Jesse: Mama, when you were a baby they called you "Vicky", right?
Me: Yes.
Jesse: If we get another baby we should name him "Zombero."
Me: Um, okay. Where did that name come from?
Jesse: He's on Ben 10. (a cartoon) He's an evil clown guy.
Me: And why should I pick such a name?
Jesse: Because it's cool.
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I read a book recently called "A High Wind in Jamaica" by Richard Hughes that had a passage that made me laugh. If it were true it would certainly explain a lot. I sometimes feel this way when speaking with my children. It said,
Being nearly four years old she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies of course are not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
...
Possibly a case might be made out that children are not human either: but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are mad, in fact): but one can, by an effort of will and imagination, think like a child at least in a partial degree--and even if one's success is infinitesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no more think like a baby, in the smallest respect, than one can think like a bee. [p.113]
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