Kids say the darndest things

call for yelp

Me [trying to get a string of vegetable matter out from between my back teeth at the table]: Sorry, this is disgusting, sorry!
7yo: No, no.... It's beautiful!

lol

"Sometimes people who are good looking on the outside are bad inside. Like Elon Musk. He is very handsome but he is like Lex Luthor."

Me: "Elon Musk isn't handsome."

"Yes he is. His hair. His body."

Hahahaha

Opal is back in Queens after 5 months with her grandparents. Very much looking forward to scooter riding with her best friends Peter and Luke. Before leaving to meet them she says "I can't wait to go scooter riding with peter and luke. I'm going to beat up on them."

Nicole and I look at each other incredulously. She meant "beat them", which, even that, is pretty silly because there's no way she's as fast as them as she came late to scootering, but "beat up on them" is a whole other connotation.

Me & Wife: [give extensive, emotional, impassioned description of her birth and its associated traumas to our 7yo daughter]
7yo: so what does ATM stand for, anyway?

My son announced that he's going to start calling me "Dad" (instead of "Daddy") when he turns 8. Rough stuff... :(

Aw

:(

It’s ok—he’ll probably still be asking to me sit on his bed while he falls asleep until he’s 18.

the search for personal dignity and independence starts with jettisoning 'mommy and daddy' for 'mom and dad'

Last week our 9yo took a strong stance on abortion. “It’s just a bunch of cells. It’s the woman’s body!” We definitely never had a conversation about this with her. How do even you make a facepalm (how does she know about this without us being involved?) a shrug (well that could’ve been a lot worse) and a surprised grin (correct, kiddo!) all at once?

As best we can tell she’s been using her tablet to do a lot of research on puberty. Good for her and also FFS.

My 5yo stopped calling me daddy and just calls me by my first name. He also barely thinks of me as a parent.

Opals new thing, when I say “did you forget” something, like this morning when she left the sink running after the bathroom, she says “I didn’t forget…I just didn’t remember”.

This morning, my daughter turned to me and said the following, slowly & deliberately, with a half-smile like she was redpilling my a$$ with a juicy truth bomb:

"Daddy... do you know who likes carrots?"

Who?

"Rabbits."

(it's not much on the page, but I thought it was adorable, fsr)

“What’s a VCR?”

For better or worse, my son is now set up with Google Hangouts on the computer he uses for school; so he now pings me throughout the day from the other room (whenever school's not in session) -- with lots of exclamation points, digital "stickers," little drawings he makes on Sketchpad, etc. If I don't respond immediately, he keeps pinging me. Here is a recent exchange:

HIM:
[photo of himself waving]

[sticker of a fist striking]

dad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not a fist bump
a punch!!for you not responding

ME:
LOL

HIM:
[sketch of a frowning cartoon character w/steam rising from head]

to many people say "LOL" these days

too many people say "LOL". Not enough parents send stickers.

Kid keeps coming home from grade 1 with most of his lunch uneaten, so my partner sits down at the table with him this afternoon while he’s finishing said lunch:
E: What can I put in your lunch so you’ll eat it?
Kid: You don’t want to know.
E: No, I really want to know, that’s why I’m asking!
Kid: You won’t like it.
E: Well, let’s talk about it.
Kid: Bread. I want a lot of bread.

Me too, my child, me too.

"I want a lot of bread" ... lol that's great

haha otm

Lately, my 4 year old daughter's often picking flowers outside and giving them to my wife.

So the other day she says "Since I'm the one that gives her flowers, I should be the one sleeping with Mommy"

my 5-year old son, shaking his head, after losing a mini game in Mario Party because he immediately walked off a cliff: "I just don't know how this happened"

lolling at all the good ones from today!

Opal, 3.5 yrs. after hearing a parent say something was occupied “that’s when there’s more than one octopus”.

massive lols at that

omg occupied octopi! Hahaa

ahhh that is the best

A few cute things from today:

* * *

Son: "Why do they give butterflies more respect than moths?"

* * *

Daughter: "UGHHH! This is so INTERESTING!"

Her mom: You mean 'frustrating'?

Daughter "...FRUSTRATING!!"

* * *

She's also been "spelling out" the names of things she wants (like her older brother does, to soften the blow when he suspects we'll say 'no'); but because she doesn't know how to spell, it's just meaningless strings of letters:

"I want a: Z... Y... L... N... A... W... X...."

my two-year-old daughter is obsessed with skeletons and spooky things in general at the moment, so i showed her a picture of king diamond at dinner and she was immediately entranced

i played her the first track on DON’T BREAK THE OATH and when king diamond started singing she exclaimed ‘it’s a girl skeleton!’

she proceeded to finish the last mouthfuls of her toast and beans, which she was refusing, after i told her king diamond would want her to eat up

then she asked me if king diamond was my best friend and if he had magic fingers

then she rechristened mercyful fate as ‘magical feet’

finally she wanted to know if they make stuffed kings diamond because she wanted to cuddle him

Super sweet!

Hah that’s hilarious

Opal met our 7mo pregnant friend and asked “does your baby like to watch Arthur and Esme and Roy?” (Her current favorite shows).

Getting really into knock knock jokes.

Opal- knock knock

Me- who’s there?

Opal- life.

Me- life who?

Opal- life that goes on.

Then I said that’s great I have to share that and she said “share that with the joke department.”

oh man we had an intense week or so of knock knock jokes like a month ago, he absolutely did not 'get' the whole concept other than the setup so it was endless knock knock / who's there? / total non sequiter exchanges

yeah, she mostly was doing stuff like "knock knock, who's there, snap peas, snap peas who, snap peas that I'm eating"

Knock-knock jokes don't really make sense anyway. It's no wonder that kids haven't mastered the form.

When you think about it, the hypothetical scenario of a knock-knock joke is dated at best and absurd at worst.

Someone (someone you are not expecting) knocks on your door and you don't know who it is. There is no peephole or window to look out. You can't open the door slightly to check. So you rely on a verbal exchange. The verbal exchange starts with a first name, but you don't know who it is until you've determined their last name. What the fuck? In what universe is that even happening?

Doorbells, doors with windows in them, peepholes, and buzzers have all existed since way before any current people were born. And nowadays no one just drops by unexpected - surely there would have been a text at least, if not a thorough discussion of who was coming, when and why. And if someone shows up and only provides a first name, it's not like having the last name would clinch the deal and make me open the door. Like, if she says "Shelby Smith" I will open the door but if she says "Shelby Jones" I won't?

How many Shelbys do I know, in this scenario?

Finally, they almost always hinge on a cultural reference that would MAYBE work for your parents or grandparents. But a contemporary kid would just be like "huh?"

Two jokes picked at random from a joke book I have here:

"Shelby." "Shelby who?" "Shelby Comin' Round the Mountain."

"Sam and Janet." "Sam and Janet who?" "Sam and Janet Evening..."

YEAH GRANDMA GREAT JOKE, BYE, GONNA WATCH TIKTOK NOW

that makes me think of how much i hate the amelia bedelia books. the whole thing is based on amelia taking expressions literally, but the kids don't know the expressions or what they mean either, so every two pages you have to explain the metaphorical and literal meanings of each command that amelia is misinterpreting. it takes like half an hour to get through a 20-page book and no one enjoys it

yep

The interrupting cow
The interrupting cow wh...
MOOOOOOOOO!

Never fails.

sam & janet evening is v good
also i am an old

Me and 6yo were reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and got to the part where one of the grandmothers takes too many age reversing pills and disappears

Son: Where did she go?

Me: She vanished because she hasn't been born yet.

Son: She's back in her mama's tummy. But her mama must be dead. So she will be born in a cemetery. Inside a coffin. And she will have to dig her way out of a grave with baby hands.

Son has a great future ahead as a D&D DM.

sorry but "Shelby Comin' Round the Mountain" just made me lol.

the set-up for a knock knock joke isn't to set us a-dreamin of the days when ppl pounded on peephole-free doors -- as ymp says, even when this was an irl thing it didn't work the jokescript implies. it's simply to announce EXTREMELY SILLY PUN INCOMING, and to let you calibrate your comedy timing and rhythm against the anticipation of the person who's said "hit me with it"

Opal lives Amelia Bedelia. We have a whole thing where whenever I hear a phrase like “cut the deck of cards”I say “Opal! What would Amelia Bedelia do if you have a deck of cards and you ask her to cut the deck?” And she goes “she’d actually cut the deck!”

A blunt opinion regarding St. Patrick from a seven-year-old: "He was dumb. Snakes are cool."

2yo after sitting on potty: Mummy, this actually dream, isn't it