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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32145
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32145
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Without being pejorative, six year olds are very shallow and (if not abused) very trusting, they believe what adults tell them. Unless they are rationally precocious, most believe (or would be happy to believe) in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Stork that brings babies, and unicorns and dragons and all sorts of Magic -- but do not take those as **exceptions** , to a six year old **everything** is basically magic! They do not truly understand how anything works, so if you tell them their iPhone and TV and car work by magic, they will believe that. They really don't have the teaching or life experience to separate fantasy from reality, or any deep level of understanding.

This shallowness extends into their humor: We humans only find something humorous if it breaks an internalized norm. So as an adult you can understand a sexual joke, or a political joke, or a work place joke, or a joke related to dumb investments or being conned.

About the only rules six year olds have internalized are related to bathroom activities and the most basic polite behavior; so they find fart jokes funny, or saying "poop" in front of company, or purposely chewing with their mouth open, or dribbling spit. Breaking taboos is funny. They don't get innuendo or implications, they don't leap to the "If ... Then ..." consequences of what somebody says.

Or I should say "Most" for six, since some as young as four and five are beginning to question the veracity of whether Santa Claus is real. In first grade, most of them cannot even subtract yet. Six year old girls believe they can be a princess with a magical wand.

Their arguments end quickly with "terminating" claims: Why don't you use bad words? _Because God will be mad at you._ Why will God be mad at you? _I don't know, Mommy says so, so its true._

The advice I have is to make your child's understanding shallow and without nuance or hidden meaning. They relate through fairy tales, and children's shows. When they don't understand something, they don't ask intelligent questions to improve their understanding. They change the subject, or offer solutions that are centered on their own feelings and experiences, that to an adult seem ridiculously shallow.

> Are you still sad because of Uncle Allen?
> 
> Yes, sweetie, I am very sad.
> 
> Do you want to watch cartoons with me?

Because ... What makes a six year old happy? She doesn't understand other lives; so what in HER life makes her happy? She doesn't understand things like responsibility or duty, or why she has to go to school, or go to bed at nine, or eat her vegetables. Her life is filled with rules she follows to avoid punishment, lines she cannot cross (and doesn't truly comprehend why), and a handful of choices about her entertainment (what to watch, who to play with, etc) and to a lesser extent, her food choices. Her solution to the grief resulting from the loss of a sibling may not be faith in the after life or a reflection on his heroism or kindness, it may be chocolate cake.

They will have a very limited vocabulary, they will not use any but the most shallow metaphors or similes. They won't understand a "corruption that spread like cancer," because they don't understand either corruption or metastasizing cancer. (They probably know what "cheating" at a game is, but seldom more than "it is being bad," and that isn't good.)

You must put yourself in this naive, literal, shallow-but-well-meaning mind, and guard against allowing the girl any "adult" comprehension. I would not make her mispronounce adult words, or pretend she has some vague concept of something (like an extramarital affair) that is beyond her years.

Original score: 7