Klara can identify herself and other people in photos and in the mirror. She says “Klara, papa, Money (that’s her successful aunt), Axie (her cousin), baba, Ninnie (another cousin).” But when I point to myself, she says either “baby” or “Klara.”
It’s a little creepy.
This is when you point at yourself in pictures, right? If not, I could guess that maybe she just recognizes that as the correct answer to any self-pointing gesture, “Klara” being just a synonym for “myself”. Did you perhaps teach Klara her name by pointing at yourself?
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Funny thing is, she knows I’m mamma . Whenever she needs anything, it’s “Mamma, nyam nyam banana!” (Meaning, I want to eat a banana.) Or “Mamma, up, up, bunny, hop hop.” Which means, “take me in your arms and chase the bunny into the bushes.” But in the pictures or the mirror, she doesn’t identify me.
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Or “Mamma , shoes, ball, outsie.” Meaning, “get off your ass, put on the shoes, grab the ball and take me out for a walk already.”
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I don’t think that, at Klara’s age, kids have a very good understanding that there are people, and that those same people can also be seen on pictures or in mirrors.
For instance, it will be a while still until she’s able to recognize that it’s herself that she sees in the mirror.
Since she spends most of the time with you, I think for her you (right now) exist only in 3D “meatspace.” The fact that she recognizes others in pictures probably has more to do with the fact that most of them she only sees on screen (your relatives in Canada) or in pictures, and that you yourself have often pointed them out to her on screen and in pictures.
I really wouldn’t worry about it.
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I like it when kids refer to themselves as “you” (as though their name were You).
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She doesn’t do that yet. She’s too little, and the only sentences she says so far are commands. It’s only by the age of 3 that kids learn to say “I”, knowing that it refers to a separate human being that’s different from everybody else.
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I have thought this over for a while, and I believe that the reason Klara calls you “Klara” is that she is secretly reading your blog and cannot pronounce “Clarissa.”
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Very possible. 😁
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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