Children Skipping “Seven” When Counting: A Followup

About a month a go, I wrote about my daughter who forgot “seven” when counting to ten, and as my mother said I also did this, and I heard about another child who also skipped “seven,” I asked if anyone knew what this was about. I got a few responses.

Two of the people responding, Håkan and Jocke, asked whether it wasn’t just that my daughter had difficulty pronouncing the word ”sju”, which perhaps is the most difficult one. Generally, my daughter has trouble with words beginning with “sj,” usually pronouncing it as “h.” But actually, and I hadn’t thought about this, she manages to pronounce “sju” quite perfectly, and was the only word beginning with the “sj” sound I could recall.

Another of the responses came from Steve Hunt, who also blogged his email to me. His 2.5 year old daughter also skipped “seven.” He wrote that he checked his wife’s psychology books and looked around a few websites, but couldn’t find anything. He ended his email saying that we ought to send Steven Pinker an email.

So I sent an email to Sweden’s Steven Pinker, Peter Gärdenfors (whose latest book, How Homo Became Sapiens: On the Evolution of Thinking, I’ve been recommended by Håkan), and last night he sent me an answer. Unfortunately, he had never heard of it, and he wrote that more controlled evidence would be needed to start looking for possible causes. He added that his youngest son skips “three,” though.

Rob also responded, saying that his son when he was about my daughter’s age, added another “seven” after “nine.” And Steve Hunt also wrote that his daughter went on to include “seven,” only to skip “eight.”

So perhaps it is just a case of children skipping certain numbers (or using them twice) and there isn’t anything special about “seven.” (Anyway, I’m still interested in hearing anything you have to say about this.)