Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Loosing teeth and social/emotional development

Well Keet, neither of my older kids were successfully dry until they finished getting their baby teeth (and would go well for months in between getting another tooth and regress when the teeth were coming). And my delayed reader never crawled...

LOL - Love these theories! DD did have her 2yo molars when she toilet trained - but she got them very early (hence the early loosing teeth). She didn't crawl, went straight to walking and yet read at 2.5... goodness imagine if she'd crawled!

Another I read about was someone who said that if children didn't crawl they'd never be able to dance! That one still makes me giggle.

There actually is a fairly well accepted connection between crawling, left/right integration and dyslexia (and the co-ordination to dance well actually). But how do you tell the difference between a kid that doesn't crawl because they can't and one who doesn't crawl because they are gifted and on a different trajectory? And that left/right integration can be improved in other ways. Swimming has helped my DD a lot.

Both my DH's and my own families, but especially his side have a history of long, slow bone development, late (SLOW & agonising) teething, etc. So I suspect some of the "late blooming" in his family is directly related to relative developmental immaturity for age. Because my girls are tall and either bright or gifted they don't look seem they are developing more slowly than average in any regard, but I suspect that they actually are at least physically developmentally slower than average. It will be interesting to see what happens with time.

Many of my friends' kids attend a Waldorf school. The place seems very lovely, with wonderful teachers, and of course it is definitely play-based in the early years, and convenient to our house. Children seem to thrive there. I've vaguely considered sending DS there, but I really can't get past all these complete bizarro beliefs that underlie the philosophy. If you think the bit about the teeth is weird, try looking into the rest of it.

FWIW, I never crawled and I learned to read (very well) at 4.

Also, DD was a very late teether (no teeth till 11 months, 2-year molars not till about 3) and yet she has LOST her teeth much faster than many of her classmates. I think she's lost at least 8, at 7.5.

The Waldorf school near us has a wonderful feel to it and I actually know a lot of graduates who had a lovely time and turned into lovely human beings. I found their open day quite enchanting when DD#1 was a wee baby. I think like Montessori, the individual schools can vary a lot. But I still just couldn't come at it once I really started reading and thinking about it seriously.

I think things like not crawling, not yet having adult teeth, etc are markers that you may find in a disproportionately high number of children with a reading delay - but lots of other kids will have those things and learn with no trouble at all.