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So I just got this comment on LYG that reminded me of something Iâve been wanting to talk about! Before I start, let me be clear that I think Ashley has a right to her opinion and to comment what she wants, and to be fair this has been a common critique of LYGâs early chaptersâ
âSo itâs not sympathy Iâm looking for or anything like that. I just think itâs super interesting, because I talked the way bb Rey does in this story when I was around five or six. Thatâs why I wrote her like this, because it felt completely natural to meâ
âAt the time of posting this story, I had no idea that itâs generally not considered ânormalâ for younger kids to sound like this. And then I started receiving feedback like Ashleyâs. Hers is far more recent than all the others, but the first comment like this I ever got aboutâ
âbb Reyâs speech patterns put me into a sort of Existential Crisis (TM). Like, did I do childhood wrong? I actually brought this up to my parents, like, hey, did you guys ever find it weird that I spoke like this when I was five or six, and they said they werenât surprised by itâ
âBecause I was apparently already reading the newspaper by the age of three and I was reading novels at the age of around four or five. My dad said he came home one day and found me hunched over his copy of âFoucaultâs Pendulumâ by Umberto Eco, and that was further confirmationâ
âThat I was ~advanced.~ From then on everyone in the family plied me with books and I got my own computer xD My late grandfather immediately took me under his wing and by the time I was seven heâd made me memorize a slew of classic poems by Tennyson, Keats, Byron, Shelley, etcâ
âSo, because this love for language of mine was steadily nurtured by my family, when we had to take an assessment test in fifth grade, it was found that my reading and vocabulary was beyond the college level (my math was only high school level so letâs not talk about that 
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âAnd the thing is, my teachers and classmates were so chill about it as well. It was not until I wrote and posted âLike Young Godsâ in 2016 that I found out other people didnât like it and someone said it was weird and annoying that a six-year-old spoke this way. I honestly alsoâ
âBelieve that itâs a matter of cultural differences, although I could be wrong! I canât presume where these commenters are from but all Iâm saying is that I grew up here in Asia and kids being well-read and well-spoken have never been pointed out as some sort of flaw. I creditâ
âBecoming the person and the writer that I am today to the supportive and encouraging environment that I was immersed in as a child. Now Iâm wondering how I would have turned out if my family, friends, and teachers had told me to speak and think âmy age,â and I am so gratefulâ
âThat they didnât, that they just let me be me and pursue my interests. I canât help but think of those kids who were told stuff like what the commenters said, and I hope that these kids have come to understand that they are so valid despite attitudes like this from adultsâ
âAnd I guess the bottom line is, do not stifle children! Let them speak in complete sentences and have complex emotional responses if they want to! And always be cognizant of the fact that the way other people have been raised might be different from the way you were. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="â€ïž" title="Rotes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Rotes Herz">
