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> > Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

> strike me as incredibly weird, almost like a verbal version of the uncanny vally.

I don't think that you have to talk to kids that you know like this, but it was important on the TV show that they not make assumptions (like that the child knows their parents) because they are broadcasting it to a huge number of kids with different life circumstances.

>I did not enjoy it when adults spoke differently to me than they spoke to each other.

Seeing the Mr Rogers documentary that came out a few years ago, I realized that he basically spoke the same with everyone.

OK, that's fair! He spoke very unlike the adults and kids around me, though. :-)

Kids can tell when they aren't being given straight answers.

Kids may not understand that they're doing "The 5 Whys", and//or that doing so may be annoying for the umpteenth time.

But non-answers like "because" as the be-all & end-all has an expiration date. That bill comes due for somebody. If that somebody ends up being your grown-up kid when it's time to pay, I wonder how much sympathy I'll have and for whom.