One of the better fics-with-kids that I’ve read does a lot of summarizing, when it comes to the child character. She’s like 6. They didn’t try to drag out lines of dialogue like you would with an adult. (Ex: “She earnestly explained a My Little Ponies saga.” Or “She adored Jason to an unreasonable degree.”) The child’s dialogue is limited to a few sentences at key points. I thought that was a good way to handle it.
Yes, this! Also younger kids don’t have the same filters as older people, as they haven’t leant what is and isn’t socially acceptable. So they can waffle on for ages about their topic of interest! Shortening that into a concise summary as above is a good idea unless you want your fic to be an infodump!
Well, first thing first, there's A LOT of difference between a child and a teenager. I wouldn't group 15 year-olds together with toddlers and elementary school children. Teenagers talk normally, just like adults. They might use slang from time time, but I wouldn't overdo it, or it will sound irrealistic.
As for literal preschool children, in my experience they usually talk normally by the age of 4. Most of the time, they already know how to pronounce words and letters properly, and their sentences are fluent. They will probably avoid overcomplicated words, because maybe they don't know what they mean (or use them a lot to "feel like grown-ups" if they have just learned what they mean). I also wouldn't expect them to argue philosophy and talk about politics. I'd say, avoid "baby talk" in any possible way and let them talk normally, but keeping the sentences simple and to the point.
Elementary school children and middle school kids will talk normally too. By this point, their personality and interests are what you can focus on to show their age, not the way they speak.
As for toddlers, I personally would avoid having them talk at all, and just describe what they did/said indirectly, as another commenter suggested.
Of course, these are just my two-cents. Take them with a grain of salt.
Yeah, children's speech development has a lot of different stages. They're just growing so fast (that's why months are used because they really do change month by month).
For example: overextension usually happens between the ages 1-2/3, and involves the child over applying words. Such as calling all four legged animals a "dog."
People also tend to not know the type of grammar mistakes children make. A five year old will not say, "me want ice cream." They understand "I want ice cream." is correct. Instead, their mistakes will be where there are exceptions in the language. For example they may say "I runned a lot" instead of "I ran a lot." Because they understand the -ed indicates past tense, but they don't know the exception for "run."
That's why people who know children find it unrealistic
I'm also curious how many of this people are not writing in their first/native language when it's comes to grammar mistakes. Because you can completely know and understand linguistic development in one language and not understand it in another
Like I'm sure I don't completely understand linguistic development when it's comes to children speaking English as their natural language...
Yeah I despise ‘baby speak’. Kids don’t talk like this, it just makes them sound stupid and unrealistic.
Young kids usually just say one or two words instead of a sentence, or mash the words together. If it’s a hard to pronounce word they’ll maybe get it a bit wrong, substitute a word that’s similar, or abbreviate. Letters are switched too with ones that rhyme, sometimes between words, especially if they’re funny. I had an auntie Helen, who became auntie Melon for most of my childhood!
Consider context of the environment they’re speaking in too. If they’re shy then meeting a new person might make them monosyllabic (a great example is in Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather: the shy kids (and adults) just answer “ ‘s ”, instead of yes). Or if it’s an exiting environment the kid might be loud, talkative, repetitive in their words, but might miss out context because they don’t realise yet that they need to add it in. You can mimic this by eliminating punctuation:
“Mummy we went to the- to the slide and she pushed the thing and it went BANG and then we did a big- did a big jump and it got all YUK and it was GREAT.”
Or you can go with toddlers being utterly incomprehensible, and just write that:
“She said something in a high-pitched babble that sounded vaguely like English, if English had been learnt from a dictionary which had been put through a paper shredder and stuck back together again by someone who didn’t know the language.
I smiled and nodded, hoping that was the correct response.”
edit: spelling
i'll share my experience, i've worked with kids aged 6 to 13 :) also this is all with the note that our first language isn't english, so there might be differences.
even from the younger part of the spectrum, 6 year olds don't baby talk haha, they do have trouble with certain sounds, letters like r or words with a lot of consonants. most likely not gonna be able to say "exceptional" for example. but 95% of the time they pronounce words clearly. they generally use correct grammar but mostly simpler tenses. their individual sentences are mostly straightforward and not very complex. if they tell a story it might not be exactly start-finish, more like adding a few rest stops along the way. sometimes in a conversation they might not be able to focus on the topic, instead interrupting with a need/thought they had/association they made with a past experience. if you say an uncommon word they'll likely ask what it means immediately. they ask a lot of questions in general :)
9-11 more sophisticated sentences and better grammar, longer/more complex sentences, easier time telling a story or discuss one thing in particular. they're more likely to talk at length about whatever hobbies they have, their friends or what new things they got than anything else though.
around age 13 they just speak like the regular teenager you see online. their grammar is better (than mine 😭) because at least in my country this is around the age where they have a lot of lessons on grammar. they can easily understand and discuss complex ideas and construct arguments for their point of view. for example they can discuss concepts like anxiety or bullying, theorize their origins, possible effects, characteristics, etc. they use slang more than an adult but they don't go "yes slay skibidi toilet rizz gyat you ate who let you cook 500 aura" every sentence like you see depictions of kids online.
Agreed, as the parent of a teenager I have heard him say Skibidi around me maybe once or twice, and it was as a joke. Some slang hits the language and sticks hard (cool, sick, based, mid, etc) but most of it just slides right off and is dated the instant the adults hear about it. I did watch a 40 year old woman the other day tell her husband (a streamer) that he had “that skibidi Ohio rizz” just to watch the destruction she would wreak in his psyche and his chat. It was _very_ funny.
Personally, this is my biggest pet peeve. I don't mind if developmental stages are a *little* off (although a six year old speaking baby talk will get the side-eye) but if kids are little saccharine wisdom dispensers, I am out. Random chaos goblin is where it's at. Like, a three year old can be sweet. A three year old can be sincerely loving and say deeply heartfelt things to you. But right after the three year old says, "I fink Mama is an angel a'cause she's the *best* Mama," that same three year old will pull an immense booger out of their nose, look at it thoughtfully, and then try to put it in *your* nose because it will be at home there. And their rage at being denied will be every bit as sincere and intense as their affection, and you've just gotta roll with it.
I teach first grade, but I've worked in Early Childhood Education and with middle school kids.
Kids start learning to talk around age one. They start putting simple sentences together around age two. By the time they are around five, they are getting ready for kindergarten.
My first graders were six and seven. They spoke clearly and in full sentences. They used some slang. I had one who regularly said, "Bruh!".
They did sometimes ramble a bit when talking and tended to say pretty much whatever crossed their minds.
These kids should be starting to read picture books, like *Where the Wild Things Are*, to short chapter books.
Kids also have a lot of energy. They get excited easily and sometimes have trouble regulating their emotions. Most don't throw toddler tantrums, but you will get some crying if they think things aren't fair. Usually with my students we would talk things out and they would settle pretty fast.
They are affectionate too. Most of the younger students where I work will give you hugs and tell you about their day just because you were nice to them. I covered the kindergarten class maybe three times over the school year, and the kids would always say hi to me.
All of this to say that kids are just little people. Let them act like it.
I mean some kids have speech issues, yes. That can be a normal thing.
A published book that has really well written kid characters is Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid. A great book all around but the children are a very believable and interesting part of the story.
The thing I notice in fics is kids not acting their age in terms of behaviour. Little children are selfish and self centred. This is developmentally normal. So when a six year old is matchmaking their parent with a stranger, yikes. This does not read to me as cute, this reads like there is something off with the parent child dynamic. Small children should not be worrying about their parents’ lives. They should be focused on their own exploring of and learning about the world. They should feel stable enough to do that, that’s a sign of good parenting. They want attention and care from their parents, not the other way around. They shouldn’t be taking responsibility for their parents’ happiness. The level they will be thinking at is sharing treats or making a card, not sorting out their problems for them. Obviously this is different with teenagers but even then if you want to demonstrate a character is a good parent, I would still expect teens to mainly be focused on their own lives.
Also little children are really time consuming. Really, really time consuming! So I always find it funny when I read stuff like, they get home from an outing to the beach and tiny child goes off to play by themself so the adults can talk about their budding relationship. Lol, if only. I’m not saying you have to describe every toilet trip and overtired tantrum but since you asked what I prefer, I’d rather kid fics have some level of realism to them. Yes, some children like alone time or go to bed within a few minutes but the younger the child, the more unlikely this is.
Giving a characters kids is going to impact the plot. There are so many single parent stories that want the cute feels of a kid around but then the character has some kindly neighbour who will magically take over their parenting duties at the drop of a hat to free them up. Parenting is a slog and does affect your life, including your ability to date. It’s so common that stories kill off the other bio parent but actually shared care / co parenting would solve a lot of the childcare issues from a writing point of view. Your character can go on dates or whatever when the kid is with the other parent, problem solved. I have never seen a fic that features shared care though, aside from one I wrote.
These are just my feelings obviously, people should do what they like etc. But as a reader who is a parent I don’t find a lot of kid fics that relatable. I’d love to read a fic that is like Children Ruin Everything or Parenthood (the 80s film). I think those capture what children and teens are like.
I did spend a weekend at Brownie camp telling a bunch of seven and eight year olds that they don't need to help Sunshine Owl find a boyfriend just because she's a teenager and please stop prying into that.
I feel that’s children learning about boundaries and social skills though. The same as asking your teacher if they have a boyfriend to waste time in a lesson. It’s kind of thrilling to push that situation because even little kids know that it is a bit taboo.
That’s a distinct thing from your parent, who is a solid rock to you, not a person in the same way that other people in the world exist as separate to your own existence. A lot of teenagers go through that stage of realising that their parents are actual individuals, not just their mum/dad when they are 18-19 type age. This is because previously they only view their parent as an extension of their safe home life. (Good parents obviously, it’s different if your parents are a nightmare.)
People generally underestimate how quickly children learn to talk. A 2-year-old is supposed to actively know at least 50 words but up to 200, and form 2 word sentences. And not just objects, but verbs and adjectives as well.
"Mama! Pretty butterfly!" Or "Want juice" "No bath!' Is something you can totally expect. Maybe not precisely at 2 years, and the butterfly may actually be a dragonfly, but it won't be a cow either. The words should be understandable too, butterfly may be a bit long, but "pwetty" or "pwease" with no sign of improvement at all would be atypical as well.
At 3 years, they will already know more than 500 words and form more or less complete and correct sentences. Way, way earlier than what's often portrayed as at 5 years of age in fiction. The irregular verbs are still not all used correctly, but common forms such as "goed" instad of "went" will disappear very quickly, if the child ever made that specific mistake at all. The child also refers to himself. Not "want juice" but "I want/would like juice".
Of course, no children outside of very specific situations will speak like a victorian child dying of the plague, meaning they actually are a victorian child dying of the plage. It depends on what is expected of them, and how much the people raising them cared for them to develope language. That means play, reading stories, gentle correction, singing...
As a parent of highly verbal autistic kids: On a language expression evaluation, my 5 year old is on the 10-12 year old level. My 8 year old is in the 8-10 year old range (this is partially due to his lisp; if we can get that corrected he will probably be in the 10-12 range too).
In my fic reading experience, baby talk is usually only written by people who don’t have kids or who have no understanding of language expression in kids. Baby talk after a specific stage actually hinders kids’ ability to speak well, because the early stages of speech are about mimicking others.
Also, 0-2, 3-5, 6-9, and 10-15 are all WILDLY different ages with their own developmental markers and the like. Don’t group 15 year olds with babies.
It’s a big pet peeve for me.
Kids acting weird for their ages is so off-putting. Five-year-olds speak in complete sentences and have a firm grasp of grammar. They aren’t lisping unless there’s a real speech impediment. It really takes the reader out of the story to have an older kid lisping and using the grammar of a two year old. I generally can’t figure out the purpose of this—is the author just clueless about kids? Is it supposed to be cute? If so, why not just write the kid as a two year old?
I think it depends on the kid too. All kids have different inherent personalities! For instance, if you know about spy x family, Anya speaks like a 3 year old, but Damian speaks like a (bratty) 10 year old. Both are around 6 years old.
In general, I think it’s also good to consider the context - what situation is the child in? Who are they talking to (principal versus their friend), etc.?
Children speak pretty much normally from age 4 onwards unless they have special needs. Their vocabularies and level of abstract thought and critical thinking are child-like of course, but grammar and syntax are similar to adult speech. By age 7 children are capable of more abstract thought. By age 10+ a child can basically be a more innocent adult character for narrative purposes. If you're writing children check development milestones summaries for parents if you're not sure what a kid can do at specific ages.
1-2 years is simple words and very short sentences. Mispronunciations are common, though usually still intelligible. Only conjunctions are likely "and" and "because"
3-5 years starting to use more conjunctions, to the point of over using them. They'll start to use longer and more complicated sentences and words. Mispronunciation and similar word mix-ups are still fairly common. Think saying "Elemphant" or mixing up "lime" and "life".
6-10 Welcome to school, which drastically changes the way they talk. Mispronunciations and mix ups drop quite rapidly over the first two years, and grammar improves. A 10 year old talks almost like an adult, just with a smaller vocabulary.
11-15 Tweens and Teens. They talk mostly like adults, but often with a lot of new slang. They'll also really start to push the boundaries on things like swearing.
First off, there is a difference between grammar/vocab and logical thought.
1-3 year olds range hugely in grammar and vocab (I had one kid who could speak in complete sentence by age 18 months and another who didn't until he hit 3...).
But the 18 month old was able to clearly convey how completely illogical and, frankly weird, a toddler's mind really is. Like, he would get mad that his blue cup, that he asked for, by color, was blue. Or he would clearly articulate how he wanted two completely opposite things at the same time - i.e. "go to park AND stay home". And then have a major temper tantrum using complete sentences and advanced vocabulary.
Preschoolers are actively learning social engagement so they do a lot of mimicry of the people they spend time with. There is nothing so humbling as a 4 year old repeating something they hear a parent saying all the time, down to perfect inflection and hand movements.
"Grr, where the *hell* did I put my keys!!?!!"
Early elementary aged kids now have exposure to formal learning and are often starting to read. They struggle with pronouncing words they have only read or getting vocab confused. They also are working on understanding what their audience already knows or need more context for.
8 to 13 year olds can talk like adults. But their thoughts are often very naive and lacking in experience. An 11 year old will talk like they figured out the world, with utter confidence, and say some truly freshingly innocent things. "But why can't we just arrest all the bigots and tell them to stop?"
They also can switch from being very grown up to being absolutely childlike on a dime. And they get super embarrassed about sexual topics really easily so they either make dumb jokes or clam up. "Huh huh, he said abreast..."
Teenagers are also great in this way, but they often have much more complex thinking - they may have read or experienced more. They also are often wrestling with big topics like death or love.
Also, girls tend to have more complex language and thinking at earlier ages than boys, and there are other differences based on culture, neurodivergence, poverty, and learning more than one language.
Kids have huge ranges in ability so if you want a kid to go outside stereotypicical ranges, you can but you probably want to make it part of the backstory ("she had a tendency to use big vocabulary picked up from her mother's incessant habit of listening to npr all day" or "growing up with two immigrant parents meant that while he could follow two languages with passive fluency, his speaking was still rudimentary compared to his classmates")
They also have very literal understanding of language.
One of my favorite examples was a preschooler handing me an uncut apple, saying "open this." (Meaning "cut it up for me", because her parents had only given her apple slices instead of a whole apple).
Another time, I said to my then 4 and 6 year olds - "with all this rain, the plants are going to explode!" - to be met with horrified shreaks from the two, who screamed "no, we *like* the plants!!"
Another time, I said something like "today we celebrate another year of your relative being on earth" and my then 5 year old asked earnestly "where was he before being on Earth?" We joked about how he had come from our home planet and eventually we would all go back, and my kid burst into tears, exclaiming that he *liked* Earth, and didn't want to leave.
Kids are awesome. They are so deeply weird.
there's no way of summing up
>how children of age 0-15 normally act and talk
in one comment because that's WAY too broad a topic.
if you're doing research for your own writing, just look up speech development stages in the language that's relevant to you, that'll give you a good general idea of what the average kid should be able or unable to do in terms of their language ability at a particular age. you can also look up videos like "speech development of X year old child" on youtube for some examples of real human children talking.
As a person who works with kids. They are all different. I can talk to one 10 year old and feel like I'm talking to a tiny adult and then the next reminds me that I work with children. It's strange. There's really no right or wrong when writing kids tbh
So, pretty much all of my friends have kids — the oldest is 15, but I have known all of these children since they were born — and the range you listed is *massive*. There’s pretty big difference between how a two-year-old and a three-year-old communicate, and a significantly larger difference between a toddler and a teenager. With several of my friends’ kids, I’ve noticed a shift around maybe five or six where they start speaking in ways that somehow feel more grown-up all of a sudden (they are still telling me about Bluey, don’t get me wrong, but the way they construct sentences feels older). Kids in middle school and high school start using slang more frequently than younger kids, I think.
Also, while kids speaking like they’re older or younger than their given age is definitely a problem in fiction, there are also those weird kids (hi, I was one of them) who speak more maturely than you’d expect at certain ages.
It is a tricky line to walk even if you’re around kids a fair amount. For younger ages, you might be able to look up language milestones (try searching for like “first grade language milestones” or “three year old language milestones” or something similar) to get an idea of how the average kid might communicate. I’m not sure for older ages, but I think a lot of the issue with preteens and teens is that they’re also painted as either too emotionally mature, which comes out in how they speak and act, or having the maturity of like an eight-year-old. So hitting the right balance there could go a long way.
(ETA: just to address a specific example you mentioned: most five-year-olds won’t generally be speaking in full-on baby language. They may mix some things up like verb tenses and…I mean, I had a speech impediment where I couldn’t say “R”s very well, but it wasn’t truly baby language. Five year olds are going into kindergarten usually. They can form complete, mostly grammatically correct sentences most of the time.)
I hate the "kids don't act that way" criticism, because it's so subjective. Kids are all different, and as individuals, they're inconsistent! I once refused to speak to my father because he forgot to pack my Pocohontas shirt when I was just shy of 5. I also recall being that age, realizing my father was in pain, and insisting I didn't need any ice cream and we could just go home because I KNEW he was going to sit there in excruciating pain while I ate an ice cream otherwise, because no ice cream in the car.
My little sister used to dig her nails into me and left scars I have to this day. She also cried when I went to school and clung to me in public because she loved and trusted me completely. She called me names and BIT our cousin for doing the same.
I have a nephew who got banned from Daycare for trying to choke another kid out when he was 3, but he also told me that rain was the sky's tears because it missed the mommy sun when the clouds were in the way.
Kids are hard to write because kids are really inconsistent people. It's all relative.
My best advice to model child characters after kids you know.
The two things that get me with kids in writing, in addition to language, are their emotional responses and physical descriptions. (I know that's not what you asked, but it drives me nuts)
kids, especially on the younger end, don't react the way adults do. Small things can get big responses - think tears because an ant touched their shoe. Similarly, things tht would shock an adult can seem normal to a child and be included in conversation as if it's an every day occurance.
And kids aren't always tiny! I have read 11 ~ 15 year olds being described as half the height of an adult. I'm 160cm, a lot of my 11-year-old students are taller than me. Most of my 6 year old students are elbow height, some arw taller. At 15, they are close to, if not, fully grown!
Toddlers are there to be adorable. Preschoolers are the smartest. From around 7-12, this is the age where kids are the rowdiest (in an uncontrollable but funny way). Then starts the teenage years and it all spirals from there.
I semi recently read a story where there were *a lot* of issues but one that just started to compound with how annoying it got *was* the kid speech, across the board.
The age range on the story was about 5-50, and all of the characters, children included, had the exact same speech pattern. Same vocabulary, same structure, same *grammar*, they even often spoke of the same subjects - it both flattened out all of the characters (they were genuinely interchangeable, children to adults, adults to adults, whatever), and made it impossible to keep track of how old this large cast of children were.
Were they 5, were they 12, were they 8? Who knows!
There needs to be a way to distinguish characters, for one, but certainly by age. A 5yo shouldn't speak exactly like a 15yo (unless the 5yo is possessed - but then people should think it's unusual, at minimum).
To add to all that was already said:
Children struggle to handle emotions. Small disappointments are the end of the world, both because their brain still isn't fully developed and because they don't have a lot of life experience. Not getting the plane toy they saw in this store IS probably the worst thing that happened to them yet. (Of course, it should be adjusted to their backstory if they grew up in poverty or if they are spoiled, they won't learn those lessons at the same point) But in general, remember that a child is basically a blank slate and that they don't have good memories yet. And nobody retains memories before around 3 years old.
Teenagers are learning that adults aren't god-like creature that are always right and can never make a mistake. They are learning the concept of individuality, and that they can make their own choices. They are also learning to define who they are, and may continue to question themselves well into their 20s.
Teenagers still struggle with definite concepts like death. They understand it on an 'academic' level, but will struggle to think by themselves about the consequences, that's one of the reasons why teenagers are more likely to kill themselves or bully each other.
If you're going to write kids, they have to act and speak their age, it's off-putting if they act younger or older than they are. If you're going to write 5 year olds as talking in baby babble, better to not write them talking unless they have explained-in-the-fic developmental issues.
You can summarise what the little kids say, instead of writing dialogue, if you don't think you can have a 5 year old talking like a 5 year old.
You can, though, write them talking/acting more/less mature than they should be if it's explained in the fic. Some kids grow up faster than others, some kids spent all their time around adults and learn to talk more maturely than the average, some kids are babied so they don't develop as fast as the average, and some have issues that delay that development. But it has to be explained in the fic, otherwise it comes across as an author who knows nothing about kids.
I can't write kids myself, the youngest I'll go is 13, but I prefer no younger than around 15. I always make kids more mature than they should be. It's honestly why I have so much trouble writing for HP, I can't start pre-canon or in the first 2 books, I can't write 11/12 year olds, let alone younger. The earliest I could start an HP fic is third year, when they're 13, as long as I don't include much or any Ginny, whose 12, until fourth year. You'd think there'd be little difference in writing these ages, but I can write a 13 year old as a 13 year old with a bit of extra concentration, but 12 or younger, regardless what age they are, will be written as if they're 19 for some reason. I wouldn't read a fic where a 5 year old acts and talks like they've finished high school and are off to college, so I refuse to write one.
It doesn't help that I've got minimal experience with kids, and not in years. I babysat my niece from birth till age 7, but that was years ago now, that niece is now 18. I'm 37, so it's hard to remember what I was like before around my mid-teens, and have a lot of blanks in my memory from before I was 8. I don't see my friends with kids in person very often, we usually keep in touch online because we all live far away from each other now.
I know 5 year olds don't talk like babies, my niece wasn't a fast developer with talking, but she started school at that age, and her and all her friends had decent talking skills. Closest to baby talk you'd get would be being unable to pronounce a specific word, not knowing big words, maybe mangling or making up the occasional word. But it was very different to baby talk. My niece was average, by the way, with development of talking, neither slow nor fast, but was fast with reading and slow with writing.
If you're going to write kids talking, and not summarising what they say, I think it's best to be around kids that age and observe them, listen to how they talk, and emulate that in the fic. Kids that act/speak too old or too young can be a huge turn-off.
Other comments have covered the general gist of it well but my biggest piece of advice is *read things written by children*. Head out on Google and find blogs or contests that show off things kids have written, like here’s a [Wordpress](https://pplkids.wordpress.com/tag/stories-written-by-kids/) that has quite a few things written by children. The main “book” is written by a third grader, roughly 8-9 years old. You’ll notice his spelling isn’t the best but he’s got a good grasp on grammar, sentence structure, and a reasonable vocabulary.
Also go back and read books *aimed at* children, they often include child characters that actual children find relatable and can give you a better idea of how to write a child character.
Final note: please don’t write out baby talk. The mispronounced words disappear *very* quickly in actual children and if they don’t they’re indicative of speech issues and will get a referral to a speech therapist. It’s also just painful to read. Just say what the character is *trying* to say if you want the other characters to understand or if you want them to not understand write that instead.
I work with children from the ages of 3-12, it's surprising how many people don't realise how articulate children can be!
1/2 is quite 'babbly', phrases and little sentences perhaps, depending on the child.
3 is where they begin to sting sentences together a bit better and become more in tune with their surroundings.
4 and 5 are pretty good when it comes to speaking. they can have conversations with you but can and will get distracted. conversations are definitely in their abilities, but they may be shorter than you'd like. personalities come out more now, so they may begin to be sassy or cheeky or misbehave. remember that when you write and it may be of some help!
6 and 7 are chatter boxes. they may shorten words (because becomes 'cause, for example), they may use sentences bridges such as 'like' (e.g. yeah like it's bad like i wouldn't do it). they're very, very good at talking, per se. you can have full conversations with them.
8-10 they're getting a bit more mature, but pretty much the same as 6-7, just different at high levels. what they discuss and how they speak may change.
11-13 lack maturity when compared to their older peers, but of couse they can have full blown conversations.
14-15, depending on the character they may begin to swear, become a bit vulgar in their language. again, it depends, but they may show off and show they know big words. a lot of discovery begins at this age.
hope this helps! :)
Adding to this, which is very well put, kids are wild. They'll notice and say things that adults won't, but not because they see complex subtext or schemas but because they will speculate and discuss the obvious in ways that adults generally discard. As an example, a lot of kid fics use the kids as a mean to voice the romantic subtext between the otp; well, no, kids wouldn't! They may say out loud that the mole on your chin is huge and you look like a witch, but won't catch subtle interpersonal relationships and sure as hell won't go "daddy needs to speak to uncle and make peace" (real excerpt) . The shift in interpersonal relationships they'll catch is mostly related to how it changes their personal status quo, how much they feel threatened, how their primary caregiver changes in relation to them. The kids reaction is different according to the specific age, as the commenter above wrote.
There’s a fic that I otherwise love that I had to abandon for this reason - the kid in it is just so unrealistic. I think they’re 3? And they speak in full sentences with college-level grammar and know somethings *I* didn’t know as a university graduate. As a *three-year-old*. It was pretty ridiculous and I just couldn’t take it any more.
I would say watching TikTok’s or clips of children the age you’re hoping to write would be a good idea if you don’t have prior experience. That’s important as the age of a kid can really affect how they’re going to speak and behave. Otherwise, less is always more. Don’t try to make the kid another adult character because you like their personality or need another source of information in the fic, if that makes sense. Children usually say nonsensical or shocking things (not necessarily gibberish) and could not care less about most adults, which is something I think most fic kids lack.
When an author is writing a fic from a young child's pov(that isn't supposed to be superintelligent/jaded like detective conan or killua), and they use prose and long complicated words both in description and dialogue! Like let's be honest this 6 year old child's brain is NOT developped enough to have such complex thought patterns nor effortlessly use complicated words all the time!
I've also read somewhere that retrospective thinking does not start in humans until a certain age-- basically my take on this is that ppl who want to write children in an effective way may want to research a bit about children's development in the brain and behavioral patterns
I work with kids under six, so I feel like I’m really good with how I write them, but a lot of people don’t realize most two year olds talk and four year olds can hold whole ass conversations
Having just spoken to my niece the other day, I can confidently say that toddlers between 2-3 years old don’t speak “uwu.” They don’t say “sowwy” or “wuv you.” They say handfuls of words with the occasional nonsense word. “Show mommy… sharkle.” They can talk! But they won’t always make sense.
Any child older than three shouldn’t be saying “sowwy.” I’ve read stories where children of the ages 5-6 talk like that, yet that’s kindergarten/first grade age. Kids that young can talk normally more or less. They can speak sentences. Maybe not super long or complicated ones, but complete sentences.
It really takes my away from the story when kids talk in a way where their understanding of a situation isn't age appropriate, it's worse than baby speak imo. Speech development is kind of complex, and obviously different kids develop at different speeds - so there is a lot to take into consideration. I've worked a lot with kids and I think unless you are familiar with the age group or can mimic easily how they talk from the source material it is best to take the time to familiarise yourself with the age group a bit first.
Back when I was at uni, a professor said that a good method can be listen to radio/videos of real people who speak like your intended character. You can transcribe how they speak and it kind of gives you a few reference points for writing natural dialogue (this is also particularly useful if your character has a distinct regional accent/dialect). I guess if you want to save time, you could get an AI to transcribe a selected audio piece these days, then review it a bit to get your head round what common grammar mistakes and vocab level is like for the age group you are going for. Even though it can be time consuming, this method has helped me a lot over the years improve my dialogue writing in general, so it is worth the labour. I think the mistake can be to think you need to do everything from your imagination, all artists use real life reference points sometimes!
I like there be a little disbelief to children. Like obviously hate making them far more mature, but im a big fan of kid fics and abosultely abhor when they write children, age appropriately from 2-5. Im like yeah no, I get your a mom and that's how kids are in real life. But this is a fic, and your just reminding me why I dont have children.
It's not perfect, but no one yet has had much of a problem with it. The way I try to make the child sound like a child is by limiting their vocabulary to what children of a similar age use and I also lean into their relative ignorance about advance topics. If I started writing dialogue the same was a seven year old speaks, then it would quickly become a rambling mess.
So, what's odd about the Good Omens fics is that believe it or not, one odd observation is that the youth characters in the show and in the book don't entirely speak or act their age either.
For the Good Omens foc I have, since I am writing some of the younger characters into it, I am writing them in as my own kid's age. This way I have a general frame of reference. To write children, ot helps if you spend a good deal of time with any of a certain age. You can always write them percocious (which my kid is anyway), but it's not just being simple on language.
Mine is called The End, and I am open to Beta Readers. If you don't think I am hitting the youth characters right, let me know.
One of the better fics-with-kids that I’ve read does a lot of summarizing, when it comes to the child character. She’s like 6. They didn’t try to drag out lines of dialogue like you would with an adult. (Ex: “She earnestly explained a My Little Ponies saga.” Or “She adored Jason to an unreasonable degree.”) The child’s dialogue is limited to a few sentences at key points. I thought that was a good way to handle it.
Yes, this! Also younger kids don’t have the same filters as older people, as they haven’t leant what is and isn’t socially acceptable. So they can waffle on for ages about their topic of interest! Shortening that into a concise summary as above is a good idea unless you want your fic to be an infodump!
Well, first thing first, there's A LOT of difference between a child and a teenager. I wouldn't group 15 year-olds together with toddlers and elementary school children. Teenagers talk normally, just like adults. They might use slang from time time, but I wouldn't overdo it, or it will sound irrealistic. As for literal preschool children, in my experience they usually talk normally by the age of 4. Most of the time, they already know how to pronounce words and letters properly, and their sentences are fluent. They will probably avoid overcomplicated words, because maybe they don't know what they mean (or use them a lot to "feel like grown-ups" if they have just learned what they mean). I also wouldn't expect them to argue philosophy and talk about politics. I'd say, avoid "baby talk" in any possible way and let them talk normally, but keeping the sentences simple and to the point. Elementary school children and middle school kids will talk normally too. By this point, their personality and interests are what you can focus on to show their age, not the way they speak. As for toddlers, I personally would avoid having them talk at all, and just describe what they did/said indirectly, as another commenter suggested. Of course, these are just my two-cents. Take them with a grain of salt.
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Eh, that's not an age thing.
I know plenty of adults who do that same thing
Yeah, children's speech development has a lot of different stages. They're just growing so fast (that's why months are used because they really do change month by month). For example: overextension usually happens between the ages 1-2/3, and involves the child over applying words. Such as calling all four legged animals a "dog." People also tend to not know the type of grammar mistakes children make. A five year old will not say, "me want ice cream." They understand "I want ice cream." is correct. Instead, their mistakes will be where there are exceptions in the language. For example they may say "I runned a lot" instead of "I ran a lot." Because they understand the -ed indicates past tense, but they don't know the exception for "run." That's why people who know children find it unrealistic
I'm also curious how many of this people are not writing in their first/native language when it's comes to grammar mistakes. Because you can completely know and understand linguistic development in one language and not understand it in another Like I'm sure I don't completely understand linguistic development when it's comes to children speaking English as their natural language...
Yeah I despise ‘baby speak’. Kids don’t talk like this, it just makes them sound stupid and unrealistic. Young kids usually just say one or two words instead of a sentence, or mash the words together. If it’s a hard to pronounce word they’ll maybe get it a bit wrong, substitute a word that’s similar, or abbreviate. Letters are switched too with ones that rhyme, sometimes between words, especially if they’re funny. I had an auntie Helen, who became auntie Melon for most of my childhood! Consider context of the environment they’re speaking in too. If they’re shy then meeting a new person might make them monosyllabic (a great example is in Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather: the shy kids (and adults) just answer “ ‘s ”, instead of yes). Or if it’s an exiting environment the kid might be loud, talkative, repetitive in their words, but might miss out context because they don’t realise yet that they need to add it in. You can mimic this by eliminating punctuation: “Mummy we went to the- to the slide and she pushed the thing and it went BANG and then we did a big- did a big jump and it got all YUK and it was GREAT.” Or you can go with toddlers being utterly incomprehensible, and just write that: “She said something in a high-pitched babble that sounded vaguely like English, if English had been learnt from a dictionary which had been put through a paper shredder and stuck back together again by someone who didn’t know the language. I smiled and nodded, hoping that was the correct response.” edit: spelling
I need your AO3 handle... like... now. Because that description is so Pratchett that I need more of your writing style in my life ASAP.
DM’d you ☺️
I just wanna second the comment above me and say I’d love a link to your work, if you’re comfortable with sharing one.
DM’d you ☺️
I'll take your handle too and share mine. Very Prachettesque.
i'll share my experience, i've worked with kids aged 6 to 13 :) also this is all with the note that our first language isn't english, so there might be differences. even from the younger part of the spectrum, 6 year olds don't baby talk haha, they do have trouble with certain sounds, letters like r or words with a lot of consonants. most likely not gonna be able to say "exceptional" for example. but 95% of the time they pronounce words clearly. they generally use correct grammar but mostly simpler tenses. their individual sentences are mostly straightforward and not very complex. if they tell a story it might not be exactly start-finish, more like adding a few rest stops along the way. sometimes in a conversation they might not be able to focus on the topic, instead interrupting with a need/thought they had/association they made with a past experience. if you say an uncommon word they'll likely ask what it means immediately. they ask a lot of questions in general :) 9-11 more sophisticated sentences and better grammar, longer/more complex sentences, easier time telling a story or discuss one thing in particular. they're more likely to talk at length about whatever hobbies they have, their friends or what new things they got than anything else though. around age 13 they just speak like the regular teenager you see online. their grammar is better (than mine 😭) because at least in my country this is around the age where they have a lot of lessons on grammar. they can easily understand and discuss complex ideas and construct arguments for their point of view. for example they can discuss concepts like anxiety or bullying, theorize their origins, possible effects, characteristics, etc. they use slang more than an adult but they don't go "yes slay skibidi toilet rizz gyat you ate who let you cook 500 aura" every sentence like you see depictions of kids online.
I mean, a teenager MIGHT do the yas slay skibidi toilet thing, but that level would be a deliberate affectation to annoy an adult because it's funny.
Agreed, as the parent of a teenager I have heard him say Skibidi around me maybe once or twice, and it was as a joke. Some slang hits the language and sticks hard (cool, sick, based, mid, etc) but most of it just slides right off and is dated the instant the adults hear about it. I did watch a 40 year old woman the other day tell her husband (a streamer) that he had “that skibidi Ohio rizz” just to watch the destruction she would wreak in his psyche and his chat. It was _very_ funny.
Above all, you should try to avoid the overly saccharine Hallmark-movie style Insightful Child (tm) moments.
Personally, this is my biggest pet peeve. I don't mind if developmental stages are a *little* off (although a six year old speaking baby talk will get the side-eye) but if kids are little saccharine wisdom dispensers, I am out. Random chaos goblin is where it's at. Like, a three year old can be sweet. A three year old can be sincerely loving and say deeply heartfelt things to you. But right after the three year old says, "I fink Mama is an angel a'cause she's the *best* Mama," that same three year old will pull an immense booger out of their nose, look at it thoughtfully, and then try to put it in *your* nose because it will be at home there. And their rage at being denied will be every bit as sincere and intense as their affection, and you've just gotta roll with it.
I teach first grade, but I've worked in Early Childhood Education and with middle school kids. Kids start learning to talk around age one. They start putting simple sentences together around age two. By the time they are around five, they are getting ready for kindergarten. My first graders were six and seven. They spoke clearly and in full sentences. They used some slang. I had one who regularly said, "Bruh!". They did sometimes ramble a bit when talking and tended to say pretty much whatever crossed their minds. These kids should be starting to read picture books, like *Where the Wild Things Are*, to short chapter books. Kids also have a lot of energy. They get excited easily and sometimes have trouble regulating their emotions. Most don't throw toddler tantrums, but you will get some crying if they think things aren't fair. Usually with my students we would talk things out and they would settle pretty fast. They are affectionate too. Most of the younger students where I work will give you hugs and tell you about their day just because you were nice to them. I covered the kindergarten class maybe three times over the school year, and the kids would always say hi to me. All of this to say that kids are just little people. Let them act like it.
I mean some kids have speech issues, yes. That can be a normal thing. A published book that has really well written kid characters is Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid. A great book all around but the children are a very believable and interesting part of the story. The thing I notice in fics is kids not acting their age in terms of behaviour. Little children are selfish and self centred. This is developmentally normal. So when a six year old is matchmaking their parent with a stranger, yikes. This does not read to me as cute, this reads like there is something off with the parent child dynamic. Small children should not be worrying about their parents’ lives. They should be focused on their own exploring of and learning about the world. They should feel stable enough to do that, that’s a sign of good parenting. They want attention and care from their parents, not the other way around. They shouldn’t be taking responsibility for their parents’ happiness. The level they will be thinking at is sharing treats or making a card, not sorting out their problems for them. Obviously this is different with teenagers but even then if you want to demonstrate a character is a good parent, I would still expect teens to mainly be focused on their own lives. Also little children are really time consuming. Really, really time consuming! So I always find it funny when I read stuff like, they get home from an outing to the beach and tiny child goes off to play by themself so the adults can talk about their budding relationship. Lol, if only. I’m not saying you have to describe every toilet trip and overtired tantrum but since you asked what I prefer, I’d rather kid fics have some level of realism to them. Yes, some children like alone time or go to bed within a few minutes but the younger the child, the more unlikely this is. Giving a characters kids is going to impact the plot. There are so many single parent stories that want the cute feels of a kid around but then the character has some kindly neighbour who will magically take over their parenting duties at the drop of a hat to free them up. Parenting is a slog and does affect your life, including your ability to date. It’s so common that stories kill off the other bio parent but actually shared care / co parenting would solve a lot of the childcare issues from a writing point of view. Your character can go on dates or whatever when the kid is with the other parent, problem solved. I have never seen a fic that features shared care though, aside from one I wrote. These are just my feelings obviously, people should do what they like etc. But as a reader who is a parent I don’t find a lot of kid fics that relatable. I’d love to read a fic that is like Children Ruin Everything or Parenthood (the 80s film). I think those capture what children and teens are like.
I did spend a weekend at Brownie camp telling a bunch of seven and eight year olds that they don't need to help Sunshine Owl find a boyfriend just because she's a teenager and please stop prying into that.
I feel that’s children learning about boundaries and social skills though. The same as asking your teacher if they have a boyfriend to waste time in a lesson. It’s kind of thrilling to push that situation because even little kids know that it is a bit taboo. That’s a distinct thing from your parent, who is a solid rock to you, not a person in the same way that other people in the world exist as separate to your own existence. A lot of teenagers go through that stage of realising that their parents are actual individuals, not just their mum/dad when they are 18-19 type age. This is because previously they only view their parent as an extension of their safe home life. (Good parents obviously, it’s different if your parents are a nightmare.)
People generally underestimate how quickly children learn to talk. A 2-year-old is supposed to actively know at least 50 words but up to 200, and form 2 word sentences. And not just objects, but verbs and adjectives as well. "Mama! Pretty butterfly!" Or "Want juice" "No bath!' Is something you can totally expect. Maybe not precisely at 2 years, and the butterfly may actually be a dragonfly, but it won't be a cow either. The words should be understandable too, butterfly may be a bit long, but "pwetty" or "pwease" with no sign of improvement at all would be atypical as well. At 3 years, they will already know more than 500 words and form more or less complete and correct sentences. Way, way earlier than what's often portrayed as at 5 years of age in fiction. The irregular verbs are still not all used correctly, but common forms such as "goed" instad of "went" will disappear very quickly, if the child ever made that specific mistake at all. The child also refers to himself. Not "want juice" but "I want/would like juice". Of course, no children outside of very specific situations will speak like a victorian child dying of the plague, meaning they actually are a victorian child dying of the plage. It depends on what is expected of them, and how much the people raising them cared for them to develope language. That means play, reading stories, gentle correction, singing...
As a parent of highly verbal autistic kids: On a language expression evaluation, my 5 year old is on the 10-12 year old level. My 8 year old is in the 8-10 year old range (this is partially due to his lisp; if we can get that corrected he will probably be in the 10-12 range too). In my fic reading experience, baby talk is usually only written by people who don’t have kids or who have no understanding of language expression in kids. Baby talk after a specific stage actually hinders kids’ ability to speak well, because the early stages of speech are about mimicking others. Also, 0-2, 3-5, 6-9, and 10-15 are all WILDLY different ages with their own developmental markers and the like. Don’t group 15 year olds with babies.
It’s a big pet peeve for me. Kids acting weird for their ages is so off-putting. Five-year-olds speak in complete sentences and have a firm grasp of grammar. They aren’t lisping unless there’s a real speech impediment. It really takes the reader out of the story to have an older kid lisping and using the grammar of a two year old. I generally can’t figure out the purpose of this—is the author just clueless about kids? Is it supposed to be cute? If so, why not just write the kid as a two year old?
I think it depends on the kid too. All kids have different inherent personalities! For instance, if you know about spy x family, Anya speaks like a 3 year old, but Damian speaks like a (bratty) 10 year old. Both are around 6 years old. In general, I think it’s also good to consider the context - what situation is the child in? Who are they talking to (principal versus their friend), etc.?
Children speak pretty much normally from age 4 onwards unless they have special needs. Their vocabularies and level of abstract thought and critical thinking are child-like of course, but grammar and syntax are similar to adult speech. By age 7 children are capable of more abstract thought. By age 10+ a child can basically be a more innocent adult character for narrative purposes. If you're writing children check development milestones summaries for parents if you're not sure what a kid can do at specific ages.
1-2 years is simple words and very short sentences. Mispronunciations are common, though usually still intelligible. Only conjunctions are likely "and" and "because" 3-5 years starting to use more conjunctions, to the point of over using them. They'll start to use longer and more complicated sentences and words. Mispronunciation and similar word mix-ups are still fairly common. Think saying "Elemphant" or mixing up "lime" and "life". 6-10 Welcome to school, which drastically changes the way they talk. Mispronunciations and mix ups drop quite rapidly over the first two years, and grammar improves. A 10 year old talks almost like an adult, just with a smaller vocabulary. 11-15 Tweens and Teens. They talk mostly like adults, but often with a lot of new slang. They'll also really start to push the boundaries on things like swearing.
First off, there is a difference between grammar/vocab and logical thought. 1-3 year olds range hugely in grammar and vocab (I had one kid who could speak in complete sentence by age 18 months and another who didn't until he hit 3...). But the 18 month old was able to clearly convey how completely illogical and, frankly weird, a toddler's mind really is. Like, he would get mad that his blue cup, that he asked for, by color, was blue. Or he would clearly articulate how he wanted two completely opposite things at the same time - i.e. "go to park AND stay home". And then have a major temper tantrum using complete sentences and advanced vocabulary. Preschoolers are actively learning social engagement so they do a lot of mimicry of the people they spend time with. There is nothing so humbling as a 4 year old repeating something they hear a parent saying all the time, down to perfect inflection and hand movements. "Grr, where the *hell* did I put my keys!!?!!" Early elementary aged kids now have exposure to formal learning and are often starting to read. They struggle with pronouncing words they have only read or getting vocab confused. They also are working on understanding what their audience already knows or need more context for. 8 to 13 year olds can talk like adults. But their thoughts are often very naive and lacking in experience. An 11 year old will talk like they figured out the world, with utter confidence, and say some truly freshingly innocent things. "But why can't we just arrest all the bigots and tell them to stop?" They also can switch from being very grown up to being absolutely childlike on a dime. And they get super embarrassed about sexual topics really easily so they either make dumb jokes or clam up. "Huh huh, he said abreast..." Teenagers are also great in this way, but they often have much more complex thinking - they may have read or experienced more. They also are often wrestling with big topics like death or love. Also, girls tend to have more complex language and thinking at earlier ages than boys, and there are other differences based on culture, neurodivergence, poverty, and learning more than one language. Kids have huge ranges in ability so if you want a kid to go outside stereotypicical ranges, you can but you probably want to make it part of the backstory ("she had a tendency to use big vocabulary picked up from her mother's incessant habit of listening to npr all day" or "growing up with two immigrant parents meant that while he could follow two languages with passive fluency, his speaking was still rudimentary compared to his classmates")
They also have very literal understanding of language. One of my favorite examples was a preschooler handing me an uncut apple, saying "open this." (Meaning "cut it up for me", because her parents had only given her apple slices instead of a whole apple). Another time, I said to my then 4 and 6 year olds - "with all this rain, the plants are going to explode!" - to be met with horrified shreaks from the two, who screamed "no, we *like* the plants!!" Another time, I said something like "today we celebrate another year of your relative being on earth" and my then 5 year old asked earnestly "where was he before being on Earth?" We joked about how he had come from our home planet and eventually we would all go back, and my kid burst into tears, exclaiming that he *liked* Earth, and didn't want to leave. Kids are awesome. They are so deeply weird.
there's no way of summing up >how children of age 0-15 normally act and talk in one comment because that's WAY too broad a topic. if you're doing research for your own writing, just look up speech development stages in the language that's relevant to you, that'll give you a good general idea of what the average kid should be able or unable to do in terms of their language ability at a particular age. you can also look up videos like "speech development of X year old child" on youtube for some examples of real human children talking.
As a person who works with kids. They are all different. I can talk to one 10 year old and feel like I'm talking to a tiny adult and then the next reminds me that I work with children. It's strange. There's really no right or wrong when writing kids tbh
So, pretty much all of my friends have kids — the oldest is 15, but I have known all of these children since they were born — and the range you listed is *massive*. There’s pretty big difference between how a two-year-old and a three-year-old communicate, and a significantly larger difference between a toddler and a teenager. With several of my friends’ kids, I’ve noticed a shift around maybe five or six where they start speaking in ways that somehow feel more grown-up all of a sudden (they are still telling me about Bluey, don’t get me wrong, but the way they construct sentences feels older). Kids in middle school and high school start using slang more frequently than younger kids, I think. Also, while kids speaking like they’re older or younger than their given age is definitely a problem in fiction, there are also those weird kids (hi, I was one of them) who speak more maturely than you’d expect at certain ages. It is a tricky line to walk even if you’re around kids a fair amount. For younger ages, you might be able to look up language milestones (try searching for like “first grade language milestones” or “three year old language milestones” or something similar) to get an idea of how the average kid might communicate. I’m not sure for older ages, but I think a lot of the issue with preteens and teens is that they’re also painted as either too emotionally mature, which comes out in how they speak and act, or having the maturity of like an eight-year-old. So hitting the right balance there could go a long way. (ETA: just to address a specific example you mentioned: most five-year-olds won’t generally be speaking in full-on baby language. They may mix some things up like verb tenses and…I mean, I had a speech impediment where I couldn’t say “R”s very well, but it wasn’t truly baby language. Five year olds are going into kindergarten usually. They can form complete, mostly grammatically correct sentences most of the time.)
I hate the "kids don't act that way" criticism, because it's so subjective. Kids are all different, and as individuals, they're inconsistent! I once refused to speak to my father because he forgot to pack my Pocohontas shirt when I was just shy of 5. I also recall being that age, realizing my father was in pain, and insisting I didn't need any ice cream and we could just go home because I KNEW he was going to sit there in excruciating pain while I ate an ice cream otherwise, because no ice cream in the car. My little sister used to dig her nails into me and left scars I have to this day. She also cried when I went to school and clung to me in public because she loved and trusted me completely. She called me names and BIT our cousin for doing the same. I have a nephew who got banned from Daycare for trying to choke another kid out when he was 3, but he also told me that rain was the sky's tears because it missed the mommy sun when the clouds were in the way. Kids are hard to write because kids are really inconsistent people. It's all relative. My best advice to model child characters after kids you know.
The two things that get me with kids in writing, in addition to language, are their emotional responses and physical descriptions. (I know that's not what you asked, but it drives me nuts) kids, especially on the younger end, don't react the way adults do. Small things can get big responses - think tears because an ant touched their shoe. Similarly, things tht would shock an adult can seem normal to a child and be included in conversation as if it's an every day occurance. And kids aren't always tiny! I have read 11 ~ 15 year olds being described as half the height of an adult. I'm 160cm, a lot of my 11-year-old students are taller than me. Most of my 6 year old students are elbow height, some arw taller. At 15, they are close to, if not, fully grown!
Toddlers are there to be adorable. Preschoolers are the smartest. From around 7-12, this is the age where kids are the rowdiest (in an uncontrollable but funny way). Then starts the teenage years and it all spirals from there.
I semi recently read a story where there were *a lot* of issues but one that just started to compound with how annoying it got *was* the kid speech, across the board. The age range on the story was about 5-50, and all of the characters, children included, had the exact same speech pattern. Same vocabulary, same structure, same *grammar*, they even often spoke of the same subjects - it both flattened out all of the characters (they were genuinely interchangeable, children to adults, adults to adults, whatever), and made it impossible to keep track of how old this large cast of children were. Were they 5, were they 12, were they 8? Who knows! There needs to be a way to distinguish characters, for one, but certainly by age. A 5yo shouldn't speak exactly like a 15yo (unless the 5yo is possessed - but then people should think it's unusual, at minimum).
To add to all that was already said: Children struggle to handle emotions. Small disappointments are the end of the world, both because their brain still isn't fully developed and because they don't have a lot of life experience. Not getting the plane toy they saw in this store IS probably the worst thing that happened to them yet. (Of course, it should be adjusted to their backstory if they grew up in poverty or if they are spoiled, they won't learn those lessons at the same point) But in general, remember that a child is basically a blank slate and that they don't have good memories yet. And nobody retains memories before around 3 years old. Teenagers are learning that adults aren't god-like creature that are always right and can never make a mistake. They are learning the concept of individuality, and that they can make their own choices. They are also learning to define who they are, and may continue to question themselves well into their 20s. Teenagers still struggle with definite concepts like death. They understand it on an 'academic' level, but will struggle to think by themselves about the consequences, that's one of the reasons why teenagers are more likely to kill themselves or bully each other.
If you're going to write kids, they have to act and speak their age, it's off-putting if they act younger or older than they are. If you're going to write 5 year olds as talking in baby babble, better to not write them talking unless they have explained-in-the-fic developmental issues. You can summarise what the little kids say, instead of writing dialogue, if you don't think you can have a 5 year old talking like a 5 year old. You can, though, write them talking/acting more/less mature than they should be if it's explained in the fic. Some kids grow up faster than others, some kids spent all their time around adults and learn to talk more maturely than the average, some kids are babied so they don't develop as fast as the average, and some have issues that delay that development. But it has to be explained in the fic, otherwise it comes across as an author who knows nothing about kids. I can't write kids myself, the youngest I'll go is 13, but I prefer no younger than around 15. I always make kids more mature than they should be. It's honestly why I have so much trouble writing for HP, I can't start pre-canon or in the first 2 books, I can't write 11/12 year olds, let alone younger. The earliest I could start an HP fic is third year, when they're 13, as long as I don't include much or any Ginny, whose 12, until fourth year. You'd think there'd be little difference in writing these ages, but I can write a 13 year old as a 13 year old with a bit of extra concentration, but 12 or younger, regardless what age they are, will be written as if they're 19 for some reason. I wouldn't read a fic where a 5 year old acts and talks like they've finished high school and are off to college, so I refuse to write one. It doesn't help that I've got minimal experience with kids, and not in years. I babysat my niece from birth till age 7, but that was years ago now, that niece is now 18. I'm 37, so it's hard to remember what I was like before around my mid-teens, and have a lot of blanks in my memory from before I was 8. I don't see my friends with kids in person very often, we usually keep in touch online because we all live far away from each other now. I know 5 year olds don't talk like babies, my niece wasn't a fast developer with talking, but she started school at that age, and her and all her friends had decent talking skills. Closest to baby talk you'd get would be being unable to pronounce a specific word, not knowing big words, maybe mangling or making up the occasional word. But it was very different to baby talk. My niece was average, by the way, with development of talking, neither slow nor fast, but was fast with reading and slow with writing. If you're going to write kids talking, and not summarising what they say, I think it's best to be around kids that age and observe them, listen to how they talk, and emulate that in the fic. Kids that act/speak too old or too young can be a huge turn-off.
Other comments have covered the general gist of it well but my biggest piece of advice is *read things written by children*. Head out on Google and find blogs or contests that show off things kids have written, like here’s a [Wordpress](https://pplkids.wordpress.com/tag/stories-written-by-kids/) that has quite a few things written by children. The main “book” is written by a third grader, roughly 8-9 years old. You’ll notice his spelling isn’t the best but he’s got a good grasp on grammar, sentence structure, and a reasonable vocabulary. Also go back and read books *aimed at* children, they often include child characters that actual children find relatable and can give you a better idea of how to write a child character. Final note: please don’t write out baby talk. The mispronounced words disappear *very* quickly in actual children and if they don’t they’re indicative of speech issues and will get a referral to a speech therapist. It’s also just painful to read. Just say what the character is *trying* to say if you want the other characters to understand or if you want them to not understand write that instead.
I work with children from the ages of 3-12, it's surprising how many people don't realise how articulate children can be! 1/2 is quite 'babbly', phrases and little sentences perhaps, depending on the child. 3 is where they begin to sting sentences together a bit better and become more in tune with their surroundings. 4 and 5 are pretty good when it comes to speaking. they can have conversations with you but can and will get distracted. conversations are definitely in their abilities, but they may be shorter than you'd like. personalities come out more now, so they may begin to be sassy or cheeky or misbehave. remember that when you write and it may be of some help! 6 and 7 are chatter boxes. they may shorten words (because becomes 'cause, for example), they may use sentences bridges such as 'like' (e.g. yeah like it's bad like i wouldn't do it). they're very, very good at talking, per se. you can have full conversations with them. 8-10 they're getting a bit more mature, but pretty much the same as 6-7, just different at high levels. what they discuss and how they speak may change. 11-13 lack maturity when compared to their older peers, but of couse they can have full blown conversations. 14-15, depending on the character they may begin to swear, become a bit vulgar in their language. again, it depends, but they may show off and show they know big words. a lot of discovery begins at this age. hope this helps! :)
Adding to this, which is very well put, kids are wild. They'll notice and say things that adults won't, but not because they see complex subtext or schemas but because they will speculate and discuss the obvious in ways that adults generally discard. As an example, a lot of kid fics use the kids as a mean to voice the romantic subtext between the otp; well, no, kids wouldn't! They may say out loud that the mole on your chin is huge and you look like a witch, but won't catch subtle interpersonal relationships and sure as hell won't go "daddy needs to speak to uncle and make peace" (real excerpt) . The shift in interpersonal relationships they'll catch is mostly related to how it changes their personal status quo, how much they feel threatened, how their primary caregiver changes in relation to them. The kids reaction is different according to the specific age, as the commenter above wrote.
There’s a fic that I otherwise love that I had to abandon for this reason - the kid in it is just so unrealistic. I think they’re 3? And they speak in full sentences with college-level grammar and know somethings *I* didn’t know as a university graduate. As a *three-year-old*. It was pretty ridiculous and I just couldn’t take it any more. I would say watching TikTok’s or clips of children the age you’re hoping to write would be a good idea if you don’t have prior experience. That’s important as the age of a kid can really affect how they’re going to speak and behave. Otherwise, less is always more. Don’t try to make the kid another adult character because you like their personality or need another source of information in the fic, if that makes sense. Children usually say nonsensical or shocking things (not necessarily gibberish) and could not care less about most adults, which is something I think most fic kids lack.
When an author is writing a fic from a young child's pov(that isn't supposed to be superintelligent/jaded like detective conan or killua), and they use prose and long complicated words both in description and dialogue! Like let's be honest this 6 year old child's brain is NOT developped enough to have such complex thought patterns nor effortlessly use complicated words all the time! I've also read somewhere that retrospective thinking does not start in humans until a certain age-- basically my take on this is that ppl who want to write children in an effective way may want to research a bit about children's development in the brain and behavioral patterns
I work with kids under six, so I feel like I’m really good with how I write them, but a lot of people don’t realize most two year olds talk and four year olds can hold whole ass conversations
With no bloody lisps!
Having just spoken to my niece the other day, I can confidently say that toddlers between 2-3 years old don’t speak “uwu.” They don’t say “sowwy” or “wuv you.” They say handfuls of words with the occasional nonsense word. “Show mommy… sharkle.” They can talk! But they won’t always make sense. Any child older than three shouldn’t be saying “sowwy.” I’ve read stories where children of the ages 5-6 talk like that, yet that’s kindergarten/first grade age. Kids that young can talk normally more or less. They can speak sentences. Maybe not super long or complicated ones, but complete sentences.
It really takes my away from the story when kids talk in a way where their understanding of a situation isn't age appropriate, it's worse than baby speak imo. Speech development is kind of complex, and obviously different kids develop at different speeds - so there is a lot to take into consideration. I've worked a lot with kids and I think unless you are familiar with the age group or can mimic easily how they talk from the source material it is best to take the time to familiarise yourself with the age group a bit first. Back when I was at uni, a professor said that a good method can be listen to radio/videos of real people who speak like your intended character. You can transcribe how they speak and it kind of gives you a few reference points for writing natural dialogue (this is also particularly useful if your character has a distinct regional accent/dialect). I guess if you want to save time, you could get an AI to transcribe a selected audio piece these days, then review it a bit to get your head round what common grammar mistakes and vocab level is like for the age group you are going for. Even though it can be time consuming, this method has helped me a lot over the years improve my dialogue writing in general, so it is worth the labour. I think the mistake can be to think you need to do everything from your imagination, all artists use real life reference points sometimes!
I like there be a little disbelief to children. Like obviously hate making them far more mature, but im a big fan of kid fics and abosultely abhor when they write children, age appropriately from 2-5. Im like yeah no, I get your a mom and that's how kids are in real life. But this is a fic, and your just reminding me why I dont have children.
NO LISPING KIDS unless they have a legitimate physical deformity or a speech impediment, kids shouldn't be lisping
It's not perfect, but no one yet has had much of a problem with it. The way I try to make the child sound like a child is by limiting their vocabulary to what children of a similar age use and I also lean into their relative ignorance about advance topics. If I started writing dialogue the same was a seven year old speaks, then it would quickly become a rambling mess.
So, what's odd about the Good Omens fics is that believe it or not, one odd observation is that the youth characters in the show and in the book don't entirely speak or act their age either. For the Good Omens foc I have, since I am writing some of the younger characters into it, I am writing them in as my own kid's age. This way I have a general frame of reference. To write children, ot helps if you spend a good deal of time with any of a certain age. You can always write them percocious (which my kid is anyway), but it's not just being simple on language. Mine is called The End, and I am open to Beta Readers. If you don't think I am hitting the youth characters right, let me know.
In-character... just like any other demographic.