Sorry your mom isn't as happy for him as she could be. If it was my mom, the Doogie Houser kind of comment would fall into the same category as, "What's with the almond spread, can't the kid be a kid and have a PB and J?" -- my mom just generally finds a way to get under my skin whether she intends to or not. Even when she says something like, "oh we never used to worry about that type of stuff, we just let you all grow up" it seems like it could have been left unsaid. I think underneath it all she is pretty proud of him, and happy for him too, she's just not one to express it.
Anyways, advice (this was my "note to self" the other day"): ask questions when I don't understand, don't underestimate why they may do something. I keep underestimating DS3 in things. Like recently I was turning book pages reading to him and I turned a page and he says 4, and I turned another page and he says, 5. I'm about to correct him that those are not pages four and five and then I think oh right, he's too little to correct about something like page numbers, I should cut the poor kid some slack. But then a minute later it hits me that actually he was making a numerical mental index of the items in the story in the book so that he could remember them in order later (why he needs to I don't know), we were indeed on the 4th and 5th items, it was just that items 1-3 he said silently. Sure enough several pages later the next one came and he says, "6th, toad". It was over my head and I nearly was negative towards him for doing something inventive. What I needed to do was ask a question, "where is number 4" or something like that, not have a gut reaction about what a 3 year old would do. I don't know how I have those reactions when this is my first 3 year old, but somehow I seem to.
Polly
