My niece creeped me out - death comment

[Lanzy]

Tonight my niece (7 year old) looked at the hand print I had recent done with my 7 week old. My niece then innocently goes is that so you can remember Em? Then does this gesture of putting hand to throat (slit) I went what does that mean and she went death.

I’m now worrying as niece also few weeks ago kept saying “EM I don’t want you to grow up be this size forever” of course maybe innocent but had seen some TikTok of woman who said that then next thing.. tonight it freaked me though ger saying that!
i’m now :( - I said why did she think that and she didn’t really say…

Wtf tv show was that …. YouTube?

She has obviously watched something inappropriate.

Yes Wednesday does that on her show

not approriate for a 7 year old

Your sister shouldn't be letting her watch Wednesday. Some children do have a dark side - it can be a phase but it could be how she is.
Definitely do not let your baby with her alone, ever. Not until you really see a difference for the better in her behaviour.
People do act out of what they have seen, all the time.

That's very dark I'm sure most children have a few handprints and footprints pic's at various age's. She probably has some herself. Maybe she's heard they take hand and footprints of stillborn babies and babies with a terminal illness in the hospital for parents. But it's still odd.

I think she's just exploring ideas and she's very likely been influenced by something she's seen. At that age death isn't a taboo, it's a curiosity as is life.

My ds at that age wrote a list of everyone in our extended family in order of who was going to die first, with (perceived) oldest at top of list and so on. He was rather amused by his list, even though he adored his grandparents, who were of course first in line. He had no sense of what it would be to lose someone he loved. It was just interesting to him.

15 years on that list has proved very wrong - the oldest grandparent still standing and several other family members gone far too early. There was no magic involved or premonition. He was just a kid thinking about the meaning of life.

When did I say I thought my niece was going to kill my child? If I thought that my niece would be nowhere near my baby. She is actually in the next room and loves my baby. It was more the words that come out her mouth that concerned me. Jesus

I know she knows that handprints aren’t associated with death/stillborn because my 17 year old nephew had them done as baby and she knew that as she made that comment shortly after.

I wouldn't leave her alone with your baby. I think you are worried and don't want to say it because so many are minimising it and patronising you with the question, what are you worried about. Please follow your gut instinct.

Some years back when a child of the family was around 8 he said he wanted to throw my dd out of a window so she broke every bone in her body. It goes without saying that he has never has been, and never will be, in a room alone with her. He is now 15 and has numerous services involved with him due to severe behavioural issues.

I remember a friend telling me around 15 years ago that her young cousin (around age 5) told her to put bleach in her babies bottle because her baby wasn't settling. That 5 year old is now a fully grown adult and all i will say is she was right to be worried about it.

Follow your gut instinct and don't leave her alone in a room with your baby.

My niece has never done any harm to anyone, I asked why she said it and she said she didn’t want to talk about it. I said it had upset me to make comment like that.
My niece is always happy to see her cousin, excited. Wants to cuddle her, sing to her, feed her.

My worry is that I couldn’t understand why she would think from print to that, it seemed so random. She never sees her dad but is very happy child and to the point, she has no friends where someone has died. She has recently moved school and still doesn’t know anyone
she does love the ipad and youtube, and it seems like she has watched Wednesday but I have no idea what is in that.

i have seen her make the throat gesture in the past to mean death before Wednesday came out.
the reason she does the gesture is because she doesn’t like using the word death.

In convo too tonight she went “I made a wish for my family to live forever”

”angels have wings and good go to heaven and bad go to hell”

Fgs this is ENTIRELY different. Stop trying to freak a first time mother out. Unreal.

I wouldn’t have her in your house again tbh

I 100% associate baby footprint keepsakes with stillbirths/dead babies. To the point where one of my friends bought me a kit when DS was born and I chucked it away because I felt making one would be tempting fate (I’d had a lot of miscarriages prior to high-risk premature DS and did not want any more jinxes).

So it isn’t necessarily weird that she thought that. I literally don’t know anyone with a non-dead child who has one. DH even refers to them as “dead baby footprint pictures”. People with living children have photos and videos of the actual child, which you often can’t really do with a stillbirth or neonatal death.

I know it’s a personal choice but I was given a hand imprint present when my baby was born and never used it as I associate it with dead babies. Not from experience but seeing things on the TV so maybe she has seen things too and the slit throat thing is something my son used to do to describe death when he was around that age. So really wouldn’t worry, it sounds like your niece got worried when you did the hand print.

Does your niece play Roblox or Among us? Or does she watch YouTubers who play these games. Making a slit throat sign seems to be a universal way of signifying death in these things without saying the word, as the word can get videos taken down and advertising pulled on them. My kids and the kids in my family use it as a way to mean death, it doesn’t mean they’re going to actually cause the death. I just think your niece is trying to make sense of the world. Kids nowadays are far more technologically advanced and because you’ve done something that isn’t taking a picture she’s probably just trying to figure out why. In my opinion I wouldn’t worry about it at all, kids say the weirdest things but they’re just trying to figure things out. My kids say the weirdest stuff but now I’ve learned to roll with it. I would only worry if you’ve seen her attempting to hurt your baby, but by the sounds of it she loves her as much as you do. Hope this helps

I'd guess she has seen it done for someone else, possibly a dead child or possiblh justvasca momento. I don't think she's psychicly predicting your baby's death nor is she planning to murder her cousin.
Kids say weird stuff all the time.

I can imagine why it has upset you and freaked you out. But, from my experience, children say some absolutely awful things sometimes about babies and death.
I know a really lovely girl who said the strangest and vilest thing to someone when she was pregnant. It was completely out of character. The child was in a lot of trouble for saying it though.

Try not to let it worry you and know you’re not alone with children saying weird things that don’t mean anything.

Id be a little nervous but kids say odd things: I was teaching and had a child who was 3 at the time look at me and say "We dont kill our friends" totally straight faced, fallowed up a few minutes later with "Neby! SISTERS name is gonna stab Mr. Steve with a knife." I told the parent who assured me that the sister very much liked moms boyfriend (mr. steve) but she would keep a eye on her "weird" child/

Ahh, Wednesday may have affected it?? It is a fairly child friendly show I think, but the main character is obviously quite deathly and death obsessed. She could be mimicking that. I wouldn't worry, just talk to her parents if it happens again I'd say. I think she's just getting stuff of Youtube etc. especially as you said she's a lovely kid and loves her cousin. Kids get influenced all the time.

About a year ago I was having health investigations (all came back clear). But my 4yo daughter randomly said one evening at that time ‘even though I won’t be able to see you, I know you’ll still be there’. She had no idea about my health stuff, so I became paranoid, thinking she’d had a premonition or something. A week or so later while her fave prog was on, I heard that line from the mum character saying it to her daughter about going to bed… so she obviously picked it up and repeated the meaning. Kids do just parrot things they’ve heard or seen back, take things out of context and generally have downright bizarre chains of thought! I would really try not to overthink this one and chalk it up to kids just saying weird things :)

Ah I remember being that age, or a little younger, and going through the processing death stage. I'd seen dead pets, but this was about realising that when people get old, even people I know, they die, so old people I knew would not be alive for much longer before they died. I did horribly tactless things like playing the funeral march on my keyboard once when my grandma was visiting, and thinking she'd like it/find it interesting/think it was relevant and I was a clever girl, because she was old and would likely die soon. (Incidentally, she didn't.)

But it was also grimly fascinating to me that anyone can die at any age, even babies and children, and you might not even expect it — though that never felt quite real to me, as it didn't seem to ever happen in real life (I got lucky, and as a child was obviously sheltered from some things too).

I wasn't dangerous or psychopathic and didn't want anyone or anything to die (at that age I was the kid who'd run up to a group of bigger boys in the infants playground who were yelling "bloodsucker, bloodsucker" and about to stamp on an earthworm, push them away, rescue the worm and take it to some nice safe soil), but I was autistic and that probably affected my level of understanding of my grandma's potential feelings about me welcoming her into the house with death music. OP, you say you're autistic — is your niece genetically related to you?

I doubt she understands what the death gesture is actually miming — it's probably a fairly arbitrary gesture to her, like pointing at your temple and making circles for crazy, or thumbs up for okay, and she (hopefully) won't be thinking of all the horror/thriller films adults see where it's used as a threat.

I'm old enough to remember the tv show 'Children Say The Darndest Things'
I always thought it should have been called 'Children Say The Stupidest Shit, Just Ignore Them'

When I say "Incidentally, she didn't", I meant she didn't die soon. Thankfully she lived well into my early adulthood. And she took the whole 6yo funeral music thing entirely in her stride, luckily.

OP it is quite normal to feel superstitious about your DD’s welfare — after all most cultures have or had, at one time these feelings. Some cultures even gave their babies ugly names so bad spirits wouldn’t abduct them etc. Now we know, using our rational brain, that saying things which might “ tempt fate “ have no affect whatsoever, but a little bit of our less rational brain can sew doubt and worry us. Look at the silly little superstitious things many people stir do.
Your wee niece has no power to affect future events, she isn’t a little witch, she’s just a little girl at a delightful age trying to make sense of the world. We tend to link birth and death together because they both hold mysteries and so your DD’s birth may have prompted DN to think about these things.
The fact that there was no emotion involved shows she was not really serious because she loved Baby and would be upset at the thought of losing her.
Ive rambled rather but just want to reassure you that your feelings are normal but that there is nothing to worry about. Enjoy your precious DD

Cartoons or something like pirates of the caribbean can trigger something like that off. im sure theres a scene in aladdin (original one) where he does something similar

But yeah. I think the niece sounds much more like me than she sounds like the two(!) dangerous children Theglowofcandles has come across, and I've never murdered a single person.