My two year old depicted a very violent scenario verbally

Question

I was playing with my two year old where she was spooning sea shells into a bottle. I put out my hand to hold the bottle steady. This is something that she would often object to and she may say something like 'I don't need help' or 'leave alone, mommy'. This time she said 'chop your hand off mommy.' I asked her how and she replied 'with a knife mommy', then proceeded to add 'put your hand on the chopping board, I am going to chop it off'. I was obviously really stunned and upset. She articulated all of this in a pretty normal tone while playing.

My daughter only gets a half hour of TV at night which is always 'paw patrol'. She spends her day with a nanny who, though new to the job, seems to be adjusting. She goes to a drop in centre 4 days a week where there are some older kids, but she is quite on the timid side in social situations and does not interact all that much with them. We asked the nanny where she could have heard something like this and she had no idea.

I cannot imagine she would come up with such an idea herself or that she would get something so concrete in her limited interactions with other kids. The other possibility is television, unknown to us. This cannot be in the house as we have a cam. We also have a GPS tracker on her stroller and know where she is during the day and this is all public places. We are very worried about this and are considering a Montessori school for her. We are concerned that there is something in her current situation that is not right and also whether it is possible she has been threatened in some way. Is this an overreaction? We do not want to put her through another transition unless necessary.

Answer 1

From where I see this it seems like an over reaction yes, but it goes together with a somewhat protective behaviour (cam, stroller GPS tracker, ...). Kids tend to remember stuff when they hear it, was it only one time (and most of the time not the things you would like them to remember...), and she may have heard it anywhere kids play around her.

If you don't have any other clues about her being bullied/threatened, like a major change in behaviour, chances are big this is the case and it probably doesn't require any further attention.

That said, considering it is still a violent declaration, if she reiterates it you might want to have a short discussion with her explaining why this kind of saying is inappropriate, and maybe try to know where she heard it in the first place, which she might have forgotten as you can't possibly remember how and when you learned some things, you just happen at some point to know it...

Answer 2

Kids, even young kids, can indeed have what to us as adults seem like violent or perverse imaginations, and can come up with scenarios that shock us, even without being exposed to them elsewhere. (Many kids, in fact, enjoy discovering what things they can say that will shock their parents!) Ever since he was very little, my son has continually shocked me with the kinds of things he says (until I remember the things I came up with when I was his age).

That's not to say you should automatically discount what they say, but in a case like this-- where you're reasonably sure she's not repeating something she's heard or seen, and when she herself doesn't seem personally bothered by it --I wouldn't worry about it.

You have to remember that all of our brains are coming up with different ideas all the time, it's just that adults have learned to censor themselves. For a young child, with no real knowledge of the darker side of life, things that seem horrifying to we adults can instead seem funny, whimsical, or (at worst) harmlessly naughty. She's not picturing a graphic, bloody amputation, the way you are. She's just thinking how funny it would be if you were made of dough.

Answer 3

TL;DR: nothing to worry about. This strikes me as usual reasoning behaviour.

Something that stands out to me is your statement

she is quite on the timid side in social situations

Often, these children are not interacting because they are busy observing. It would not surprise me at all if she were picking up significantly more from her peers than they are from each other.

However, it strikes me as most likely that while you (or someone else) were making a meal and chopping vegetables on the chopping block, that it was explained to your daughter than the bits of the vegetables that are being chopped off are the bits you don't want to eat. This provides the basis for a logical reasoning that "if something is somewhere it shouldn't be, you could chop it off so that it isn't there anymore".

Without further refinement on this tidbit of knowledge, it applies to everything in the universe. She is progressing and attempting to use new phrases that she has heard in different ways that she believes logically fit. When she is then corrected that it doesn't fit, it helps to hone her understanding.

Answer 4

It sounds like a bit of an overreaction. I can easily imagine her getting that from some combination of seeing older kids playing as pirates (with a hook-hand), and the nursery-rhyme "three blind mice" ("...cut off their tails with a carving knife.."). Or even extrapolating from the Paw Patrol characters cutting up a tree to move it off the road (do they do that?) to "cut off the thing in the way" (and your hand was "in her way"). Heck, maybe it even came from you or someone else in the house saying something like "put the carrot on the chopping board, I am going to chop it up".

Even if it did come from school/daycare, after moving her around she would probably still be exposed to new violent things - its just part of culture. It seems as if it might be better to learn to talk with her about these things as they come up at home than to move her around to avoid them. I also think that if she had been threatened she would be acting scared, not casually talking about chopping body parts off.

I wouldn't bring it up again but if she does perhaps something as simple as "Don't be silly that would really hurt! When we chop veggies we try really hard to NOT cut ourselves as cutting ourselves hurt." I say not to bring it up again because the odd things that really stick out to me from my childhood are things where my mother overreacted over something I would have otherwise forgotten. I remember I once blurted out: "You're a murderer mommy!... A murderer of CHOCOLATE!" (because she DEVOURED chocolate) I thought it was really funny, she did not. I still remember how angry she got. If she had simply replied with "thats not a nice thing to say even when joking" and left it at that it probably wouldn't be one of those key unpleasant memories of childhood.