I skipped a lot of this thread but saw the post on Amelia Bedelia. DS's second grade teacher said that she reads Amelia Bedelia books to the class and at the beginning of the year only a few kids laugh at it and by the end of the year, most are laughing at it (typically the ones who are not laughing, are behind cognitively or have autism). So according to her, second grade, or age 7-8 seems to be the magic age for most kids to grasp Amelia Bedelia, and perhaps understand not to take language so literally. In terms of math, I can see why he didn't understand "find the difference". We probably didn't either, at that age, until it was explained in math class with word problems as an example. In terms of what's normal, I think a lot of 5 year olds have problems grasping things that we consider very simple like if you have 10 trees and cut down 3, how many are left standing?" At age 4, DS was solving things like "There are 38 trees in your yard and you cut down 13, how many are left?" He would solve that in his head, and he did turn out to be gifted in math (he is now 8 and was accelerated several years for math).
