That 'toddler speaks 7 languages' video was filmed in my local library... I saw the whole setup

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2 Comments

And people actually believed that poor kid was legitimately fluent in seven languages. I saw them cutting between takes, the mom was off camera prompting him in Mandarin with flash cards. The whole thing was staged, they had a handler for the kid who was just feeding him lines. My niece is bilingual and even she mixes up her words sometimes, so the idea that a toddler is code-switching perfectly between seven languages is just laughable. The worst part is now my neighbor is trying to get her three year old into "language immersion" classes because she saw that viral nonsense.

umathompson10d ago

You know, I actually fell for that video at first. I showed it to my cousin who works with kids and she just laughed and pointed out the same things you did. The editing cuts were super obvious once she showed me. It's wild how easy it is to get caught up in stuff like that until someone points out the cracks.