Is everyone on Mumsnet's kids gifted?

[colditz]

No, I'm not being bitchy at all. But some of the things that your 3 year olds can do, not one child at ds's nursery can do! Does Mumsnet attract high acheiving parents with high achieving kids, or are children in the SE doing better than other areas, or am I just missing something?

My ds is 32 months old, and when I see him with his peers at nursery, I am not at all worried, but when I read about what (it seems like) the majority of the children of his age of mumsnetters are doing, it worries me sick!

He isn't potty trained. He doesn't recognise his name when written down. He can't hold a proper conversation, and although he does see a speech therapist, this doesn't seem very uncommon in boys of his age. His only contribution to the computer is to stick inappropriate objects in the disc drive. Ditto dvd player, video, and cat. He is only just starting to use imaginative play.

I love him so much, he is the happiest, most charming child, but I am worried that I am doing something dreadfully wrong here, and he will suffer intellectually for my shortcomings as a parent.

Honestly, not a bitch-rant, I'm just getting quite worried now!

You don't have to have a high-achieving father for this to happen, Issymum! My dad has never forgiven me for not getting a first at Oxford!

My kids are certainly NOT gifted - dd2 might be, but dd1 isn't.

In terms of milestones, dd1 was 3 1/2 before she was reliably potty trained, dd2 was 21 months
dd1 didn't walk until she was 22 months, dd2 walked at 13 months.
dd1 could write her name before she went to shcool (at 4 3/4) and knew some/most of her letters, but couldn't read, dd2 is nearly 4 3/4 (starts sschool in jan) and can write her name and almost every word she wants if you spell it out.

So what can I say 32 months is 2 3/4, dd1 was in nappies, dd2 was not, dd1 wouldn'thave known her own name, dd2 could probably have written it!!

Kids are all different, dd1 is a graceful ballerina, dd2 is a lumbering elephant

Issymum

seriously though no one is actually suggesting that achieving gross motor milestones or early potty training is a sign of being gifted??

no, mine aren't.

dd didn't sleep through the night til she was 2, potty training took over 6mths, and even then she used to go to nursery with 3 changes of clothes. she was terrible at it, and i left it til late too. she wasn't walking til 15/16mths. however, she is seriously gifted in the throwing a tantrum and whinging department, she'd win awards for it .

and both mine have appalling eyesight and wear glasses with lenses as thick as milk bottle bottoms. their father was mr.magoo
.

I used to wish that DS would be very intelligent, successful, etc. Now, after having gone to a development assessment and realising that he really is behind all I wish is for him to be normal and healthy, that is ALL I want.

sleeping through the night
potty training
walking
these are NOTHING to do with intelligence are they??
I can litter train a rabbit in a day
dogs have really good motor skills
hamsters sleep a lot
not relevant

Will also add the usual "All kids develop at their own rate" stuff, but you're right, there do seem (to me too) to be a disproportionately large number of posters here with very advanced children. My boys are bright in some ways - DS1 (7)is very articulate, dreadful handwriting, still bedwetting, and all in all a drifter through time and space; DS2 is a bit more practical, an early reader, but can't pedal his bicycle yet or write any recognisable letters.
But angst is what we mothers are made for.....
Colditz, your son sounds lovely - happy and charming is all you could want of any 32 month old! Mine were that too (still are) and it's more important to me than any of that other stuff.

Colditz - I hear you girl! I've often felt like that but now DS1 is almost 4 he's just about the same as his pals. He's been a 'reluctant speaker' as the speach therapist likes to say but just lately people can understand him almost as well as the other kids. Personally, I think the just develop at different rates but once they reach a certain age they're all more or less the same. So Don't panic! Let him vandalise everything in the house if he wants to. He's using his imagination and having fun! (DS2 has started stuffing everything imaginable everywhere imaginable if it wasn't getting expensive and annoying it'd be cute!

My dd (2.5) is like Flamerobins' - a completely convincing fibber. She's also very gifted at getting the cat in a headlock. We'd better not get them together, eh Flame?

gracej - sympathies.

colditz, I must admit that I was at the thread where people's children were writing their names at 2! (But I didnt want to sound unhinged and jealous so I just didnt post)
My children are all super intelligent and gifted, as well as incredibly beautiful, but strangely this doesnt show in their school work, which is fairly mediocre. I dont understand why. Maybe the teachers just didnt appreciate my unique children enough

Ha ha! My dd can't even say her name now (20 months) so I doubt she will be writing it by 2!

Her scribble drawings are worthy of the Tate Modern however...

weesadie - you have just made me realise that I have never heard dd2 say her name - she's 24 months. mind you, I havent spent much time with her recently.

They'd both be tellin tales on the other Surfer!!! Mine's not been around cats much, so would love the headlock lessons - she could trade them for hunting wabbits with a fishing net

But isnt part of it what you teach them/what they have the opportunity to do too? I certainly didnt try to teach my dd how to write before now (nearly 3) and its all scribbles anyway, but I did teach her how to spell her name (3 letters) and she recognises the names on the letters we get cause I sat down and showed her. She can ride a bike (with stabilizers), but never tried skating - my friends dd who is a few days older than my dd is ice skating every week, and is brilliant at it, but has rarely had the chance to ride a bike. Of course some things are nature rather than "nurture," but everyone has their own gifts.

I think part of the problem is that there are just too many books and charts and milestones saying that at x age your child should be doing y and so on and so forth, and if one's child isn't doing what the book says at that age (especially if it's a first child) we start to ask ourselves why. I think that all children develop at their own pace, my DS was crawling at 7 months but didn't actually sit on his own until 10 months, I put that down to lazyness, he could do it, he just couldn't be bothered, so I bought him toys to encourage him to sit up and we played with them together and he got there. He talked early and could hold a conversation by age 2, a lot of the other boys he played with didn't speak properly until at least 6 months later, but they're all the same age now and most have the same communication skills. They all catch up eventually.

I would disagree though on the point that talking to your child has nothing to do with them developing speach. While it is true that every child develops at his/her own pace, and if the child does not have the aptitude to speak early they won't if they're not able, you definitely do get back what you put in. there have been numerous studies that have pointed out how children develop in certain situations, how children that watch too much television are often unable to communicate properly, and children who grow up in one-to-one care develop better than those that are put into nursery as babies. I know a girl whose parents are both totally deaf, and although she was exposed to speach from other people, she actually didn't learn to talk until she was 3 and went to pre school. A child who points regularly at things and is given what he/she points to will often not talk until later because he can communicate in that way. But as long as they are all walking/talking/potty trained by school it's really not an issue.

I do think that development and giftedness are different things though, an inteligent child might have inteligence to read/write/retain knowledge, but still might not walk until late or whatever

What a great thread... Ds1 has always developed at his own rate - he's not quite got the hang of jumping yet at 2 1/2 (tries hard tho, bless him, not quite worked out that saying and doing not the same thing). DH will be happy, as long as he doesn't go to Cambridge...

totally agree, XmasPud and Issymum. my parents were very academic and just expected us all to be very good. luckily we were all high achievers but if one of us hadn't been it would have been pretty awful for them. and we all had our times of feeling academically inadequate.

am absolutely determined i won't do that to my children. they can be bright or not, academically successful or not. it's their life.

I would rather they were nice caring people, I really would!

harrumph at notion that only (ex)oxbridge counts as high achievement/intellectually gifted and i don't think "pushy" mothers are exclusively from that group either!

far too early to assess ds's (4.5) and dd's (17m) intellectual gifts...

My mum is always saying how she'd love one of her kids to get a first at uni (I am studying at the mo) and it is depressing! I just don't think I am quite that level, I'd love a 2.1!

Sorry nightynight! My dd hardly says anything, a few words here and there... I try not to worry about it.

Isn't the subtext of this thread that if we only have "normal" children we wonder what we did "wrong", "I'm clever so why isn't my kid clever, too?" kind of thing.

Then we wonder if others are exaggerating about their children's talents.

I'm bummed my kids aren't gifted; but I'm also grateful they don't have any major problems, either (other than being burdened with me as a mother, but that's another going back to wondering what I'm doing "wrong", again).

Two things I have noticed since having children is firstly that pretty much all children have something they can do amazingly well. My goddaughter could do jigsaw puzzles at about 18 months both the right way up and upside down (ie with no picture showing). That was it - in every other respect she was entirely "normal", but if you judged her on that alone you would think she was astonishing. My DS and DD have both been very early talkers - much earlier than their peers, clear diction, full sentences etc. But that's all: and in fact in DS's case, all his friends at 4 now speak exactly the same way and you certainly don't look at him and think he is freakishly advanced in the same way that I don't expect people say about me "Wow, doesn't Anchovy speak well - so clear, and in sentences".

Secondly and it ties in with the first point, any sort of development chart seems to envisage that development is equal across the board. What I have really noticed with my 2 DCs is that they are a bit uneven, and more so at some ages than others. So at 3 DS spoke very well, which was great, but in fact at 4 he still drinks from a sippy cup most of the time, doesn't find buttons particularly easy and regularly confuses a couple of colours. I suspect what happens on MN is not so much that everyone is a high acheiver with high acheiving children, but more that everyone (naturally) focusses on the things their child can do and tends to overlook the things that they can't do.