Linguistics

A little 6 year-old boy doesn't talk.

His Mother takes him to the doctor, who says, "He's fine. Just give him time."

A couple months later, his Mother takes him to a Child Psychologist, who says, "He's fine. Just give him time."

A couple months later, his Mother is cooking his breakfast and she accidentally burns his toast.

Scraping the burnt toast over the sink, She thinks to herself, "He'll never know the difference", and she serves the toast.

As she turns back to the sink, the little boy says,"This damn toast is burnt!"

Shocked, the Mother turns and says,"What did you say?"

"This damn toast is burnt!"

She says,"Omigod! You're talking! What happened? Why did you take so long to talk?"

"Up till now, everything was OK."

My favorite ADHD moment as a child was my school insisting I could read because I could answer the questions about the book.

My mother took me home and demanded I read the book. I still couldn't answer the questions.

Frustrated she made me read the book out loud to her. I did so perfectly. Still couldn't answer the questions. I read just fine, I just had trouble paying attention. I read the entire book out loud while thinking entirely about something else.

because I found the test taker intimidating

Yeah honestly I'm pretty convinced that a large part of children's "ability" depends solely on who's testing them, and on how well they feel that day.

I actually tutored a kid to get her into kindergarten, lol. She was bright but her first language was Korean and she was shy about speaking in English, maybe also shy about white people. So we basically hung out and "read" picture books together, my role just being to give positive reactions to whatever she said. And she got in, so it worked I guess.

I had a similar sort of experience myself (probably lots of people did) when I was at a psychiatric hospital, I was a kid, 15 or 16 or so. I had to solve some exams for what I guess was like two hours, and I was going crazy by the end, exhausted and losing focus. And based on that crap they were supposed to rate my cognitive abilites and emotional state. Thankfully I simply didn't return there, no consequences, but it's terrifying to think that some kids' futures and whole lives were determined by such bullshit, and even more, as the article shows, that it could act as quasiscientific legitimisation of racism.

I wonder at what point do people forget how they were as kids?

I posted about his passing two days ago, but it gained less traction - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/33628658 (idk if you can see it on Mastodon)

man probably kept running averages in his head. you come in, he considers your age, class, subculture and diet and is able to predict how you’ll call him

Funnily enough, I have a somewhat similarly problematic name (not in pronunciation, but in declension - it can take up either feminine or masculine endings). The choice is purely regional and predictable, but I'm still glad to hear new examples (and it's also fun to mention the whole issue and hear layman justifications for this or that option).

I wonder what my pronunciation /lə’bʌv/ says about my English, considering it's my second language. It seems like it would be the more common option because it's more likely to be deduced from the written form?

> a fun anecdote is that Labov didn't correct people on the pronunciation of his last name (/lə'bʌv/ or /lə'boʊv/) because he liked to observe the variation.

man probably kept running averages in his head. you come in, he considers your age, class, subculture and diet and is able to predict how you'll call him