I keep having flash-backs to this conversation I had with my youngest child. This morning I blurted my drink accross a crowded cafe when I burst out laughing because.....

I was having a conversation with one of my friends about when our children were babies and the things we remembered most about them, the one thing that came to mind about my youngest child was that he cried an awful lot when he was a tiny baby.

Later that day after my friend had left my youngest came over and held my hand looked deeply into my eyes and said....

"The reason I used to cry when I was a baby, mummy, was because I didn't know you very well and I thought you were going to kill me"


am still laughing

Melanie,

I have to ask ... why is that funny to you? How could it have been that your child felt he/she didn't know you very well and thought you were going to kill him/her? How is that you cannot realize now that your own behavior had something to do with how your child felt? How is it that even now you are not sensitive to how you child felt and thing it funny that he/she spent SO much time crying? Even now you laugh at the hurt you caused your little one.

You should be so much more than ashamed of yourself.

Venus

Dear Venus
you are asking Melanie a series of questions followed by judgments and assumptions from YOUR perspective of how you see the situation from limited information.
Maybe it would be more helpful if you wish to find out her answers, to presume innocence rather than guilt and make your suggestions neutral?
Then after her reply you can make your judgments and vocalize them if you believe that helps?

Regards
Peter

Hang on a sec' Peter, with respect just let the post breeeeathe a little.

It's the subjective opinions that , in my subjective opinion, make this forum such a varied and dynamic place to share....and learn.

...and you made an implicit judgment about Venus' judgment too didn't you?

May I suggest a better question - seeing as how it can be helpful to 'do' NLP rather than just 'write' about IT?

Venus, HOW do you do 'angry indignation'?

JL

p.s. Peter, what comes to mind when you read Melanies initial post?

p.p.s With two young children myself, I gotta say I felt sad when I read your post Melanie...what sprang to my mind was - if that was my child - WHAT could I do to help give my child empowering associations when they think back to that time...

p.p.p.s ...then I thought - hmmm maybe Melanies child is 18 years old now and was just having a laugh with his Mum and the joke didn't translate to the forum.

Let's take a moment to remember Mel is a real person and her daughter is a real person, and there's bound to be a lot more to this story than the few words that appear on our screens.

Asking questions might be better than guessing the blanks.

I have to agree with Chris on this one!

Have to? Acccording to whom I have to agrre with him? What makes me? How would it be if I didn't? Hmmmm... oh well anyway I still agree with Chris on this one!

Hm... what came to my mind when I read Melanie's post was something like, "Oh, wouldn't be nice to find some other kids say jokes and post here". Because children do say darndest things and I would never make an immediate assumption that something sinister is going on.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the original post to suggest to me any parenting faults on the part of Melanie.

James, I wonder if your children ever said anything that could be interpreted as if you were a bad parent?

My girlfriend's daughter when she was about 3 had a strange habit when in a restaurant to go from table to table and steal a french fry or two when she had a chance. Very embarasing. Of course, some overzealous child advocates would jump to a conclusion that the child wasn't properly fed. And that would be very untrue.

The truth is we can only have tentative theories about what goes through people's minds when they do what they do. It's especially true with young children who don't verbalize as much as adults do.

So how can we know what went through Melanie's son mind when he said what he said? Melanie was there, she has a benefit of really knowing her son and she had an opportunity to observe his verbal/nonverbal behaviour.
So, unless there is evidence that Melanie is a child abuser in denial, I feel that we can take her word for it to be a joke and maybe share some of our own?

I read Mel's post and laughed loads.

My context is:

• that I've met Mel and think she is a wonderful, kind and deeply caring person
• I have a child of my own and he sometimes says things that elicit a similar response. Sometimes he means to, sometimes he doesn't and sometimes neither of us know .

For all those reasons, my assumption of positivity remains.

Thanks for a good belly laugh Mel

Cheers

Carl

Alex, sure my kids have said stuff that could be construed as me being a bad parent.
I was NOT judging Mel's original post!

In a postscript I simply shared MY REACTION to it., if you're going to judge that then I'm off - or maybe I'll just post my NLP ANALYSIS of the post.

In a second postscript (if you read it) you'll see that I raise a second suspicion that Mel may even be joking.

My original sentence was to intimate that we SHOULD NOT pass judgment and that the post should BREEEEATHE...ie. lets see what else happens shall we.

Long day...

J.

Ah the joys of comunicating over the Net. Now, that's a topic for NLP discussion, isn't it?

James
I was not passing judgment on Venus post. I was suggesting another way for her to look at it. I did not tell her how she had to look at it I used the word 'maybe'.
Ironically you were the one who is apparently judging my supposed reaction?
Venus gave ample evidence of things to Meta, I only suggested that she might re-think her generalization.
I know Mel and had to laugh at the post.
By the way , how long does breeeeeeeathing require before we question further?
The next post would have to have gone one way or the other, it was pretty black and white from that standpoint in time! Either ignore Venus post or challenge it.
I personally do not judge people, for the reason that I do not like to be judged myself.
And if we are going to get really deep into this while I'm at it, who is there to judge anyway? That's from my map.

Always happy to go first - Y'see, what I did was deeply hallucinate what it would be like for ME if Melanies story were NOT a joke and it had happened to ME. That's what made me sad.

Very soon after that I began to remember all the times that my kids have said funny things like Melanies daughter said, and it made me laugh...so then I wondered whether it WAS in fact, a joke.

I've since had a message that affirmed ONE of the above....but I'm keeping Mum teehee!

"Daddy...?"

"Yes darling"

"....don't want a Daddy"

"Really? Why not"

"Just want a Mummy"


Oedipus Scmedipus...what does it matter so long as he loved his Mother!

J ;-)

OMG!

I've got another one

When my daughter was three we had been reading about the different names given to male and female animals, her elder brother decided to test her to see if he could catch her out so he asked her
"What is a male cow called?"
"A bull" she replied proudly
"What about a male sheep then?" he asked
"A ram" she smiled
"OK what about a male cat"
"It's a Tom" she said
I could see my son really concentrating and a smile suddenly lit up his face
"Right then!" he said "How about dogs"
I could see my little girl puzzling and then
She said "The female is a Bitch" big smirk "And the Male is a Bastard!"

I sent that one to Readers Digest but they didn't print it

LOL!!!!!

Love and Marriage:

• "If falling in love is anything like learning how to spell, I don't want to do it. It takes too long." -- Glenn, age 7
• "Love is like an avalanche where you have to run for your life." -- John, age 9
• "I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn't supposed to be so painful." -- Manuel, age 8

more is here:
Things People Said: Kids' Ideas About Love

I'm in the "kids say the funniest things" club.

I once explained to my 6 year old daughter (who dislikes currants) that her grandma used to make my favourite pudding of spotted dick. The day arrived when we visited grandma and my daughter was in a great state of pudding anticipation. After eating it, grandma asked if she liked it - "yes" came the reply "but next time can I just have dick"

Isn't it funny.......how something that was meant to be funny ........and which I thought was funny........ got a lot of funny responses.....that weren't meant to be funny .......but were in a funny kind of way ? We'll probably all tell this tale tonight.about ten past midnight.....just after auld lang syne..... Party Animals the lot of us ! LOL !

When I read Melanie's first post in this thread, I giggled, because I experience so many of these outrageous, precocious blurtings from my own kids, it hit my funny bone.

It is my guess that those of you without kids -- could easily have over-reacted to the potential morbid aspects of Melanie's youngest's response.

But there are certain things you may also not be aware of.

(1) At young ages, kids don't have the same associations or understandings of "death" or "killing" that we as adults do. The younger they are, the less complex an understanding there is. Typically they have a rudimentary understanding of death as "here" vs "not here." And many times they don't have a real understanding of the permanency of death. Or perhaps they understand some aspects of death because of pets who've died, or bugs, or watching animal shows where one animal has killed in order to eat, etc. The point is, our understanding is not theirs. Our maps are not theirs. They are in active map-building mode -- most adults are not, anymore (we NLPers have to remind ourselves to start re-building our maps more actively as adults!).

Sometimes these bizarre utterances are their attempt to integrate things they've heard or seen elsewhere.

(2) Take the last point further. Sometimes comments like this are a form of rationalization of old behaviors, over which they don't have the least actual inclination as to why they were doing something when they were younger. They're just trying to make sense of it today, given perhaps what they saw in a movie or a TV show last night or last week, etc.

Some other examples:

The other day, my 8 year old looked at me indirectly through my minivan's passenger side mirror (the one with the usual printed words at the bottom), and said, "I believe I'm closer to you than I appear."

On another occasion, while I was driving my kids home from school, my 4 year old blurted out "Come to think of it, I don't think I'm in the mood for Chinese Food tonight." (a verbatim quote from my 4 year old - I typed it exactly as she said it).

My 8 year old is suddenly, really getting, ambiguities. It happened this year. I had to explain a lot more in prior years; I've been testing for it for ages. A couple of days ago, my 8 year old was playing with a very small penguin toy. The nose had apparently broken off, but there were still two tiny black eyes on it. She announced to me "The nose broke off the penguin, Daddy." I responded, "Well, you're going to have to make sure to keep an eye on it from now on." She went into trance momentarily, and then launched into laughter for several minutes, repeating the phrase and then explaining both meanings to me repeatedly!

Fun stuff. Now we have a whole new level of communication on which to connect!

As I recall, Piaget had something to say about it developmentally; apparently at the age of 8 & 9, kids are reaching the end of their myelinization process (might continue until 11, the exact age escapes my recollection at the moment). But myelinization is one aspect of the ability to retain longer-term memory. The ability to hold and maintain conflicting positions concurrently is also a new skill that develops around this timeframe, which is of course at the root of ambiguity.

It is also the reason why children around this age diminish the occasions when they yell "I hate you!" to their parents when they experience anger. Very young children have difficulty making clear sense of experiencing love and anger at the same time; so generally speaking, they understand their emotions as -- loving their parents when they're happy, and hating their parents when they're angry or feeling deprived of what they want.

I'm really going to LOVE teaching my kids about logical levels; I think it will help them make sense of when they can concurrently experience love for a PARENT, and anger or disappointment with a parent's BEHAVIOR or CHOICES that they might not agree with.

I have laid the groundwork for this in the past when I haven't been happy with their behavior(s), by always saying "I love you deeply, [name], AND, I'm not happy with [x behavior]. I may feel angry about [x behavior] -- but it doesn't mean I don't love you because I do. So let's give you a choice. If you want more of your usual privileges, then it's time to do more of [y behavior]." Then they're more likely to understand and own the implications of their own behaviors. If they choose to act that way, then they get no dessert, or, get less movie or tv privileges.

They may not have consciously understood the distinction I was making with these phrasings, but I'm reasonably confident they have never felt unloved by me due to any inadvertent & stupidly-phrased utterances like "Ohhh, I'm so ANGRY with YOU!" And of course, with some children, anger at a given moment about a person (rather than a behavior) may very well translate to hate (at that time).

Regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld

When my eldest son was about three he was fascinated by the workings of the body.
wondering if perhaps he had the makings of a doctor or great surgeon we encouraged him with the Usborne 'Body book'. The one that explains how the body works in mechanical cartoon type pictures. The last page explained sex and reproduction. (Strangely the same book next door owned by two little girls, didn't seem to have this page) We suspected parental censorship, or maybe they kept that page in their bedroom to remind them what to do!?

One afternoon we had friends round for tea and were talking about an aquaintance who was about to get married. My son was playing on the carpet with his toys, when he suddenly declared in a loud voice, "Well I'm not getting married if it means I've got to stick my tinkle up some ladies' bottom!"

He's 27 this month, must remind him of this on his birthday!!

Yes I know I look too young to have a child that age, you should see the picture in the attic!

Keep em coming.

Nigel

Just wanted to step in and hand everyone a pinch of salt to take whilst reading the original post.

Cheers,

Mark