Learning a second language is a fantastic way to feel many aspects of being a child again. Having to deal with frustration. Understanding a situation but not be able to fully take part. Being able to communicate but only with the blunt instrument of the words you know.

I'm not sure whether to interpret this as a statement about what we currently over/under-estimate, or as command that we should try what feels like over/under-estimation in order to counter our own biases.

Kids are so much smarter and more capable than adults give them credit for, and it is stunting society as a whole

I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point)

Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole way through their prime learning years

I feel so sorry for the next generation

"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half

I like Lemony Snicket's approach: he gives (obviously) wrong, but technically correct, definitions for hard words. These definitions are usually hyper-specific, or satirical. Children, who are still very familiar with learning vocabulary from context, can find this much more amusing than adults who have given up on learning new words except via dictionaries.

> The word “briskly” here means “quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.”

> “Wipi!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through law books.”

Remember that Astrid Lindgren was born in 1907, got pregnant at 18 and had to give up her son to a foster home for the first few years. She grew up in a completely different world, and it's no coincidence that a lot of her stories are basically about consoling traumatized children.

I didn't appreciate Pippi Longstocking fully until I read Stieg Larsson's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Occasionally covers are better than the original song.

It's perhaps no coincidence that the opening theme song of the Fincher (Mara/Craig) version of the movie is an outstanding cover of "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.

Kids do think about death. Hiding or avoiding the discussion does nothing. My kids absolutely adored Brothers Lionheart.

>>which is glorifying suicide

I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.