I spent some time as a school parent governor when my kids were small and talked to teachers, especially the reception class teachers, who IMO have a tough job.
They wanted articulate and socialised children, who could button their own coats and put their own shoes on, What they got varied from children who were barely able to talk, had no idea about sharing, and needed help with just about everything, to some at the other end of the curve.
So the only suggestion I have for the OP (and it may already be happening) is to enrol the child in a playgroup or kindergarten and try to let her mix with a variety of other children her age. She needs to be prepared to meet different races and colours, as well as children with handicaps.
I should add that my teacher acquaintances were not over-enthusiastic about children who were proficient and ahead of the rest with reading and arithmetic. That often meant that they could soon become bored and start distracting their classmates. Numbers up to ten, and colours are fine, as is the ability to colour within the lines.
Thanks for all the replies. Impossible to reply to everyone so I’ll pick out a few things.
She doesn’t really seem interested in letters or numbers. I’ve taught her to say the letters in her name, but she doesn’t recognise them written down. If she seemed interested I probably would have taught her more, but I don’t want to force it on her and make her dislike the idea of reading. I don’t know if the people talking about teaching their kids stuff early were responding to the child, or just doing it as a matter of routine.
She was very late starting talking, but when she did she went from only saying ~20 single words to 5 word sentences in two months. Maybe it will be similar with reading?
My nephew who is the same age is very interested in numbers. He could recognise all the digits at 2, while my daughter only knows a couple of them at 3. He loved watching a series called Numberblocks on Youtube, but when I showed it to her, she got bored after a few minutes. Yet she’s ahead in language. It’s funny how different kids are.
A funny example of this is colours: before she was talking, I tried to play colour matching games with her, and she never seemed to pay any attention to colours of things. Only when she learned to talk did she get interested in them, and then it was favourite colours. She still talks about it and wants to give us things in our favorite colours, it’s quite sweet. Right now she’s interested in pretty things, and pretend games, especially playing mummy and baby. And singing. She loves to make up songs about what she’s doing at any given moment - she honestly seems to think she’s living in a musical!
She’s not there yet, but I think she’s on track for this sort of thing, which is reassuring. She’s in nursery, so she gets to practice interacting with other kids, sharing and so on every day.
Her nursery taught her numbers up to 20, and she’s good at reciting them, but she can’t actually count: she points at things, and recites numbers, but does not understand the idea that one number should correspond to one object. It hadn’t occurred to me previously that this was not intuitive.
Surely three year olds are not supposed to be able to do this? My daughter can put on a t-shirt or pyjama top, but can’t get it off again unless it’s very loose: she just doesn’t have the manual dexterity yet. I’ve only just got her out of nappies in the daytime (thank god) - seems to be a common problem for this generation of kids. Maybe it really is people having unreasonable expectations due to him being ahead in other areas?
This is more like my experience. In my memory, one day something just clicked and I went from deciphering the text to reading. And then I started reading and didn’t stop - my own books, the books in the school library, my mum’s historical murder mysteries and my dad’s books on maths, children’s and adult books from the county library, books given to me by parents whose own children had grown out of them - one was big into horses, a topic that didn’t especially interest me, but I read them all anyway.
When I was a teen my uncle gave me several boxes full of old New Scientist magazines, which I thought was incredibly generous at the time, but now I can understand how glad he was to be rid of them.
Not something I’m well qualified for, unfortunately. If it wasn’t for the social side I’d be tempted to home school her, given how much I hated school myself. Plus it’s just inherently inefficient - we’ve just been talking about how different kids are, and then you send them to an institution that treats everyone the same, can’t make allowances for students being at different levels, or do much to tailor the curriculum to their interests. But socialisation is essential.
The hardest thing my kids learned in kindergarten was how to walk in a line and keep their hands to themselves.
Some classes learn it quickly and others have the one or two unruly students who just can’t do it and it starts a whole thing in the line and it falls apart. I’ve heard teachers lament over this a bunch.
Well, I can’t say for sure, but dressing/undressing is one of the questions on the adaptive behavior questionnaires we always have to fill out. He’s autistic, support Level 2 which means he’s getting all these evaluations to determine where he is developmentally. When he was first evaluated six months ago, his adaptive (independent) behaviors were in the bottom 4% and his social skills were in the bottom 1%. So at least in my kid’s case they are not setting unrealistic standards. They are trying to identify where he needs intervention. But I can’t say for sure how they are scoring any given item. In the most recent one I did, it had questions that were clearly for much older kids.
While professionals take it very seriously, a lot of people in our orbit don’t because he is a friggin math genius. They assume this is going to translate to wild academic and professional success, but I am not so convinced, this kid has serious issues that may make a big impact on how successful he is in school.
It’s normal for kids to be behind in something, but when they are behind in almost all the things that is the time to be concerned. But in the six months since he started therapy, he has improved tremendously. In fact he was recently re-evaluated for speech and they said they have to score the test but they think he no longer qualifies for speech services! I am a true believer in early intervention for sure.
We are starting potty training this month - wish me luck! I feel like it could go either way.
Are you reqired to send her to school too young? I started school in the first grade, no K or pre-K. And I was pretty much ahead of everyone else in my class that did go to K. (I’m not sure if pre-K was even a thing yet then).
I didn’t want to project too much onto my kid before he was born, but one secret desire/hope I had for him is that he would have an easier time socially than I did.
It’s only legally required from age 5, but it seems like making her start half way through the year, after the other kids have all made friends, would be a bad idea. Plus I assume she’d lose her place. My sister did use this as a loophole to take her daughter on holiday in term time, since the government can’t fine you before the mandatory attendance age.
My daughter can put a tshirt over her head if I hand it to her, and get her arms in. She can pull on socks, not always the right way around, and take on and off leggings, but she can’t be bothered most of the time! She can button her cardigan and even do up the zip on her hoodie, but needs me to hold it to put her arms in. I think that’s pretty normal for this age.
Hurray! And good luck. I think potty training is another thing where they just have to be ready. We tried so long and my daughter just wasn’t interested - I tried putting her in pants and she didn’t care when she was wet; I had to whisk her off to be changed. We gave her pull ups and got her to go in the potty sometimes, but she still weed in the pull up almost every day. Then one day she asked to wear knickers, and since then she has only had two accidents.
If I was religious, I would have prayed for my kid to be normal socially, ahead of being smart or talented at anything. It’s a hard life not fitting in with other people. But it’s still possible to find happiness, as I believe you have too. I hope the early intervention makes things easier for your son. For my little girl there are some red flags, but so far everything is going okay.
A lot depends on the individual school, but from my own experience, schools in general nowadays are more sensitive to differences in children’s needs and abilities than they were when I was a kid. Human nature doesn’t change, but there seems to be more emphasis on teaching children to be kind than teaching them to conform.
My son can take off his shirt if I get the first arm for him, and he can take off his socks if he pulls hard enough, and he can take off his Velcro shoes, but that’s it. He can’t do any of the things you just listed and he cannot dress himself at all. I am working on it though. Today changing for swim class he got his pants most of the way off. I’ve decided to start building in some time in the mornings to work with him on dressing and undressing. I just have a gut feeling he’s ready.
Part of the issue is fine motor skills and the other part is he just gives up when it gets hard. And sometimes he just seems genuinely confused about how things work. Like I was trying to get him to put his coat on a hanger today (with one side already on), and I said, “grab the coat” twenty times and he kept grabbing the hanger instead. He genuinely didn’t get that you have to lift the coat up to put it on a hanger.
It’s a lot of work but when he finally does get the hang of a skill, I just feel on top of the world. We are going to make it. And we’re having a pretty good time.
It is. I’ve fortunately never had much trouble making at least a few close friends, but I was definitely viewed by most other kids as weird. I dealt with my share of bullies and just feeling out of step with other kids. I didn’t understand why they were into the things they were into and still don’t. But I married another weirdo so I guess it’s no real surprise we have a weird kid.
Yeah, that’s the technical term for it, ‘one-to-one correspondence’ : one item, one number. And even when they understand that, if there are a lot of items, they can get confused. I know lots of pre-schoolers who can recite numbers to twenty or higher, but can only actually count to 3 or 4. There is also just the abstract idea of an ‘amount’ of something, and the numbers themselves, that 5 books and 5 people are the same 5. You can do things like ‘set the table for 4 people’, 4 mats, 4 plates, 4 forks, 4 spoons - 4 is 4 is 4 is 4. But it is also just lots of iterations of them having one of something, then two of something, then more than that. What is quantity, anyway?
Playing with her and doing things together are really helpful ways for her to learn. You are unconsciously adding in all this information about the world. If you follow her lead, you don’t even need to know what to teach her, because she will take you to where she needs. (You can also teach her specific things, of course).
Little kids have a lot of trouble following someone else’s train of thought, doubly so for kids on the spectrum. So you tell them and tell them but they just don’t always have the ability to integrate what you are saying into their thinking. But it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t understand how hangers work. They are pretty niche. You probably grabbed the hanger when you did the first arm of the coat, so it might make sense to him to copy that.
Spice Weasel - They have dolls so kids can practice their dressing skills where they can easily see and reach the buttons, zips, etc. That might be a way to get started.
You’ve probably already had advice, but putting arms into sleeves, while you hold the sleeves out for him, or feet into trousers ditto are some of the easiest things to start with. Zips are quite easy too, if you have already joined the bottom. Often the biggest struggle is getting them to pay attention to dressing when they want to be off doing something else. Motivation definitely helps - I didn’t think my daughter could put a dress on until I bought her a Peppa Pig one she really liked, and she ran into her bedroom and got it on over her other clothes in about 5 seconds flat. Maybe you could find him some clothes with numbers on, or soft and cuddly fleece pyjamas if he’d like that better?
If you want to teach him putting on shoes, wellies are some of the easiest since you can just slip your feet into them. Kids’ wellies often come with loops at the top to pull on, too.
Something I just started teaching her is turning her clothes the right way out. I think that’s more of a logistical challenge than a fine motor one; you could have go with socks, maybe even your socks since they’re bigger - it’s a long shot, but the transforming aspect might interest him.
Now I’m older I can understand better, at least in an abstract sense, but that doesn’t make me share those interests. One unexpected advantage of having a kid is that it gives you a ready made and relatable topic to talk about with other parents. Disadvantage is having to remember not to bore non-parents with it.
Me too. I figure it’s all but inevitable she’ll at least have some autistic traits.
I was surprised how much she didn’t copy what I did in dressing her, but found her own way to do things. Like when she pulls on her leggings, she pulls one leg on partway, then folds the end back on itself over her foot in order to free it. When I do it I just keep pulling the leg up until her foot pops out. I tried to teach her to take her dress or top off in a couple of ways, but she couldn’t do it or got confused. She found her own method by pulling the front up and over her head, then wriggling her arms out behind her. But that only works if the garment is loose enough.
I can only talk about my own kids. We always read to them a lot and they loved it. Pooh, Swallows and Amazons, not Dick and Jane. My daughter started a French immersion kindergarten and they asked us not to teach her to read in English. Meantime her younger (by 17 months) brother had taught himself to read by looking over our shoulder, Interestingly, he was slow to talk. Just a few words till he was 2 and then started talking in complete sentences. Anyway, when he started kindergarten he was reading, but then he too was taught in French only. By third grade, they were both reading in both languages. As for math and counting, I never paid any attention but they all did well. The third one came along 6 years later and went through the same experience. All three are fluent in French, although they rarely use it.
One other story, of a grandson. When he had his 4th birthday checkup, the pediatrician asked if he could write his name and he said yes. So she asked him to show her. He was sitting on the other side of her desk and printed his name upside down and backwards–so she could read it.
Anyway, we basically let the schools take care of what they do best and it worked out pretty well.
Oh, I feel this so hard. My daughter is really, really good at math and math competitions, and everyone thinks this is so great – and it is! But then I look around myself and see how much of life is dependent on social interactions and emotional intelligence, and I kind of just hope that I can teach her enough in the social-emotional sphere that she can interview for and get a job to support herself without crashing and burning. Sometimes I’m hopeful, sometimes I think it’s going to be a long, long slog to get to that point. (I do think that we’ll make it, though.)
This is how I was as a little kid. I can remember my mom telling me that she was a little worried that I wasn’t talking. I had an older sister (less than 1.5 yrs older) who was an enthusiastic talker. But one day I popped out an entire sentence (Mommy, Carla chase the kitty). Thinking about it much later I came to understand that my brain likes to have a bunch of detail before it can coalesce everything into a coherent whole. If your daughter’s brain works like mine does, this might be helpful to being a good support for her.
My daughter had straight A grades going into her junior year of high school. I told her that grades weren’t everything, that she’d have all sorts of fun things coming up that she might never get a chance to do again.
She took this to heart and got a few B grades, but was more involved with social stuff outside of school. Her mom was furious, but we didn’t talk so I just ignored that she was ranting.
When she was interviewing at colleges she was asked about her sudden change from all A’s. She explained that her dad told her it was OK to get a few B’s in exchange for a social life. The people interviewing her agreed and she got into her first pick university!
Yep. My son is brilliant, and even highly creative in how he expresses his love of numbers. He’s also very affectionate in his own way, enjoys physical closeness, etc. But I’ve never heard “I love you.” Don’t get me wrong, I know he loves me. But he just seems to have no interest in or understanding of these things people do to bond with one another. I think my husband and I have a great, warm, and loving relationship with our son, but we were recently talking about how we have developed our own family language that is probably indecipherable to anyone else. It’s only recently with ECSE that my son is going into this world that doesn’t speak his language. I have some anxiety about whether he will be understood. And I’m not sure how much he’ll be willing or able to adapt.
