Mumsnet Talk

I did a search for 18 mo, to see what sort of things I should be doing with my dd and for my dd, and also what sort of stages she should be at and have come away white with fear.

First of all there are people agreeing that their children talked in TWELVE word sentences at 18 mo. TWELVE! I've counted on my fingers, that's like, 'Mummy, I went to the park today and picked some white daisies.' Just daisies is just 11! Then there are posts where people are painting and clay modelling and glueing with their 18 mos. Mine has just about learned to hold a crayon, if I introduce her to paint she's just going to stick her hand in it. Or eat it. In fact, she eats the crayons.

Rationally, I suppose this site is going to attract the entire spectrum of abilities, so the top are going to be here as well as wherever my dd finds herself. But it really is scary.

Don't be scared! They all learn at different rates. My dd couldn't say a 12 word sentence at 18 months.
Could barely say a word!
Can't shut her up now ( she is 7)

My DS was over 3 before he was saying 12 word sentences. And he is still within the normal range.

I think that people glueing and painting etc with their children are often mummy glueing and painting and the DCs wandering off to do something more interesting.

I teach English to small children, and most of them start to draw with crayons at around 18mths to 2yrs. We do fingerpainting too but it is very very messy, but also good fun.

If you want to do painting, then use finger paints that are nontoxic and big sheets of paper.

But don't worry about her development, there are always going to be DCs that do more and those that do less than your DS.

DD nearly 17 months. 'Just' learning single words and we are very proud. She thinks crayons are yummy

Aaaahahahaha

The Mumsnet Factor.

Group together a large number of competitive overachievers, give them a means of communication (the internet) and something they care deeply about (their children).

Stand back and watch the brags fly.

What you have to remember that is that these high achievers are few and far between.

We have gluing, painting and playdough at the toddler group I run - the children do stuff with their parents but the reality is that the parents due and the children eat the playdough or put the paintbrush in their ear but their mums could still say they are doing the activities together even if the children have no idea what is going on!

I also think that sometimes some of the post need to be taken with a teeny weeny pinch of salt. After all we can say what we like about our children and chances are you will never ever know if we embellish a little.

If you want to know what the average 18 mth old is like go to the home page of MN, click on your child on the left hand column and have a look at the developmental milestones. I bet you anything you have nothing to be worried about at all.

ebenes - and you believe this stuff?

Don't fret.

Pretend those posters are exaggerating or drunk if that helps

My 20m says two-word sentences, if I'm lucky. and still eats crayons sometimes - he is a noodle. And utterly fab natch

His sis did talk dead early though so meh, different children different skills it makes fark all difference in the end. Apart from I will bang my head on my wall if tomorrow when ds says "ooook" and points and I say yes darling? do you want a drink? a snack? is there a bird? a bee? do you want to have a banana?????? what? WHAT?????

the parent glue not due.

i think the art stuff is how willing you are to cope with the mess.

dd did more painting and stuff at that age than ds because it was easier to contain the mess with one, but now that it's summer i let them paint in the garden. glueing is in some ways less messy (glue sticks and paper) but means prep to get interseting things for them to glue... which doesn't happen often in this house!

as for speech, all kids are differant. 4 months ago at 18 months ds's wasn't great, then suddently overnight he did start rambling in sentances, but then he has a big sister to pick that stuff up from.

keep in mind, many parents exagerate wildly, even more so on the internet where they don't have to meet the eyes of the incredulous readers

When DD was born, DS was just over 2 and I wrote out a list for my mum (who was going to look after him) of things he said with translations - none of the phrases was more than 3 words, and most of them were incomprehensible unless you knew him well.
He's currently at university reading History & politics, so I really don't think it's any indication of general intelligence.

Oh,ignore them!!All kids differ

FWIW my first child is (I think) reasonably smart,not a genius.My second has developmental delay.I have done equal amounts of sticking/colouring/painting and bookreading with them both.

My mum keeps me down to earth on things like this - apparently I was talking at 7 months (!), reading by 2 but couldn't walk till about 18 months and wouldn't feed myself till about the same age. Most kids end up able to talk / walk / feed themselves etc in the end so what difference do a few months make either way?

though having said that my mum does seem to have competitive grandma syndrome, always telling me stuff her friends' grandkids can do 'oh so and so is waving / pointing / speaking fluent japanese' or whatever..

DS's longest sentence so far is "No tank oo Mama" (when offered a bath ) and that's only with his speech accelerating rapidly in the past month - he's 2 and 2 months. HV at his 2 year check said he was perfectly normal.

Clay is for eating, crayons still occasionally need to be tasted, although in the painting stakes, I think he is supremely talented - rivals Jackson Pollock

RustyBear - you have a child at uni?! How can that BE, I thought you were early 30s!

DS is very advanced at acting - he can execute a perfect indignant that was unfair face with sound effects and you should see his innocent I am not drawing on the walls presentation. I should get him an agent really.

Oh and he is pitch perfect on his tantrum screams as well

<proud mummy>

Rustybear
Lol, you have just reminded me, I did the same thing with my MIL as DD was difficult to understand (plus she was speaking English which MIL does not understand)

She does not shut up now. (DD, not MIL)

Although the same could be said for MIL

Aw, thank you all! I think I need to go to more toddler groups, but the one mine is at she is by a long way the youngest, so it's just more examples of children out-talking and out-understanding her by miles. They all know how to put things away and copy the teacher and mine just wanders around shouting OUTSIDE! OUTSIDE! (1 word sentence). It's true that she will eventually learn to do it, but it is easy to think that being slow now means being a bit thick later. Am going to check out the official milestones on the home page as a nice bedtime story. Well, I hope...

I wish LL! Early 50's! Were you confused by by the first pic on my profile? - I put those up to celebrate DD's 18 th birthday! DS is 20 & DD 18, hopefully by October I'll have 2 at uni!
Nice to think I "sound" young, even if I don't look it.....

i agree all kids differ i cant really remember excatly what age dd1 started talking but she was very quick. we took her on holiday when she was 16 months and i can remember that we were able to converse with her then and much of what she said made sense but wasnt gramatically correct.

she picked up 'wanna a euro' n 'want one' very quickly and she was able to question why she needed suncream and tell you which slide she wanted to go on and she sang 'bob builder' on kareoke but all the words were wrong.

dd2 however is twelve months and can only say 'mama' and 'errgh'! she comminicates by calling every one mamma, even her dad, and pointing at what she wants and saying 'errgh'. although she never says 'mamma errgh' so i dont think she knows how to put more than one word together!

your dd is just fine. she will learn these things when she is ready.

Oh yeah, profile, yeah I'd looked at that <cough>

EBenes, DS's best friend (exact same age) was saying "three green lorries!" (and being right) at about 21 months - DO NOT COMPARE, it will do your head in

From the 'your child' section, the first thing I read:

"Her physical achievements: She is getting progressively better at walking, swinging her arms casually while looking around her."

Oh dear. And <i>casually</i>!

At three and a half my son managed his longest ever sentence, it was seven words long.....I don't like you Mrs Speech Therapist........We were so proud!!!

EBenes, the Mumsnet Child updates once told all the mothers of 3 year old boys that they would be playing with dolls, getting ready for the day when they too became mothers so I wouldn't worry too much!

at 12 word sentences.

dd2 just about says hello.

And she calls me Nanny (which I'm not too impressed with)

Serin,thats fab!!!

dd is 2.5 and said "Muma" for the first time the other day

What's really funny is that people would count the words in the sentences

Ahhh, some people are such knobs.

.....I have to confess, that reading this site over the past week or so has often made me feel distinctly bad. I evidently provide little nourishment, spiritually intellectually or nutritionally to my noisy, fighting, underachieving boys.

(Either I have felt bad, or I have thought "smug f****rs, come and try a slice of what I've got...")

However I am suitably reassured by the healthy scepticism of this thread.

I mean, if there were THAT many gifted children, we would surely be knee deep in 'em....

Can I just hijack a bit to ask about painting/craft activities at toddler groups?

The one I used to go to before DCs got too old, all the other parents/CM used to finish off the childs work.

Eg when we did a frog, DD smeared green paint on about half of it and then lost interest in the frog and when on to painting her forearms or endless handwashing (making the water change colour has always been the best part of painting for her). The other parents would actually paint the bits that remained white so the frog was all green!

I had assumed this was a cultural thing, because they are French and I am not. Has anyone seen this at toddler groups?

Oh that's a Quote of the Week nomination right there, wulfricsmummy!

Rusty, just looked at your profile - your daughter is beautiful! You must be so proud of her

Ebenes I promised myself that I would never get sucked into competitive parenting, I know logically that babies develop at different ages, but sometimes I just can't help it! In fact for a while it seemed that DD wasn't doing anything, though she would make the sound "woof" (she is 11 mo now, this was about 2 months ago) so DH and I spent 2 weeks saying "DD, what do doggies say? What do doggies say?" trying desperately to get her to say "woof" at the right moment so we could use it as a party piece!

Othersideofthechannel
I can only answer for Germany, we do that here too. "Oh, look at the lovely hedgehog DD made today in playgroup"

Well, actually DD played with a dolly while I stuck leaves onto a hedgehog shape. Waste of bloody time, I did not go back.

Ebeeny
Don't worry, I am sure that my DCs have never wandered along "swinging her arms casually while looking around her". DS is 4yo and still chuggs along with his arms up like a little train.

MN often terrifies me, though more about my failings than my dcs .

I think it is a case of people telling you what they are proud and pleased about and keeping quiet about the rest. If it was not an isolated incident, hy MN about it.

FWIW, my 3yo 'decorated' the bathroom with her poo yesterday. She is certainly normally bright and abnormally vile that day. Today may be better .

Really don't worry about it.

Twelve word sentences are not the norm!

I am sure that some children do but a handful of words and not even stringing them together is quite normal for 18 months.

I know someone that sat down one evening with their (presumably devoted) friend and worked out how many words their 20 month old knew compared to the average. It was something absurd like 100 or so but can you imagine writing them down and counting every word, and then telling people.

Take your child to a parent-toddler playgroup and you'll soon see how normal she is - and how busy all the mums are, decorating toilet rolls, rolling out playdough shapes and making Christmas cards that will later be claimed to have been made by their children. The kids are too busy eating the playdough and pouring glue all over the table, another child's picture or their trousers actually to do anything intentionally artistic.

you know the rough rule of thumb - has anyone mentioned it yet?

one word at one
two words at two
three words at three
18 words at mumsnet

Are there any "normal" toddler - they're all as mad as a box of frogs as far as I can tell.

DS's only 4 word sentance so far at 2.6 was "Molly see Dan willy"

In my defence I was trying to persude him to put his pants back on before his friend came to play. The threat of her seeing his willy produced much mirth and a milestone 4 word sentance! Boys don't change do they?

Kewc (for both posts!)

Hehe Kewcumber.
My DD at 13 months is very talented. Today she removed her own nappy and walked around the house with it, dropping the vile contents (including I may add some chunks of crayon)as she waddled.
I got v.paranoid in DD's first year, after spending too much time with competitive mums and reading developmental stages in books & on web. then one day I looked at DD and realised that the little fluffy headed one was just the best thing thats ever happened to me and now I let her get on with it. Don't worry EBenes. Toddlers are bonkers as Kewcumber says, and we don't want them growing up too quickly like that poor chap who was an antique expert at about 6 and had a sex change and is now totally screwed up.

Regarding art and craft - I run a messy-play based toddler group. We start at age 2, which is when some children start being capable of concentrating on gluing, painting etc IME.

Some parents let their kids get on with playing with all the sticky, messy, pretty stuff and take home some gloriously eccentric but generally unrecognisable creations. Others do it with the children and talk through what they are doing together in a rather nice, intimate way. Yet more let their kids play in the sand while they do the craft themselves - and have a thoroughly good time chatting and reliving their childhood.

And I reckon all three are perfectly valid approaches, in different ways.

But I expect they all tell their friends that "DD/DS loves doing art and craft"

(When the kids get to about 3, they are much more likely to produce something on their own and refuse to let mummy get involved.)

My youngest is three, and frankly, I can't remember a single milestone. You know, those milestones that at the time they happened you thought, 'I'll remember this forever'....

actually, my ds - 21mths - speaks several different languages and is currently working on a cure for rectal cancer

My DD is 2.4 and can speak sentences that last for several minutes without stopping for breath.

Haven't got a clue what she is saying though (DH and I reckon she is talking in tongues)

Hi Ebenes
Know what you mean, my friend has ds same age as my dd and reckons at age 2 1/2 he could write own name, count to 50, do a 60 piece jigsaw, and use a calender?????????

sure the poor kid is very cute etc... but doubt any of that is true....
Don't worry about it

DD (aged 2) loves arts and crafts, I can tell by the glitter in her poo.

She just about strings two words together, some only decipherable by translator-parent.

On the other hand she has a mean right hook, excellent coordination and is evincing a scary kind of early criminal intelligence.

oh yes, we have hama beads in the poo too.

Chirpygirl
Perhaps your DD is truly G&T and has taught herself to speak Japanese

I have been thinking about this "She is getting progressively better at walking, swinging her arms casually while looking around her" I think we should petition to get it changed to:

"He is getting progressively better at walking, however he prefers a gangly flailing-limb run. If forced to walk he will stop and pick up every leaf on the way and examine it in detail as if it were the missing link between and ape and man and his Nobel prize depends upon it. He will also discover how interesting ants are at this point. On the upside, he may stop licking lamp-posts about now"

Here is my 19mo DD's twelve word sentence:

"addn addn addn addn addn addn addn addn addn addn addn addn"



a) it's a spectrum and b) half of them are lying.

thats quite advanced, At 19 months I think DS had only got as far as "addn addan addn"

LOL. Reminds me of the mum I saw on telly who was so proud because her six month old could say daddy's name. Daddy's name was Abu ...

at Kewcumber's correction

I don't know about all this painting and sticking at mother and toddler groups. It must have changed since I was there. I thought they were invented so you could sit on a chair at the edge of the room and fall asleep while your toddler achieved highly precocious milestones in the middle of the room on their own!

Don't be scared, they all learn at different rates. Mine happens to be towards the forward end but not because I treat her like mini einstien! I CM so I did with her all the things I did with older children. This did include sticking, painting with hands and brush but only marks on a page, lots of help etc. Any child over 1 can have a go under close supervision, but its not a parental duty. They will have plenty of opportunity for this at creche/pre-school.

LOL! I went to Mother and Toddler 3 wks ago and had my 8wk old doing foot painting. Obviously she was totally compliant (and unresponsive because she was asleep!).

DD1 hardly said anything at 18 months at 3 she hardly came up for breathe, we cannot shut her up.

DD2 who is 18 months younger than DD1 thinks she is DD1's twin and anything DD1 does she has to do. She was speaking in sentences really quickly, she drew a face at 2.2yo without ever being taught (benign neglect of second borns), she is already beginning to write letters all because DD1 has started to. I don't know if she is genuinely intelligent or is just very good at copying her sister.

DD2 also does all the crafty things DD1 does, plays with older toys and "read" older books so I think that plays a part in it as well.

My 3 year old has the creative ability of a newborn but the capacity to poo like a 36 year old man.

Honestly it sounds like someones dropping jacket potatoes into the toilet when he goes.

lol

LOL! This thread has been a joy, thank you to everyone for being so kind. Now that the weather is nice, I think we are going to start painting. Well, I am.

connor- does he take a newspaper with him? Because that would be truly impressive.

DD3 is nearly 18 months and her version of a two word sentence is "gone gone" (about her dinner. That's about it. Oh, and her counting is VERY advanced. She can count one (nnnn), two(dooo), three(neeeee), three, two, two, three. Great stuff. Absolutely normal. (I think....tell me it's normal?)

You could do what I do in these situations and repeat to yourself 'it's a stage not an age'.

My eldest is now 8. She was quite slow to talk in sentences. Now we don't count words, we just time her by the hour.

I really enjoyed reading this thread I have been desperately trying to find someone with a child like mine. Thank you for putting it all in persceptive.

xxx