Sometimes I "forget" what NT children are capable of...

[mm22bys]

Sometime I "forget" that even young children (2 years old) speak. I saw a little boy one month younger than DS2 today and he was chattering away, calling out "mummy" and I thought what I would give to be called "mummy".

He also wanted a "puppy"

I forget that 2 year olds can do dot-to-dots.

I forget that 2 year olds can feed themselves using cutlery.

I forget that even 20 month olds imitate their daddy shaving...

Bit of a reality check really....

I guess we are now so far from "normality" that I've forgotten was "normal" is...

Anybody else?

We cope day to day by looking at our child through the framework of their own skills/progress as individuals - but every so often reality does bite us on the bum.... though I do think doing dot-to-dots is not a typical 2 year old skills!

I know. A long time ago I stopped comparing DS2's progression with the charts, but sometimes it is inadvertently brought home to me.

I am finding it easier now though, than in the past, I must be gaining some deal of acceptance. Now I know what the dx is, I don't feel so pressed to push him, IFKWIM. We are just happy with his progression, and rejoice in any "development" there is....

I've found having seemingly nt ds after dd (there's 2 and a bit years between them)a complete shock. Can't believe what he is doing (he's 17 mths) Sometimes its quite bittersweet cos I'm chuffed he seems to be doing ok but it is quite sad that he's already at a stage she prob won't get to.

Absolutely detest people going on about him as well - like congratulating how 'good' or 'forward' he is, like it somehow makes up for dd - if that makes any sense. Sure I'm prob just really oversensitive

aw fio that is lovely

I know comparing with others is inevitable, but please don't beat yourself up about it. As long as they eat, who cares if it's cutlery or fingers or chopsticks or, for the time being, mummy feeding them. And as for dot-to-dotting, I think children should be labelled 'super-developed' if they actually refuse to do it , it's such a pointless task. Try to focus on something that your son does well instead - when everything else fails, I focus on how cute DS is!
To help me avoid thinking too much about normality, I'm keeping a diary of DS's own progress (well, started yesterday, so not much on it yet), with his own stages and milestones - he should have 900 words at his age, but if by the end of this week we can reach two more and make it to 332, believe me, I'll be superhappy!

aye fio. How do they all get on now? I find ds plays with dd and they seem to get on quite nicely (he fetches her stuff ) he's off like a whippet when bigger, more interesting kids are about.

sc - I really wouldn't bother counting the words - but concentrate on filling in the gaps. e.g. at that age DS didn't have stop/go/again/yummy/yucky, and needed to do verbs and simple prepositions, to work towards building up to combining and then sentences.

Having an NT dd after 2 boys with SN has been a real shock. I remember when she first turned her head when she recognised her name when she was a baby (my 8yr-old still finds this difficult). Me and dh sat there like loons trying out different names to see if she was turning to the sound of her name or to the sound of our voices.

I read on MN the other day that at 2.10 her DD should have 1000 words.

Is that correct?

FF, that's lovely. My DS2 is 2.3, but I have kind of resigned myself to never hearing that, or even "mummy".

DS2 has an older brother, who will be turning 5 in May and who is NT, but sometimes I am sad that DS2 will probably never be at the level he is at even now. I find DS1's "progress" bitter-sweet....

DS2 had a tummy bug for most of last week and he's still recovering even now. He has been really tired all week, he's just not even himself at the moment :-(.

The figure of 900/1000 words at around age 3 came from the SLT, but TotalChaos is right that it's not the word count that matters. 'Mummy kiss' by itself would probably be more satisfactory than 'Could I have the orange juice please'

Most 16 yr olds can spell their own name, I note

It did hit like a brick this week when I left ds indoors whilst I ran dd to school (10 minute round trip).
Once onto school road, DD(7) said "I can walk into school myself from here mummy if you need to get back to Mr Panicky" (ie ds 14).

mm22bys My ds1 did not speak til 3.6 and he calls me dummy now.But yes he is very delayed and disordered compared to 27 month brother

FF, do you know what sort of mito disorder your friend's dd has?

We were told that he may never walk but he has proved them wrong, and while we have been told he may never be able to talk very well (or words to that effect) we are going to try to prove them wrong on that one too!

It's not the number of words that's important, but how the child uses them to communicate. For example at the age of 3 Ds1 could repeat back "Little pig, little pig let me come in" but could not say "juice" to indicate he wanted a drink.

Most 16 yr olds can also manage to use a dictionary, an encyclopedia, look things up online, learn a very basic survival level of a foreign language in less than 8 years of schooling, listen to and follow more than one instruction given at a time, and indeed know where a full stop goes in a sentence.

Bullet123: I think you're right, which is why I was so happy that DS is quite articulate when he wants or doesn't want something. His longer sentences are about not wanting to go to nursery (no desire to socialize, you see). But then the SLT seemed to think that communicating in order to request things is not that great, and brought up this 1000-word thing, as if to say, don't harbour any illusions about DS. I had a little hope that DS was actually making progress, but I felt as if she crushed it under this 1,000-word thing

I know what you mean. At preschool today I took DD2 (18mo) in with me to collect DD1. DD1 (3.3) escaped from the inner room. I abandoned DD2 to find DD1 (thankfully she was curled up in a ball 'hiding' in the bathroom with her 1:1 worker coaxing her up). The sad thing is that I knew I could trust DD2 to stay where I had left her.

Already, at 18 mo DD2 is naturally more able to live life than DD1. But DD1 is gorgeous, so that helps