Grateful for some advice as I'm desperately trying to think up ideas to entertain my little boy. He is advanced for his age - I'm not claiming that he's gifted as he's far too young to reach a proper assessment (15 months) but I'm guessing that those of you with gifted/talented children will be used to trying to keep up with an exceptionally demanding child!
He has been very aware since a young age, smiling at a few days old, laughing at a couple of weeks, sitting up alone at three months, clapping at four months, rolling at four months (both ways), commando crawling at five months, crawling properly at six months, standing at seven months, crusing at eight months and walking without assistance jsut before eleven months. He started saying mama, dada at ten months and now uses 'ta' consistently and has a fair few words behind him (nana, grandad, juice, teddy, cheese, triangle, hello (and picks up phone to say it)- I've forgotten some..). He's also been making animal noises for months - moo, baa, mam (for miaow). At eight/nine months he couldn't reach our television so pushed things there to climb up on. He has been sitting on his own flicking through books and babbling away for months and but is only now taking an interest in me actually readin to him. He has been spoon/fork feeding himself for the past couple of months. He can now sit down and watch a television programme for between 10-20 minutes. He can stack over ten small wooden blocks (and applauds himself as he does so!), and will play with megablocks for some time building towers, and has been able to follow requests such as "where's your ball?" since around 10/11 months. He does enjoy scribbling and painting but not for very long. He loves older children and is very uninterested in children the same age. He has always been very demanding - I've envied mothers who could just sit down in mother and baby groups while their child slept while I would be running around after him! He is also very prone to full-blown temper tantrums if he isn't allowed something - and he seems to get so frustrated with his limitations if he can't physically do something.
Sorry for the long list, I'm sure I've missed out a lot of stuff but just wanted to set out what he's been doing (I've never written it down before so it's probably all over the place). I know that everyone thinks their child is advanced - but he has consistently been months ahead on almost all of the development charts and I'm finding it really difficult to find age appropriate activities to do with him - for example he loves animals so I'll take him to the local farms but he also loves eating mud if given half the chance! Soft play areas are a pain because the baby section is too boring for him so he escapes and tries to join in with the older children who are far too boisterous. He is too young for most of the organised children's activities and while I take him on walks to our local highstreet on my day off there isn't much for him to do and it's always the same.
I work compressed hours so I can get Wednesday's off with him and feel bad sometimes as I think he'd be happier in nursery with lots of other children and organised activities.
Grateful for any advice you can offer (and please be kind - I'm not trying to label my child and force him into anything I swear!).
Emma