Writing very young children

Some Lonely Scorpio

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My apologies if this isn't the right place to put this. I'm playing with ideas for a short story focusing on the main characters of my current WIP, who are now married and have a 2-year-old son. The prospect of writing such a young character realistically is intimidating, to say the least. It's so hard to write very young children (ie, 5 and under) well. And I, personally, hate it when readers are beaten over the head with how cloyingly precious the kid is. I want this character to seem three-dimensional and real as opposed to something cute to be gushed over. If plot/context helps, the protagonists are immigrating to another country and must deal with the additional challenges of parenting a toddler.
 

Atlantic12

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A toddler precious? Bwahahah! Sorry. :)
Just remember young kids are basically conservative and don't like change. A toddler who is emigrating might fight everything that is happening.
 

Some Lonely Scorpio

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Just remember young kids are basically conservative and don't like change.
I'll keep this in mind! I was originally going to have him be (mostly) cooperative but now I see this may not be the best course of action. ;)
 

CWatts

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A toddler precious? Bwahahah! Sorry. :)
Just remember young kids are basically conservative and don't like change. A toddler who is emigrating might fight everything that is happening.

This. Plus kiddo is going to be tired, which increases the meltdowns.

Whoever characterized toddlers as tiny drunk people was a genius.
 

autumnleaf

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Language skills change hugely between 2 and 3, and also vary greatly between kids of the same age. Toilet training usually takes place around that age. Disruptions to routine can often cause a kid to regress, e.g. have toilet accidents, start sucking his thumb if he's stopped doing that,
 

neandermagnon

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I went to live on another continent with a toddler in tow, and moved back to the UK with an 8 yr old and a 4.5 yr old. If you want to ask more specific questions about resettling on another continent with a toddler, please go ahead. Or any other questions about small kids in general.

Bear in mind that kids are very individual. Also I agree with you about any story where the kids "precious" or gushed over for cuteness... that is so far from the reality of toddlers I can't even...

Okay, first things first, the flight. The kid screamed through the entire take off (I'm guessing her ears hurt but she was too little to tell me), settled somewhat once we were in the air, but refused point blank to even sit in the bassinet provided by the airliner (we were in special parent + small child seats with the additional oxygen mask, small child seatbelt attachment and an bassinet) never mind sleep in it. Qatar Airways cabin staff are good with small kids and usually have baby wipes, nappies and even complimentary toys* and don't mind holding the kid for a bit while you nip to the loo (or go and take a short, sanity saving breather in any small space you can find on an aeroplane). They also, very wisely, seat all the people with small kids in a special small kids section at the front. I'm guessing that people who don't like kids are seated at the back of the aircraft.

*they used to have little stuffed toy aeroplanes with the Qatar Airways logo that they'd give out to the kids, not automatically... they'll do it to distract the kids if they can see parents are struggling. They also had spongebob toys and the kids' meal came with a spongebob lunchbox on one flight.

Small kids won't sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. There's also very little to keep them amused (very short attention spans). In-flight entertainment isn't much good until they get to the four-year-old (or thereabouts) phase where they can actually sit and watch a film as opposed to wanting to climb all over the seats. Thankfully, Arabs tend to love kids and are usually forgiving of kids' shenanigans and will befriend families nearby, rather than tutting and judging them like so many Brits do (not all Brits! There are notable exceptions...)

Travelling with small kids (I did the trip a few times, thanks to my employer providing free air tickets back home every once in a while) is a very sticky business. Getting entirely covered in various sticky liquids (parent and/or child) is pretty normal. Little kids aren't that great at not spilling drinks at the best of times, but when the drink's on a tiny tray table, the kid wants to climb on the tray table and there's turbulence... Three changes of clothing is absolutely essential (as I found out on one flight where child's original clothing was changed due to being drenched in orange juice, then later on she refused point blank to use the aeroplane toilet. She took one look at it and cried and refused to go near it. Landing was delayed by half an hour waiting for permission to land. Child was toilet trained but obviously there's a limit to a 3yr old's bladder capacity. Child had a little (or not so little) accident as we waited to get off the plane after landing. (Qatar airways cabin staff are also good at clearing up puddles.) She was already wearing her spare clothes. The distance from the gate to passport control at Heathrow is very, very long, especially for a 3 yr old in wet trousers. The lady in passport control said "awww bless!". We had to get all the way to baggage claim and get our hold luggage before child's trousers could be changed. (Thankfully, Granny and Granddad met us just after baggage claim and Granny took the child to the toilet to change into some other clothes to give poor, exhausted Mummy a break!))

Right! So that's just the flight... actually settling into a new place wasn't so bad. We didn't send much furniture but we did send the cot and her toys and other things so she'd have familiar things. I'm not sure she really understood that we were on a different continent. The climate was radically different and it was a new house, but her bed, toys and similar were the same. Some things we bought new. We were only 3-4 timezones away* so there wasn't that much change in her daily routine - I think we slowly eased her into her new bedtime and getting up time. Toddlers aren't that fussy about the whole awake during the day/asleep during the night thing anyway and being wide awake at 2am is normal, so it's not like you'd notice that much difference between a jetlagged toddler and a non-jetlagged toddler.

*they don't have daylight savings so it's 3 timezones different for half the year and 4 for the other half

Anyway feel free to ask more questions...

ETA: I do sincerely recommend Qatar Airways as a child-friendly airliner
 
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Some Lonely Scorpio

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Wow, thank you for the extremely detailed answer! I will absolutely pm you with any further questions. :) I should also clarify that the characters are traveling by ship, not by train, just to put things into perspective.
 

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It really depends on the child, as well as how the parents/other caregivers respond to the child*. My experience flying with my toddler has been very different to Neander's! Lol. Our first long-haul flight (Jakarta to San Francisco), I was alone with her and I was SO. SCARED. I even made goodie bags for the other passengers, with candy, ear plugs, and a note apologizing in advance for any noise she might make. But in the end, she didn't cry once, and the other passengers came over and said she was so good they forgot there was a baby in the cabin with them.

I guess the worst part about flying with her after 2 yrs of age, aside from actually having to pay for her fare, is that she started walking around and saying hi to everybody else and introducing her stuffed hippo to them. Most people are understanding when this happens, but I still feel bad about interrupting them, so I try to avert her attention with toys or books. Most airlines would also give out small things like a coloring book and crayons etc, which is really helpful.

Settling into a new place takes wee hippo at least 2 days. For the first two days, she'd be really quiet and timid, and observe new people without talking or interacting with them. Then, on the third day, she'd open up and go back to her giggly self. There was one trip to Singapore where she just decided that she wasn't ever going to grace the Singaporean soil with her feet. So...I had to frikkin' carry her everywhere. Jaysus, that was a fucking nightmare. Still don't know why that happened...she's been to Singapore a ton of times, but just that one time, she was like, Nope, I'm not walking outside of our hotel room, thanks. As SOON as we touched down in Jakarta, she happily ran around at the airport while we waited for our bags.

So for your story, I think it's fine to give the kid whatever reaction that would fit the story's needs best. If you need the kid to be an angel, that's believable, and if you need the kid to be slightly more needy, that's believable too...it really all depends on the circumstances surrounding the child. Children that are normally easy-going can just as quickly have meltdowns. Wee hippo is usually super chill, but sometimes, the weirdest things upset her. Like this morning, she was all happy and cheerful, and then...she tried to fold her blanket into a square, but it kept turning into a rectangle (funny how that happens, isn't it? :D ) and she was just like, OH GOD LIFE IS SHIIIITT.

*Wrt how caregivers/parents react...I've found that this is the one thing that affects wee hippo the most. Mr Hippo has a tendency to over-react. Whenever she has a minor fall or whatever, he'd gasp and then go, "Oh my gawd!" Wee hippo is honestly a bit of a coward now, and I toootally blame this on him. :D I have bad habits myself as a parent. Um, for example, I uh, tend to have a bit of a potty mouth. And wee hippo has been known to say "Shit!" So that's totally on me. She's also really prissy, like if it's raining outside, no matter how light, she'd go, "Take the umbrella please, Emmie no want to get wet." (Also blaming Mr Hippo for this one, lol.) She loves playing with makeup and she'd go, "Oh! Emmie so pretty!" And I accept the blame for that one. Pretty much everything she does or says is a reflection of our behavior, so depending on your main characters, the kid can be anything you want.
 
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lonestarlibrarian

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I haven't done international traveling with really small children, but I did a 1,500-mile roadtrip with a 3-yo and a 22-month old. I was lucky in that I got to carpool with my brother, so we were able to share driving duties-- 1,000 miles is about as far as I can handle solo-- but the drive to and from went very well for both of the kids. Having the older boy be able to entertain the younger one was very helpful, but doesn't really help with your WIP. :) They were both wayyy too young for the usual car games of road trip veterans that I played when I was a kid-- license plate games, the alphabet game, stuff like that-- but I'd bought them a iPad just for this trip, and the older one got to play some games, and the younger one got to watch him, and they were as happy as clams. When I was little (1400-to-1700-mile road trips), we amused ourselves with books and listening to kids' music on a tape recorder when we got tired of watching the scenery; for this one, my brother had a Netflix subscription on his phone, so he gave the kids a few episodes of this or that when they got restless.

Peeking at some old phone videos, at 26 months, DS2 was still pretty much at the "Ehhh! Ehhh! Ehhhh!" or "Mmmmm!" stage when he had complicated stuff to discuss, although he could understand far, far, far more than he could speak on his own. Yet at the same time, he had no problem in conveying his wishes. "Ehhh! Ehh! Ehhh!" "You want the dustpan?" "Ehhh! Ehh! Ehhh!" "You want the brush?" And then he'd go sweep up some spilled Cheerios and throw them in the trash. Or, "Tell Grandma that the muffin was yummy!" "Mmmmmmmm!" But he wasn't conversational in a verbal kind of way until he was a few months away from his third birthday, when he could say things like, "I like choochoo tracks" or "My whistle" or things like that. For some of it, if you weren't tuned in to understanding two-year-old-speak, it would have been pretty hard for an outsider to interpret. So the words were there, but they weren't quite clear-- like he would say something, and it would sound like "duck" but I knew from context that it had to be "track". I had taught my kids some of the most-important-to-us baby signs-- "milk", "sleep", "play", "more", "all done", "potty"-- when they were newborns, and that really helped cut down on the frustration of not being able to communicate, and they were still using them when they were young two-year-olds.

One thing I remember from DS1-- I noticed a flier for a toddler tumbling program for 3-and-up, and he was 2-and-a-half. I thought, "Pshaw! Just six months! I wonder if he can sign up anyways--!" but of course, I didn't. And then fast-forward six months, and I was amazed at how much development he had undergone between two-and-a-half and three. So I agree that "a two-year-old" can plausibly be anywhere-- a barely-two is developmentally very different from an almost-three. In terms of cooperation and attitude, though, I found that the eighteen-to-twenty-four months involved more butting of heads and exerting-of-will than the twenty-four to thirty-six months... Perhaps mine got their terrible twos in early. :)

Another thing I noticed was, for example, with shirts. A baby or young toddler will let you dress him in any shirt; he doesn't care. As he grows, though, he'll say, "I want the ball shirt!" and as long as there's a ball on it, he's happy. And when he gets, say, closer to three, he'll say, "I want the baseball shirt," and by golly, if you try giving him a basketball shirt or a football shirt--- you're obviously not going to slide that past him unnoticed! :) I got into the habit of giving him his choice of two shirts-- "Do you want to wear the orange shirt with a basketball, or a maroon shirt?" and he'd have that amount of control over his surroundings, and that would make him happy.

Writing kids is hard. Writing young kids is very, very hard, especially since so much of their communication is physical and relies on someone being in tune with them. :) Good luck!
 

cornflake

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Adding to what the hippo said about the influence on caregivers -- kids that age know exactly who is with them and how to work those people. Kids are not dumb.

When there's someone who is very sympathetic to stuff, who will fuss over a fall or bump, a kid will fall and cry and lay waiting for rescue until that person comes with soothing words, kisses, a cookie.... if the only person there is a 'oh, you're fine,' type, the same kid who takes the same fall will just get up and motor on without a tear.

Many, many people have seen kids that age start wailing and stop to check if someone is watching or coming and then adjust accordingly.

I know a 'oh, you're fine,' type who was with her granddaughter, whose mother is more the other way. The kid was in her high chair with a tray of Cheerios, and grandma reached out and took one. Kid was shocked and slapped her hand away. Grandma said, 'ok, guess I don't want to play <the little game thing they'd been playing>' and turned away and picked up the newspaper. Kid considered, said grandma's name and held out a fistful of Cheerios with a sweet little smile. Kid's mother was shocked the kid grasped what was going on and was able to figure out how to alter the situation. Grandma was not, returned to the game and shared the Cheerios.

It doesn't have to be sitcom precocious or treacly to be not dumb.
 

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The just-pre-verbal stage is fascinating. I remember seeing my nephews who couldn't talk yet, select their favourite videotape, turn on the TV and the VCR, insert the tape and press "start" on the front panel. All while babbling to each other in wordless concentration.
 

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I once went swimming/wading in a shallow stream with some friends and their pre-verbal baby (I don't recall the exact age, but he was only just learning to walk, so he had to be held the whole time we were in the water. We discovered that the stream bed was full of little clams (I guess that's what they were) mingled with the similarly-sized rocks, and decided to gather enough to make clam pasta sauce for dinner.

The kid was fascinated by this, so I grabbed a handful of rocks out of the water and showed him that we only wanted the smooth shiny clams, not the rocks. After a couple handfuls he got the idea and happily spent a good forty minutes being presented with handfuls of rocks so he could pick out the clams and put them in the jug, just like the adults were doing. He did it flawlessly.

Later that night, my friends admitted they were astonished. They had no idea their son was capable of something like that, and it didn't even occur to them to try and show him. The funny thing was that I, having relatively little experience with children, never considered the possibility that it might be too difficult. I just figured, "eh, the kid wants to participate, I'll let him participate."
 

neandermagnon

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Adding to what the hippo said about the influence on caregivers -- kids that age know exactly who is with them and how to work those people. Kids are not dumb.

When there's someone who is very sympathetic to stuff, who will fuss over a fall or bump, a kid will fall and cry and lay waiting for rescue until that person comes with soothing words, kisses, a cookie.... if the only person there is a 'oh, you're fine,' type, the same kid who takes the same fall will just get up and motor on without a tear.

Many, many people have seen kids that age start wailing and stop to check if someone is watching or coming and then adjust accordingly.

I agree 100%. I'm the "you're fine" kind. I'd seen the exact same thing described above plenty of times before I had kids. Kids are much tougher than people give them credit for. This can sometimes carry on when they're older, even school age (parents still acting like it's a tragedy if the kid falls over and the kid lying there, crying, acting like they just broke a limb), and parental overreactions can make kids anxious about falling over, which then affects their ability to do sports. (If you act like something's a bigger deal than it is often enough, the kid's going to end up believing that it's a big deal.)

I've even heard parents say to kids "don't run, you'll fall over" - I don't really understand that at all. Let them run, let them fall over, let them pick themselves up again*. Even if they do actually get a grazed knee or something, a kiss and a plaster makes it better in about ten seconds. I have no idea why plasters are so much of a universal panacea - probably because they have a favourite book/cartoon character on them (aka distraction) - but they are. And kids have expectations based on past experiences. "Last time I was bleeding I got a plaster. I see blood. I must have my plaster!" - if you and the kid are in the habit of putting on an Oscar-winning performance of anxious, concerned parent and poor, tragically grazed child, it's going to play out every single time.

*obviously not if there's a chance of them falling overboard or into something dangerous. It's best to just completely remove the toddler from the danger area, or carry them and hold them very tightly.
 

neandermagnon

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I once went swimming/wading in a shallow stream with some friends and their pre-verbal baby (I don't recall the exact age, but he was only just learning to walk, so he had to be held the whole time we were in the water. We discovered that the stream bed was full of little clams (I guess that's what they were) mingled with the similarly-sized rocks, and decided to gather enough to make clam pasta sauce for dinner.

The kid was fascinated by this, so I grabbed a handful of rocks out of the water and showed him that we only wanted the smooth shiny clams, not the rocks. After a couple handfuls he got the idea and happily spent a good forty minutes being presented with handfuls of rocks so he could pick out the clams and put them in the jug, just like the adults were doing. He did it flawlessly.

Later that night, my friends admitted they were astonished. They had no idea their son was capable of something like that, and it didn't even occur to them to try and show him. The funny thing was that I, having relatively little experience with children, never considered the possibility that it might be too difficult. I just figured, "eh, the kid wants to participate, I'll let him participate."

I love this example. We evolved to learn this way as little kids - learning from the adults how to gather food by copying them. It's beautiful.
 

neandermagnon

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This might be useful to get an idea of what kids can do at different ages https://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/birthtofive.aspx - bear in mind that they're based on the average child. Some kids will do some of those things much earlier. For example, artistic ability runs in my family. The page says age 3-4 is when kids will start to draw people, however my kids were drawing people by age 2 and at age 3 my older daughter started imitating the style of a particular children's book illustrator. So the ages vary a lot more than the page suggests. If the kid's much later than the ages on the page, it could be indicative of a developmental problem - the purpose of pages like this is to make parents aware of potential red flags.

Also, hitting milestones earlier tends to be quite predictable (not always) e.g. in my family, hitting drawing milestones early (people will quickly point out that stuff like this runs in the family and who they get it from). Or if a kid starts to crawl early they're probably also going to learn to walk, run, kick a ball, etc early too. But not necessarily... I know some parents who said their kids were so good at crawling they didn't have so much incentive to start walking so they started crawling early and started walking late. And things like kids learning to walk and never learning to crawl first also happens. Some kids do unusual things like learning how to shuffle along on their bottoms rather than crawling.

You have a lot of leeway for individual kids being the individuals they are, but the page should give you a general idea of what most kids can do at what age.

Also, when parents of little kids meet up with parents of other little kids, what age my kid did what and any unusual things they did "oh, mine was a bottom shuffler" is a common topic of conversation. Along with discussing all the trials and tribulations of eating and potty training and similar. (Though obviously people are individuals and not all the same... applies for parents as much as it applies for kids!)
 
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frimble3

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I have no idea why plasters are so much of a universal panacea - probably because they have a favourite book/cartoon character on them (aka distraction) - but they are.
Plasters worked their magic even back in the older days of my childhood, when they were a plain beige 'flesh' colour. I think the magic is that they cover up the damage, so that when the initial pain is gone, the memory of the injury fades quickly, unlike leaving the graze uncovered, so children can be reminded.
 

cornflake

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They're also a novelty, special thing. I don't know a kid, myself included, who didn't demand plasters at a certain age for the most minor, invisible boo-boo. My parents usually wouldn't indulge in buying the cool ones either, but I still wanted them.
 

Bufty

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I had a bashed knee once. My elderly aunt put on gauze- the wrong way round with the fluffy bit on the wound, then covered it with a huge piece of sticky plaster. When my mum pulled it off -YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still stick wee plasters on even the most minor cuts. And sometimes use that spray stuff instead- it's quick and easy if you can avoid spraying everything else at the same time.
 

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One of the magical effects of plasters is that they attract attention. :D Wee hippo once had a pretty deep scrape, so she wore a plaster for a few days, and oh, the amount of attention that teeny Band-Aid attracted! Strangers would say, “Aww do you have a booboo? Poor thing!” Surprise, surprise, even after the wound healed, she insisted on us putting a Band-Aid on her unblemished skin. I made sure to interrupt everyone before they could show sympathy and tell them that there’s nothing underneath the plaster. Once the attention faded, her interest in plasters mysteriously died as well...
 

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No-one has mentioned travel sickness. That was a biggie in my childhood - when I was three, I could only travel a few miles at a time in a car before upchucking and the parents would stop every few miles to walk me round the car a few times. Then they learned that if you put someone with travel sickness in the front passenger seat so they look at the nice steady view in front, rather than the blurred view to the side, it works a lot better. That worked for me, and having a draft from the window. Not totally chuck free but.... Coaches and buses remained a problem for years.
Advance a few years, we went on a ferry to France. Guess who got sea sick....
Anti-travel sick pills did sort of work - mainly by putting me to sleep for the duration. Which if you are on an educational scenic tour, kind of defeats the object.
 

cornflake

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No-one has mentioned travel sickness. That was a biggie in my childhood - when I was three, I could only travel a few miles at a time in a car before upchucking and the parents would stop every few miles to walk me round the car a few times. Then they learned that if you put someone with travel sickness in the front passenger seat so they look at the nice steady view in front, rather than the blurred view to the side, it works a lot better. That worked for me, and having a draft from the window. Not totally chuck free but.... Coaches and buses remained a problem for years.
Advance a few years, we went on a ferry to France. Guess who got sea sick....
Anti-travel sick pills did sort of work - mainly by putting me to sleep for the duration. Which if you are on an educational scenic tour, kind of defeats the object.

Oh this was so me -- I was the barfiest little flake. My boxmates however, had no such issue. It's very individual. To this day I get wildly motion sick on nearly anything -- boats, buses, trains, planes, watching movies shot with handy-cam....
 

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... Later that night, my friends admitted they were astonished. They had no idea their son was capable of something like that, and it didn't even occur to them to try and show him. The funny thing was that I, having relatively little experience with children, never considered the possibility that it might be too difficult. I just figured, "eh, the kid wants to participate, I'll let him participate."

You have the instincts of a teacher. :)
 

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I’m writing a book series where one of the characters is very young. In the first book, she starts as a newborn, but she’s six mo. by the end. The second one is set six months after the first. It begins with her first birthday and by the end, she’s 18 mo. old. I plain on ending the third book with her turning two.

I’ve mostly gotten through it, by reading up on childhood development, so I can have a general idea as to what skills she’d be capable of at what age, but I know understand why so many people screw up when writing very young children. Small children are hard! The traditional way of developing characters is to have them go on adventures and interact with other characters. But small children haven’t mastered bladder control, much less adventuring, and at that age, they still can’t really interact with anyone on a meaningful level. Kind of hard to do that when you’re in the early stages of language development.

The two most common screwups when writing small children, is that the author either makes the kid entirely too precocious for its age, or the kid disappears and is hardly mentioned for pages on end, thus making it so that they could be played by a couch cushion for all the impact they have. I will say that it can a story with one of those child prodigies who are doing higher math while their counterparts are working on 2+2 level addition, but the author needs to understand what is typical for a child of that age and why genius kid is so unusual.

As for the couch cushion problem, just remember that while they can’t do a lot to drive the plot, their existence does have an impact on the other characters and will affect their thoughts and actions.
 

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Do you have any children (who has the exact age of your character) You could study them? What they do, and how they are talkin’.
 

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I don't know about others, but I noticed with mine--- I was always living in the present. I was so close to them, it was very hard to remember, "Oh, #1 rolled over at age such-and-such, but #2 rolled over at this age instead." Whereas my husband is all, "Oh, don't you remember, #1 was about this same age as #2 is now when he started doing X..." and I'm like, "I don't remember at all..." :) The funny thing is, though, is that I perceive them as being much older than they are... especially when I see them in a mirror; I often don't see them as they are in this moment in time, but how they'll be two years down the road. I don't know if other moms run into similar issues.

So-- unless a writer has kids at exactly that age at the moment of writing, it can be tough to rely on memories, even for someone who's raised a few kids. :) And likewise, it can be weird to "borrow" a generic kid as a model, because you don't have that connection going. Even when I'm looking through my old cellphone videos, I was really happy I took the care to narrate things--- because I've lost that connection/in-tune-ness with my own kid, as he was x years in the past, because it's been replaced by being in-tune with how he is in the present.

The things that do stand out are in things like their different priorities-- #1's first words were things like "mama" and "dada" and things like that. #2's first words were things like, "Mine" and "No" and stuff. :p So there's a definite difference between writing an only child, versus writing a child with siblings!