What is the difference...?

What is the difference...?
D

Don-NY

Registrant
Borrowing a page from Nathan, I ask a question.

Background:

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting three year old twins, a boy and a girl. They are two of the happiest and sweetest children I have ever seen.

They filled me with incredible joy, but also almost unbearable sorrow when I watched them and remembered what happened to me when I was their age.

So the question is,

What is the difference between childlike and childish? Examples are appreciated.

Donald
 
It seems at me that both are very similar, in expressing child qualities. However, it seems 'childlike' is used to express positive things, such as the innocence, curiousity and wonder that children have. 'Childish' appears to be reserved to express negative things, like poor attention, being self-centered or acting as a brat? That just seems the difference at me.
 
Lets see how would I define them...

Childlike: chasing the icecream truck 4 blocks to get one.

Childish: teasing the person next to you because he doesnt have one.

Just my thoughts.
James
 
Hi don,
What is the difference between childlike and childish?

I saw a poster once, it showed the Grand Canyon and its caption was "You see things as they are and ask why. I see things as they could be and ask why not."

An idealist I would think probably best describes childlike, like the first weeks and month of my SA discovery at an age not unlike yours. Prior to that discovery, my attitude toward life, rejection and failing would best be described as childish, especially since I often repeated the negative events looking for abuse, attention or for whatever reason.

For instance, last week, after repeating some of my deviant sexual behavior, I feel myself slipping back into some of my negative behaviors. Why would anyone want hurt over happiness? That is childish IMHO.
 
Childlike: being lost in setting up your dail up conection to the internet.

Childish: screeming at the poor tech support guy, because you did not know that your modem needed to be plugged in.
 
Donald, I always have felt that childlike, means a certain trust, joy, simplicty, innocence, a not being tainted by prejudices. I know a man, he is a physician and in his 40's now. He is a childlike person to me. While not at all naive, he chooses to be kind to everyone. He gives people a warm and honest smile, he seems to think the best of everyone unless they give him reason to think otherwise, he can still have fun just being with his family in the back yard, having a picnic, throwing frizbees etc. His motto would seem to be, "lets not complicate the situation."

In a sense he makes me mad, he can always, and I mean always, give a person the benefit of the doubt, can find good in them, and feels no need to push his agenda--and he has one. But he persuades rather than going into a pushy style.

Childish has always been a negative or pejorative word to me. I see it used when someone wants their way and wants it right now! They think the world revolves around them and when anyone suggests that we don't all exist to make them happy they do, as our friend Dave says, "throw their toys out of the pram." They pout, won't talk to people and really seem to me to act like anyone who does not give them what they want NOW, is a bad person.

I was childish earlier this week. I was trying to find a ballpark where my school's team was playing. It was in a little village I have never been to before. But, there was a sign telling me to exit at exit 188 to get there. Well, 188 was closed for construction. This has always been a sour point with me. RAMP CLOSED seems to me to be an incomplete sentence. RAMP CLOSED--FOLLOW MARKED DETOUR is how I have decided it MUST be.

Well I found one of those places in the highway that emergency vehicles use to turn around and I decided that the law owed me the privilege of turning there. Well, a police officer pulled me over. I gave him my lecture on how I believe life should be. I was rather curt to him. The ticket cost $158.00 and 4 points on my driving recod. I see that as childish. Both because the way I want the world to be is not by that fact the way it ought to be. Secondly, the police officer has nothing to do with closing ramps for repair but I yelled at him as though he was.

Bob
 
Hey Bob, "The ticket cost $158.00 and 4 points on my driving record."

But did you cry and roll around on the ground kicking your feet?

Couldn't resist, sorry how it turned out for you, 'cause that is something I would have also done, turned where ever.
 
Hey Michael, thanks!

I didn't kick my feet, but I did truly want to tell the cop to direct me to the detour that should have been posted--but I could tell he was steamed as it was.

Bob
 
Don,

Nathan's pages make for good threads. :) Thanks for starting this one.

I think childish and childlike both apply to behavior, not to people.

So, my behavior is childish when I pursue what I want without awareness that others have wants and needs, too. This is what a child sometimes does.

My behavior is childlike when I strive to share some beauty or joy without awareness of superficial differences between me and others. This is also what a child sometimes does.

Thanks,

Joe
 
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