I saw this the other day and I wondered how the original artist — the kid — would feel about the new-and-improved version of his picture.
Do little kids know that they draw like shit? Would they get mad if older people drew like them?
That’s essentially what happens with kids and language during the overregularization phase. Kids begin to learn grammar rules like “add -ed to make it past tense” and start screwing up words (eg., throw => throwed) that they used to get right when they were just relying on memory (throw => threw). But if mom or dad says “throwed,” the kid will get pissed off because even though he can’t prevent his own mistakes, he knows it’s wrong.
At first glance the comparison is pretty limited because drawing is all about imagination and aesthetics, while grammar tends to be a little more normative.
Still, there’s something kind of appealing to <not science>a unified theory of childhood spazticity, this stage where kids want to do or draw or say one thing but are forced by their overeager brains to sputter out embarrassing juvenilia that gets cruelly mimicked by unsympathetic elders.</not science>


![hipsterpuppies:
the summer after his senior year, mr. chow traveled europe by train for a month, and now aggravatingly insists that “it’s barthelona.”
[photo via micki m]](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky9rgfqYwD1qb0fx9o1_500.jpg)


