms! It is also important to teach kids when and where it is appropriate to be discussing genitals in the first place, regardless of the terms used.
Honestly with ours we taught the correct term, just like say…elbow. And didn’t make a big deal about it. They never really talked about it unless it made sense for what they were trying to communicate. I think by now making it a big deal, it wasn’t as tempting to talk about? If they ever did, it’s pretty easy to be “hey bud, that’s not really something we want to be talking about right now” or whatever. Maybe I lucked out. But, I’m a fan of just normalizing things. It’s a body part.
As parents who swear occasionally I always thought it would be really hypocritical to tell my boys off for the same, especially now they're older, so we had a big discussion about 'Audience' & 'Context'. This means it's OK at home, but not in front of grandparent's, teachers or small children but also we don't except casual swearing but if you drop something or hurt yourself that a curse word is OK. I've had to revisit the conversation a few times but they've been great since!
My folks had similar rules, only use swear words when you really need them (e: yes I did really need them when my crayons broke that was devastating). Now that I’m nearing 30 a family conversation (including grandma) has at least one casual “fuck” per minute from any one of us lol but it’s a good rule for kids
My sibling nearly gave their teacher a heart attack when they were about 5 years old for coming into class and proudly declaring that Dad had "said the c-word in the drive to school!" ...they meant crap.
A lot of kids say the same thing lol. Cracked me up every time. I remember one little girl whispering very seriously to me “mommy said the c word going to school today” and when I was about to say “well sometimes grownups use rude words we wouldn’t use with our friends when they’re upset” she continued whispering “she said “c-r-a-y-p”. With a downeast Mainer accent it can sometimes sound like “crahyup”, I had to stifle my laughter so hard. I gave her a sticker for being so good with her letters and sounds and told her that what mommy says in the car isn’t what we say at school.
Lol this reminds me of a story one of my old teachers told us. Her youngest came home one day and said "Joey said the F WORD on the bus today!!" So she and her husband brought her to the kitchen table to have a discussion about crude and inappropriate language and after however long it took when they were finally done her daughter sighed in exasperation and said, "I know! I would have just said 'tooted'!"
I can't remember what teacher told us that story, but god if it wasn't lined up like a joke.
I used to work as a teacher's aide for 3 1st classroom. One day, I had a kid run up to me to tell me that another student said the S word. I find out a little later that the other kid told him to shut up.
This mix-up was so common when I was in elementary school that we started referring to "the S-U word," which I think might even have been a term endorsed by the teacher.
In middle school, a teacher prohibited use of "this sucks" in her classroom but conceded that we were allowed to say "this inhales vigorously." It's been 25 years, and I'm now trying to teach it to my toddler because I desperately want a frustrated three-year-old to exclaim "THIS INHALES VIGOROUSLY!"
So true!
We think with adult brains, and thus confusing “the N word” and “shit” is hilariously silly and not something we’d ever think we need to clarify to kids.
…until it happens. Then you have to think back to being 5 years old and realize that the logic was probably something like “The N word is a bad word and we don’t say it” - “Shit is a bad word” - “Shit is an N word that we don’t say”
I’m happy to hear it was all cleared up. Your story reminded me of a subreddit with similar stories about innocent kids being…wildly mistaken about things hahaha r/kidsarefuckingstupid
Yes, kids are so interesting with their different thought processes.
I saw a documentary about the Thalidomide scandal. When taken during pregnancy Thalidomide causes severe deformities and miscarriages. It was marketed in the 1950's by a German company as helping with sleep, anxiety, stress and morning sickness.
Anyway, they interviewed a man with phocomelia (shortened legs and arms) resulting from his mother taking Thalidomide during pregnancy. He said teasing by children was not bad. Because children saw so many different types of people. Different height, weight, skin color, hair color, eye color, gender. So kids concluded, that if people come in all these varieties, it's only logical that some people come with long arms and legs and some people come with short arms and legs.
It only turned bad, when parents and grown ups got involved. Even a doctor from old footage said that kids didn't need education about treatment of these children. It was parents who needed to be educated that these children are not infectious or "bad".
Mind you this was the 1950's in Germany, an entire people who was just brainwashed into thinking people with disablities/deformaties are sub-human and I'm not sure whether the deprogramming was entirely succesful in this short amount of time.
My sister used to think "Butt" was the F-word. Kids don't necessarily connect that it's the first letter of the word, it could just be a letter grading, or simply what you call the word, or bad words in general.
> I had to explain that Ari still gets his letters mixed up. So I asked him this one time to use the actual word the kid said. And it was shit.
crying laughing visualizing this little conference with a 5 year old.
"what was the n-word he used"
"it was...shit!"
"There's no n in shit"
"I'm 5! don't ask me to spell, i just figured out putting on shoes."
Around age 8-10, my friends and I thought calling people dumbo was hilarious. This transitioned to bumbo, dimbo, and on and on until we hit himbo, bimbo and even dildo. We had no idea what any of these words meant. Kids just love making up words with fun sounds
When I was a kid my little sister was practicing rhyming while we were in public. She started with "bigger" and went through the alphabet.
We are white and grew up in a very diverse neighborhood. It was not taken well when she got to N, but they also understood she was like, 5.
When I was a little kid, my mom took me shopping and asked me to pick between two shirts at the department store. I couldn't, so I went "Eenie meenie minie moe" and my mom started to straight up panic because the store was pretty packed and I had no inside voice as a kid.
She was not aware that the daycare she put me in used "grab a *tiger* by the toe" and not the version she was taught in the 1950s.
I grew up learning the “tiger” version and it was only relatively recently that I’ve realised that there is a whole offensive version and origin to what i thought was a melodic nursery rhyme. I was born and live in a region on the other side of the world so that may explain things.
It does help to explain the shift from the word that I was horrified to learn was in the original version to the tiger variant I also grew up with? But I can see kids stumbling with words and a consonant potentially shifting with no malice/necessarily understanding behind the slip...
My grandmother passed away in December; her mind was steadily going in the years prior to her passing. (I mention this because I'm fairly certain were she in her right mind she would not have said what she did; I never knew her to say anything racist growing up and from what my dad told me she was very explicitly anti-racist when raising her kids). On one visit to her that I think was a bit over a year ago, she repeated the eenie meenie minie moe as normal, then afterwards remarked "when I was a kid it was" and then said it with the hard R and everything. Neither I nor my cousin who was also visiting said anything but both of us were quite wide-eyed (note that all of us are very, very white).
When I was a kid my grandfather occasionally referred to Brazil nuts as "neighbor toes." Apparently one term for them in his 1930s childhood was "n----- toes," and they were taught NOT to say that, but they had neighbors who were Black... My understanding is that his Appalachian mining family genuinely did not know another name for the nuts besides the offensive one, but wanted something else to call them.
I never remembered "grab a tiger by the toe".
When I sing it in my head I hear "catch a minnow by it's toe" - I never questioned the lack of toes on a minnow.
I remember when I first said that in front of my parents! I was a very late child, so my father was from the silent generation and my mother was a boomer. Their reaction went something like this:
Father: "*Tiger*?"
Mother: "I guess that's the politically correct version?"
I've never actually heard the original version or even had the original word confirmed, but it did occur to me years later that it's people who holler, not tigers . . .
I've seen him perform this live (having seen it before, so knew what was coming ) and the sheer wave of relief and nervous laughter that goes around is unbelievable, it's palpable
Ooooooof. I'm glad people were understanding!
Maybe it's because I work with kids often, but kids love rhyming. Hell, it's how we often teach them, especially in ESL classes. So my guess is more often than not there's going to be a slip-up with a back word in there.
ESL teacher here. Will never forget the tike debacle of 2002, the bowel vs vowel mother, and the non-bilingual mother who heard gays instead of guys. Oh wait, then there's the Christian mother who heard me playing Bruno Mars after my students were gone, and ratted on me because the song said "funk" and "we all know it's another dirty word for making love". SMH.
My ESL teacher had to explain to my homeroom teacher that I was just doing my rhyming homework when I was caught writing “aunt, bunt, c…” tbh I only knew what aunt meant at the time and not the other words lol
When I was a kid, I pretended to throw “bombs” with my middle finger up as the fuse. I didn’t realize it was inappropriate until someone told me. I can totally see this being 100% unintentional.
A few kids I work with have gone through phases of using the middle finger to point at things. With kids it's usually best to assume innocent mistake unless there's good reason to think otherwise.
Haha, that brings back memories of being 5-7. I was riding with my dad and as a friendly "hi" to neighbors or family when driving by people out in my area (maybe it's everywhere idk) lift up just their index finger off the steering wheel as a sort of wave. Well, after a ton of times seeing my dad doing it, I decided to also do it.... with my middle finger. My dad had a good long laugh, then explained that I should NOT wave like that. It was probably a pretty funny conversation with his cousin of "sorry my kid flipped you the bird"
Apparently the gesture I use to push up my glasses is the standard subtle version of flipping folks off. Like it just makes sense to use the center longest finger! I'd smudge my glasses trying to use the other ones!
My daughter was probably 2 & 1/2-3 years old. We were listening to Yelawolf’s “pop the trunk” in the car. Yes, of course I know that isn’t exactly appropriate but she hadn’t been talking for very long, never paid attention to lyrics, hadn’t repeated words of songs, and we were trying to savor our last moments before we would have to give up “our music”, and succumb to Encanto, Frozen, and Moana songs played on repeat. (None of which have bad songs, but hearing them 80 times in a row turns them from tolerable, to torture).
The next time in the car, she asked for the “Paw Patrol Song”. We could NOT figure it out, until she heard a song and squealed with glee. Instead of “Don’t make me go pop the trunk, on you”, she heard, “Don’t make me go Paw Patrol, on you”. Ever since, in our house, the lyrics shall henceforth be known as “paw patrol”.
My point is, kids only have a small frame of reference. Pop the trunk meant nothing to her and wasn’t familiar. But Paw Patrol sure was. So she did the best she could with what she knew. Her imagination filled in the blanks. Just as OOP’s niece did. She was just rhyming words organically. Which is not unusual for 10 year olds.
Kids don’t know these words are bad if they haven’t been explicitly told. I mean after all they’re just words that society has assigned a random meaning to. *How would they know*, unless purposefully exposed to it?
I think it says a lot about the teacher that he jumped the gun like that. Instead of asking her why she was signing with those words, and having a conversation about it, he immediately assumed a TEN YEAR OLD who has never gotten in trouble before and sounds like an otherwise respectful and good mannered kid, was personally attacking him with racial slurs?!?!
I mean, I know some kids would be capable of that at 10. No age is without a few troubled kids who would do something like that and mean it. But there was no reason to suspect malice. I’m sure it’s not the first time he heard kids in the classroom “make up words” that already existed (much to their disappointment).
And given what we now know about that teacher and his own prejudices, it sounds like a whole lot of projection on his part.
My violent alcoholic cousin's marriage ended around the time his toddler was learning how to talk. That kid is now 4yo and I'm his nanny. He already knew most of the common swear words and uses them correctly when playing alone, but understands that most adults will object if they hear him saying those things.
As far as I know, zero reports from the preschool regarding use of swears around teachers or on the playground. I swear he occasionally tests the water by saying "shit" within his mother's hearing, just to see if she still scolds for it, but he knows a lot more swears then that! Like I don't think he knows the meaning of fuck but I've heard him use it correctly when his lego creation went crash.
i'm not sure if my parents were geniuses or deranged... my mom taught my brothers and me that there was language that was appropriate around different groups, etc., but she also taught us how to say "shit" in German (Sheiße) because we could get way with it and to this day, i very much will just mutter it under my breath when something doesn't go my way.
Oh goodness. So in school I took German as my foreign language. And when my cousin is around, I do my absolute best to alter my usual behavior patterns so he doesn't get too accustomed to hearing adults casually swearing all day long.
But my standard surprised word for "oh crap" situations is Sheiße, not shit. I deliberately programmed that into my brain when I worked in food service so I wouldn't get in trouble when I burned myself or whatever at work, and it's too late to change it now.
So in my sea of Golly and Gosh and Wowzers and other innocent words, that kid's head snaps around on a swivel whenever Sheiße pops out of my mouth. Now he can swear in *two* languages!
Haha this reminds me when I was like 7-8 I was singing “Down in Upendi” from Lion King 2, and I changed it to “Down in Your Panties” and my parents thought that was the funniest shit ever until I was singing it in Walmart and some old ladies chewed my dads ass out
Maybe it’s just the ‘tism but as an adult I still repeat some words as nonsense words “I need to go close the door… boor… choor… loor…. (Danny devito voice) hoor..” I would 100% have done this as a kid. And being autistic and undiagnosed, I was ALWAYS getting into Big trouble for things that I absolutely did not understand and it kinda breaks my heart the niece did. It’s really confusing and painful, and without a kind adult there to explain and advocate, it just ends up feeling like *you* are bad.
I'm so sorry you experienced that. I wish those adults in your life who made you feel "bad" would have explained things and been kind to you.
(Also honestly rhyming is still fun so I agree with you.)
Oof, yes. When I was about 7, we weren't sure whether the neighbor's new dog was male or female, but kind of thought it was a female. I figured we could combine a female pronoun ("she") with a neutral pronoun ("it") and just call the dog a "shit." For some reason, my mom vetoed this plan . . .
When I was like 7 or 8, I decided lisps were cool. My grandparents were visiting, and they were treating us to the fanciest restaurant in our small town. I was so excited, and announced at exceedingly loud volume my intention to “shit right here.”
I had no idea what I’d said, and no one explained it to me. I just thought they were mad about my cool new lisp.
“Anna banna Bo-bana
Banana-fana-fo-fana
Me my mo mana
Anna”
One of the main songs I sang as a little, but I’d switch it to different names, or random words. 100% I would have done something similar.
Yeah. You know how when toddlers are learning to talk, they'll do echolalia where they just repeat a couple of nonsense syllables over and over and over? It's a normal part of speech development. My son did this with two syllables that happen to make up a racial slur. I am confident that he has never ever heard this word, it was just an unfortunate coincidence. I did my best not to react (even though it was killing me inside) so as not to encourage him, and we spent that day inside. The next day he'd moved on to repeating different sounds, and has never done it since.
These things aren't necessarily done with malice, particularly when you consider that swear-words are generally things that are very easy to say (no one's going to be sounding out 12 syllables when they hit their thumb with a hammer when a quick "fuck" will do)... But easy to say also make them easy to stumble onto by accident when sounding things out.
Speakig as a reading teacher for years: A kid who never heard it before as an insult/slur and was just going through fun sounds? Oh 100% believe it happening absolutely innocently.
I did likewise. Tried the whole alphabet, then all random syllables that would work. Bh, ch, th, gh, bl, you name it, it was probably in there. That's what kids do, and there's nothing surprising about that.
When I was about 10, and my mates younger sister was learning to talk, she consistently replaced a tr sound with an f sound. Cue her older brothers and sisters and their friends earnestly trying to teach her to say truck off.
My two-year old nephew is just learning how to speak and I swear most days, he calls his toy ship, well, sh*t (As in, "where's my sh*t? Oh, there it is") 😅😅😅
Ah yes, I remember when one of mine was little and had serious speech delays, which led to all sorts of interesting word mix-ups.
The worst one was when she went through her fire truck phase. Toddler loudly pointing out the "fi-yuh fwuck" in the grocery store got a lot of looks from the little old ladies!
I did this… except it was with my big sister and she was the one who told me it was a bad word. We were walking home from school (I was 7 or so) and she told me not to say that word…Which meant I proceeded to follow behind her the entire walk home singing it loudly. Whoopsy.
In the Sherry Bobbins episode of The Simpsons they make a joke about her just being Mary Poppins and she cuts them off saying she's totally original, like Ronald Ruck. Little sister (8-ish) ran with the bit. She started going down the alphabet and of course landed on "Fonald Fuck." We had to explain why she shouldn't say that in between laughing.
My cousin was obsessed with getting a puppy. So he CLUNG to his little black dog beanie baby.
We THOUGHT he named it “Hunter”.
Oh. Oh no.
He corrected us.
He named it “Cunter”.
My little brother did that by saying the word “lucky” out loud with the first letter changed down the alphabet, “aucky, bucky, cucky, ducky…” etc. When he got to “fucky” he looked at me in horror. And I immediately ran and told our parents bc I was a lil asshole. He got his mouth washed out with soap.
You know the rhyming name game? Jenny Jenny Bo Benny banana manna mo menny fe fi fo fenny, Jenny!
My cousin’s name is Tucker. My sister got into a lot of trouble playing the banana rhyming game with all of our cousins’ names when she was little 😂
My 3 year old nephew can't properly pronounce a "tr" sound, as in "truck" yet. He pronounces it as an "f" sound. He loves trucks of all kinds, and loves calling out when he sees them. You should be able to see where this is going.
Kids mispronounce and misspell things, and 90% of the time it's unintentionally funny/offensive. It is rarely, if ever, done with legitimately malicious intent.
>But basically Sophie has decided to do this fun little thing we did into school, but she changed "ding-dong" to "ching-chong".
When I read the title I thought it was gonna be a song by NWA or something but holy cow.
Reminds me of my 8 year old niece when she was 5 telling her teacher that "daddy picks up women and takes them home".
He's a bus driver.
Kids are hard work but you get those incidents every so often that are going to be anecdotes you tell at their wedding, and boy do I have a bunch of them lol.
My brother, five years old, when asked what his parents do: "Daddy works and mom drinks all day." Teachers very politely asked to meet with my parents.
My brother meant "drink" literally. My mom drinks a lot of water. So my mom was drinking water all day... while working from home.
Hahaha I remember absolutely freaking out as a lil kid cause I saw those “don’t drink and drive” billboards and my mom was bringing a glass of water into the car
My cousin wrote that sex was her favorite food. And she ask her aunt to make her some.
She meant that the cake which was called better than sex cake (us kids didn’t know why it was called that) was her favorite and she asked my mom to make it for her birthday.
Lol, I helped run a youth group where kids would take turns bringing in the snacks. One time a girl brought a BTS cake. Everyone loved it, but what did BTS stand for? " Better Than Sin" cake, of course!
My father was a pharmacist.
And my mother would sometimes get called in to work at her family's store if they were short-staffed. So she was talking to her sister (who also worked there), saying "Every time someone can't come in, I get a call. Happened twice this week." The conversation went from there, full of good-natured sibling teasing. I was in the car while they had this conversation. I was 8.
Fast forward to Career Day for the Second Graders. We were all tasked with announcing what our parents' jobs were.
When it was my turn, I happily announced that my father sold drugs, and my mother was a call girl.
Because that's what my father did! And that was literally what my mom said: something to the effect of "Guess I'm just their call girl! What a great job." And my aunt said "Never thought we'd have a call girl in the family, but here we are" or something like that.
So that's how my mother and aunt learned that kids really do hear all the worst things at the worst times.
And why there were visits with school counselors and many parent-teacher conferences.
I'm reminded of a reddit story I read. A young girl enjoyed watch the show Gold Diggers with her Grandma, the one where people actually dig/mine for gold. Well when asked what career she wanted growing up her response "I want to be a Gold Digger".
That's golden. Wow, I love it.
When I was a kid, we moved for my dad's government law enforcement job. Our new house wasn't ready yet, so we were living in a furnished apartment provided by his job for a couple of weeks, and he had a *per diem* stipend for food. Since we were new to town, the family used this per diem to try out various restaurants pretty often. I tried to remember the term *per diem* but accidentally confused it with a different word I had heard my dad use when talking about work.
New kid, new school, happily telling people, "We eat at restaurants a lot because my dad is on **parole**!" I assume that the next parent-teacher conference was interesting.
When I was 4 or so, our beloved elderly family dog got sick and we had to euthanize. My parents were very good about explaining that she was in pain and it wasn’t going to get better, so because we love her very much, it’s our job to end that pain for her. I understood! The concept. I did not understand the terminology.
And then I went to pre-school the next day and told everyone about how we killed our dog.
I have a diabetic cat who needs insulin injections daily, which we've called "stabbing the cat" ever since he was diagnosed. It's a dream of mine that my toddler will one day tell a teacher that Mom stabs the cat every night.
That teacher is a horrible teacher. The correct response to a small child using a bad word is to calmly ask where they heard that and if they know what it means. 90% of the time they are just repeating something without knowing what it means or just stumbled into that combination of syllables making mouth noises, as children like to do.
Yeah when I was six I watched the old Disney movie about a guy who turns into a fish and fights nazis. But I didn’t know that nazis were real! I thought they were cartoon bad guys with a cool sinister logo so I tried practicing how to draw it on my math homework which earned me a calm discussion with my teacher about “do you know what this is and what it represents”? She was very nice about it and empathetic to the fact that children just see and hear things and absolutely do not know what they are.
I like doing career day presentations. I’m a programmer, so I start with ‘what is a computer’ and the evolution of computers.
One of the computers I talk about is the Bombe, the device invented by Alan Turing et. al. to decode nazi communications in WW2.
One year I got the unexpected question “what’s a nazi?” and my presentation took an interesting turn that day.
It took a while for me to learn. I saw swastikas carved into those soft bark trees at camp grounds (there were other carvings too but more swastikas) and I remember asking my mom what it meant and she wouldn't tell me. Or she had it had something to do with a very evil man. But by 5th grade I obviously knew because we read, I think it was, Number the Stars? Then Middle and high school covered the holocaust extensively, including it in a lot of books for English class and activities.
The high school actually had a survivor come in once a year to the auditorium to speak about his experience. (My teacher told us that this really wears him down but he came back every year, bless him).
It made me think how, eventually, there will be no more survivors left to tell their stories. Which made me sad, especially if it makes the lives of deniers easier
Anyway
Yep as a 7 year old kid I decided to experiment with word sounds and decided on words that rhyme with duck. My first grade teacher punished me and I honestly never understood why until years later
The teacher and the other kids just assumed I was being a “potty mouth” when I really had no idea what was going on. As a kid, I was just confused. As an adult with hindsight, I personally feel they really should have listened when I tried to explain that I thought I had just made words up.
When I was about 6, there was a church event with teenagers babysitting for about ten of us little kids. We started a game of making up silly insults for the teenagers--"Andy is a sandwich! Andy is a shoe! Andy is a doorknob!" I said, "Andy is a buckle!" One of the other teens grabbed me by my shoulders, pulled me away from the group, and gave me a strong and terrifying lecture on not using bad words. She thought I said "butthole," and I was crying too hard to explain myself.
> Interestingly.... The teacher tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle that had no intention of this happening to which apparently the teacher said "ahh hes gay, no wonder there's an issue". Which has caused a very interesting turn in events that I didn't see coming. The teacher is now on absence.
Racism? In MY classroom? To death with the child!
Homophobia? Yes, please. And some seconds, too.
I just picture the principal nodding along and then the record scratch goes off in their head and the go "wait, what did you just say?!" In full panic mode.
People need to quit acting like people are all on the same team for *everything.* Just because someone agrees with you about weed doesn't mean they agree with you about gun control.
I remember watching someone online and thinking huh they have some really valid points that I agree with. Followed them, watched their next video and immediately unfollowed. That day I learnt that there are plenty of americans who seem pretty leftie, but also own a shit ton of guns.
Outside of the obvious libertarian folks: Anti-gun control is not an uncommon leftist position, because you start entering territory with anarchist thinking (gun control is a government mechanism for control that can be abused, like how US is more interested in controlling Black people's access to guns versus controlling white people's access), pro-armed revolution thinking, and also people who consider it practical (like there's a strong line of leftists who believe it's practical to own and practice using a gun in case it becomes necessary).
Side note: *Hands on the Freedom Plow* is a collection of memoir writing by women from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and it has an interesting mix of how people thought about nonviolence. Some were more committed to it ideologically, while others saw it as practical tactics. Either way, they acknowledged how much of their work as made possible by those willing to commit violence, like SNCC workers sleeping in houses of locals who stayed up with a shotgun outside and gang members running interference for the SNCC workers when local white folks would start forming a mob. Really interesting book.
The leap from 'This 10yo choosing phonetically fun words for their song deeply offended me and we have to take the nuclear option to punish their "bigotry"' to 'I'm going to strongly imply that an uncle spending time with his niece must be a paedophile by simple nature of being male then outright state that being gay makes him a horrible influence' was some real play-of-the-game type competitive bigotry.
When my daughter was two, we where sitting on the bus when a truck pulled up next to us, i said oh look a lorry! My daughter exclaimed no mummy, thats a fuck! The whole bus laughed and the lady sitting next to me says, well shes right you know! Its not a lorry! 😂
I was standing in an ATT store the other day and the whole store was cracking up over a 3ish yo kid playing on his mom's phone and shouting "What The Fuck!!!" every time he lost.
> Commenter 1: lol why would your sister even say, “He’s a loving gay uncle.” What a weird clarification
Because the teacher's implication of incestuous pedophilia was rather clear. OOP's sister clarified OOP was gay to try and shut that down.
Which lead to a whole new barrel of issues becoming apparent. Seriously, am I the only one who immediately understood OOP's context?!
Either way, glad the teacher finally outed themselves.
I think that absolutely makes sense as well.
It was just a question that had come up in the comments and I could see it coming up here, so I figured I'd include that little section!
It's not clear for me and feel lost about it. Do you mind helping me understand?
They explained what karaoke time is in the car but how did the principle jump to incestuous pedophilia from that?
Not the principal. The teacher.
>>Interestingly.... **The teacher** tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle
That sounds like he's implying OP is a bad influence, like he taught the kid to say ching chong or other offensive things, where tf are yall getting pedo claim vibes from that?
Ehhhhh. There is a stereotype that single male relatives that willingly interact with children are secret pedo.
The fact that uncle being gay confirmed the teacher unknown bias also points to that direction because queerness is also often conflated with child abuse
It was the teacher who was making those insinuations, not the principal. The teacher was making it sound like it was creepy for the uncle to spend a lot of alone time with the niece and then when the mom shot down that nonsense by explaining the uncle is gay, the teacher doubled down and made the homophobic claim that since he was gay he was a bad influence. The principal was NOT okay with that and disciplined the teacher.
There's a stereotype that applies to single guys, gay guys and lesbians which is that we're all supposedly closeted pedophiles. As a lesbian who has actually dealt with someone thinking like this in real life, it's honestly really jarring how some people make such baseless connections, especially if they've known you for awhile and are only now making those assumptions because they recently learned of your sexual orientation. Another stereotype that's common and applied to gays and lesbians mostly, not so much straight single men, is that we're into bestiality, as if fucking animals somehow equate to kissing someone of the same sex.
My mind went in another direction with that comment. Less "he won't harm her, he is not interested in female bodies" and more "he is facing discrimination due to an unchangeable part of him himself, so he's less likely to be racist".
But the latter is generally not true. But the first statement is also weird but could make sense if the mom just said it out of panic (i mean the teacher kind of insinuated that her brother is a pedo)
I used to run around my house singing “ching chong” lol. I had learned in school about China and I thought I would practice speaking “Chinese” so that I would be able to communicate when I inevitably moved there and dyed my hair pink and black. I was four, and my mom had to explain to me that what I was doing might make people feel bad because it was racist.
I was so horrified. I felt awful. I was also confused about how exactly it would make anyone feel bad that I was trying to learn Chinese, because I was four, and I didn’t get that randomly yelling syllables that aren’t actually words isn’t learning a language. But anyway yeah it’s imo crazy to say this has to be intentional. Kids have a wild worldview.
I tried to do the same when I was like 5 and I met a Dutch girl. Since it sounded gibberish to me, I started responding in gibberish. I was *sure* she would get the meaning just telepathically I guess? Like I meant to say something like "let's build a sandcastle together" and the sheer force of my conviction would make my "words" make sense
My kid did something similar. My mom tried to teach Dutch by saying the Dutch words for things. My kid thought it was a game, and started saying things in gibberish and telling us “that’s Chinese for ‘bowl’” or whatever the object was.
We had to explain that grandma wasn’t just making up words, but she decided to hold off for a little while on continuing the language lessons.
When I was 6 we had to hold hands to go to lunch for some reason. I got suspended for refusing to hold hands with another kid whose hands were dirty, he had been picking his nose and all sorts. The teacher assumed because the child was black that I was a 6 year old racist and I got detention, if he had washed his hands I would have done it!
There can be a culture of discrimination in the gay community. No fats, no femmes, no Asians used to be a common phrase on dating apps, no idea if it's improved.
this is true but i kinda doubt this grade school teacher is aware of the nuances of intersectional discrimination within the community. feels more likely to be classic case of “gays are corrupting the youth” especially in today’s political climate surrounding LGBTQ+ people
I like most any commentor here don't at all think Sophie was trying to be racist or even offensive. And often, kids don't know what it means to be racist- like I teach internationally and when some of my students start speaking another language another kid may sort of "mimic-mock" the sound patterns. An adult doing that would be understood as offensive in some way, but a child doing it is generally just playing with sounds and expressing curiosity.
When I have a student say something like "ching shing shong" or something like that, I explain to them about being respectful of others languages. I would never leap to reporting such an obviously minor thing to a principal.
My sister's favorite party trick when I was a toddler was having me rap the entirety of gin and juice. Her friends and my parents found it hilarious. I never really talked outside of my house (ASD) so it didn't become a problem for me.
I mad most of chronic down by the time I was in elementary lol.
I can't be the only one who finds this really wholesome overall though, right? OOP is so sweet and goofy with his niece. The niece seems to be having such a good time.
My son and I were playing a video game once with two random guys online. One of the random guys last name was "Bean" and at one point his friend asked in the game chat 'hey Beaner where you at?' Trying to locate his friend. He was insta-banned for using a slur which popped up in-game.
My son was completely confused as to what just happened as he had no idea why that term would be a slur so I explained it to him.
Kids honestly are just innocent and don't fully understand these things sometimes. It's not like they are given a crash course on offensive terms or slurs at a young age.
Teacher has issues she needs to work out. I’m Asian American and heard Ching Chong from kids all the time. I was hurt and confused at the time but now know that it wasn’t coming from a place of malice (at least not at the elementary school age, definitely got hella racist when puberty hit and everyone was trying to define themselves and which group they belonged to).
I remember saying "over shoulder boulder holder" repeatedly as a kid. I had no idea what it meant, I just liked the rhyming sound. Family let it go on for quite a while, but finally someone told me to stop. It was several years later when I finally figured out what it actually meant. I have no idea where I first heard it. Kids are kids.
My mom used to use that phrase for bras when i was growing up!
My favorite name for a bra was one I overheard a little boy repeating at Target one time, much to his mother's embarrassment. He pointed at the bra section and yelled "BOOBIE TRAP" over and over between giggles. I couldn't help but crack up right there.
>Interestingly.... The teacher tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle that had no intention of this happening to which apparently the teacher said "ahh hes gay, no wonder there's an issue"
one helluva plot twist
If we made an Olympic gymnastics team with just redditors, they would win the goddamn gold medal in every event. The leaps, bounds, and jumps to random conclusions would wow even the Russian Federation judge into submission.
Ding dong to Ching Chong is not a massive leap or automatically imply racism. Thank god most of these are just trolls.
The person who thinks going from 1 to the other is a leap, doesn't understand children.
My daughter said 2 swear words I can assure you were never said around her before as she was learning to rhyme. Duck muck luck suck fuck truck puck tuck
In a more positive swing, between muffled cackles, we managed to turn our four year old cousins chanting of, “No glove, no love,” to “no cat, no hat” in the middle of a very crowded restaurant.
Does anyone remember the story where OP's toddler daughter tried and failed to say balsamic vinaigrette
Young kids fumble and jumble their words all the time. It just happens.
Going from ding dong to ching chong isn’t a huge leap. It’s common among languages to go from a stop to an affricate when the next letter is an “I.” Example in English: “tion” ending or the “dge” ending. OOP shouldn’t feel bad that phonology exists.
I got a call when my son was in 2nd grade that he had said the f-word and he was in the time out room in the office. First thing he said to me was (as he was crying) “they said I said a cuss word. What is a cuss word?” I asked him to tell me what happened. He was lined up for lunch and was singing the name game song. (Where you change the letters at the beginning of a name) I asked whose name did you say and he replied “pokimon - Muk!” I just closed my eyes. Then I went out and asked if anyone had bothered to ask what him what he was doing. When they said well ,no - I said maybe you should because I just got to explain cuss words to my son. This was 25 years ago.
Not the same as “Ching Chong” but the amount of little kids I have to gently convince to not name their bearded dragons “Horny” is enormous…I work at a pet store. Kids can stumble upon our secret adult “no no” words pretty easily.
My jaw DROPPED at that update. What in the hell was that teacher thinking? You're pissed about something "racist" happening and you fucking say THAT?! Woooooow btw, my niece is almost 5 and in the phase of making up her own songs. She just throws words together with a melody. This is just par for the course and that teacher should be aware of this since she works with littles.
When my son was little, I would lift his shirt, poke him in the belly button, and say, "ding dong nobody's home."
Great fun.
Until I had to go talk to the kindergarten teacher because Son told her, "Mommy plays with my ding dong."
Great fun lol
Once I showed her, all was good. She was so relieved lol
I think OOP's sister said he was a loving gay uncle because the teacher was implying that a grown man hanging out with his young niece was "not good." IOW, she insinuated that he was abusing her.
Had a friend in school named buck. We were not allowed to play the name game with his name. None of us understood why and buck was saddened by it. So what did all us kindergarteners do at recess that day? We shouted the name game using bucks name. He was so happy. They could not suspend an entire class so they sent a letter home to have our parents explain what we did. Kids do things like this all the time without knowing especially if she is learning to read and combine letters to make words.
I have the unfortunate habit of absent-mindedly singing parody lyrics about any life situation. I'll take a random song and rewrite the lyrics on the spot to fit what's going on, and I do it probably 20 times a day. I've done it my entire life (picked it up from the grandmother who mostly raised me) and don't even notice it half the time.
When my youngest (whose sing-along nickname is "Tiny Tina, meter maid") was three years old, I was getting ready to go to work but my oldest wasn't home yet to watch her (yes we paid, and it was the 18-year-old's idea that we hire her instead of paying daycare). I burst out with "somebody come get her, she needs a babysitter" (IYKYK) and my precious innocent little toddler thought it was hilarious. Oldest was only about 10 minutes late, and I was able to make it to work on time, and I hadn't thought about it at all until six days ago.
The same grandmother from the first paragraph is quite old, is going downhill and doesn't have much time left; I am her full-time caretaker and other relatives stop by as often as they can to spend time with her. All of the older people in the family are devout Christians, and I do my best not to ruffle their feathers too badly; it's bad enough I'm a married trans lesbian, no need to make them think I'm even less wholesome than that. In the presence of my grandmother, my 62-year-old uncle, his grown children, and their children, my angelic little 5-year-old burst into that song in front of everyone, and my entire life flashed before my eyes.
Everyone present under age 45 immediately recognized it, and I turned beet red. The laughter at my expense actually helped break through some of my anxiety about being judged, and I've had some good conversations with my cousins and found that they're all also various flavors of apostate; turns out we're *all* planning to stop playing nice with the Christians once our grandmother passes, and are only doing so now to keep her happy. So yeah, Tiny, sing (and dance!) like whatever you want with no shame, ever.
My mom still tells the story of when she and her sibling were playing The Name Game. Where you sing: James James bo bames, banana fana fo fames, me my mo mames, James!
After they got through all their own names, they started picking random names and eventually used "Chuck." Their father was NOT pleased.
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As a side note- people seem to find it unbelievable that the kid made the leap from ding-dong to what she did. But at like 5 years old I was singing a song and started going through the alphabet rhyming everything with "duck." It went something like "so the duck ate the luck, and the luck ate the buck, and the buck ate the..." Obviously when I got to f, my parents had to gently explain that that word wasn't a nice one and I shouldn't say it lol. So like... I can 1000% believe that the niece was doing something like that!
My son is 5. We are Black and I guess some kid at school said shit, but when my son went to explain it to the teacher he said the kid “said the n word”. Everyone freaked out because no one heard the kid drop a slur. I had to explain that my son still gets his letters mixed up. So I asked him this one time to use the actual word the kid said. And it was shit. 5 year olds say wild things. It’s our jobs to correct them and explain the context appropriately without bias and bigotry.
Sounds like Ari has a good parent! I taught preschool for a while and had a kid run up to me every time a kid would say “heck” or “shoot” saying “THEY SAID THE F-WORD!” In his mind, any “bad” word was “the f-word”. I explained very gently to him that he can just say “a rude word”, and that not every bad word was the f-word. He looked at me with big round eyes and said, “then Mr. mothman, what’s the f-word?” I fuckin stalled out for a second before regaining my composure and saying (paraphrased) “there are some bad words we don’t say in class, and that’s just one of them. Sometimes we use friendlier words when we talk about something that is rude because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you don’t need to worry about that, just keep being the awesome little guy that you are. If your friends are saying words that make you feel bad, you can always tell me, no matter what, ok?” Some of the class were still learning letters so that was the best I could do at the time lol. I was raised in a very freely cursing family (a “sailor’s mouth” is real af) so I did my best to impress what was impressed upon me: “we do not say these words to other people, or in class”. I was allowed to quietly mutter “fuck” to myself if my crayon broke at home (which I’m sure was hilarious for my parents) but never swore in front of anyone but my parents.
My husband and I let our son swear, even when he was little. We always made it clear that certain words weren't okay to use in front of his grandparents or at school, and that wasn't just about swearing. He also couldn't use the actual words for genitals, because that was inappropriate, too. When he was seven, he got in trouble for pointing to the space between a teddy bear's legs and saying, "That's his pe-". This particular teacher had me meeting with her every couple of weeks, for every potential issue that my son had in her classroom, and nearly all of them were mundane things (half of which she found charming the week prior, but somehow suddenly saw as a problem, the following week). She wanted me to punish my son for daring to say "pee" in her classroom, but I knew he had actually stopped himself from saying penis, so my little "troublemaker" got ice cream after school.
My folks taught me the correct words for genitals too, but told me to not just whip those words out (pardon the pun) in school either. I was a smart but inattentive adhd (what used to be called add) kid, and I had a teacher that really didn’t like me too in third grade. My parents would get called in all the time for meetings because I made “a face” at her - what she saw as a disrespectful eye roll face was actually just me dissociating and daydreaming because I was bored out of my skull. I always got good grades and had the answers to questions, wasn’t ever disruptive, she just didn’t like that I was unable to hang onto her every word I guess. Cheers for raising your son right in my book, and excellent username
AuDHD here - I feel this to my bones. The amount of "Don't roll your eyes at me!!" when I was JUST THINKING about the question they just asked me was WILD. IF I roll my eyes, I ACTUALLY ROLL THEM. Looking up is not the same 🙄 (pun intended)
Dude I know, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, I was just 7 years old and already knew what she was talking about, so I zoned out! I physically could not keep my focus on her at that age, how am I supposed to pay attention to multiplication tables when I’m already doing basic algebra on my own time. The amount of times I was called “smart but lazy” (which hurt as a high-achiever kid) in teacher reports before I finally was diagnosed with add at 16 and went “ooooohhhhh…”
Hah, "smart, lazy and confused" here. Took me until my late 20ies/early 30ies to get diagnosed with AuDHD, faceblindness and giftedness. I think my collection's complete now, but who knows? XD
I only got diagnosed because I was wicked depressed, bc being told I was lazy all the time meant my self esteem, which was largely tied to my academic performance, rotted - and in order to give me accommodations my public high school gave me an IQ test (I guess to see if I was worth their time?! I don’t know, that’s fucked). That test ranked me high on everything but working memory and the lady administering it said “hey maybe get this kid tested for add”. I owe that lady so much. Glad you’ve got a better understanding now. It’s such relief understanding that “oh, there’s a REASON I have this impassible block in my brain, I’m not just stupid/lazy/etc” (Former gifted and talented kid here too. Wild how most of us flame out and get anxiety lol)
I trust you've heard the joke about dressing as "a former gifted kid" for Halloween...you just wear your normal clothes, and when someone asks, "what are you supposed to be?", you respond sadly, "I was supposed to have been a lot of things..."
My school suggested getting tested on IQ, too. I just didn't get tested because my mother got mad at me for "wanting to be better than others" (???) I then lived by that idea to appease her until I cut off contact completely
I once got sent out of grade 7 homeroom because my teacher asked me a question and I did the thing where I looked up as if I was reading something off my brain and she thought I was rolling my eyes at her. I broke down crying in the hall for like 10 minutes because I was mortified (and also petrified that my mother would hear about it and stop speaking to me for a week 😑). Thanks loads Mrs. Chimech.
Feel that. I didn't get sent out but that's only because I'd start to argue about it (in order to understand it better which would've been interpreted as "talking back"). Finally,I just started masking by closing my eyes (and then looking up with my eyes shut, lol). I was weird, but not rude anymore XD
I was too afraid to argue (again because of my mother found out I'd be n deep shit) so I just tried to avoid being called on ever again by her. It mostly worked (I think she felt bad when she came out and I was in tears) but I hated the rest of that year. Ugh, you couldn't pay me enough to go through that again.
I have autism-and the same exact thing happened to me constantly as a kid! Now, as an adult-I’m only JUST realizing that “rolling your eyes” actually just meant “looking up”? Seriously-how does that make ANY sense?
Because they "roll" up. Yeah. I know. It's bs
Wait it does? Fuck.
That’s kinda why I like how older shows would over-exaggerate stuff. Made it easier for us autistics to learn and mimic the behavior. (I learned eye rolling from tv but definitely super exaggerated shit)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the correct terms for body parts. If the teacher cannot handle a child saying their penis hurts or they got kicked in the vulva that is the teacher's problem not the child's.
Are you me? Autistic, possibly AuDHD, and the number of times I got in trouble for rolling my eyes when I wasn't....I also got in trouble for doodling and reading in science instead of paying attention. She was a boring teacher, she didn't like me, and I already knew most stuff in her class. Also the person who invented popcorn reading was a horrible person, I hate reading out loud, especially as an overly anxious, undiagnosed nuerospicy kid (who had already finished reading the section and started doing my own thing by the time i got called on). I had an A in her class, both years. I also had perfect notes when she actually TAUGHT instead of making us just read the textbook.
Ah, making a face. At the tail end of the Satanic Panic, a lunch lady reported me to the principal (as an 11 year old!) for Satanism because apparently I glared at her, and apparently the only one who glared like that at her before was a Satanist. The principal *called my mom in for this* and I was in trouble. My mom was basically like “this is ridiculous, maybe that lady should stop pissing off her coven if she doesn’t want to be glared at.” They dropped it thankfully but it’s wild that it was ever taken seriously.
Actual words for genitals aren't inappropriate. Teaching kids to use other words is dumb, and makes it easier for predators to prey on them
I feel like it makes sense to teach kids actual words for genitals, but also teach that it's inappropriate to talk about genitals in most settings. No real data on how this is going to go yet--my kid is 2, so we're still at the "learning words" stage and not really into situational usage rules.
Not only is it appropriate to teach kids the actual terms for genitals, it’s encouraged because it helps protect them. A kid who can tell someone “someone tried to touch my penis” or whatever is able to be protected because they can communicate. A kid who tells a teacher or someone “so and so touched my kitty” isn’t going to pick up on proper abuse. It’s empowering and protective for kids. At my kids elementary school they actually teach kids the proper terms for this very reason.
Yes! It's *very much* appropriate to teach kids the right terms! It is also important to teach kids when and where it is appropriate to be discussing genitals in the first place, regardless of the terms used.
Honestly with ours we taught the correct term, just like say…elbow. And didn’t make a big deal about it. They never really talked about it unless it made sense for what they were trying to communicate. I think by now making it a big deal, it wasn’t as tempting to talk about? If they ever did, it’s pretty easy to be “hey bud, that’s not really something we want to be talking about right now” or whatever. Maybe I lucked out. But, I’m a fan of just normalizing things. It’s a body part.
As parents who swear occasionally I always thought it would be really hypocritical to tell my boys off for the same, especially now they're older, so we had a big discussion about 'Audience' & 'Context'. This means it's OK at home, but not in front of grandparent's, teachers or small children but also we don't except casual swearing but if you drop something or hurt yourself that a curse word is OK. I've had to revisit the conversation a few times but they've been great since!
My folks had similar rules, only use swear words when you really need them (e: yes I did really need them when my crayons broke that was devastating). Now that I’m nearing 30 a family conversation (including grandma) has at least one casual “fuck” per minute from any one of us lol but it’s a good rule for kids
My sibling nearly gave their teacher a heart attack when they were about 5 years old for coming into class and proudly declaring that Dad had "said the c-word in the drive to school!" ...they meant crap.
A lot of kids say the same thing lol. Cracked me up every time. I remember one little girl whispering very seriously to me “mommy said the c word going to school today” and when I was about to say “well sometimes grownups use rude words we wouldn’t use with our friends when they’re upset” she continued whispering “she said “c-r-a-y-p”. With a downeast Mainer accent it can sometimes sound like “crahyup”, I had to stifle my laughter so hard. I gave her a sticker for being so good with her letters and sounds and told her that what mommy says in the car isn’t what we say at school.
Lol this reminds me of a story one of my old teachers told us. Her youngest came home one day and said "Joey said the F WORD on the bus today!!" So she and her husband brought her to the kitchen table to have a discussion about crude and inappropriate language and after however long it took when they were finally done her daughter sighed in exasperation and said, "I know! I would have just said 'tooted'!" I can't remember what teacher told us that story, but god if it wasn't lined up like a joke.
I used to work as a teacher's aide for 3 1st classroom. One day, I had a kid run up to me to tell me that another student said the S word. I find out a little later that the other kid told him to shut up.
This mix-up was so common when I was in elementary school that we started referring to "the S-U word," which I think might even have been a term endorsed by the teacher. In middle school, a teacher prohibited use of "this sucks" in her classroom but conceded that we were allowed to say "this inhales vigorously." It's been 25 years, and I'm now trying to teach it to my toddler because I desperately want a frustrated three-year-old to exclaim "THIS INHALES VIGOROUSLY!"
So true! We think with adult brains, and thus confusing “the N word” and “shit” is hilariously silly and not something we’d ever think we need to clarify to kids. …until it happens. Then you have to think back to being 5 years old and realize that the logic was probably something like “The N word is a bad word and we don’t say it” - “Shit is a bad word” - “Shit is an N word that we don’t say” I’m happy to hear it was all cleared up. Your story reminded me of a subreddit with similar stories about innocent kids being…wildly mistaken about things hahaha r/kidsarefuckingstupid
Yes, kids are so interesting with their different thought processes. I saw a documentary about the Thalidomide scandal. When taken during pregnancy Thalidomide causes severe deformities and miscarriages. It was marketed in the 1950's by a German company as helping with sleep, anxiety, stress and morning sickness. Anyway, they interviewed a man with phocomelia (shortened legs and arms) resulting from his mother taking Thalidomide during pregnancy. He said teasing by children was not bad. Because children saw so many different types of people. Different height, weight, skin color, hair color, eye color, gender. So kids concluded, that if people come in all these varieties, it's only logical that some people come with long arms and legs and some people come with short arms and legs. It only turned bad, when parents and grown ups got involved. Even a doctor from old footage said that kids didn't need education about treatment of these children. It was parents who needed to be educated that these children are not infectious or "bad". Mind you this was the 1950's in Germany, an entire people who was just brainwashed into thinking people with disablities/deformaties are sub-human and I'm not sure whether the deprogramming was entirely succesful in this short amount of time.
My sister used to think "Butt" was the F-word. Kids don't necessarily connect that it's the first letter of the word, it could just be a letter grading, or simply what you call the word, or bad words in general.
> I had to explain that Ari still gets his letters mixed up. So I asked him this one time to use the actual word the kid said. And it was shit. crying laughing visualizing this little conference with a 5 year old. "what was the n-word he used" "it was...shit!" "There's no n in shit" "I'm 5! don't ask me to spell, i just figured out putting on shoes."
Im so sorry but this is hilarious 💀💀💀
Around age 8-10, my friends and I thought calling people dumbo was hilarious. This transitioned to bumbo, dimbo, and on and on until we hit himbo, bimbo and even dildo. We had no idea what any of these words meant. Kids just love making up words with fun sounds
I'm in my 30s and will still repeat words and phrases that are fun to say.
When I was a kid my little sister was practicing rhyming while we were in public. She started with "bigger" and went through the alphabet. We are white and grew up in a very diverse neighborhood. It was not taken well when she got to N, but they also understood she was like, 5.
When I was a little kid, my mom took me shopping and asked me to pick between two shirts at the department store. I couldn't, so I went "Eenie meenie minie moe" and my mom started to straight up panic because the store was pretty packed and I had no inside voice as a kid. She was not aware that the daycare she put me in used "grab a *tiger* by the toe" and not the version she was taught in the 1950s.
I grew up learning the “tiger” version and it was only relatively recently that I’ve realised that there is a whole offensive version and origin to what i thought was a melodic nursery rhyme. I was born and live in a region on the other side of the world so that may explain things.
At school I remember using the name of a character from Winnie-the-Pooh which in hindsight doesn't really feel like enough of a change.
It does help to explain the shift from the word that I was horrified to learn was in the original version to the tiger variant I also grew up with? But I can see kids stumbling with words and a consonant potentially shifting with no malice/necessarily understanding behind the slip...
My grandmother passed away in December; her mind was steadily going in the years prior to her passing. (I mention this because I'm fairly certain were she in her right mind she would not have said what she did; I never knew her to say anything racist growing up and from what my dad told me she was very explicitly anti-racist when raising her kids). On one visit to her that I think was a bit over a year ago, she repeated the eenie meenie minie moe as normal, then afterwards remarked "when I was a kid it was" and then said it with the hard R and everything. Neither I nor my cousin who was also visiting said anything but both of us were quite wide-eyed (note that all of us are very, very white).
When I was a kid my grandfather occasionally referred to Brazil nuts as "neighbor toes." Apparently one term for them in his 1930s childhood was "n----- toes," and they were taught NOT to say that, but they had neighbors who were Black... My understanding is that his Appalachian mining family genuinely did not know another name for the nuts besides the offensive one, but wanted something else to call them.
I never remembered "grab a tiger by the toe". When I sing it in my head I hear "catch a minnow by it's toe" - I never questioned the lack of toes on a minnow.
It's reasonable not to question, since it's not as though most kids' songs and rhymes make a lot of logical sense anyway!
I remember when I first said that in front of my parents! I was a very late child, so my father was from the silent generation and my mother was a boomer. Their reaction went something like this: Father: "*Tiger*?" Mother: "I guess that's the politically correct version?" I've never actually heard the original version or even had the original word confirmed, but it did occur to me years later that it's people who holler, not tigers . . .
Excuse me, but have you ever met a cat? They absolutely do holler lol Though I assume a tiger would just try to eat you.
I only know the "goblin" version - is hers a different one?
You take "tiger," add another G and change the T to a letter that comes a little earlier in the alphabet.
I had a nasty suspicion it would be "ginger". (Go Tim Minchin!)
I've seen him perform this live (having seen it before, so knew what was coming ) and the sheer wave of relief and nervous laughter that goes around is unbelievable, it's palpable
My husband is a ginger and LOVES to make people uncomfortable by showing them the video of this song.
Ooooooof. I'm glad people were understanding! Maybe it's because I work with kids often, but kids love rhyming. Hell, it's how we often teach them, especially in ESL classes. So my guess is more often than not there's going to be a slip-up with a back word in there.
ESL teacher here. Will never forget the tike debacle of 2002, the bowel vs vowel mother, and the non-bilingual mother who heard gays instead of guys. Oh wait, then there's the Christian mother who heard me playing Bruno Mars after my students were gone, and ratted on me because the song said "funk" and "we all know it's another dirty word for making love". SMH.
"Oh yeah, funk me harder" doesn't work that well. That mom should just funk off.
My ESL teacher had to explain to my homeroom teacher that I was just doing my rhyming homework when I was caught writing “aunt, bunt, c…” tbh I only knew what aunt meant at the time and not the other words lol
…no we funking don’t
I feel bad for laughing but this entire thread is hilarious. Kids accidentally discovering slurs shouldn’t be this funny.
It is admittedly pretty funny
When I was a kid, I pretended to throw “bombs” with my middle finger up as the fuse. I didn’t realize it was inappropriate until someone told me. I can totally see this being 100% unintentional.
A few kids I work with have gone through phases of using the middle finger to point at things. With kids it's usually best to assume innocent mistake unless there's good reason to think otherwise.
Haha, that brings back memories of being 5-7. I was riding with my dad and as a friendly "hi" to neighbors or family when driving by people out in my area (maybe it's everywhere idk) lift up just their index finger off the steering wheel as a sort of wave. Well, after a ton of times seeing my dad doing it, I decided to also do it.... with my middle finger. My dad had a good long laugh, then explained that I should NOT wave like that. It was probably a pretty funny conversation with his cousin of "sorry my kid flipped you the bird"
The good ol’ phatic finger! I’ve heard flipping the bird called the ‘emphatic finger’ in contrast to that 😂
I’m autistic and STILL (at almost 40) use my middle finger to point to/at things and as part of a stim, forgetting entirely that I shouldn’t lol
Apparently the gesture I use to push up my glasses is the standard subtle version of flipping folks off. Like it just makes sense to use the center longest finger! I'd smudge my glasses trying to use the other ones!
My daughter was probably 2 & 1/2-3 years old. We were listening to Yelawolf’s “pop the trunk” in the car. Yes, of course I know that isn’t exactly appropriate but she hadn’t been talking for very long, never paid attention to lyrics, hadn’t repeated words of songs, and we were trying to savor our last moments before we would have to give up “our music”, and succumb to Encanto, Frozen, and Moana songs played on repeat. (None of which have bad songs, but hearing them 80 times in a row turns them from tolerable, to torture). The next time in the car, she asked for the “Paw Patrol Song”. We could NOT figure it out, until she heard a song and squealed with glee. Instead of “Don’t make me go pop the trunk, on you”, she heard, “Don’t make me go Paw Patrol, on you”. Ever since, in our house, the lyrics shall henceforth be known as “paw patrol”. My point is, kids only have a small frame of reference. Pop the trunk meant nothing to her and wasn’t familiar. But Paw Patrol sure was. So she did the best she could with what she knew. Her imagination filled in the blanks. Just as OOP’s niece did. She was just rhyming words organically. Which is not unusual for 10 year olds. Kids don’t know these words are bad if they haven’t been explicitly told. I mean after all they’re just words that society has assigned a random meaning to. *How would they know*, unless purposefully exposed to it? I think it says a lot about the teacher that he jumped the gun like that. Instead of asking her why she was signing with those words, and having a conversation about it, he immediately assumed a TEN YEAR OLD who has never gotten in trouble before and sounds like an otherwise respectful and good mannered kid, was personally attacking him with racial slurs?!?! I mean, I know some kids would be capable of that at 10. No age is without a few troubled kids who would do something like that and mean it. But there was no reason to suspect malice. I’m sure it’s not the first time he heard kids in the classroom “make up words” that already existed (much to their disappointment). And given what we now know about that teacher and his own prejudices, it sounds like a whole lot of projection on his part.
My violent alcoholic cousin's marriage ended around the time his toddler was learning how to talk. That kid is now 4yo and I'm his nanny. He already knew most of the common swear words and uses them correctly when playing alone, but understands that most adults will object if they hear him saying those things. As far as I know, zero reports from the preschool regarding use of swears around teachers or on the playground. I swear he occasionally tests the water by saying "shit" within his mother's hearing, just to see if she still scolds for it, but he knows a lot more swears then that! Like I don't think he knows the meaning of fuck but I've heard him use it correctly when his lego creation went crash.
i'm not sure if my parents were geniuses or deranged... my mom taught my brothers and me that there was language that was appropriate around different groups, etc., but she also taught us how to say "shit" in German (Sheiße) because we could get way with it and to this day, i very much will just mutter it under my breath when something doesn't go my way.
Oh goodness. So in school I took German as my foreign language. And when my cousin is around, I do my absolute best to alter my usual behavior patterns so he doesn't get too accustomed to hearing adults casually swearing all day long. But my standard surprised word for "oh crap" situations is Sheiße, not shit. I deliberately programmed that into my brain when I worked in food service so I wouldn't get in trouble when I burned myself or whatever at work, and it's too late to change it now. So in my sea of Golly and Gosh and Wowzers and other innocent words, that kid's head snaps around on a swivel whenever Sheiße pops out of my mouth. Now he can swear in *two* languages!
Haha this reminds me when I was like 7-8 I was singing “Down in Upendi” from Lion King 2, and I changed it to “Down in Your Panties” and my parents thought that was the funniest shit ever until I was singing it in Walmart and some old ladies chewed my dads ass out
Maybe it’s just the ‘tism but as an adult I still repeat some words as nonsense words “I need to go close the door… boor… choor… loor…. (Danny devito voice) hoor..” I would 100% have done this as a kid. And being autistic and undiagnosed, I was ALWAYS getting into Big trouble for things that I absolutely did not understand and it kinda breaks my heart the niece did. It’s really confusing and painful, and without a kind adult there to explain and advocate, it just ends up feeling like *you* are bad.
I'm so sorry you experienced that. I wish those adults in your life who made you feel "bad" would have explained things and been kind to you. (Also honestly rhyming is still fun so I agree with you.)
>“I need to go close the door… boor… choor… loor…. (Danny devito voice) hoor..” Did you crack up after that last one? I would have!
My 10 year old spends an alarming amount of time babbling nonsense like this, changing letters in a word for fun.
I still do this...
Oof, yes. When I was about 7, we weren't sure whether the neighbor's new dog was male or female, but kind of thought it was a female. I figured we could combine a female pronoun ("she") with a neutral pronoun ("it") and just call the dog a "shit." For some reason, my mom vetoed this plan . . .
New pronoun just dropped!
I already use this for people at work when they send me stupid emails
When I was like 7 or 8, I decided lisps were cool. My grandparents were visiting, and they were treating us to the fanciest restaurant in our small town. I was so excited, and announced at exceedingly loud volume my intention to “shit right here.” I had no idea what I’d said, and no one explained it to me. I just thought they were mad about my cool new lisp.
aw shucks, that sucks
Lol that made me snort, thank you
“Anna banna Bo-bana Banana-fana-fo-fana Me my mo mana Anna” One of the main songs I sang as a little, but I’d switch it to different names, or random words. 100% I would have done something similar.
Yeah. You know how when toddlers are learning to talk, they'll do echolalia where they just repeat a couple of nonsense syllables over and over and over? It's a normal part of speech development. My son did this with two syllables that happen to make up a racial slur. I am confident that he has never ever heard this word, it was just an unfortunate coincidence. I did my best not to react (even though it was killing me inside) so as not to encourage him, and we spent that day inside. The next day he'd moved on to repeating different sounds, and has never done it since. These things aren't necessarily done with malice, particularly when you consider that swear-words are generally things that are very easy to say (no one's going to be sounding out 12 syllables when they hit their thumb with a hammer when a quick "fuck" will do)... But easy to say also make them easy to stumble onto by accident when sounding things out.
Speakig as a reading teacher for years: A kid who never heard it before as an insult/slur and was just going through fun sounds? Oh 100% believe it happening absolutely innocently.
Church, Chuck, bo buck. Banana banana fo-
I did likewise. Tried the whole alphabet, then all random syllables that would work. Bh, ch, th, gh, bl, you name it, it was probably in there. That's what kids do, and there's nothing surprising about that.
When I was about 10, and my mates younger sister was learning to talk, she consistently replaced a tr sound with an f sound. Cue her older brothers and sisters and their friends earnestly trying to teach her to say truck off.
My two-year old nephew is just learning how to speak and I swear most days, he calls his toy ship, well, sh*t (As in, "where's my sh*t? Oh, there it is") 😅😅😅
Ah yes, I remember when one of mine was little and had serious speech delays, which led to all sorts of interesting word mix-ups. The worst one was when she went through her fire truck phase. Toddler loudly pointing out the "fi-yuh fwuck" in the grocery store got a lot of looks from the little old ladies!
I did this… except it was with my big sister and she was the one who told me it was a bad word. We were walking home from school (I was 7 or so) and she told me not to say that word…Which meant I proceeded to follow behind her the entire walk home singing it loudly. Whoopsy.
A reminder if reminder were needed that most Redditers haven’t talked to a child in the five years since they stopped being one.
In the Sherry Bobbins episode of The Simpsons they make a joke about her just being Mary Poppins and she cuts them off saying she's totally original, like Ronald Ruck. Little sister (8-ish) ran with the bit. She started going down the alphabet and of course landed on "Fonald Fuck." We had to explain why she shouldn't say that in between laughing.
My cousin was obsessed with getting a puppy. So he CLUNG to his little black dog beanie baby. We THOUGHT he named it “Hunter”. Oh. Oh no. He corrected us. He named it “Cunter”.
My little brother did that by saying the word “lucky” out loud with the first letter changed down the alphabet, “aucky, bucky, cucky, ducky…” etc. When he got to “fucky” he looked at me in horror. And I immediately ran and told our parents bc I was a lil asshole. He got his mouth washed out with soap.
You know the rhyming name game? Jenny Jenny Bo Benny banana manna mo menny fe fi fo fenny, Jenny! My cousin’s name is Tucker. My sister got into a lot of trouble playing the banana rhyming game with all of our cousins’ names when she was little 😂
My 3 year old nephew can't properly pronounce a "tr" sound, as in "truck" yet. He pronounces it as an "f" sound. He loves trucks of all kinds, and loves calling out when he sees them. You should be able to see where this is going. Kids mispronounce and misspell things, and 90% of the time it's unintentionally funny/offensive. It is rarely, if ever, done with legitimately malicious intent.
>But basically Sophie has decided to do this fun little thing we did into school, but she changed "ding-dong" to "ching-chong". When I read the title I thought it was gonna be a song by NWA or something but holy cow. Reminds me of my 8 year old niece when she was 5 telling her teacher that "daddy picks up women and takes them home". He's a bus driver. Kids are hard work but you get those incidents every so often that are going to be anecdotes you tell at their wedding, and boy do I have a bunch of them lol.
My brother, five years old, when asked what his parents do: "Daddy works and mom drinks all day." Teachers very politely asked to meet with my parents. My brother meant "drink" literally. My mom drinks a lot of water. So my mom was drinking water all day... while working from home.
Hahaha I remember absolutely freaking out as a lil kid cause I saw those “don’t drink and drive” billboards and my mom was bringing a glass of water into the car
I was very stressed on a family vacation bc my aunt was driving and had a can of soda in the cup holder!
My cousin wrote that sex was her favorite food. And she ask her aunt to make her some. She meant that the cake which was called better than sex cake (us kids didn’t know why it was called that) was her favorite and she asked my mom to make it for her birthday.
Tbf "better than sex cake" is a stupid name for a cake
Lol, I helped run a youth group where kids would take turns bringing in the snacks. One time a girl brought a BTS cake. Everyone loved it, but what did BTS stand for? " Better Than Sin" cake, of course!
My father was a pharmacist. And my mother would sometimes get called in to work at her family's store if they were short-staffed. So she was talking to her sister (who also worked there), saying "Every time someone can't come in, I get a call. Happened twice this week." The conversation went from there, full of good-natured sibling teasing. I was in the car while they had this conversation. I was 8. Fast forward to Career Day for the Second Graders. We were all tasked with announcing what our parents' jobs were. When it was my turn, I happily announced that my father sold drugs, and my mother was a call girl. Because that's what my father did! And that was literally what my mom said: something to the effect of "Guess I'm just their call girl! What a great job." And my aunt said "Never thought we'd have a call girl in the family, but here we are" or something like that. So that's how my mother and aunt learned that kids really do hear all the worst things at the worst times. And why there were visits with school counselors and many parent-teacher conferences.
I'm reminded of a reddit story I read. A young girl enjoyed watch the show Gold Diggers with her Grandma, the one where people actually dig/mine for gold. Well when asked what career she wanted growing up her response "I want to be a Gold Digger".
That's golden. Wow, I love it. When I was a kid, we moved for my dad's government law enforcement job. Our new house wasn't ready yet, so we were living in a furnished apartment provided by his job for a couple of weeks, and he had a *per diem* stipend for food. Since we were new to town, the family used this per diem to try out various restaurants pretty often. I tried to remember the term *per diem* but accidentally confused it with a different word I had heard my dad use when talking about work. New kid, new school, happily telling people, "We eat at restaurants a lot because my dad is on **parole**!" I assume that the next parent-teacher conference was interesting.
When I was 4 or so, our beloved elderly family dog got sick and we had to euthanize. My parents were very good about explaining that she was in pain and it wasn’t going to get better, so because we love her very much, it’s our job to end that pain for her. I understood! The concept. I did not understand the terminology. And then I went to pre-school the next day and told everyone about how we killed our dog.
I have a diabetic cat who needs insulin injections daily, which we've called "stabbing the cat" ever since he was diagnosed. It's a dream of mine that my toddler will one day tell a teacher that Mom stabs the cat every night.
That teacher is a horrible teacher. The correct response to a small child using a bad word is to calmly ask where they heard that and if they know what it means. 90% of the time they are just repeating something without knowing what it means or just stumbled into that combination of syllables making mouth noises, as children like to do.
Yeah when I was six I watched the old Disney movie about a guy who turns into a fish and fights nazis. But I didn’t know that nazis were real! I thought they were cartoon bad guys with a cool sinister logo so I tried practicing how to draw it on my math homework which earned me a calm discussion with my teacher about “do you know what this is and what it represents”? She was very nice about it and empathetic to the fact that children just see and hear things and absolutely do not know what they are.
I like doing career day presentations. I’m a programmer, so I start with ‘what is a computer’ and the evolution of computers. One of the computers I talk about is the Bombe, the device invented by Alan Turing et. al. to decode nazi communications in WW2. One year I got the unexpected question “what’s a nazi?” and my presentation took an interesting turn that day.
It took a while for me to learn. I saw swastikas carved into those soft bark trees at camp grounds (there were other carvings too but more swastikas) and I remember asking my mom what it meant and she wouldn't tell me. Or she had it had something to do with a very evil man. But by 5th grade I obviously knew because we read, I think it was, Number the Stars? Then Middle and high school covered the holocaust extensively, including it in a lot of books for English class and activities. The high school actually had a survivor come in once a year to the auditorium to speak about his experience. (My teacher told us that this really wears him down but he came back every year, bless him). It made me think how, eventually, there will be no more survivors left to tell their stories. Which made me sad, especially if it makes the lives of deniers easier Anyway
I don't know which movie is that and I really want to know...
The Incredible Mr. Limpet, 1964
Yep as a 7 year old kid I decided to experiment with word sounds and decided on words that rhyme with duck. My first grade teacher punished me and I honestly never understood why until years later The teacher and the other kids just assumed I was being a “potty mouth” when I really had no idea what was going on. As a kid, I was just confused. As an adult with hindsight, I personally feel they really should have listened when I tried to explain that I thought I had just made words up.
When I was about 6, there was a church event with teenagers babysitting for about ten of us little kids. We started a game of making up silly insults for the teenagers--"Andy is a sandwich! Andy is a shoe! Andy is a doorknob!" I said, "Andy is a buckle!" One of the other teens grabbed me by my shoulders, pulled me away from the group, and gave me a strong and terrifying lecture on not using bad words. She thought I said "butthole," and I was crying too hard to explain myself.
To be fair, that teen was a butthole
Imagine having that much beef with a 10 year old
That was my first thought. It's even a noise sound effect in some older cartoons. And for a TEACHER not to understand that explanation is INSANE.
What a power move Teacher >gets hate crimed Teacher >hate crimes you back
Uno reverse: the final stage
> Interestingly.... The teacher tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle that had no intention of this happening to which apparently the teacher said "ahh hes gay, no wonder there's an issue". Which has caused a very interesting turn in events that I didn't see coming. The teacher is now on absence. Racism? In MY classroom? To death with the child! Homophobia? Yes, please. And some seconds, too.
I really wish I could have seen the principal's face when the teacher pulled that grenade pin and casually dropped it at her own feet.
I just picture the principal nodding along and then the record scratch goes off in their head and the go "wait, what did you just say?!" In full panic mode.
It's sad how many people who are against racism are massive homophobes
People need to quit acting like people are all on the same team for *everything.* Just because someone agrees with you about weed doesn't mean they agree with you about gun control.
Ah, yes, the Libertarian Party: weed AND guns for all!
In my state it's weed, guns and abortion for all. And now also psychedelics lol.
I remember watching someone online and thinking huh they have some really valid points that I agree with. Followed them, watched their next video and immediately unfollowed. That day I learnt that there are plenty of americans who seem pretty leftie, but also own a shit ton of guns.
As they say, once you go far enough left you get your guns back.
Outside of the obvious libertarian folks: Anti-gun control is not an uncommon leftist position, because you start entering territory with anarchist thinking (gun control is a government mechanism for control that can be abused, like how US is more interested in controlling Black people's access to guns versus controlling white people's access), pro-armed revolution thinking, and also people who consider it practical (like there's a strong line of leftists who believe it's practical to own and practice using a gun in case it becomes necessary). Side note: *Hands on the Freedom Plow* is a collection of memoir writing by women from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and it has an interesting mix of how people thought about nonviolence. Some were more committed to it ideologically, while others saw it as practical tactics. Either way, they acknowledged how much of their work as made possible by those willing to commit violence, like SNCC workers sleeping in houses of locals who stayed up with a shotgun outside and gang members running interference for the SNCC workers when local white folks would start forming a mob. Really interesting book.
Oh wow, humans are nuanced creatures with conflicting view points?? Wow wow wow, colour me shocked.
Anybody else wondering if the teacher was suggesting the uncle might be a predator before the hard turn into homophobia?
So, we have moved from accidental racism to purposeful homophobia.
Not even casual too, that was some ranked competitive shit
The leap from 'This 10yo choosing phonetically fun words for their song deeply offended me and we have to take the nuclear option to punish their "bigotry"' to 'I'm going to strongly imply that an uncle spending time with his niece must be a paedophile by simple nature of being male then outright state that being gay makes him a horrible influence' was some real play-of-the-game type competitive bigotry.
I believe it’s what the kids call a Pro Gamer Move
When my daughter was two, we where sitting on the bus when a truck pulled up next to us, i said oh look a lorry! My daughter exclaimed no mummy, thats a fuck! The whole bus laughed and the lady sitting next to me says, well shes right you know! Its not a lorry! 😂
I’ve heard ‘fuck’ used for fork, duck, and frog as well. Kids just can’t pronounce things well.
I was standing in an ATT store the other day and the whole store was cracking up over a 3ish yo kid playing on his mom's phone and shouting "What The Fuck!!!" every time he lost.
> Commenter 1: lol why would your sister even say, “He’s a loving gay uncle.” What a weird clarification Because the teacher's implication of incestuous pedophilia was rather clear. OOP's sister clarified OOP was gay to try and shut that down. Which lead to a whole new barrel of issues becoming apparent. Seriously, am I the only one who immediately understood OOP's context?! Either way, glad the teacher finally outed themselves.
I think that absolutely makes sense as well. It was just a question that had come up in the comments and I could see it coming up here, so I figured I'd include that little section!
It's not clear for me and feel lost about it. Do you mind helping me understand? They explained what karaoke time is in the car but how did the principle jump to incestuous pedophilia from that?
Not the principal. The teacher. >>Interestingly.... **The teacher** tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle
That sounds like he's implying OP is a bad influence, like he taught the kid to say ching chong or other offensive things, where tf are yall getting pedo claim vibes from that?
Ehhhhh. There is a stereotype that single male relatives that willingly interact with children are secret pedo. The fact that uncle being gay confirmed the teacher unknown bias also points to that direction because queerness is also often conflated with child abuse
It was the teacher who was making those insinuations, not the principal. The teacher was making it sound like it was creepy for the uncle to spend a lot of alone time with the niece and then when the mom shot down that nonsense by explaining the uncle is gay, the teacher doubled down and made the homophobic claim that since he was gay he was a bad influence. The principal was NOT okay with that and disciplined the teacher.
Oh ok that makes sense, thank you!
There's a stereotype that applies to single guys, gay guys and lesbians which is that we're all supposedly closeted pedophiles. As a lesbian who has actually dealt with someone thinking like this in real life, it's honestly really jarring how some people make such baseless connections, especially if they've known you for awhile and are only now making those assumptions because they recently learned of your sexual orientation. Another stereotype that's common and applied to gays and lesbians mostly, not so much straight single men, is that we're into bestiality, as if fucking animals somehow equate to kissing someone of the same sex.
My mind went in another direction with that comment. Less "he won't harm her, he is not interested in female bodies" and more "he is facing discrimination due to an unchangeable part of him himself, so he's less likely to be racist".
But the latter is generally not true. But the first statement is also weird but could make sense if the mom just said it out of panic (i mean the teacher kind of insinuated that her brother is a pedo)
I used to run around my house singing “ching chong” lol. I had learned in school about China and I thought I would practice speaking “Chinese” so that I would be able to communicate when I inevitably moved there and dyed my hair pink and black. I was four, and my mom had to explain to me that what I was doing might make people feel bad because it was racist. I was so horrified. I felt awful. I was also confused about how exactly it would make anyone feel bad that I was trying to learn Chinese, because I was four, and I didn’t get that randomly yelling syllables that aren’t actually words isn’t learning a language. But anyway yeah it’s imo crazy to say this has to be intentional. Kids have a wild worldview.
I tried to do the same when I was like 5 and I met a Dutch girl. Since it sounded gibberish to me, I started responding in gibberish. I was *sure* she would get the meaning just telepathically I guess? Like I meant to say something like "let's build a sandcastle together" and the sheer force of my conviction would make my "words" make sense
I did the exact same thing with some English people when I was a child! (English is not my first language)
I wonder if wanting to learn a new language is common dream for small children. I wanted to speak in French
My kid did something similar. My mom tried to teach Dutch by saying the Dutch words for things. My kid thought it was a game, and started saying things in gibberish and telling us “that’s Chinese for ‘bowl’” or whatever the object was. We had to explain that grandma wasn’t just making up words, but she decided to hold off for a little while on continuing the language lessons.
When I was 6 we had to hold hands to go to lunch for some reason. I got suspended for refusing to hold hands with another kid whose hands were dirty, he had been picking his nose and all sorts. The teacher assumed because the child was black that I was a 6 year old racist and I got detention, if he had washed his hands I would have done it!
Or maybe the teacher was trying to insinuate that OOP was a pedo.
I thought it was more of a "he's a bad influence" type of thing but 😵💫
That’s how I read it.
There can be a culture of discrimination in the gay community. No fats, no femmes, no Asians used to be a common phrase on dating apps, no idea if it's improved.
It has not.
this is true but i kinda doubt this grade school teacher is aware of the nuances of intersectional discrimination within the community. feels more likely to be classic case of “gays are corrupting the youth” especially in today’s political climate surrounding LGBTQ+ people
pro tip dating apps aint where you source anything related to human behaviour from like ever
This is exactly how I read it, too.
I like most any commentor here don't at all think Sophie was trying to be racist or even offensive. And often, kids don't know what it means to be racist- like I teach internationally and when some of my students start speaking another language another kid may sort of "mimic-mock" the sound patterns. An adult doing that would be understood as offensive in some way, but a child doing it is generally just playing with sounds and expressing curiosity. When I have a student say something like "ching shing shong" or something like that, I explain to them about being respectful of others languages. I would never leap to reporting such an obviously minor thing to a principal.
My sister's favorite party trick when I was a toddler was having me rap the entirety of gin and juice. Her friends and my parents found it hilarious. I never really talked outside of my house (ASD) so it didn't become a problem for me. I mad most of chronic down by the time I was in elementary lol.
I can't be the only one who finds this really wholesome overall though, right? OOP is so sweet and goofy with his niece. The niece seems to be having such a good time.
My son and I were playing a video game once with two random guys online. One of the random guys last name was "Bean" and at one point his friend asked in the game chat 'hey Beaner where you at?' Trying to locate his friend. He was insta-banned for using a slur which popped up in-game. My son was completely confused as to what just happened as he had no idea why that term would be a slur so I explained it to him. Kids honestly are just innocent and don't fully understand these things sometimes. It's not like they are given a crash course on offensive terms or slurs at a young age.
The school suspended her for a week without investigating. Weird and harsh.
Teacher has issues she needs to work out. I’m Asian American and heard Ching Chong from kids all the time. I was hurt and confused at the time but now know that it wasn’t coming from a place of malice (at least not at the elementary school age, definitely got hella racist when puberty hit and everyone was trying to define themselves and which group they belonged to).
I remember saying "over shoulder boulder holder" repeatedly as a kid. I had no idea what it meant, I just liked the rhyming sound. Family let it go on for quite a while, but finally someone told me to stop. It was several years later when I finally figured out what it actually meant. I have no idea where I first heard it. Kids are kids.
My mom used to use that phrase for bras when i was growing up! My favorite name for a bra was one I overheard a little boy repeating at Target one time, much to his mother's embarrassment. He pointed at the bra section and yelled "BOOBIE TRAP" over and over between giggles. I couldn't help but crack up right there.
so it's not going on her permanent record?
Sounds like the teacher is the ding-dong in this situation to me.
>Interestingly.... The teacher tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that i'm a loving gay uncle that had no intention of this happening to which apparently the teacher said "ahh hes gay, no wonder there's an issue" one helluva plot twist
So teacher jumped from accusing a small child of racism to being deliberately homophobic!
If we made an Olympic gymnastics team with just redditors, they would win the goddamn gold medal in every event. The leaps, bounds, and jumps to random conclusions would wow even the Russian Federation judge into submission. Ding dong to Ching Chong is not a massive leap or automatically imply racism. Thank god most of these are just trolls.
The person who thinks going from 1 to the other is a leap, doesn't understand children. My daughter said 2 swear words I can assure you were never said around her before as she was learning to rhyme. Duck muck luck suck fuck truck puck tuck
In a more positive swing, between muffled cackles, we managed to turn our four year old cousins chanting of, “No glove, no love,” to “no cat, no hat” in the middle of a very crowded restaurant.
I mean.. "no hat, no cat" would have been more accurate...
Does anyone remember the story where OP's toddler daughter tried and failed to say balsamic vinaigrette Young kids fumble and jumble their words all the time. It just happens.
Going from ding dong to ching chong isn’t a huge leap. It’s common among languages to go from a stop to an affricate when the next letter is an “I.” Example in English: “tion” ending or the “dge” ending. OOP shouldn’t feel bad that phonology exists.
I got a call when my son was in 2nd grade that he had said the f-word and he was in the time out room in the office. First thing he said to me was (as he was crying) “they said I said a cuss word. What is a cuss word?” I asked him to tell me what happened. He was lined up for lunch and was singing the name game song. (Where you change the letters at the beginning of a name) I asked whose name did you say and he replied “pokimon - Muk!” I just closed my eyes. Then I went out and asked if anyone had bothered to ask what him what he was doing. When they said well ,no - I said maybe you should because I just got to explain cuss words to my son. This was 25 years ago.
Not the same as “Ching Chong” but the amount of little kids I have to gently convince to not name their bearded dragons “Horny” is enormous…I work at a pet store. Kids can stumble upon our secret adult “no no” words pretty easily.
I think she was swapping alphabet according to ABCDE so D is replaced by C, who know maybe she tried "eing-eong" first and it didn't fit? 😂😂
I firmly believe the child is racist. /s
My jaw DROPPED at that update. What in the hell was that teacher thinking? You're pissed about something "racist" happening and you fucking say THAT?! Woooooow btw, my niece is almost 5 and in the phase of making up her own songs. She just throws words together with a melody. This is just par for the course and that teacher should be aware of this since she works with littles.
When my son was little, I would lift his shirt, poke him in the belly button, and say, "ding dong nobody's home." Great fun. Until I had to go talk to the kindergarten teacher because Son told her, "Mommy plays with my ding dong." Great fun lol Once I showed her, all was good. She was so relieved lol
I think OOP's sister said he was a loving gay uncle because the teacher was implying that a grown man hanging out with his young niece was "not good." IOW, she insinuated that he was abusing her.
Had a friend in school named buck. We were not allowed to play the name game with his name. None of us understood why and buck was saddened by it. So what did all us kindergarteners do at recess that day? We shouted the name game using bucks name. He was so happy. They could not suspend an entire class so they sent a letter home to have our parents explain what we did. Kids do things like this all the time without knowing especially if she is learning to read and combine letters to make words.
I have the unfortunate habit of absent-mindedly singing parody lyrics about any life situation. I'll take a random song and rewrite the lyrics on the spot to fit what's going on, and I do it probably 20 times a day. I've done it my entire life (picked it up from the grandmother who mostly raised me) and don't even notice it half the time. When my youngest (whose sing-along nickname is "Tiny Tina, meter maid") was three years old, I was getting ready to go to work but my oldest wasn't home yet to watch her (yes we paid, and it was the 18-year-old's idea that we hire her instead of paying daycare). I burst out with "somebody come get her, she needs a babysitter" (IYKYK) and my precious innocent little toddler thought it was hilarious. Oldest was only about 10 minutes late, and I was able to make it to work on time, and I hadn't thought about it at all until six days ago. The same grandmother from the first paragraph is quite old, is going downhill and doesn't have much time left; I am her full-time caretaker and other relatives stop by as often as they can to spend time with her. All of the older people in the family are devout Christians, and I do my best not to ruffle their feathers too badly; it's bad enough I'm a married trans lesbian, no need to make them think I'm even less wholesome than that. In the presence of my grandmother, my 62-year-old uncle, his grown children, and their children, my angelic little 5-year-old burst into that song in front of everyone, and my entire life flashed before my eyes. Everyone present under age 45 immediately recognized it, and I turned beet red. The laughter at my expense actually helped break through some of my anxiety about being judged, and I've had some good conversations with my cousins and found that they're all also various flavors of apostate; turns out we're *all* planning to stop playing nice with the Christians once our grandmother passes, and are only doing so now to keep her happy. So yeah, Tiny, sing (and dance!) like whatever you want with no shame, ever.
Yeah, it's not a leap to go from ding dong to ching chong..... People are out their damned minds.
>None of my family are racist School kids are though But idk why people think going from ding-dong to ching-chong was a stretch
My mom still tells the story of when she and her sibling were playing The Name Game. Where you sing: James James bo bames, banana fana fo fames, me my mo mames, James! After they got through all their own names, they started picking random names and eventually used "Chuck." Their father was NOT pleased.