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by wilg 1261 days ago
It's not an incorrect word, but it can be possibly misconstrued as being infantilizing, because "child" somewhat implies a young person. But I can't think of a better word!

Perhaps it could have been more a bit more tactful to reword to avoid saying "child", like saying "your son is doing well" in this case.

1 comments

Son or daughter avoids the possibility of infantalizing an adult child.
That’s what I said. Unfortunate that there is no obvious way to make it gender neutral.
An adult child is still the kid of her parents.
Without further context, "his child was in an accident" suggests a child of ~1-12/16/18. (Younger than ~1 and we should say "baby".)

"His son was in an accident" could equally refer to an adult.