What age do babies born in the same year catch up with each other

[Greygoose21]

Hi,

Just wondering what age everyone would say babies born in the same year catch up with each other.
Example my little girl is 6 months and my friends little girl is 8 months. Obviously she is doing things that my little girl isn’t. And you can see that there is two months between them by size and development.
Where you couldn’t see a two month gap between two 2 year olds.
Hope that makes sense 🤦‍♀️.
Thanks

They don’t. September born children are more likely to het higher GCSE grades or become a premiership footballer. But it’s worth remembering there are lots of different factors which impact on a child’s performance.

It's very very hard not to compare your own dc to others. But please don't. Comparison is the death of all joy

There's 16months between my youngest two and both have very different qualities. Eldest isn't a great climber, youngest will climb to the top of anything
Eldest is a bit of a fussy eater. Youngest will eat anything
Eldest is a calm, sensitive thoughtful soul, youngest is a loving hellraiser

Kids are all different and equally as fantastic

Fwiw your friends baby has been around 25% longer, so at that young age (under 1) they are developing at a phenomenal rate.

Depends on the child. Don’t beat yourself up.
I have a summer born, she was behind for ages with walking, jumping, skipping. Now she is ahead of kids in her class in other areas (even though she is 10 months younger) and about the same with her physical abilities.

I’d say by two. I have a group of 12 mum pals & our babies were born between April & 31st Oct 2017. They are all now 2 or 3 and you really cannot tell that much different. They all walk, talk, eat, run, play, count, know colours .. I suppose you could probably tell the difference between mine as the eldest & the very youngest in terms of a few things like starting to attempt to write letters, recognise numbers & some vocabulary but not really on sight!

I'd say about 2 as well. By 3 you'd never know.

My 20mo has a little pal who is 2 months younger than him. The age difference is starting to become less apparent now, the gap has slowly been narrowing as they get older. They will happily play alongside each other (or would, pre COVID).

Obviously, every baby is different though. Another one of my friends has a daughter that's 9 days older than DS, and she is better at some things but worse at others.

I think to look at, sooner than you might think. I have friends with babies a couple of months younger than my 15 month old and they are all a similar size and doing similar things now.

However, academically it makes a difference right up to GCSE. Summer born children are more likely to be on the SEN register and statistically do worse in their GCSEs. There are many exceptions of course (someone’s bound to come along in a minute and tell me they were born on August 31st and have a 1st from Cambridge) but at a population level it makes a difference.

Around the same time you start routinely referring them in years rather than months. Because the months stop meaning as much.

So around 2.

Read @BeKindOrBeQuiet's post, then read it again, and read it again. You won't get a better answer.

Enjoy your baby and stop comparing. They change so much in the first 2 years, don't miss all those lovely times by comparing with another child.

By about 2, I agree. DS2 is 22 months and his friends of similar but not exactly the same age are now pretty much where he is in development, rather than noticeably ahead/behind.

And yes defo don't compare if it will make you feel anxious! If you mean more when will they be able to play together, around 1.5.

I'd say 2ish too. Before that there's too many mile stones - sitting crawling walking talking etc

In a former job I had to make a list of the students thinking about applying to Oxbridge and their dates of birth.

There were 10. Eight of them had birthdays between September and December. And eight of them were girls.

If the babies in question are 6 and 8 months neither of them are 'summer born' for academic purposes, they'll be October and December babies?

They're all individual, I'd say a difference of 2 months will be barely noticeable if at all by 18 months old.

By that point the 'normal' range in milestones is quite wide so they'll be 'ahead' in different things but I doubt you'd be able to order a bunch of 18-20 month olds by age without knowing.

There is such a range in development even at that early age. Some will crawl at 6 months, others not till 12. Same with talking and all of the other milestones.

I usually guess a baby's age by their size rather than by what they are able to do. Mine are long past the baby stage and I would now struggle to tell a 6 month old from an 8 month old.

Quite a few people saying there's no noticeable different at quite a young age have the older child of the group - I think you notice it for longer if yours is the youngest. In my postnatal group the babies spanned five months, with mine the youngest by a month - when we last met up (before lockdown, DS was about 20 months) the mother of the oldest was saying there's no difference between them now - there clearly was a noticeable difference between 20 month old DS and her 25 month old, particularly in terms of speech, but I suspect she just thought her DD was brighter than DS rather than 25% older!

You wouldn't be able to put a small group of children aged between, say, 2 and 2.5 in order of age by ability because of individual variation, but it's not true that that means the difference has disappeared. If you had 100 2 year olds and 100 2.5 year olds and tested them the average difference would be very obvious.

Anecdotes don't contradict broad statistical trends (I'm a July baby and have a first from Cambridge, will that do @modgepodge?!), it just shows that the trend doesn't reflect every single individual.

@Lockdownseperation

They don’t. September born children are more likely to het higher GCSE grades or become a premiership footballer. But it’s worth remembering there are lots of different factors which impact on a child’s performance.

But this is only because of the way we organise children for academic purposes, and if school years ran from January to December it would be the autumn born that statistically were lower performing. There is not a developmental difference between children born in September to those born in June.

Yes, the OP isn't talking about comparing Sept and Aug born dc in the same year, she is talking about two children born in October and December. In a Nursery group, you couldn't sit and watch the dc for a day and then 'know' which of them was two months older than the other. Looking at completely opposite ends of the school year is for a different thread.