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at what age do kids start not taking idioms literally?
like...'you have a chip on your shoulder' doesnt actually mean there is a potato chip on their shoulder and 'pulling my leg' doesnt mean yanking on my leg.
Kids with autism have difficulty with these statements and can take them literally. Just wanting to know at what age do kids usually 'get' this sort of stuff..
My daughter is 3 1/2yrs old with an older sister with autism. She told her sister today to put her seat belt on or the police man would take her away and 'stick her up on the wall' . She obviously heard this in a movie or something 'stick em up' , lol. It was very cute, and I know this is prob quite normal at her age, but I would like to know what is typical.
Thanks
1 Answer
- ?Lv 41 decade agoFavourite answer
To really understand idioms, a person has to develop abstract thinking (that is, to be able to think symbolically about ideas, rather than only about the concrete physical world.) The step from concrete to abstract thinking is a developmental milestone that may happen at the earliest around age 7 or 8... for some children it occurs later, and for some people it never happens.
Your daughter with autism is probably a concrete thinker. Your 3 year old is also a concrete thinker (all 3 year olds are). Like you said, she is probably mimicking something she heard on TV - but my guess is that if you question her about what the policeman might do, she will have a very literal interpretation.
A psychologist named Jean Piaget developed an influential theory about how children's ability to think develops as they grow. You can read an overview of his viewpoint here: