Experiences of young toddlers with impressive memory/verbal skills?

[Stripydiplodocus]

My DD is nearly 17 months and seems to have a memory like a sponge. I'm starting to wonder if she's got some sort of photographic memory but I'm not sure if I'm being PFB/thinking she's exceptional because she's exceptional to me? Looking for people's experiences of toddlers that seem to remember everything (and if applicable what your child was like when they're older!).

Things DD does:

1. Know loads of slightly technical vocabulary. Will point to a picture of a bird and say "beak"/"claws"/"wings"/and things like flap, air, fly, sky. Was playing with her toy elephant the other day and just went "trunk, head, ear, eye, mouth, back, leg, tail, wag!" And pointed to the right bits as she went, entirely unprompted.

2. Can differentiate between fairly similar things, i.e. can point at and name a bunch of different flowers and tell them apart (at last count: daffodils, crocus, daisy, poppy, hyacinth, hellebore, dandelion, lavender, heather, maybe more...). Can differentiate between a hamster and a mouse, rabbit and a hare, lion/tiger/leopard/panther etc.

3. Can count to 29 (and can also count to 14 in French... I used to be a French teacher so sometimes say things in French and she picked up on it straight away...).

4. Recognises all the digits (perhaps except zero) and well over half the letters in the alphabet.

5. If I sing a nursery rhyme and leave out a word, she fills it in, even if it's a word she only knows in that context, i.e. Old King Cole was a merry old ___

Anyway, I would be really interested to hear if this is actually as unusual as it feels to me, and if anyone can offer any similar experiences. Sorry for the essay and TIA.

Oh and she also:

1. Quotes from stories when a word reminds her of it. For example, I said she'd done a remarkable job of her dinner, and she said "remarkable cat! Dog! Medal! Egg!" And after a moment of me being thoroughly confused, I realised it was from Mog the Forgetful cat, where there's a line that's something like "What a remarkable cat! I've seen watch dogs, but never a watch cat. She will get a medal. I think she'd rather have an egg". We hadn't read the book recently when she came out with this, and she's done the same with a whole bunch of stories since then.

2. Enjoys talking about fairly abstract things for a toddler, i.e. when she's eating lunch, will say things like "Duck! Pond. Dabble. Egg. Hatch. Quack" and it's like she's telling me all about what ducks do.

3. Can also talk about things that have happened with what seems to me like a lot of accuracy. For example at the park the other day, there was a cat, and a dog barked at it and it jumped into the pram and wouldn't get off so I had to pick it up and plonk it on the floor, and many many times since then, she's said "Park. Cat! Dog. Bark. Cat. Pram. Mum. Pick!" which is a fairly accurate summary!

My DD was doing some of those things at a similar age. She was talking in proper sentences, not lists of words, and had a fairly extensive vocabulary. We didn't really do letters/numbers at that stage but she knew lots of shapes and colours. She collected random information and remembered things that I didn't even know she had heard - reciting parts of conversations DH and I had had!

I remember being very embarrassed at a toddler group around that time. A lovely lady was reading DD a story, pointed to the picture and said some thing like look at the birdy. DD looked at her and said very clearly, that's not a birdy, that's an owl (it was, but still...)

My eldest was exactly like this, she has autism. For mine, she appeared to be advanced in so many different areas, well she is! An absolute when she hit about 6 or 7 it became apparent that despite being advanced in many areas, she didn’t have the same emotional intelligence as the other children as they started to mature. She knew her manners but could still be very rude by saying things she couldn’t understand were rude.

Similar to my DS, but he is socially, not emotionally, behind.

Now and 8 year old ahead in some areas, behind in others.

My toddler was like this, she is 13 now and has a nearly photographic memory and recalls conversations verbatim. She’s at a super selective school, so very academic, it’s not just memory.

@Seeline and @Inyourhonor thank you for replying ... Autism was actually one of the things on my mind as there's family history and she just seems (to me at least) soooo different to the other babies we meet. At the moment I can't really comment about her social and emotional skills as (to my knowledge!) they're not really supposed to have any social or emotional skills at 1 and a half but it's something I'm on the look out for. Is there anything you'd have done differently if you'd known sooner?

Tagged the wrong poster, I meant @Mimosachimosa, sorry!

@Seeline that's a very cute story!

Some of it sounds a bit like echolalia:

www.verywellhealth.com/why-does-my-child-with-autism-repeat-words-and-phrases-260144

But honestly it's also just entirely possible she's just very verbal! As long as she's meeting the other communication/social milestones on the Ages and Stages questionnaires you get from HV, then I'm sure all is well and she's just a smart cookie!

A friend's little girl with autism did a lot of the repeating lines from books as her early communication, but she quite clearly wasn't communicating with adults and other caregivers pretty early too. It was kind of out of context and random repetition of specific lines from stories, not commenting on what was going on, what she could see, etc.

@Hugasauras Thank you! Do you know where I can track down an ages and stages questionnaire? A quick google didn't bring one up and I've never seen one before so no idea what I'm looking out for.

I did wonder about echolalia as she does love to repeat bits of stories over and over again, but she does it in quite a social way IYSWIM, wanting me to say bits of it with her etc.

Your HV should be doing them with you at the various developmental checks, but you can get them all here:

www.broomfieldpediatrics.com/ages-stages-questionnaires/

Thank you very much @Hugasauras ! We've not seen a HV since she was 10 months but looking at the link you sent then she's meeting milestones across the board!

I had one who was like this with the exception of point 2 in your second OP. Turns out it was autism🤔.

She seems very bright to me. Sorry, I don’t know about the autism point.

Either way, she sounds lovely. 😊

My son (now 7) was similar. His first word was 'doctor'and he was also able to read out the eye test board in the GP surgery at about 14 months old! He struggled a bit with social relationships but is a very gentle, kind and intuitive little boy. He (as well as my dd who is older) have really great memories. Spelling is no problem for him as it's as though he can recall immediately any word that he has seen written down.

I would keep an eye on her and keep her learning. Not all kids go through the same patterns of learning. My son's nursery teacher tried to dismiss his abilities as 'just reciting things' but another of his teachers pointed out that when we were at school, that was actually the accepted way of learning.

Thank you so much everyone for your experiences of your own kids! Lots of mentions of autism...

And @MindPalace thank you - I may be biased but she really is such a delight! She's so funny and cute and interesting and genuinely good company! (Obviously she's also a complete pain in the bum at times too!)

My DS was just like this. He was very advanced verbally and physically. No autism, but got bored at school and underachieved. Now my DGS (not his son) is the same and hates school because it's so boring. It's not really an advantage.

My ds is now 19 yo and at that age could literally point out different types of aeroplanes in the sky ‘2 jet Boeing 737’ type of thing, knew every single type of car by make and model and even some artists paintings!

i just want to say that it’s not always autism. He’s not autistic at all, he’s now just an extremely strategic logical thinker. He’s studying PPE and is extremely good at it.

My daughter was the same. Other parents and early years professionals would always comment on how advanced her speech was. She is now 6 and being tested for dyslexia. Her reading is above the expected level but her writing and spelling is behind, which I was surprised how there could be such a disparity between the two! Her maths is average, she has never had any interest in numbers.

She is extremely sociable and still has an amazing memory and loves learning. Her motor skills have always been behind, she never crawled and walked at 15mo. I thought she may have dyspraxia.

It's definitely unusual. Most children of this age are babbling with maybe a handful of words. It may be that she will turn out to be gifted, which may or may not come with a side order of neurodiversity. You might want to look up the term twice exceptional if you haven't heard it before. Although you're quite right it's too early to say for anything really. Just enjoy her, she sounds like a lot of fun :)

Thank you so much for your experiences, everyone.

And especial thanks to @BertieBotts as I'd never heard the term twice exceptional so will do some reading! She really is a HUGE amount of fun!

Not from my memory. Until she was about 4 she was far ahead of other babies and toddlers. Astonishing maths and language skills. There’s nothing she didn’t really cope with well from memory. It became apparent slowly from then on.
first things that became apparent were eye contact, following instructions and she became very dominating in conversations always steering them in the way she wanted them to go. For example she could talk for hours with excellent social skills about something she was interested in, but if someone took the conversation a different way she just couldn’t handle that and would disengage completely.

Thanks, @Mimosachimosa. Really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.

DD1 has a good memory. I can't remember her exactly at 17mo but I know she could recite Cat in the Hat at just turned 2yo.

She's nearly 9 now and she's bright, still got a good memory, but she is already used to stuff coming easily to her. She doesn't like to practice or work hard. Neither do I tbh but I was hoping she would not down tools quite this early!

I took my fifteen month old to the GP on hearing him chat away about going on holiday, how he had hayfever etc he thought he was his older brother. When I corrected him said he had never seen a child with such a vocabulary and comprehension at fifteen months, he has an eidetic memory and is/was very gifted.
My daughter before she was two entertained people in Waterstones by "reading" half a dozen Hairy Maclairy books word perfect. She has autism.
I never felt any concern about ds I only ever thought he was clever but I worried for dd in spite of her apparent high ability.
I would speak to a GP and ask if you should be concerned.

Thanks both - it's interesting how many of the toddlers on this thread have been so into stories, as it's my DD's best thing. I've just discovered I can leave out almost any word in any one of perhaps 100 stories she has and she can tell me what word comes next! Hope she keeps this love of books as she grows.