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Is Cooper (I presume that’s the youngest) old enough to be past the “potato with arms and legs” stage?
For those that don’t know, basically there’s a stage where kids don’t draw bodies at all, because they don’t fully register the interactions with that part of their parent (or something like that), and so a portrait of a parent tends to end up a head with stick limbs.
I don’t specifically remember doing this myself, but I saw younger kids doing that when I was a child and have since learned that it’s a developmental phenomenon.
Anyway, Cooper might be advanced for his age. That is, assuming any of this is even relevant for anthropomorphic cartoon cats.
i just have to raise this picture from that article
i feel like this has some meme potential
It’s from Hieronymus Bosch, of course it has.
So it has a name! If I knew that, I had long forgotten. Thank you!
I was curious, too, so I went checking, and I don’t know if they Litterbox comics kids have a canon age. My inclination is that they don’t; I’m pretty sure they’re based on actual kids, but the comic has been coming out for almost a decade and Cooper & Vincent haven’t grown at all, so I think it’s more or less based on some amalgamation of who they’ve been.
Anyway, I think Cooper goes to day care (he’s still learning to speak in a lot of the comics, and while he was remembered to be around one year old at this size, he was probably closer to two and his mom just forgot). Most kids move beyond Tadpole People around 5-7, so I would say the answer to your question is no. Speaking from my personal parenting experience, my almost-four-year-old is only just getting past the abstract expressionism and just-cover-the-paper-with-a-single-color stage. Though our daughter was drawing somewhat recognizable animals and human shapes when she was this age, so it’s pretty variable.
Incidentally, Vincent seems to be around five (he’s somewhat capable of video games and seems significantly inspired by Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes, who is canonically five), so he’s probably in either preschool or kindergarten, which would make him (in my experience) a somewhat advanced artist for his age.
Though, in fairness, they are the children of a cartoonist (maybe two? I think the husband helps with the comic). So their artistic skill might be better than most of their peers.
I’ve interacted with her on Bluesky and it’s my understanding that she still bases the cartoon on her kids but they are like, teens now (?) so the cartoon kids tend to do things a little old for their age; I believe their cartoon kids are a little older than you suggest though, like 7 and 3? But I don’t think it technically matters.
The interaction I had was in particular to one comic she did in regards to Terraria, Minecraft and Animal Crossing, as her rl son was going through all that. The behavior was very 13 or 14 years old vibe to me, but could be younger or older depending.
Nice, that makes sense. The “I’m into Minecraft now” comic was hilarious.
Fascinating… my son drew a potato portrait of our family a couple of months ago and I love it 😊
Also what kid that age has handwriting that good
I’m assuming by the F and (come see me) without any signs of erasure or whiteout that perhaps the teacher was doing the writing and Cooper was just dictating. It took a moment to register with the teacher, hence the F with a tiny bit of scribbling out the letter.
For daycare and preschool kids (and even early kindergarteners), it’s pretty standard for the teacher to interview the kids and write down their answers. I’m always excited to see how my kids conceptualize me this way.
Now, Vincent’s paper? No way a five-year-old wrote that.
What throws me off is that the handwriting on the right seems like it’s intended to look more like a child’s handwriting
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. The one on the right was written by the five year old, by his own hand (and honestly looks a bit too nice for him, too, but as a cartoonist she does have to make it reasonably legible for the audience). The one on the left, conversely, was transcribed by the two-year-old’s teacher, during an interview wherein she asked him questions and wrote his answers down. The “see me” is a message for the parent, not the student.
Edit: I do think that the placement of the kids in the bottom panels does confuse this a bit. The younger kid is on the mom’s left, so it’s in the first panel; but then we switch to the other perspective and see them from a third person viewpoint where he appears on the right side of the frame (even though he’s still on his mom’s left).
How does she have so many comics? What happens when the kids run out of young and start rebelling? What happens when they are adults? How old are we?
The one little tooth gets me every single time.
