Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Your perception of other same age kids?

It seemed like we held dd16 for the first 9 months of her life. If her feet hit the ground, she cried. Carrying this baby around constantly was no easy feat as she was a big baby.

My husband is a tall man and both kids were beasts Dd rarely napped and never slept through the night until she was 18 months old. Strangers did remark on how alert she was. I felt like I was in a fog half the time.

My son was alert and focused from the get go- kind of intensely examining everything/everyone, and YES, we'd see normally developing babies of the same age and both DH and I would comment later on how 'zoned out, sleepy, or unobservant' the kids were. It just seemed like you could WATCH the synapses firing with our little spit fire, and the other kids were just so...still, relaxed looking.

In response to the cry it out posts- we didn't even go there. I've got a spirited intense extroverted child. That would have been a nightmare. We used the gentler, more gradual approach of the 'BabyWhisperer' Tracy Hogg. It really worked well for us and our child as he was/is persistant and tenacious.

the first 12 mos were a fog for me too. My baby was just different in temperament, his ability to communicate wants and needs early and with vigor, and his motor skills- on his feet early. And people wonder why he is our singlet! LOL

I'm still waiting for the mouthing to stop. She is doing it much less frequently than before, but still doing it. It might be because she only had 4 teeth until she was 12 months and just now has 7 and 8 coming in on the bottom?

She can draw a straight line with a crayon, but then follows up by trying to chew on it. Maybe the edible crayons I bought her (made with natural stuff) smell too good!

I had to laugh about the no sleep. DS2 is happy and active, so apparently he's getting enough sleep, but DH and I are definitely not (I hoping for more zzzz after he finishes getting his molars).

When I'm around other toddlers at playgroup or in the park, I find myself explaining things to them like I do to my son, but I get a lot of blank stares back. I can almost see their eyes glaze over from Too Much Detail. I think I even scared one little guy. DS2 doesn't understand why they won't play with him, but when we're around slightly older kids (3-4) he gets really shy.

Yes! Absolutely!
I know exactly what you are talking about.

From the moment he was born, he was alert, and all the other babies had these glazed looks. It was very noticeable (and not just to us, people would comment on it).

At preschool, I notice it too, but it's more subtle now. It just seems like DS is more alive, more alert, more intense. It's like an adult plopped inside a 3yo body. I don't know how else to describe it.

That said, at classes, DS is usually not the one listening or following directions. I think the pacing is too slow for his mind. He often tries to speed it up by following his own agenda, or he amuses himself in his head. I think the constant waiting is just too much for him. That little brain never stops.

An example. He is the kid who isn't keeping up in swim class. He is too busy trying to figure out swimming on his own (and half drowning). I really think it's a pacing problem. Giving him bits and pieces at a time is exhausting, when he just wants a major brain dump all at once. lol.

Lastly, he rarely napped his first year of life. It was exhausting. I think he didn't want to miss anything, you know?

The pediatrician we have for our children is about 60 years old and is nearing retirement. He has seen literally thousands of kids grow up.

When DS was a few weeks old and we took him in for a routine checkup, our pediatrician told us that "We won't need to save any money for college. He is extraordinarily bright." He said that based upon his opinion that our son was unusually alert. We didn't take it seriously at the time.

Later, when DS was 2 years old and we were concerned he wasn't speaking, our pediatrician told us that he had no worries whatsoever, and that when DS finally "decided" to speak, it would be in full sentences. A few months later, DS did start speaking, in full sentences as predicted.

And he still has the same unusual level of alertness, and we still get comments about it from random people.

A lot of toddlers and infants out there do look to me like someone has dosed them with sedatives. We called them blanket babies, the ones that would happily just sit wherever they were put.

The other thing I notice about other toddlers is all the stuff they say that is just wrong. Not pretending/fantasy, but just wrong, just draw wildly off conclusions. From when he could talk, if DS didn't know something he said he didn't know. I guess maybe there's a lot of kids that just like to say things for the sake of being verbal, rather than due to an interest in the content. Speaking of which, DS never did that baby jargon thing where the baby sounds like it's talking but is just complex babbling, he waited until he could talk. Probably not related.

I know one family who's kids are all like zombies for the first 18 months and then it's as if someone turns a dial and they start getting more and more active both physically and mentally. They are not PG, but not average either, they seem pretty bright. Their mom gets all wistful missing the infant stage. (Not me, DS started out at the same tempo he goes now, he got exponentially easier with walking and talking). In toddlerhood I think each of this family's kids must be horribly delayed and then a year or two later there they are saying very reasonable things. Maybe developmental trajectories really vary that much and can still be entirely normal?

A PG brother of mine, very alert in the delivery room but truly a boring looking blanket baby: he's low on motivation as an adult (he would likely term it being "energy efficient", LOL), but the brightest person I know. An exception. Or is there no rule?

As an aside, DS4 is really oral still, but so is his dad, who could walk around for an hour with a toothbrush just chewing on it. A sensory thing I guess, they both love raw carrots.

Polly

Polly, do you mean a blanket baby is easygoing? My first was completely easygoing as a baby (and I am told I was too). She probably would have fit your definition, though I'm not sure about looking sleepy, but in general she was content to observe and be still often. Didn't attempt to crawl until 10 months but nonetheless walked by 13ish months.

She still is a really easy kid at 2.5, because she's incredibly verbal, and has been since starting to talk. I can just explain to her what we're doing or when something is going on to scare or upset her, comfort with her with very few exceptions. Like someone mentioned, I pretty much talk to her in simplified adult terms and when I have tried doing this with others her age or even older, I get blank looks back at me.

My younger DD (now 10m) has always been called alert, and is much more intense in general, particularly when upset. I was frequently told she was very alert as a baby etc, and she required constant entertainment from the get go. We have had predictive type comments from people who know her about how smart they think she is or will be. Time will tell but I'm sort of afraid, to be honest, to find out if they're very right (or likewise very wrong).

I'm not sure there is a rule in this.

Hmm I have more than once complained to my DH that all the other parents who have toddlers with them at pick up/drop off time at school might as well have handbags for all the interaction they have with them. Other kids seem to just sit in a pram / on an arm / at mum's feet and be still and quiet. I have a mini tornado, who turns into a screaming, writhing octopus if she is unable to explore. She's my third like this, but somehow it does seem more intense this time around... Other peoples kids look different to me, evidently she looks different to them too as I am getting increasing questions about her age that are off but A LOT (ie "Nearly 3.5?" "No, not yet 2").

I don't know quite how I percieve other kids. I find I can often draw them out quite a bit, in just a few minutes, and they stop being blobs. But then, when I start to do something with DS that I've been doing for years, other people laugh at me, and tell me I'm over explaining. I know DS would melt down if I didn't, but they don't... I guess.

DS tends to just be quiet around others. Partly its because his articulation is not up to communicating his vocabulary to stran...well, ok, it's best if DH and I and one other familliar person are all listening together

He has a particular look for when people start explaining things he already knows to him. It seems to include mostly contempt, and a bit of embarrasment. But others read it as "not getting it," and tend to move on quick. I remember a woman trying to "teach" him to put a ball in the ball run at the science center when he was about 18 mos and had <10 english words. He gave her the look, gigged when she did the big "oh, wow" thing, waited for her to leave, and then... moved over to where she'd been standing so he could reach the other four balls he'd been trying to put through all at once so they would trip the second pathway. I remember really, really, clearly because I felt AUFUL that that woman had thought my wonderful child was a lump-baby who wasn't getting enough attention because I was over sitting on a chair (gulping down a coffee so I could keep up with him). I WANTED people to see him the way I did.

I think I've kinda gotten over that now, it happens just SOOO often. I'm kinda thankful now, becasue we get a lot less of the "wow, he's smart" than we used to. I wish he'd try harder to talk to more people, and I worry about it to the point of nightmares at that time of the month, but I worry less than I worried about the complex he was getting from the comments.

Anyway, I wonder how many of the lump-babies/kids I see are really just not trusting me to listen to *them.* And I wonder how many of them are just years down the under-stimulation path. Meh. I do think DS is smarter than your average bear, but I really have no clue about what is average. I'm not sure one ever gets to really SEE another person's kid.

-Mich.