Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What can a normal toddler do and learn?

As a first time parent I'm clueless of what a normal little bit above average 24mo is capable of?

Can 24mo old usually do jigsaw puzzles and with how many pieces? Is 4 pieces normal, 12 or more? You see I have no idea LOL

Can you teach any child alphabets between 18-24mo and they'll learn them with out trouble? At what age does a child understand that letters make sounds? Is it usually easy for a 1-2 year olds to learn to count?

Can all 18mo olds jump and climb ladders?

How do you know what is normal for a child that is above average but not 90+ percentile?

Hi and welcome!

there are some charts and lists around on the web,

like these:
http://childparenting.about.com/od/childdevelopment/Child_Development.htm
http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/ages.stages.2y.html

Keep in mind, these are ranges of "normal" development. And often used as tools to make sure kids are not behind in any area. (there are several threads on this topic in the archives of this board that you can search for)

I found it helpful to be able to observe my son with other kids and that told me a lot. If you have the opportunity to do this it can be a real eye opener.

When dsnow5 was 18 months we were in a co-op with 3 other families. age ranges were 18 months to 23 months. Verbally, my ds was where the older kids were at.

when he was two years old he went to a small preschool with 2 to 5 year olds. (he was the youngest) activities were mixed-age. he did well there.

we moved and he went to a larger preschool with classrooms grouped by age. that's when it clicked for me that he was more advanced than the other kids. He had been able to speak in sentences and have conversations since two and the others 2s and 2.5s in his class could not. for this and a variety of other reasons he was borderline miserable . the school did not want to put him in the 3 year old class because he was not all the way potty learned yet. Even though the activities, language skills, etc. were more on his level. they couldn't get past his chrono age. we left the school.

this does not answer your question but maybe some food for thought?

- EW

This should help you.

Denver Profile

I like this set of web pages
http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/two/index.html
(see, click to subjects e.g. Mathematics, and to different ages, on the left) because much of it is phrased in terms of "Most children can... Some can... A few can..." rather than just giving what a typical child can do.

So out of interest in our last - because let's face it when your 3rd and your sisters are pg - nobody looks up your milestones anymore... these two crack me up.

>Demonstrates a three-minute attention span
>Remembers yesterday's happenings

And I know y'all know why.

I'm still struggling with this as it seems so unbelievable what 3, 4 or 5 year old should be able to do, really? I'm sure a lot these are made so that the parents can feel good about the kids.

What can an advanced, not gifted toddler that have involved parents do? Surely normal child can learn colors, body parts, alphabets and shapes early if you tell them these. All the 2 year olds that have have met here (not that many) know colors and body parts and have probably known those for a while. I thought it is normal for a child to learn these things while you are learning to talk. I'm just talking about normal interaction with your baby like: "do you want to wear red or blue shirt", "will you eat pink or yellow yogurt" "let's see what you have on your nose" "let's wash your hands" etc.

If I compare my 24mo old daughter to these milestones : http://giftedkids.about.com/od/gifted101/p/milestones.htm

3 year old: only thing missing is that she does not know her last name, I have never told her that LOL
4 year old: she does not know our hometown and she does not speak that well (although does speak 2 very different languages in 3-5 word sentences)
5 year olds: she can do more than half of them again the verbal side missing the most

I really do not think she is genius level, just a normal bright, advanced little girl. She is not doing anything truly phenomenal for her age like reading fluently. When I started reading about gifted toddler I thought that being great in puzzles means something 30+ pieces for 24mo old. Now I'm confused if 9-12 pieces is advanced as they are still very simple puzzles and don't seem that demanding for a two year old. Maybe all these ppl that have not so advanced kids never gave them a jigsaw puzzles at 2 so they had to wait till later to learn to do them!

I think you have a nice mixture of good points and "GT denial" here :-) Yes, I'm sure what children learn has a huge amount to do with what they are exposed to, and given enough bullet points, almost every child is going to be ahead on some of them, just because children are so variable. And yes, I'm sure someone putting together a check list probably does err on the low expectations side to avoid worrying people, since people will tend to see the points their child can't do, before they see the ones their child is ahead on! But when you start seeing the same child ahead on practically everything, just maybe the child isn't typical?!

FWIW, my DS-now-5 got his first 9-12 piece puzzles aged a bit over 24 months, and it was a while before he could do them unaided; the kind of while that made me think he wasn't quite developmentally ready for them, rather than just that he hadn't been exposed. He's very bright, but not very visual/spatial (he's never been all that interested in puzzles, so much so that come to think of it I don't think we even own any 30 piece ones).

Oli, As far as your questions on what is normal, I have no ideal, I thought the baby books were to make other parents good too.

So maybe another thing to look for is, do other parents/stangers tell you that your child is advanced/smart? I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me starting at when my now DD6 was 2-2 1/2 year old, to the point I started wondering, how do they know? There was one time she just said a sentence and then sat down at a table and a parent came up to me and asked me if she was academically advanced. At a store standing in line to pay for something, my girls always start convesations with whoever is in line, and I also get the "I hope you realize how smart these girls are comment" As parents of course we think our children are the smartest, best looking and so on, that's part of our love for them. But when stangers/friends/family keep pointing out something we might already suspect, maybe there's more to it than we realize. Best wishes

Generally the purpose of these lists is to help identify children who are lagging behind to see if they need to get therapy or other help. The purpose is not to make parents "feel good" or to say it is unbelievable if a child can do more than what is listed as a milestone for their age. I'm sure there is no ill intent but when these sorts of threads sometimes come up on gifted lists it seems like a real slam against the many parents who have been in the situation of looking at these lists and realizing their kid might be in trouble. And, to be clear that can include gifted kids.


Kids are all different in what categories of information are of particular importance to them. I've known very gifted preschoolers who didn't know the names of colors but could tell you the names of all sorts of dinosaurs (or whatever was important to them.)

Obviously some children have much more exposure to academic concepts. Also, some parents feel more like it is a mission to make sure the child is learning so weave it into conversations and other parents figure that kids will simply learn it without needing to artificially bring it into conversations. I remember a friend asking her daughter, "do you want one cookie or two cookies?" Duh!

I have had many experiences like this. Once DD climbed up at the playground and said something like, "Look at me. I'm way up here." And another parent commented on how amazing her speech is. I was pretty surprised, because while I am aware that her speech is off the charts, I did not think that that was particularly impressive. Gosh, they should hear the lengthy, detailed stories she makes up...and the words she uses, correctly, like "prerogative" and "deconstruct."



I have also seen a few threads that start out like this and then devolve into a sort of mocking tone. (And I am not saying that that has happened with this thread.)

There was one on another board that actually sort of hurt my feelings. It was about a fine motor skill that my DD3 had only just mastered, only a bit late on the milestone charts, and it didn't take many of the "Gosh, can normal two year olds really not do that? My kid has been doing it since he was 3 months old," sort of comments before I started getting really bugged.

I mean, I think it is really great that their kids can do that so early, but saying that their kids can do something so early and then trying to claim that it is normal seems sort of insulting to those of us whose kids are on the late side.

I guess that is a bit off topic. And again, I am not saying that that is the case in this thread. I guess I just saw your post and it struck a chord with me.