Or is this normal for a 20 month old?!

[Curiousparentt]

First time mum here so not entirely sure what is ‘normal’ at what age this age - but my 20 month old DD amazes me at what she understands. She can’t yet talk in sentences, but we’ve just had this conversation…

”Where have we been today?” “Granny’s, car, rain”
“What did Granny make you for lunch?” “Sandwich”
”What was on your sandwich?” “Chicken”
”What else did you have for lunch?” “Crispies, cucumber”
”What fruit did you have for your lunch?” “Strawberries”
”What book did Granny read to you today?” “Bear” (brown bear, brown bear)
”What else?” “Caterpillar”
”Did Granny do some stickers with you today?” “Elephant, giraffe” (an animal sticker book)
”Granny yoghurt, orange” (she fed her a yoghurt and orange)
”What else did you play at Granny’s?”
”drum”
”Did you cry when we had to leave Granny?” pretended to cry “car, sleep, shhhhh” (she slept in the car on the way home).

All of her answers were correct.

Is this normal for her age or is she ahead of where toddlers typically are on their understanding?!

I think that's pretty normal surely.

But I agree with other posters, normal is amazing 🤩 it's so lovely watching children learn to talk and seeing how much they understand.

Kids are sponges, if you want to encourage sentences- I would model her answers back into complete sentences - “that’s right, you read the gruffalo with nanny etc.” My youngest just turned 2 and is talking in more sentences now and asking questions that make sense!

Absolutely not normal. I think most people aren't reading your post properly and think you are talking about the vocabulary, which although good isn't out of the ordinary. I think the level of detail of the memory is very unusual. I don't think my 4 year would remember all that. My 2 year old was a very early and good talker, spoke 200 words by 18 months, would have understood the questions, but he wouldn't remember all those details about minor things that happened hours ago.

I also said to her:

”We did some colouring in too. Do you remember what we coloured in?”
”birdy”
”what colour did we colour the birdy?”
”red”

Which was correct!

Again, the language I don’t think is special. But just the fact that she remembered the exact page we chose in her colouring book and also what colour she chose.

There's a massive range in language at this age, I know siblings where one was speaking in full sentences at 18 months and the other hardly spoke a word before 3. Both lovely bright teens now.

They have language explosions at this age, it's such a lovely time as you can start to properly chat with them and their personalities really come through.

They will sometimes surprise you the other way though - on holidays last week 3.5 hours drive from home my nearly 4yo thought we were walking to our local playground 5 minutes from home.

I think your DD sounds really bright! MN can be quite begrudging with praise but your DD is clearly ahead of the curve in terms of memory and detail.
My DD is 16 months and her vocabulary is incredible. She wouldn't be able to answer questions like your little girl yet, but she can link images and phrases to actions and memories in a simpler form and I do think she's a naturally clever little kid just like your DD ❤️

Same!

my DD wasn’t speaking like that until she was much older. If she had spoken like that I would’ve thought she was a near genius 😂