Why Kids Say Unfiltered Things About You (And What I Learned From My 7-Year-Old’s Honest Comment)
The chocolate chip bag crinkled on our kitchen counter last Sunday, and Lila swung her 7-year-old legs back and forth while I waited for the pancake griddle to beep. I’d just dragged the recycling bin out front, pulled a dandelion growing through the patio crack, and my hair was stuck to the back of my neck from early August humidity. I pulled out my phone to show her a photo my sister sent that morning: me, at 22, covered in neon body paint at a college music festival, grinning with a crowd of people behind me. Lila leaned in, squinted, and looked up at me. “Mom,” she said, completely deadpan, “when did you get so old and squishy?”
I laughed so hard I snort-laughed, and the scoop of flour I was holding tumbled halfway out of the measuring cup onto the counter. My 10-year-old son, Jude, looked up from his tablet at the dining table and chimed in, “Yeah, you are kind of squishy. Remember when you sat on my T-Rex toy last month and it broke in half?” Lila cackled like this was the best joke she’d ever heard, and I just shook my head and wiped up the flour. I wasn’t offended. It was too honest, too unplanned to be mean. But later that night, when I was folding matching socks in the laundry room, I thought more about it.
I’d spent the week before scrolling through parent Instagram on nights I couldn’t sleep, comparing my post-baby stomach and graying roots to the perfectly put-together mom creators that pop up on my feed. I’d complained to my husband over dinner that I hadn’t hit the gym in three weeks, that my favorite jeans felt too tight. And here was my kid, cutting through all that noise with one blunt, innocent observation. She didn’t care that I didn’t look like the 22-year-old in the photo. She just noticed that things were different, and said what she saw. That’s what unfiltered kid comments are, most of the time: not rude attacks, just plain observations from a brain that’s still learning when to keep thoughts to itself.
Between the ages of 4 and 10, kids are just starting to figure out social rules. They can name differences, they can notice what’s changed, but they haven’t practiced the habit of filtering observations that might hurt someone’s feelings. It’s not a sign that you’ve raised a rude kid. It’s a developmental step, one that takes years of small mistakes to get right. I’ve had plenty of awkward public moments with Lila’s unfiltered comments: the time she asked a cashier at the grocery store why she had hair on her chin, the time she told my friend who was pregnant that her belly was “bigger than the beach ball we got for the pool.” I used to freeze up, or shush her really hard right in front of everyone, which just made her more confused and the other person more uncomfortable.
After the squishy comment, I started trying a different approach that’s worked really well, and it’s way less work than panicking over every awkward line. First, if the comment is just about you and no one else is around, it’s okay to laugh. You don’t have to pretend to be hurt to teach a lesson, and you don’t have to launch into a speech about body positivity right there at the pancake counter. Laughing defuses the tension, and it models that you don’t hate your body or yourself over little differences, which is way more powerful than any speech. Then, after the moment passes, you can add one quick, clear rule. After we cleaned up the pancake mess, I said to Lila, “It’s okay that you said that, you were just noticing how I look different now. But we don’t talk about people being old or squishy, because that can make people feel bad even if you don’t mean it.” That’s it. No yelling, no long lecture, just one clear sentence she can remember next time.
If the comment happens in front of someone else, the routine is just as simple. I apologize quickly to the other person—most of the time they laugh it off anyway—then I save the conversation for the car ride home or when we get inside. I don’t shame Lila for asking in front of everyone, I just say the same clear rule: “If you see something different about someone, you can ask me about it quietly later, instead of saying it out loud where they can hear it. It might hurt their feelings.” That’s concrete enough for a 7-year-old to follow, and it doesn’t embarrass her in front of other people.
I also make a point not to put myself down after comments like this. It would be easy to say “Ugh, I know I’m old and squishy, sorry about that,” but that just teaches kids that it’s okay to be mean to yourself about your body, and that differences are something to be ashamed of. Instead, I just say something simple like “My body changed after I had you and your brother, that’s normal. I can still climb the jungle gym with you at the park, right?” That’s enough.
Last week we went to the neighborhood park for a barbecue with friends, and I ran after Lila when she tried to sneak off to the playground before eating. I got winded after 30 seconds and stopped to bend over with my hands on my knees, and she stopped, turned around, and yelled across the grass “TOLD YOU YOU WERE OLD!” Everyone laughed, and I waved her off and walked slowly to the bench to catch my breath. I still mess up sometimes: last week I shushed her too fast when she asked a stranger in a wheelchair why they couldn’t walk, and I felt bad about it the whole rest of the day. We talked about it that night, I apologized for snapping at her, and we went over the rule again. It’s an ongoing thing. She’s still learning how to filter her words, and I’m still learning how to not overthink every little thing my kid says about me. Some days we’re all just a little squishy, a little out of breath, and that’s okay.
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