My wife, daughter and I will be spending the holidays with my wife’s first cousin and family in the UK. I am looking forward to the trip (and a storybook English Christmas!) but am worried about one thing. My daughter is almost two years old, and my wife’s cousin has a son who was born just a few days after my daughter. So they are effectively the same exact age. That is fantastic for commonalities between the two families and will be great as the kids grow up together, but unfortunately it make comparison between the kids incredibly easy.
I guess that wouldn’t be such a problem except that my daughter seems to be behind her cousin in all the developmental steps. The cousin crawled first (he at 10 months, she at 11), he walked first (he at 12 months, she at 16), and he is speaking much more (he apparently uses 100 words now, and she maybe 20). And I expect he is also ahead in other areas, eating skills, playing etc….
My daughter’s pediatrician says her development is perfectly fine, and my daughter is a lovely, happy, and as far as I can tell, intelligent toddler. And I know this is not a contest, and I absolutely know never, ever to let on to my daughter that I have these feelings. But the fact remains that I am competitive by nature and every time I see these two kids together I can’t help but note the difference.
So I was hoping that Dopers might have a bit of parental wisdom to share. Please don’t flame me. As I said, I am very aware of the damage any perceived disappointment could have on my daughter and I am committed to keep this away from her. That’s why I could use the advice on how to deal with these thoughts constructively.
Just put it out of your mind and enjoy the holiday. Hell, I’ve a got a dog who understands nearly 100 words. There isn’t anything to compete over yet. Love your kid, She’s fine just the way she is.
Eh, kids - like plants - grow and develop at slightly different rates at different times in their lives. Just cuz Lil’ Mr. WalkerAndTalker is “ahead” :rolleyes: of her now doesn’t mean he always will be. Someday, years from now, she might be tutoring him in algebra!
Speaking as a father with an autistic child. These feelings subside when you see your loved one having a good time.
Also, never underestimate the power of a child’s mind.
I remember one time a had bought a roll of Clorox ready wipes. You’re supposed to be able to pull one out and the next one pops up in it’s place. Well, mine wasn’t working. I thought I had a defective roll. I verbally made my displeasure known to all those with in ear shot.
The next day I go to grab one of the defective wipes from the roll. Only to find that the roll is working perfectly fine. The only one who could have fixed it was my son. I opened the container to see what the hell it was he did.
Turns out your supposed to start from the center of the roll. Not the outside!! :smack:
I might add this was done before he knew how to read.
Rest assured that at this age, their milestone development time lines mean nothing at all. Kids are all so different. My best friend had her son 3 weeks before my son was born (we were actually due the same day!). He did so much before my son did. Geez, her kid was walking before a year old and Kiddo didn’t walk until 14 mos. My kid never even learned to crawl properly. Her’s was zipping everywhere. It was kind of hard to watch.
But like it was said before, when your kids are playing together and having fun and it’s obvious that the kids don’t care, it eases your mind.
You’re going to compare them to some degree. And that’s actually fine - it’s human nature and it’s that very trait that let us actually figure out what milestones should be happening when and led to the whole field of child development!
But it is important to remember that milestones happen in a *very *wide range of “normal”, and if your doctor isn’t concerned (and he’s a decent doctor), you should be, either. Like other posters have said, there’s no correlation with these early milestone and later intelligence, athletic ability or anything else.
Go ahead and watch them together. Yes, you already know ways in which he’s “ahead”, but there are probably some ways in which your daughter is “ahead”, too. Is she good at sharing? Is she compassionate and loving? Does she keep trying when she can’t do something? Does she know how to ask you for help? Does she have a great sense of humor? Does she give awesome hugs? Does she melt your heart like no one else can? (I bet she does!)
It’s not about competition to see which baby is better, but it can be fun to note how they each have their own personalities and strengths and weaknesses.
Einstein didn’t talk 'til he was three. Get over it. You have no idea how a child will turn out at this point. You can, however, stifle her creativity and love of life by putting too much emphasis on milestones.
You may wish to review this competitive streak with a professional counselor. There is most liekly a personal lack of confidence behind it that is poisoning other areas of your life. As time goes on, you will be unable to hide this from your child(ren) and it will cause a great deal of pain for them. No child is going to be the best at everything all the time. You will hurt them. Stop it.
Don’t you think you’re over-reacting just a tad, there, Trucelt?
I say compare away, who cares. Just don’t say anything out loud, cuz that would be tacky.
Oh god. Look, I hate to be the one to tell you this, as everyone else is apparently too nice to say it, but your kid’s dumb. Give up now. Only 20 words? She’ll never go to college. You better hope she grows up pretty, because it’s a lost cause.
Has this counting the number of words a kid knows been going on for a long time? I don’t remember ever knowing how many words my kid knew at any particular age.
Some kids wait until they have something to say, or until they have enough control to speak to their own standards. I had a regular kid, then a chatterbox, and then . . . let’s call him a watcher. The last one didn’t really talk until he could speak in complete sentences. And if he hadn’t had the chatterbox to watch, he probably wouldn’t have picked up the idea of talking as a way to socialize. The rest of the family is pretty quiet.
As to the competition - I’d take credit for all of my kids’ milestones about the same way. If they’re hitting their height milestones, I haven’t messed up badly. If they’re a little short, but the doctor is happy, I haven’t messed up badly. That’s the only way that the milestones reflect on me at all. They can show if I’ve messed up and badly deprived my kid, or they can point out a problem that’s not my fault that needs to be addressed. They can’t ever show that I’ve done a particularly good job. So I save my competativeness for things that have a chance of showing that I did exceptionally well and not that I just haven’t screwed up.
Speaking of height (which a parent has as much control over as over when his child talks), the chatterbox was a slow grower. In junior high, he was afraid that he’d never be taller than his mother (5’6"). In high school, he passed me and relaxed. Then he had growth spurts at 18 and 21 and was very satisfied (5’10.5"). Then he had another spurt at 26. He’s six feet tall now. No pediatrician has a chart that includes a growth spurt at 26. And no way I can take credit for any of it.
If you’re raising a multilingual child, this is not unusual. Comprehension in multiple languages is going to help her much more in the long-term than strictly-focused proficiency in one, so try to keep that up and don’t be worried so much about whether her family members are reaching milestones ahead of her. Listen to your doctor, and take advantage of this opportunity for socialization with her cousin. Just relax!
I’ll see if I can dig up a cite if you want- but I’ve read that kids brought up exposed to multiple lanuages are normally speaking less than kids of the same age exposed to only one (presumably because they have that extra layer of mental processing to work out which words go together, and which people say which ones)- but the difference starts shrinking after a while, and after the age of around 4 bilingual kids are way ahead in vocabulary.
My friend’s daughter has a massively better vocabulary than my sort-of-cousin’s (you can have a decent conversation with the friend’s kid; last time I saw the cousin’s little one, I could only make out one word, and that was ‘Woofy’, her toy dog), and the friend’s one is over 6 months younger. Kids vary.
I don’t either, though talking was the first thing both my kids did. Both were very one-sided; they talked early and often and didn’t walk until well after the first birthday. Kid #2 didn’t bother to walk until 17 months! AND both are now fine, reasonably athletic children. Kid #2’s current career ambition is to be a ninja, or else a policewoman (which is, I guess, the closest thing to a ninja IRL she can think of).
The moral of the story is: what kids’ skills are like during toddlerhood doesn’t have all that much to do with their skills later. Relax and enjoy the kids. Compliment your little nephew to his parents, and mercilessly stomp on any competitive thoughts you may have. Competition between parents over children is poison.
Perhaps, it’s definitely a personal issue for me. My daughter is the one who’s way ahead. She’s brilliant, and that presents it’s own set of problems. But I can’t talk to my family about it because they immediately begin comparing out and cutting down my poor nephews who are perfectly normal and lovely little boys.
It makes everybody feel bad, and results in my brother and his wife never getting to know their neice. And it all stems from my brothers ridiculous need to bury his insecurity in a pile of trophies and statistics. Actually, it stems from my Father’s having done the same to him. . . My brother can’t feel good about himself unless he’s actively defining and re-defining as “better than” someone else.
It’s a child, not a competition. And I stand by the statement that if you don’t get help to work through the basic problem, the child will know and will be hurt by it.
These differences in development have no significance. If your cousins obnoxiously broach this subject, just recount your memories of promising children who failed to live up to expectations. When your cousin’s kid gets a good job, then they can brag.
At their age, comparing the language development of a monolingual and trilingual child in terms of “amount of words spoken” is equivalent to whinning that the winner of the decathlon gold medal runs slower than the winner of the 100m dash - no shit, Sherlock, but I’d like to see how the speedster fares on the other nine disciplines!
There’s nothing wrong in comparing them, so long as you remember that it’s not a contest and that this world would be terribly boring if we were all the same.
This sounds like an issue with you, not your daughter. Apparently you’re seeing her as a reflection of you, or perhaps your abilities as a father. Your ego is taking over here, is it possible to sit still for awhile and just simply accept your daughter for who she is (and she sounds perfectly normal and healthy to me!)… and accept that every corner will present to you another chance to compare? What are you afraid of? Seriously… ask yourself what you’re scared of. I’m guessing you’re scared of what the other parents will think of you, no? Guess what - you have zero control over what other people think of you, and chances are good they will have no concern over it.
This boils down to this: until you let go of your ego trying to guide you and protect you, you’re going to cause yourself (and your daughter) a lot of unnecessary pain and friction. Breathe, let go, and accept. And try to focus on the joy you can get out of this trip.
