clever/normal?

[FredFlintstone]

I have a 17 month old and a couple of people always remark that they think she is really advanced. I honestly don't think she is though and I'm looking for some back up that she really is just a normal 17 month old! If anything I was worried because she doesn't have much speech.

Firstly she doesn't talk very much, she has about 15 words - this is certainly not advanced, is it! I know 13 month olds that say more than that.

The things they think are clever include: She knows her numbers 1-10, her body parts, shapes, animals and things, and counts on her fingers, and she knows most of her letters. Things like this I think are just because we've shown her, (she wants to do it I am not making her!) not because she's some genius! She understands loads (eg someone said "you look smart" and she pointed at her jumper).

She can follow quite complex commands/suggestions I suppose. I feel silly writing this down, it's nothing like I would call advanced but I really haven't a clue!

Thanks

[skinsl]

I think that's quite advanced. How do you mean "knows her letters"? The counting is good and the numbers. Body parts and shapes and animals I think is normal.
dont think talking is necessarily an indication of being advanced.
What about colours>
Can only compare to mine really. DS just turned 2 and I think he is clever but doesn't know numbers or letters, but can do jigsaws for 5 yr olds!

[FredFlintstone]

If you ask her "where's the letter A/B/X.." she will point correctly to most of the letters in the alphabet - also she can say some of them, eg "A", "S", "M" - and will often say these and point to the correct letter when we are looking at a book or poster.
Colours - she knows he main ones, red/blue/green/yellow/orange/purple I think. She will pick out correctly "the red ball" for example.

Oh and she can also spot where jigsaw shapes fit even if they are not obvious - not sure if this is just from practice though.

Jigsaws for 5 year olds - wow!

Thanks for your comments!

[smileyboy]

I'd say it's normal but I could be wrong. Certainly my ds and my friend's ds could do all that but maybe not all of them can and I don't know any others of that age. Wouldn't worry about the speech thing though, does sound normal too.

[victoriascrumptious]

I have a 16m old.
She can pick out about 20 animals from pictures i.e 'which one is the Zebra?'. SHe knows colours and the noises of animals. She knows her body parts. She has a vocab of about 80 words (but only strings a max of 2 words together. She can count to 5 (but I feel this is repatition rather than a knowledge of what numbers really are).I've never bothered showing her letters.

I don't think she's advanced.

I think it's impossible to tell whether a child is advanced at this age. Much of what i've described above is rote learning which is no indicator of future brillience IMHO