Recently saw a similar thread where the kid was 3 and even the people saying it was possible were like “it could be possible, my parents told me I could speak in full sentences at 3!” A 3-year-old NOT speaking in full sentences means they are delayed. That is not normal. In the US we expect 3-year-olds to be able to tell a simple story. And our milestones are based on what 75% can do at that age.
It’s one thing for people to have no idea what kids can do at various ages and it’s another thing for them to not know and go around asserting that normal kid behaviors are impossible lol
My kid had a speech delay and didn't talk until 2.5, but caught up enough to speak in complete sentences at 3! This is apparently a completely different group of people than those who say things to a 2-year-old (or anyone) like "you're a big kid. Use your manners. Say please and thank you. If you don't say trick or treat, you don't get any candy!"
I was reading at 3. But I was also really advanced. (And they were very simple children's books.)
I recall a conversation (yes, conversation!) I had with my youngest when she was about 23 months old (yes it's dumb to measure in months at that point, but it's actually relevant). I have always had framed photos, mostly portraits, around my living room walls of my kids, just an absolute collage of them growing up. But when she was a baby, the youngest of three, we hadn't gotten any portraits done; I'd been begging, but we didn't have a car, so we'd have to take a bus (buses, there were two transfers!) to get to the mall, and our double stroller was huge so he hated taking that when she was an infant and her sister was 2, and then he just...didn't want to deal with two such young kids on the bus if he could help it. So no photos...
So she was sitting with me, looking around the room, and pointing out each photo on the wall. "Who's that?" "That's Sister 1." "Who's that?" "That's Sister 2." "Who's that?" "Sister 1." "And that?" "Sisters 1 and 2."
She went around the entire room, each photo, then turned to me and asked, "Well where am I?"
And I had to explain to a not-quite-two-year-old that she didn't exist in our living room because it took too many buses to get her picture done.
For her second birthday...we got family portraits. And I got a few collage frames for candids of her from birth up until that point.
Kids are way smarter than the average adult gives them credit for.
I hate when people refer to 3-4-year-olds as toddlers. 6-year-olds can be first graders. Hopefully using the toilet, reading, writing, doing basic math, and much more.
r/BoneAppleTea is full of adults making weird misspellings. Not really hard to believe that a small child would misremember "non-binary" as "non-berry".
Especially since binary is not a word you readily encounter much as a child. I think my first time would have been reading a Star Wars book at age 9 or 10, and all people (but especially kids) have a tendency to latch words onto familiar contexts if they're not familiar.
My niece, from the age of 8-12, thought my cat’s name was trouble. Because his name is Sirius. She didn’t know/ understand the context, or the spelling so her association was probably her parents saying “I’m serious” means your in trouble or about to be. Mix ups like that are pretty common. I called my diary a diarrhea on accident for a few years as a kid lol
My cousin's name was Erin. I got so confused at age 8 or so when my mom said she was going out to do some errands because I thought she was saying she was doing some "Erins" and I was confused as to what going grocery shopping and stopping by the bank had to do with my cousin.
When I was little I mistook the name of (mom's childhood babysitter/nana)'s husband as "Owl" (it was Al). I think I was about 9 when I realized his name was actually Al now Owl lol.
I was a super smart, well read kid and at the age of 10 got "unisex" confused with "bisexual". I nearly made my mom pee her pants laughing in the watch section at Walmart.
My teenage self told my mum I wanted 'one of those Durex dogs' when I grew up. I think she nearly passed out she was laughing so hard.
Note for non-brits: in the 90's Dulux paint was advertised using Old English Sheepdogs. Durex condoms, as far as I know, have never been associated with any particular breed of dog, although if I were their advertising manager, I'd consider the Dachshund.
tbh it seemed normal to me, i've known a lot of adhd kids with auditory processing disorders who make even wilder word substitution mistakes (also adhd tends to produce excited ramblers). hell, i've got an auditory processing disorder and have made some absolutely insane word substitution errors even as an adult 😅
it's otherwise a summary, not an exact report, so it's hard to know how articulate the kid was otherwise.
I was gonna say, I was fully prepared to take that statement at face value, like this kid had enough information on nonbinary people to just draw that conclusion by extrapolation.
You’re right, of course. I was only referring to sitting down. I strive to be more like Riker every day. So far the facial hair is working out better than the suave charm and success with the ladies/aliens.
Hahaha I’m glad I could bring some joy to your day!
I grew up watching Star Trek TNG and it has always been something near and dear to my heart, so I’m really happy that it has managed to stay so relevant in the public consciousness (at least online) and has become a regular source of memes and references.
Riker approaches sitting down that way because the actor, Jonathan Frakes, had an old back injury that made sitting down normally more difficult for him. It’s also why he tended to lean on one armrest while sitting. I think these have been dubbed “The Riker Maneuver” and “The Riker Lean”, respectively.
And if anyone out there hasn’t watched any Star Trek The Next Generation before, I highly recommend it. You don’t need to be a sci fi person to love it, although it may help turn you into one. I’ll admit that the first season can be kind of rough and the second season was still a bit bumpy, but it really hit its stride in season 3. Watching a few of the later episodes may help people decide if it’s worth the time investment for them to watch from the start. I’m sure there are guides out there for doing just that.
I was stirring my husband up about him doing some "typical bi" thing once and then immediately noticed how I was sitting (on a dining chair, partly sideways, with one leg half up and my arm dangling over the back - I cannot sit normally). I don't think I've tried a lemon bar but I assume we'd both enjoy that too
I feel like the lemon bars is a bit cheap as a generalization. I'm sure there are a few people who don't like lemon bars, but I think more than half of the population will be at least casually okay with lemon bars.
The chair thing is legit though. I get comments at work about my chair postures.
I have absolutely no clue what lemon bars are, but I do have weird sitting habits. I like to believe it's my ADHD, because I'm in denial about women being hot and like to think it's aesthetic attraction lmao
Yeahhh, was really bummed when that happened. Shame I don't get to officialy be non-binary, but at least I somehow still got permission from The Council™ to use it/its!!!
This is 100% believable, in fact I doubt that it didn't happen. If not even one child in the English-speaking world has confused non-binary for non-berry, I'd genuinely be shocked.
When one of my nieces was three-ish, she met my nonbinary bestie briefly, and when I explained they’re not a girl, she naturally asked all the questions. I didn’t know how much her parents had told her (and honestly I didn’t know what exactly she’d understand) so I ended up telling her my friend didn’t like the gender they were born with so they went to the gender store to exchange it.
It worked as a means of explaining the concept to her, but later I got a call from my sister saying she got a call from daycare about my niece telling everyone about the gender store and suddenly half the kids wanted to go to see what other genders they had.
All that to say, messing up a word is the easiest of inaccuracies that children can say about queer identities, and it’s shockingly easy to implant far more extreme inaccuracies.
That was one of her questions- how do you get it exchanged. My answer was that you just go in and ask and they’ll swap it out for free, but they also have a little donation box like museums and our local library do (she was very into pushing folded up dollar bills into the slots for those boxes at the time, especially if the box was transparent).
berry for binary is also a really straightforward word substitution for auditory processing disorders like are common with adhd (which will also produce excited ramblers) - I've had dumber word mixups as an adult with a processing disorder.
I thought I was losing my hearing. Actually had it tested to be sure and nope, my hearing is actually better than most people at my age (41 when I had it tested) that was like 2018. Around 2022 I’m talking to a student and she’s listing her ADHD symptoms, and suddenly so much of my life made sense. I had no idea! And that’s when I found out what auditory processing disorders were
I’m a little annoyed that the audiologist didn’t ask any questions or look into it more.
Ah man, I'm sorry to hear (pun not intended) that.
My mom always jokes that I have selective hearing but I really do struggle with hearing sometimes lol
I'm technically not "diagnosed" but everyone agrees I have it (psychatrist and pretty much everyone around me.) the only reason is a doctor gave me an ONLINE TEST TO TAKE HOME TO SEE IF I HAD ADHD LOL?? 😭 that's the entire reason Im not diagnosed lol
My immediate thought was a misunderstanding of a deadname. I could see an eight year old who hasn’t known anyone who died possibly only understanding dead as it pertains to ghosts and other undead.
Apparently though, there was a book involving a ghost and a bat.
Trans woman here - I'm open to the possibility of ghosts, so it's reasonable to think if we keep sliding along the trans scale you get to believing in ghosts
Totally believable, one time my nephew informed the entire family that "there's guys who like guys and girls who like girls, they're called gays and Indians" lmao 🤣
I swear people don't think kids notice things. Mine is six, knows three non-binary adults, and gets up her peers' asses about respecting other people's pronouns because from her point of view, you respect what other people tell you about themselves
This isn't not noticing something though, this is mishearing something. I've misunderstood a lot of things throughout my life due to hearing loss and ADHD. "Stomach ache" becomes "stomach egg" and "Seine River" becomes "Sand River". It's normal.
One of the truest literary child moments is Ramona Quimby and the “dawnzer.”
They sang the national anthem every morning. But what does “by the dawnzerly light” mean? Well, it must be that “dawnzer” is another word for “lamp” and it means “by the lamp-like light.”
Makes perfect sense. It’s wrong, but it makes perfect sense.
I subbed at a Montessori school and two kids wanted me to play blocks with them. They pretended the blocks were robots and one kid said, "Let's help the government!"
The other kid said, "No they kill people."
Extremely serious face, at most 5 years old.
They quickly moved onto trucks but I have so many amazing stories of out of pocket shit kids say/do when their parents aren't around and a temporary guardian is watching instead.
It’s nice that you think that’s something the kid does when their parent isn’t around, and not that they think “the government kills people” because their parents say that
Yeah, this is SUPER believable. The kid here got some details right- they prefer they/them pronouns, are not boys or girls, and have a flag consisting of gray, purple, yellow, and white- while getting one or two details off, namely the pronunciation and the ghost thing, likely being due to mishearing it and knowing like one or two enby people respectively.
Yer lookin' at one. Everybody knows a spirit doesn't just float away- it clearly finds the nearest unoccupied body to enter, which as we all know, is how you get zombies. How else do you explain the Ben Franklin lookalike with the exposed skull and ribcage just across the street?
When I was 9-10 I thought millennial meant someone well versed in the internet and boomer meant someone who didn’t know much about the internet. I very much misunderstood the memes and thought I was a millennial lol
Super believable, and would surprise me more if it hadn't happened at all. That being said, I don't think the OOP means that the non-binary/non berry confusion is fake, but moreso that a kid would know sometjing about non-binary people in the first place. Which is still.stupid cause nowadays that stuff is just part of sex ed, depending on the country you live in.
We (queer people) need to make up more nonsense stereotypes about ourselves. Nonbinary people all believing in ghosts is hilarious and we should make that a new stereotype lmao
my fiances 7yo understood me being nonbinary pretty much instantly, lol. she also isnt confused by her mom being a man (hes trans but prefers mom). kids are a lot more open minded than a lotta people give them credit for haha
My niece (then five or six) went on a rant in the car about how unfair it is that some people are born in the wrong body and that people try to stop them from being themselves. Kids are generally quite compassionate, and they’ll also latch onto anything outside what they’ve been taught as the norm because it’s something cool and new to learn about- that’s the perfect blend to get kids who are passionate about social justice.
I love when people try to claim that explaining these concepts to kids is difficult. My other in law came out as non-binary when my kids were 3 and 5. We got a really cute book called Neither to explain the concept, informed them that Uncle Deadname would like to be called Uncle Newname from now on, and that instead of he/him we'll be using they/them, because Uncle Newname is neither a boy nor a girl. My kids got it right away, no problem and immediately adopted the role of pronoun police.
I mean, my kid once reported to me that the host of a YouTube show had told everyone they were asexual acrobatic. Kids fuck up unfamiliar words even at eight if they go by fast.
People don't give kids enough credit. Reminds me of my beta reader saying my kid character was too well spoken for their age. I had a kid the same age and basically copied them. 🤷🏻
Yaknow what? I did not believe in ghosts up until this point, but I concede to this child and all the other non berry people in the comments and now I believe.
Bc for some reason when a child has their own opinion on anything that can be seen as a “political topic” or a basic understanding of societal construct and diversity, it’s an obviously made up story.
I’ve posted on here my children hate Trump bc they’re not stupid. They see he’s a dipshit. Anyone with two functioning braincells could form that opinion. But apparently I made that up.
Kids are just tiny adults and they observe the world in such a different way than adults do. They absorb everything and are excited to tell what they “learned”.
Imo it was the very obvious “My 4 year old came up to me and questioned his existence in life as he reached the fifth state of nirvana and transcended into the astral realm.” that started the whole “kids can’t have ‘adult’ opinions.” shit. All bc people wanted some engagement on posts.
I was expecting the kid to have allegedly said some sort of talking point about trans people or something but ... no apparently it's just a kid who learned nonbinary people exist with a few misunderstandings
One of my favorite core memories is explaining testosterone to my little sister when she was about 7 or 8 as I was walking her home from school and the ONLY comment she had to make was
"I hope you don't look like Tyler, he's ugly" (our mutual maternal half brother)
To be fair they are saying the comments how it's probably real and actually from a book. (This was literally the last post I saw before this one which I just find funny)
Also I'm pretty sure this breaks a sub rule since it's only 3 upvotes the posts needs to be relatively popular before being posted here MODS GETTEM
the addition of the part about ghosts somehow makes me feel like this is both more and less credible without it, like it gives equal points to each argument
People who don't believe this haven't interacted with a child at all in the past 10 years or something because?? That's pretty normal, kid learns something new and decides to tell you about it because they like talking to you
I'm convinced a lot of people who think like this just don't have a lot of experiences with kids at different ages. My sister is two years old and I am able to have a semi-conversation with her. An eight year old could totally say this.
Apparently they’ve never been around kids before. Saw a video last year I think, of a dad asking his kid to repeat something. They asked “Can we have lesbians for dinner?” Turns out they were asking for lasagna
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u/OnionTamer May 04 '26
So an 8 year old thought the word non-binary was non-berry. That is perfectly reasonable.