Hacker News Reader

Comment by aitchnyu | Hacker News Reader

Most of us outgrow and then forget how cool water makes small children shiver, hunger and sun makes them weak, bitter vegetables are overpowering, sitting on grass without pants is painful, so is affection, unpolished wooden benches, men's stubble etc.

View on HN

> men’s stubble

One of my great joys in life is how much my daughter loves my stubble. She grabs my face with both her hands and declares “Sooooo scratchy!” and then squeals and laughs when I nuzzle her cheek with mine and pretend to be a horse. From ~3 yrs old, now going on 10.

My heart will definitely break a notch if the day ever comes she outgrows that!

She may outgrow it, but she'll probably never forget it.

I'm a guy, but I recall as a kid feeling my dad's stubble when I gave him a hug as a child, when he came home from work, smelling of sweat and tar (he worked as a road maintenance worker - a very hard job, especially in the summertime in California).

He passed away 14 years ago, and I'm turning 46 in a couple days; how time passes...

Can confirm—and ah that sounds familiar. My own dad was a pipefitter-wleder in an oil refinery.

I can still smell that and the feel of the work denim he'd come home in.

Same here. My strongest sense memories of my dad are the feel of his shirt against my cheek when I'd run up to hug him when he got home from work, the feel of the callouses on his fingers, and the stubble on his cheek under my hand.

I remember those things more often than I do the sight of his face, or the sound of his voice, or the smell of his cologne. By far.

reminds me of this particular comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3317

I love that my kids love it too. I hate that it immediately makes their skin break out as if there's a rash, though. (All fair-skinned red heads).

> cool water makes small children shiver

Is it just my kids then that seem absolutely immune to cold water and will happily jump into unheated swimming pools, and will happily have a cold bath?

I have a hunch its the same ‘physiology’ that causes selective hearing. “Please turn off the iPad!” vs “who wants ice cream?”

I noticed my boy was happy getting into cold water as a toddler (compared to adults who suffer during the transition from air to cold water).

Now he's four years old, and a few weeks ago we swam together in a cold lake. He was happy to get in, but after ten minutes I noticed that his teeth were chattering and his lips were blue, while I was quite comfortable.

Having been a cub scout leader and now a parent you see that kids don't really have a great sensitivity to their own body temperature. They'll wear hot coats in Summer and tshirt in Winter unless you tell them not to, they're usually pretty far gone (sunstroke/hypothermic) before they will realise for themselves that there's something wrong.

I don't think they really get a good idea until they are about a year in to puberty, and even then they're more prone to mismanage their clothing (but I think that's just experience).

Also worth bearing in mind that younger kids have higher body temperature, and that they usually have lower surface area:volume ratios than bigger people.

There are two dimensions here -- one is that they may not feel it at all; the other is that they may feel it but not realize it's bad until it's too late, and might not attribute cause.

For example, going out in the cold doesn't hurt at first, but the pain builds up. As an adult, you may react to the initial no-pain sensation because you correctly predict you'll be freezing later.

Also consider that as an adult the same feeling can be both good or bad by mental context: consider a warm toilet seat -- warmed by a fancy Toto heater at home vs warmed by a stranger's buttocks in a fast food bathroom.

I was like that as a child. As an adult, I’m always hot, unable to live without air conditioning, always looking forward to cooling down with a swim or a cold shower. (And I live in Canada; it’s not like the ambient temperature is all that high!)

Maybe I was that way as a child as well, and just wasn’t introspective enough to notice.

As an adult, I do get cold eventually, though; I can’t stay in cold water for hours, like I could as a child.

I think in this case it has more to do with that kids (and younger people in general) can hear better and at a broader frequency spectrum. I (and I know other people with the same problem) for example am always irritated why induction cooking plates make such painful noise but as most people cannot hear them, industry gets away with that. Same for those ultrasound devices to protect cars against martens that can get as loud as 200 Db.

I assume you don't really mean that affection is painful for small children...(?)

I guess they're referring to things like kids running away from distant relatives who want to kiss and hug them, which is definitely something that happens.

Probably because of the big sloppy kisses that grandmas tend to distribute.

That's definitely part of it, but I think (and I also remember) that a part of it is that children have a well-developed sense of personal space and who they are close enough to for different types of contact, from a pretty young age, but their sense of closeness is (quite reasonably) derived from actual (remembered) contact rather than from having a genetic relationship or contact before they can remember.

It's not so much a conscious sense of personal space as it is discomfort with the unfamiliar.

We have to remember that kids don't have any reason to love distant relatives, and that adults don't have the right to demand physical affection from kids.

Cheek tweaking, heavy pats on back etc.

I remember my dad would rub his stubble against my cheeks when playing monster after he caught me. It was always so intense and visceral. I loved it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com