Never compare!!!

[Member561819]

My daughter is 2 nearly 3, she sometimes struggles with sounds in words so it can be difficult to understand what she's saying a lot of the time, although I do, I think because I spend all my time with her. I have a person in my life (which a lot of you will understand) who, I feel, constantly puts my little girl down. The mother in-law.
She tells my daughter to "stop talking jibberish" which I hate! The "jibberish" is actually a good sign and is a way for children to communicate in there own way. My daughter is kind, caring, friendly, she's not spoilt but doesn't go without anything, she's funny and loves company. If you take the time you can understand her.
Now, my mother in-law has another grandchild the same age. He is very forward in speaking, he has been able to spell his name since he was 18 and can sing the alphabet. He's very intelligent indeed.
The mother in-law is always telling me about his accomplishments, fair enough. But as much as I love him, and I love him lots, he never shares, he's pushy and can be nasty. He's been overly spoilt and never says please or thank you (which my girl can say)
I believe being kind and caring is more important than being able to say the alphabet at their age.
I read to my daughter every night, I play and she doesn't watch lots of telly, we are social and we have been going to a speech specialist. So I know I'm doing a good job. Please tell me I'm not the only one!
Don't compare you're child to other children, they are all different and they are all beautiful.

Aww poor you having to put up with comparisons like that. All children are different and do things in their own time.
My dd was an early talker but my DS struggled with his sounds. I did all the things with him as I had done with my DD (talked, read every night, sang songs, played games etc, etc) but still he struggled. And I have to say my father in law did make comments about how dd was the clever one etc, which used to really annoy me.
Now at five he has just been discharged from speech therapy and the report said his speech was age appropriate.
He is also doing really well at school and throughout his reception year I saw him over take other children who at the start of the year were extremely vocal, could recite alphabet etc.
Like you, I am proud of having kind, caring children and would be more upset if they were mean, uncaring etc!
All children develop in their own time. Just keep going with what you are doing, sounds like you are doing a great job.

Comparing children is awful. My experience is from the opposite side. DS1 and his cousin are exactly the same age (within days). My son is very advanced for his age (26 mos), fully conversational, alphabet, counting etc and is constantly compared to his cousin who has around 50 words and is much more of a "baby" than DS, both of them lovely little boys and emotionally at the same developmental stage. It's a lose/lose situation as SIL feels bad that dn isn't doing things that DS is and worries that he's behind, and I feel bad that DS is perceived to be older than he is and is treated as such. It makes him frustrated and demoralised as he can't live up to the impossible standards that some people expect of him. The boys are the same age for goodness sake. If they both fall over, you don't pick one up and baby cuddle him, while telling the other that big boys don't cry and to get up, likewise if they both do something they shouldn't, the response should be the same, not "ah well dn is still very young and learning" as opposed to "come on, you're old enough to know better".

Apologies I didn't mean to vent there, just really irritates me, especially as DH is guilty of it.

OP, I hope you tell your MIL to fuck off? Who does she think she is?! Best to nip it in the bud now before your DC is old enough to understand her criticism.

Where's is your DH/DP in all of this? He should be telling MIL that this is not on. If not you should.

You are absolutely right in my opinion that being kind, and being happy, are really the only important things we should wish for for our dc - your dd sounds like a lovely, polite and caring child, and it seems that, quite rightly, you are immensely proud of these qualities in her. Why your MIL can't be, I don't know - her own issues coming in to play here, I would say.

My own parents talk a lot about my dd's "cleverness" - I'm not even sure this is true. She has a wide vocabulary, but certainly this is no marker of future academic success. My brother (their son!) could not articulate clearly (he basically spoke without consonants) until he was over three, and went on to get a DPhil from Cambridge.

Either way, all I think is important myself, is that my dd leads a good, useful and happy life. I am immensely proud that she is loving, loyal, emotionally intelligent (most of the time), funny and optimistic. It bothers me not that she can't count at 2.6, while I'm told most of my friends dc could count to 20 at 18 months. I presume she'll learn to in time, anyway!