Do You Tend to Exaggerate or Underestimate Child's Milestones?

My 10 month old daughter is already doing calculus! LoL she is walking already and says mama,dada,bye and "kit" instead of cat. I also worked in childcare and saw these kinds of moms who kids were the next Einstein and I sat there as these sweet kids ate boogers and thought "yep that's the next Einstein!" LoL

With all the kids around my house I have so much on my plate that I can't even remember when the milestones are supposed to take place. Sometimes I even pray they don't hit the crawling stage until I am rested enough to chase them so I would say I probably underestimate. I figure they will do what they do when they do it. They are all on their own schedule.

But inspite of the exaggeration isn't it great to see a mother who is proud of her child? So many aren't. She'll learn.

My oldest did walk at 10 months. Considering the outcome to hitting that milestone early I am not impressed. Did you know a walking child does not by proxy walk where you want them to? Lets not even get into running!

My second pulled herself up at 10 months, I sat her down...this went on for a month before she just stood up, flashed me a dirty look and walked away.

My kids just hit those mobility milestones early, near as I can tell they just don't like my schedules so they needed to assert their individuality. :)

Now talking, my oldest learned to talk along with my second so we had one developing a massive vocabulary early and one very late. We are talking three and a half to one and a half when I could say these kids could carry on a conversation.

I don't know if you have noticed but I haven't even mentioned three and four, poor dears, just too much to type.

If there weren't funny stories attached to those milestones I wouldn't remember them at all. Those two are 24 and 22 now, I assure you the ability to walk early has not shown up as a life skill. Don't argue with the early talker mind you.

So yeah, I don't put much on milestones. In general I reply all normal when asked with the caveat that my boys were crazy late talking. Yeah, both of them, go figure. Oddly the one that talked last is the smartest of the lot.

I guess I just figure milestones mean little and it isn't the number of children you have that makes a difference in attitude, it is the age of your children. I can assure you nowhere on their college applications did they ask about milestones, ya know? Employers don't seem to care either. :p

My attitude was probably formed by working with little ones long before I had my own. When documenting development, I knew that there had better be some actual manifestation of whatever milestone I was writing down, and I was always able to provide exact examples of little Suzy scooting before crawling or Harvey's first babbling, then a few months later, moving on to a few simple words...which I had to hear or witness before declaring that Harvey was saying this or that.

Because of this, it gave me an informed perspective that developmental milestones happen not just in a small window of time, but that the window could be a four or five month 'window' for some things...longer for others.

My son was and still is a late bloomer in some areas. I didn't stress about this, even when his 'peer' babies were crawling and he was just happy to sit and observe. So I never stated that he'd hit a milestone until I'd seen it with my own eyes--not once, but several times. When he started talking, I would give correct information "He has about three words" or "he can say "mama, dada, and ki-ki" (for Kitty).

I will say (though you didn't ask) that the hardest part of all was the moms who did brag too early on and just keeping a straight face, esp. when they would turn to me and ask "Is YOUR son doing X?" I wanted to say "Oh, no.... but neither is yours!"

Well my son was walking, talking, buttering his bread, and day trading by 9 months.

But I pushed him hard because I wanted to keep up with your dad's ex!

Thanks for a good laugh!

I think I downplayed milestones as they were happening. Since everyone's kids go at a different pace, I tried not to brag in case other Moms would feel bad.

Actually, the milestones they missed were way more interesting to me. My oldest never rolled over. Never. Not at 3 months when she was "supposed" to, and not ever! She decided early on (as a newborn) that she HATED tummy time, and therefore, why would she roll from her back to her stomach? And if we put her on her stomach, clearly we were morons who didn't understand her, so she would scream until she threw up. Oy vey. This trend continued with crawling - she refused - it was totally beneath her to travel in such fashion. She went straight to walking, very early. However, because she was terrified of falling, she would stand up, and then look around, worried that she would fall, afraid to take a step. And then start screaming. *sigh*

Fast forward 10 years, this same kid is stubborn, opinionated, holds herself to an impossible standard (to the point that she's almost OCD - we are working on it). Basically, these quirks as a baby were not signals of some underlying problem, but the sign of an extremely strong personality. Of course, at the time it was concerning, but we had a good pediatrician who told us not to worry. In any case, when people would ask, "Is she crawling yet?" I would fess up that no, she wasn't. These well-meaning people would nod their heads knowingly, and say how sad it was that the child of two athletes would end up so delayed. The last laugh is on them - this child, now 10, is in a pre-professional ballet program.

I don't exaggerate, IMO, but when DD rolled out "a duck...yeah, a duck" at 8 months we counted it AND have it on video and other people agreed that there was a hard K at the end. It was April Fool's Day so we needed evidence! And DD also tried to crawl off the exam table at her 2 mo. visit. The doctor was kind of "yeah, you have the smartest baby in the world" til she had to catch DD. So now it's a joke between us. I'm realistic about DD. When I thought her speech was a problem, I had her evaluated. They said she was ahead on many things, average on many and slightly behind on things like blends. Being in preschool has really helped DD but I needed to know where she stood.

And sometimes it's not such a great thing to have a kid ahead of the curve. SD crawled by 4 months and walked at 8 and got into everything long before she understood "no." DH says it was a nightmare.

I would just smile and nod and if they are worried where there isn't any need, tell them there's a wide range of normal.

I'm an underestimater(sp?) but I'm a " Debbie Downer" by nature.

Like someone else said, my middle son started walking at 9 mos. but severely speech delayed. So, I was convinced he had sensory issues, that caused the early walking. Instead , if being overjoyed about his accomplishment , I was a wreck.

::giggle::

Okay. Under control.

From a neurological perspective... What a lot of -otherwise intelligent- people don't GET, is that early is JUST as concerning as late. When its consistant.

NEARLY ALL babies are early, dead on, and late... In the NORMAL range. Because milestones happen at different rates. Being consistant early (abnormal) is usually a sign of a CNS disorder that is often lethal, or asychronistic development (bad), or one of several other life long disorders that will require a lot of sweat and tears.

Which is why docs are usually completely polite about "EARLY!!! WITH EVERYTHING!!!" Parents... When the child

A) Obviouslg isn't (be ause they're looking at 2 things instead of 80)

&

B) Is perfectly healthy (remember the terminal cases?), and far from deaths door.

_______

As a new parent, and new to studying the brain... I wanted to claw my eyeballs out at people saying such obviously wrong things.

Later, as the parent of a kid with special needs... I'd get horribly disappointed when I realized the park moms had no idea what they were yammering on about (there tend to be locuses of special needs families in certain areas, SO disappointed when I thought we'd actually moved into one... Just to find out the parents were doting, not commiserating).

10 years later... I've descended to waving away a laugh and walking on.

I think I was pretty much on target, not exaggerating or downplaying. You might not hear the baby saying mama, dada or cat because you don't have his dada or a cat at your house. He may say hi if his parents repeatedly say hi to him til he mimicks them, but you probably are not doing that. No, not every syllable is a word, but at that age my oldest was saying the cat's name, mama, dada and pretzel. My daycare provider was shocked when my youngest was 7 months old and I came to pick him up one day, and he looked right at me and announced MAMA!
I didn't consider them to be walking til they were actually taking steps without holding on. I didn't consider them to be talking til they were using words to label objects, not just babbling nonsense.
I always wanted my daycare providers to tell me if the kids hit some milestone while they were together. I still remember our first provider getting my daughter on video holding her own bottle.

With my first I did get spoiled. He did hit every milestone far in advance. He is "gifted". Do I care. Nah... not anymore. Don't get me wrong I'm happy for my son and glad that he is in gifted math and science class but so what. He has as many problems as he does gifts like any other child. I don't brag about it to anyone. My daughter actually is just as smart I think but she was always behind on her milestones. Not because she isn't smart as a whip it's because she's LAZY! She has been lazy since the day she was born. If something requires her to lift a finger she'd rather not. lmao... She's been that way since the day she was born. Forget walking that means she had to exert energy. Now my youngest was born with a slew on problems. He had 3 surgeries to remove a tumor off his neck by the time he was 6 months old. By 8 months old he had open heart surgery to fix his heart defects. He's never hit milestones really. Had failure to thrive. He's THREE and just recently started to talk. He had his 3 year check up and he's now up to 30 pounds! You have no idea how exciting that is. From constant visits to children's hospital, so many hospitalizations, more tests than I could recall... to just being on the charts for weight and being removed from formula finally!

I trumpet the hell out of his accomplishments and people besides me get so excited. But I guess that is understandable. People want him to be ok. People went through this with me even though they weren't his family or his mother. Everyone wants to know that Alexandre is going to be ok.

To be honest the first time I've ever seen people really care about milestones both in my friends and my own family is Alexandre. People will actually ask me how he's doing, where he's at developmentally, how his last appointment went, what his weight is up to. It's kinda new and weird to me but it's nice to know that so many people care about him and are pulling for him. So I think milestones do matter when it comes down to it... for kids like Alexandre though. All the other kids it was just a way for me to know they were developing normally. . . but until you've had a kid that isn't and you don't know what damage his conditions have caused you don't understand how wonderful milestones are.

But as long as a child is hitting them on or before then who cares. It's wonderful but doesn't mean anything. My daughter like I said is bright, get's straight a's with little to no effort, but she most certainly never hit a single milestone early. lol

Didn't have to exaggerate the milestones for any of my 4 babies they (dad,grandparents,relatives,pediatrician,PAT) seen it happen..

I think most people's attitude changes as they mature and learn more. I'm sure that was true of me.

I do believe the baby could be more advanced at home than with you in school. A quieter setting with Mom and Dad's encouragement could make a difference.

I knew a woman who insisted her son was fully potty trained at age two. She had to ask him every half hour if he had to go, then she had to take him to the bathroom, pull his pants down for him, put him on the toilet, wipe him, pull his pants up for him, help him wash his hands, and he still had accidents. He was three, and she still had to do all that for him, but she continued to insist he was fully potty trained!

As for my own kids, my older son was an early walker and an early talker, so when my younger son waited until he was 12 months to start walking I was worried, and I was really worried when he didn't start talking until he was three!