I don’t have kids and most of my friends don’t or don’t yet, so I don’t have a lot of interaction with them. However recently I was at a couple of friends’ parties (two separate occasions) where each time I got chatting to kids age around 7-8. I was doing my best to ask them questions about themselves, what did you do today, what do you like, what do you think about x, etc, which all went fine, but then I was running out of questions so I started to talk about myself a bit, trying to make it interesting/relevant to them, like ‘when I was a kid I liked to do x’ kind of thing. In both cases I monologued a bit and when I was done the kid then went ‘okay’, which is obviously something that would sound a bit sarcastic/dismissive if an adult said it. I thought: ok, fair enough, they’re not interested in hearing some random adult talk about themselves and maybe at that age they basically just want to talk about themselves, must remember that for next interaction.
However last night I was watching the Robbie Williams doc on Netflix, and I noticed at the end when he is about to go on tour, and he and his wife are telling their little son (younger than 7, maybe more like 3) that they love him, their son replies ‘okay’. So I was then wondering, maybe I over-interpreted it and this is just something children say when they can see they’re meant to reply but aren’t sure what to say? Was wondering if people who are parents might have some insight?
YABU - ‘okay’ meant they were bored, kids don’t want to hear random adults talk about themselves
YANBU - ‘okay’ means ‘I know I am mean to reply but I am not sure what to say here, I am 7 and still developing my conversational skills’