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Comment by HenrikPontoppid | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading once about how Astrid Lindgren's children's books were supreme exactly because she - contrary to many others - remembers what it is like to be a child. Not just what you did or thought when you were a child - how it felt. The endless curiosity and appreciation for what in an adult's eyes is trivial is really a special thing I hope most people carry throughout their lives. On the other hand, children also understand more than one would normally think, essentially a Moravec's paradox but in relation to adults.

"Children heal the soul" - Dostoevsky

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Overestimate their understanding, underestimate their vocabulary.

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.

No, it was really helpful advice I read somewhere. That when explaining something, always overestimate someones understanding, and underestimate their vocabulary.

Edit: apparently it's a vsauce thing. I do think it's right, it helped me a lot in life.

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.”

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

One of the first emails from the school when my small son was in Primary 1 was that they'd been making some pancakes in class and he'd picked up a Big Sharp Knife and began slicing some strawberries to put on them, and this was Very Much Not Allowed!

Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives!

Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Yes?

Want to take a guess as to why?

He's five. He knows how to chop vegetables. My parents taught me how to cook from a young age, I am teaching him how to cook from a young age. I'm raising a *man* here, not a perma-infant.

Although, between you and me, I think he could stand to use a bit less oregano in his pizza sauce. I'd never criticise his choices, I think he'll figure it out in time.

Terry Pratchett:

"You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'

IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.

'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.

IT'S EDUCATIONAL.

'What if she cuts herself?'

THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON"

Only Death speaks like that in (GNU) Terry Pratchett's books. I assume he is disguised as "the Hogfather" and the other character is unaware even though it's known to the reader. And I assume Death is there because the girl is about to kill herself with the sword.

Death is there because he is no longer Death, he is the Hogfather.

Someone else has to be Death while he's moonlighting.

Bloody irresponsible thing to do, that, just wander off and work out of scope and expect others to pick up the slack, I don't know, personifications of abstract concepts going off-map just because they feel like it, what's the Disc coming to, eh?

"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 think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible).

They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.

Tiny language models.

I never quite understood the obsession with keeping some language away from children that everyone uses themselves. The words are there because they are needed. Walking the euphemism treadmill is a Sisyphus effort.

Let them build a decent vocabulary before exposing them to the words that replace all sorts of other words ;)

I want them to be clever with how they use language. Or at least have the knowledge to be clever, if they apply themselves.

I heard of a study [1] claiming that people that swear more have a larger vocabulary in general, so your efforts might be counter-intuitive to your goal.

Don't see how deprivation of some words leads to the knowledge of other words, either. Maybe if you interject and correct swear word usage by providing other words that would be a better fit.

> Taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency.

> Taboo words comprise pejoratives and slurs.

> Taboo fluency is correlated with neuroticism and openness.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03880...

That's probably true for people who know the words but is it true for people who don't? I expect most people use most common words at about the same level of fluency.

I know the word "computer". I expect people's "computer" fluency is correlated with their general fluency. Would teaching Victorian peasants "computer" increase their general fluency?

When EBv2.0 was tiny, like could walk but not really talk tiny, and I was WFH Because Coronapocalypse, he one day did a straight deadass impersonation of me.

Picked up a cordless mouse and held it up to his little ear like a phone, "Hello? Yeah? Yeah..." and started wandering around the living room with it, occasionally scowling and holding his other hand up to his ear, "yeah... yeah... well yeah, yeah? Naja, yeah... nah, nein! <waving expansively> Nein nein nein... Yeah, 'kay, bye."

Put the mouse down on the table.

"Uuuuuurgh....."

Absolutely nailed it, Gary Oldman level precision.

Absolutely golden moments.

More people should read Oliver Sacks' book Uncle Tungsten. As a kid he was allowed to buy real chemicals for his chemistry set and was told things like "can you make slightly less hydrogen peroxide next time". Minors buying pitchblende (Uranium ore) at the local drugstore for experiments? Sure, might encourage them to be scientists.

You have to show people (not just kids, also up to college students and adults) what can go wrong so they know the appropriate amount of respect for it. Kids don't have enough fear of some things, college students have too much because they learned their fear was too little before.

I hear it's traditional in some parts to start an electronics lab semester by blowing up one of every component to show how it goes, and I had a similar experience in metal shop when I was too afraid to crash a lathe and the teacher did it himself, showing me how close you can get the tool to the part before it's a problem.

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.

That's how I feel right now talking in my only language of English.

Yep. So many people have been drifting away into some kind of parallel reality where language is seemingly the same, yet transmits no meaning between our diverging realities.

Language that looks superficially normal but transmits no meaning is called "generative AI output"

That too, but I originally meant literal human output, as in loss of ability to convey meaning with words in communication between people, no AI involved.

I like some of her books, but I am quite annoyed with kids most of the time coming from poor families with missing father/mother, it's like she couldn't write a book without some tragedy, of course the most famous Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are from normal families (there is probably reason why these are the most famous and beloved), but already Pippi Longstocking is pretty F-ed up and don't get me started on The Brothers Lionheart, which is glorifying suicide and should be really banned for kids under 15, certainly not appropriate for 9yo, though I read it to my younger kid with appropriate commentary.

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.

> She grew up in a completely different world,

Also, back then in 1925 infant mortality was probably ~10x worse [0], which adds to how we (today) might underestimate the prevalence of parent-child traumas.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?location...

I don't know why you are down voted. Death was so much more present in kids lives back then. Death from diseases and injuries so common. Kids having dead siblings entirely normal.

The writing of Charles Dickens support this thesis strongly!

I am familiar with her background she was sadly later projecting into many/most of her books. I am pretty sure vast majority of Swedish kids was growing back then in complete families without dead mother/father, same as they do nowadays regardless of marriage or divorce status.

Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are great books, the rest about traumatized kids/orphans not so much as kid books.

You are sure wast majority of kids had both parents same as today after WWI when childbirth was way more dangerous then today?

One of parents being dead was way more commom situation then it is today.

according google in 1925 85% Swedish kids were born to married parents

and

"Long-term cohort studies tracking historical Swedish registry data from the early-to-mid 1900s indicate that approximately 2.3% to 3.6% of children experienced the death of a biological parent before reaching adulthood (under 15 to 18 years of age)"

so less than 4% of the kids experienced parental death, absolute majority was born into regular complete families, my point was like half of the Lindgren characters are missing parent for whatever reason, not one in 20 books main characters, she was clearly projecting something unhealthy unrealistic into her books, if she was following reality it would be rare in her books and not that many if not majority of her characters are from incomplete families

What does it mean "according to google"? Google does not track historical demographic data. Like, use actual source.

Second 4% is actually a lot. In a class of 20 kids, one will have dead parent. That makes it something all kids growing during the era are aware of.

To me it suggest it should be expected for some writers to write about this group.

it is not that much, it means if she had 25 (4% is 1 in 25, not 1 in 20) main characters, one of them should have dead parent if she would reflect the reality and didn't have some orphan/death fetish with significant number (way way more than 1 in 25 or even 1 in 10) of her characters being orphans/foster/neglected kids

The "if you show a minority in your book, their number must not exceed their exact demographic share" rule would make it impossible to write about any minority.

> if she would reflect the reality and didn't have some orphan/death fetish

The aggressive hostility toward writing about non-majority is super weird.

As a Swede, I can't read the Emil books because of fremdscham for the parents from those scenes where Emil feels the need to run to the carpentry shed.

The farmer class could actually be like this, before we banned it, even though she tries to write about it in a comical way, but it was always a low class thing to punish ones children and to read stories where it happens is basically intolerable at least to me.

Astrid Lindgren probably knew this though. She isn't some idiot who puts this in as comic relief, it's comic but there's a serious and intolerable feel to it too. She knows she's portraying something bad and she intends for us readers to sit with the dissonance-- the low class going-to-punish-his-children aspect, the family's love for Emil, that book in which his mother writes down what he does, that Emil is well-meaning, that everything goes well in the end and that the adult Emil becomes a nämndeman, etc.

Astrid Lindgren is one of the scariest Swedish authors because of her deliberate careful and nuanced use of moral dissonance. She's scarier than Willem Fredrik Hermans.

>>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.

I read it this year to kids and the book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life.

And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as death, after each death you just move to another level.

So there is no risk at all you will lose your brother/relative, very F up thing to teach the kids, exactly opposite from what should make them scared of dying which is PERMANENT and there is no next level, where you can be with your family again.

That's such a dishonest read of the book I don't actually know what to say. To me, joining Johnathan at the end is the conclusion of the entire book of love, loyalty and bravery. Nowhere does it say "meh, no biggie just kill yourself". If that's the message you took from it then I strongly encourage you to sit down one evening and read it again. The biggest "proof" of it not being treated lightly is obviously all the inhabitants of the valley of cherries enduring, surviving and fighting against oppression instead of as "just killing themselves" to go to the next level. Even at the end Johnathan makes it sound like it's a rumour and maybe there is something there, but no one knows for sure, same as naningalia was at the beginning - people hope there is a better afterlife, but that's all it is - hope.

The "dishonest read" is a strange accusation. I think I was about 11 or 12 when I read the book and my reaction was - "err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly? Well thats a bit dumb". I did like the story though and reread the book later several times, but the suicide bits felt always so weird.

Dishonest as in - it requires ignoring 99% of the book and focusing on the last couple pages, ignoring the entire struggle, bravery and sacrifice that lead to that moment.

>>err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly

Well so your 12 year old self I guess missed the part where Johnathan was mortally wounded and about to die. The fact that Karl decides to join him in death is not a glorification of suicide, and I don't know how it could possibly be read that way. There's literally nothing willy-nilly about it - again, it doesn't appear to be some well known fact or even a fact at all that there is another "level" beyond that one - it's a guess, a hope at best. And Karl decides to jump with his dearest brother because(as made incredibly explicit multiple times throughout the entire book) - he loves him more than anything in the world and cannot imagine parting with him again. You make it sound like a video game where characters go "meh, let's try again" - it's absolutely not so. Before he died the first time, Karl wasn't sure if Johnathan was telling the truth about afterlife or if he wanted to just make him feel better in his ilness - and now that Johnathan was mortally wounded, Karl knew that only bravery and hope and love for the people you care about is worth living(and dying) for. That's what the book is about.

In my first comment I even made this explicit - I said that as an adult, this book makes me appreciate the finality of death - and you might ask, how is that so, given that in this world it looks like you can just keep dying over and over again only to go to higher planes of existence. And the answer is simple - with every death, you lose everything except for hope. Hope that you are going to wake up again in a better world and that the people you love will still be there. But you don't know. In my personal life I don't believe in it - but for children, this is the greatest gift - hope. Especially struggling ones that see no bright path anywhere - hope is all they have. And as you can tell, for majority of the book the hope was "we can win persevere against hardship and evil" and not "we can kill ourselves and hope the next world is better".

”…the book says basically - no biggie, there is no death“

So does the Bible.

But Christians make a special exception for suicide. You can be forgiven if you kill anyone but yourself.

You can even be rewarded for committing the right genocide.

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

Have you read the book or your kids just read it without you knowing what is it about?

This book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life. And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as permanent death/separation from your loved ones, after each death you just move to another level. That's really F up thing to teach small kids, who should know death is permanent.

Yes I have read it. Kids are not retarded.

I think you miss the point of this book. Karl had tuberculosis, Jonathan died saving him from a fire despite knowing Karl would soon die (which he did). No suicide there, only tragedy. Then they had an "afterlife" which is full of the adventure they wished they had when they were alive - which also means that there's some serious darkness there to fight, so not heaven by any means. In the end, Karl gets to do for Jonathan essentially what he did for him, and they're ready to move on. They didn't commit suicide, they were already dead. I don't think a single Swedish kid killed themselves over misunderstanding this book, they didn't miss the part that the brothers really treasured life and it was a tragedy that they died in the first chapter.

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.

Speaking of Dostoevsky Prince Myshkin in 'The Idiot' is a fine portrayal of this archetype. In fact I believe at one point it is mentioned that most adults dislike him while children are drawn to him or something to that effect.

Dear little Krumalura, I don't want to grow up, never ever.

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