Literal Speech As a Child

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My dad recorded me and my brothers talking as kids and it was quite amusing to hear!

I was about 2 1/2 and my mother was recording me and my baby brother. She said to me "I'm taping you and Joe right now." I said to her "Oh no! Don't tape Joe up!" And she responded "No, I'm taping his voice. I'm not taping him up. Did you think tape, like Scotch tape?"

Was this odd for a 2-3 yr. old kid to think? At what age is literal interpretation of words acceptable and when does it start to become strange?

No I don't think it's odd for someone with AS. I was caught out by 'Pull Your Socks Up', an english saying meaning smarten up. I was in middle school at the time and it was said by a teacher to me, when I pulled my socks up (we wore uniforms) and the whole class laughed at me, I was mortified, I tried to pretend that I was making fun of the teacher and ended up in even more trouble. My son has been caught out on many of these to, he's 13, and I have to watch what I say at times so he doesn't take the wrong way.

What's the difference between a two year old taking words literal and a normal two year old? I read all small children take things literal.


When I was two, it was caught on tape by my father that my mother told me to jump and instead I got off the couch and started jumping up and down when she meant for me to jump over to her. I totally ignored her hand when she was hitting it on the couch next to her. I probably didn't understand that gesture. But how many two year olds would do this same error?

I would say it becomes strange when you reach your pre teens. I've been told it's normal for kids under ten to be literal. Like when I was eight I used to take "Broke my heart" literal and "cross my heart and hope to die" and I was eight and nine then and my shrink told me that is normal for a kid that age.

I remember the "stop that teasing" incident when I was 11 and my shrink told me that wasn't normal because a normal 11 year old would know what their mother was talking about. I thought my mom was telling me to stop THAT teasing so I was doing a different tease every time. For three years I could not understand why she would tell me to stop that teasing if she meant quit teasing her.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I was thinking most children would probably take things literally. It's just that the tone of my mom's voice in the tape seemed worried that I thought that way.

I can't remember many other such incidents at an older age. But my memory is very very bad. I'm sure there were other moments, but I started to get into poetry and metaphorical language at a very young age so that may have helped.

Last edited by Kiseki on 18 Feb 2011, 10:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree, most children take thing literaly because they do not have enough vocabulary or experience with language to understand the context and the meaning of the phrase used. Some may hide the fact that they take things literaly, I did.

When I was 8, my uncle said we were going to stay up all night long (well, in fact, go to bed after midnight because we were too young to stay up all night long), in French, we call it "une nuit blanche", meaning "a white night". I remember being disappointed because the night did not turn white at midnight but never said anything.

I'd go even further by saying that adults do this too. Perhaps not the way Autistic people do but it happens to most people, especially when they have never heard the phrase or do not have enough context or experience to understand the various meanings of what have been said.

I can use sarcasm and irony just fine but usually fail to understand it when people use it. I also failed to understand my best friend joke yesterday though everyone thought it was obvious. THey say I am more literal than they are but actually, they sometimes fail to understand my own jokes or sarcasm and it happens to everyone which make communication difficult. Some are more impaired than others but taking everyone take things literaly when they cannot work out the meaning.

Hmm, I think my issues with this are mild. I can understand most speech that isn't literal, but at what point did this happen? I'm not sure.

Oh, I do remember one instance freshman year of high school where I thought "the liquidation of the Jews" meant they were all drowned in large tanks or something. The visual was so striking to me I raised my hand and told the teacher. She was like "No...that's not right."

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Children often look at life quite differently than adults. Recall hearing a true story about the daughter of Walt Disney who learned in about the second grade from her classmates that her father, Walt Disney, was a famous person but she told her classmates that had to be another Walt Disney. When she got home, she asked her dad if he really was the Walt Disney her classmates talked about rather than another person with the same name. She discovered her father was the actual Walt Disney.

I didn't know Walt Disney had kids. This must have happened a long time ago before my parents were born.

I don't see how that was taking it literal. Funny how the girl learned something about her father.

I have always had problems with other people understanding my jokes. I don't know if it's because I'm so deadpan or if my mind just works that much differently than most people. Either way, it's kind of embarrassing when they take me seriously. I don't think I have too much trouble with being too literal myself, though I can think of plenty of instances. I'm just not aware that it's any more so than anyone else. There is the caveat that I've been pretty oblivious to a lot of my traits though.

So, I don't think it's odd for a 2-year-old to think that way. I've heard plenty of discussions about "child logic" which were pretty amusing.

I always hate it when people get upset with my humor and then can't seem to understand it was a joke. Even online. I hate it when they take it seriously.

I have a great sense of humor and can make people laugh but there is a narrow window of humor that I'll miss. If it's possible to take something literally and miss the spin, I'll do that. I'll just think, "why is that funny? I don't get it". THen I have to have it explained, or take a minute to puzzle it out. But this is a small % of the time.

In conversation I can miss the meaning if I take something too literally as well. Also rare but it reliably pops up.

And phrases like a "a rolling stone gathers no moss" I just kind of ignored for most of my life. I think I was in my 20s when I thought about it and figured out what it was saying. I just pictured a rolling stone that may or may not have moss, which seemed strange, and then I stopped thinking about it.

Yes. When I was growing up, my father was in two serious car accidents. At the time, I thought that it was normal for your father to spend a few days in the hospital once in a while.



Yeah. I'm fond of ironic humor, but I don't do it much, because it's misinterpreted so often.

Someone took my humor seriously here recently despite having at the end.

I was a little pissed but stayed civil because this is an autism forum so what do I expect?

The first time I heard the word "cremation" as a child I thought that the root word was "cream" and thus had a mental image of them taking the dead body and putting it in some sort of blender to liquefy (back to that "liquidate" word above) the body into a cream of some sort. Ewwwww.....

One of my aunts had a car that was having trouble getting over the mountains so they had it "overhauled". To my mind I understood that they must have put extra weight in it to make it "over haul". I couldn't understand why they thought that this procedure would make the car work better. I would have been in about 1st grade when I made this mistake.

>>> Even with NTs this happens frequently don't worry too much about it. The world is a place of miscommunications.

i used to process sentences i heard in a literal way, and still do.
the difference between now and when i was a child is that now i do not look for any cogent meaning in things that make no instantaneous sense to me.

i just ignore things now that i know are without my intuitive understanding. when i was a child, i did hope that i could learn how to magically interpret sets of words that were innuenduous (i coined that word so it now exists), but i realized i could not really understand them even after intense tuition as to what they meant really.

"broken heart" means "sad". i know that. but how does an idea of a heart that is broken convey a feeling of sadness?

how can someone's heart break really? if it was dipped in liquid nitrogen for 20 mins and then thrown at the floor, it may break. but how does that equal sadness? how do normal people see a connection between a broken heart and sadness? how is it that they never have to be told what "broken heart" means, yet they understand?

how is it that i can be told in a very detailed sense why the phrase "broken heart" means "sad", and only retain the memory that it equals sad without ever knowing why.


my mother used to say when i was being unruly in the car "next time we bring you. we'll leave you at home". how can that be? i never bothered to ask about the logic of what she said because i was far more interested in what i saw out the window than what was happening in the car.

i have learned the meaning of a lot of the indirect sayings that people sometimes say, but i can not reciprocate with them because i have nothing in my mind to contribute that is relevant.

the chance that a literal interpretation of a sequence of words would engender an action that is similar to, but distinct from the desired result, and able to be seen in a humerus light is very slim.

my literal predisposition these days results only in my right eyebrow being raised and then lowered back to symmetry as i continue to fall into another realm of thought that is my own, wherefrom communication is impossible.

i do not understand simple statements like "she feels like sh*t today" .
i know what it means but i do not understand how it means it. i do not know how sh*t feels, so i have no reference point to think about her statement from.

there are so many potential examples of things i know but do not understand , that i can not be bothered to type about them.


the world is large and i am small and i go unnoticed which is a blessing