My toddler remembers the negatives/bad news

[hm4912]

Hi, my toddler (2.5 yrs) has a very good vocabulary, sometimes I think she has been here before! Her memory is also crazy, she remembers the most random of things weeks down the line.

however, she seems to remember the negatives, such as… her dad cut his finger, grandad got bit by a dog, the dinner burnt!! It’ll be the first thing she talks about when she wakes up and will tell everyone about it. Do you think I need to be more careful of what I tell her or is this normal behaviour? TIA!

I think it’s perfectly normal. Those things are exciting or memorable to her. We had 2 extremely precocious children in terms of speech development, at this age they were exhausting (in a good way).

My dd is the same. I lost her ball in 2022 and she mentions it even now 🤣. But she’s a generally positive person. It’s just the way they process things.

Ds saw his grandparents after returning from holiday, asked if he had a nice time. His answer was that he had scraped his knee by the pool, how much it hurt and then showed it to everyone 🤣

DH burned the toast once and for the next 18 months at least, every time we made toast DD1 would say ‘Remember when Daddy burned the toast?’ Same with loads of stuff tbh. She ate a pie once and then later that night had an unrelated sick bug, so for ages whenever she heard of pie or saw a pie she would talk about how pie made her sick.

DD2’s childhood trauma is currently when she ate a bit of lemon. So every time we see a lemon: ‘Lemons are so sour! I ate a lemon and it was so sour!’

It’s definitely just the way they process things and it’s good I think as they aren’t internalising anything. So I wouldn’t worry.

It's normal. My 15 year old used to say "mummy was in hospital " for about 6 months after i had been there to have his brother when he was 3.