Not siblings but cousins. DD has a cousin who is only a few weeks older than her. Cousin is very gifted verbally. When they were babies, I thought DD was delayed because her cousin was signing on key starting from 4 months and she was talking and making connections by 12 months. On the other hand, SIL kept on commenting how advanced our DD was with spatial relationship and with her gross and fine motor skills. So, it's not very surprising that now that they are three, DD is very mathy and cousin is still very verbal. For the most parts, it works well because they compliment each other and learn a lot from each other.
The problem is, SIL is convinced that DD's precocious math and reading abilities are due to us pushing her. She doesn't believe it when we tell her that DD picked them out on her own. It bothers me that she thinks we are lying to her.
Because, obviously, her child's verbal ability is due to intensive parental coaching. Of course...
Maybe you can run that line by her facetiously and see how quickly the coaching talk is dropped.
