Does everyone on MN have very advanced children or are mine just backward????

[VictorVictoria]

I keep reading all these threads about pncy things that three year olds say. DS (3.5) can talk in sentences, knows numbers, letters, colours etc. But he not chatty as such - I am amazed by some of his friends and indeed most of the children I seem tor ead about on MN who seem to be having elaborate conversations about abstract concepts. DS can converse happily. But its usually restricted to topics such as how many more episodes of charlie and Lola or Dora he can watch or whats for tea or the attributes of aeroplanes (favourite thing).

My DD is a happy chatty kid - she's just started reception, she's 4 and a half, and she has lots of friends, and spends her day telling me about who played flying unicorns etc etc with her today.

I realise now after our first P/T meeting that she's what her teachers call bright, but I've never pushed her to 'achieve'. She seems well liked, and hugs her class mates a lot! She loves sports and playing, and I think friendships are much more important to us that academic supremacy, and I actually boke at the hothousing concept. These are little kids after all, they need to develop at their own pace with their peers.

We all live in a social world, and I've found that in my life as a business woman the ability to form and maintain business relationships far outweighs any academic results / achievements I have.

I agree reallytired, educate the mother and the rest follows.
(Left field aside(That's why I really despise the Taliban, for bombing girls schools especially.))

lol at "remarkable talent for drawing fruit"

And also "happy pootler" is making me

Lucky you Franca, would love to bugger off to a country where people aren't so sodding hung up on class and acheivement and bleurgh.

Have a good friend who is a marvellous GP, she is Dutch and couldn't do letters/reading/astrophysics until she was 7.

I find her terribly reassuring.

DS is quite good socially. Laid back and kind and likes sharing and doesn't do pushing and hitting (which is clearly as a result of my parenting prowess!)

Unfortunately Notsorampant I'm not in northern Europe, but in Italy, which more than makes up for starting school at 6, by being crappola in so many other aspects of social life....

Sorry, my 3 yr old is one of the poncy, long-winded conversation-types. It's bloody exhausting.

FWIW I have one DC who is scarily bright, one DC who is very average and one DC who has severe SN.
The funny thing about it is that they are all equally happy. Probably the brightest child had the most angst growing up. And DC with SN can become scared and upset by things that he doesn't 'get'. So average DC is probably currently best off. And benefits hugely from having parents who think she is fab just as she is - as are the other two

I am always about reported activities, rather than ones I see after a lawyer mummy friend told me her ds slept through from 5mths.

I was very - later in the conversation I mentioned that I was surprised she was bfing as her child had slept so well, she said 'yes well he slept from the last feed at 11/12am right through till 5am'

WTF?? Sleeoing through is 7-7am in my book, not 12-5am.

I don't agree with you Orange knickers, mine have never slept 7-7 in their life and they are 13 and 11

Sleeping in through to me is having the last feed before you go to bed ie 10 and not waking us up until 6.30/7am which my son did while he was being breastfed at 3 months.

DD did the same at 3 months but was ff.

christy
you just need to wait.
By 15 mine could sleep from 9 pm until following midday no problem
...if I would let him

hmm now i feel depressed about my son. maybe i'm not middle class enough for mumsnet.

pagwatch

I forgot i had the joys of teenagers sleeping all day still to come.

My 2.7 year old is G&T at having a sense of humour and getting his own way. My five year old is G&T at using his incredibly long dark eyelashes to make old ladies give him sweets.

I think these are more important life skills that typing your name before you can successfully control your bladder.

Mine are all average. I think average is a good shelf to be on in life actually. I don't think my 3 year-old knows his numbers. Actually I have never asked him.

As adults they can be all 'gifted' in other things.

They might be drop dead gorgeous!

Gifted personalities that make people feel wonderful.

Lots of other 'gifted' qualities that have that 'I don't know what' in French.

Well, lots of us have non-verbal autistic children as well.

As others have said,early ability is a double edged sword.My dd1 could talk very early and uses really sophisticated language now (nearly 4) but she gets overwhelmed by too much adult stuff that would go over other toddlers heads.People talk about things that really worry her in front of her because they think she is too little to understand.She gets the subject,but has no frame of reference to put it in and so she can get very anxious and has a lot of nightmares.It has been quite hard for her,I think,not all that much of a bonus.

My children all have and had incredibly advanced speech but were very late in all their physical milestones as babies.
There is plenty of stuff my kids don't do as well as other kids do and I've no problem posting about that either.

We're just very talkative, wordy people, my family always has been and I'd have been very worried if they'd not followed suit.

To those who instantly assume people are lying, most of us aren't! My kids also slept for 12 hours a night (6pm-6am) from 6wks but they were bottle fed! I know in a breastfed baby that's alot less likely and any future children I have will be breastfed.

Interesting Trafficcone. My children were early walkers, but late talkers.

Well, like Fennel and Franca I appear to have defied all odds and, despite a clutch of parental degrees (mine in English), a house packed with books, a job Writing Things for a living and a pathological logocentricity (on my part), produced children who are, by MN standards, postively Neanderthal. In real life they're quite delightful and do fine at school. Here, I frequently shamble away wondering just why they're so sub-standard, frankly.