When can children...?

[Moos]

OK, so here's a thread to tap the mighty parent power and experience of the EDF family room.

The idea is to create a list of things that children and babies learn how to do over time, and the range of when it happens. Perhaps contributors could each copy the list and either amend what's already there, or add a new item - either something they can offer experience in, or somethig they'd like to know.

So my experience is that my first baby rolled over at 4 months, so I'm going to put that down. Someone else might have a baby that did it at 3 months, so they could copy my list and change it to 'between 3 and 4 months'. Another person might have had children that did it at 6 months, so they could change it again to 'between 3 and 6 months'.

Then again, you can also use the thread to ask. I'd like to know whether I'm being unrealistic to expect my son to brush his own teeth (with a little help) or whether he's taking me for a ride insisting that he can't do it, so I'm going to put that down as a '?' and would be grateful for your experience of when your kids learned to do it.

Right, so here goes, and hoping that this isn't all mad incomprehensible waffle..

When can babies and children:

Q: Roll over

A: 4 months

Q: Brush own teeth (with help)

A: ?

[elderflower]

www.babyexpert.co.uk and www.mumsnet.com there are places for those things. People already do this when they need to.

[Moos]

Oh, OK - thanks, didn't know about those. Perhaps it might be interesting/fun to do one here as well?

[pebbles]

When can babies and children:

Q: Roll over

A: Between 3 and 5 months

Q: Brush own teeth (with help)

A: 16 months (not sure whether we call it brushing and maybe a little more of sucking!!!

Q: Sit up

A: Between 5 and 7 months (son at 5m and daughter at 7m)

Q: Play on their own for longer than 30 minutes

A: ????

[dullified]

When can babies and children (specifically toddlers):

Q. Learn to say ?Yes! Yes! Yes!? to a suggestions made by their lovely mummy.

(Instead of ?No. No. No.? or the odd very reluctant ?OK?.)

A. ?

[millsa]

When can babies and children (specifically toddlers):

Q. Learn to say ?Yes! Yes! Yes!? to a suggestions made by their lovely mummy.

(Instead of ?No. No. No.? or the odd very reluctant ?OK?.)

A. Probably when they really want something and when they realise that saying 'yes yes yes' will get them what they want. My 2.5 year old son has already worked that out (although NO NO NO is MUCH MUCH more common here...)

Q. REALLY BRUSH their own teeth, not just eating toothpaste?

A. not there yet at 2.5 y old

[Andicam]

.

[Curmudgeon]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Expect-Year-Heidi-Murkoff/dp/1847379745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298917492&sr=8-1

[citizenED]

Q: Brush own teeth (with help)

A: when they are bribed...

Q: When can children make you breakfast in bed?

A: ???(please please say it's before they are 6)

[MAK]

Q: Brush own teeth (with help)

A: 4 years old

Q: When will babies give their first real smile?

A: ?

[Moos]

First real smile - 6 weeks with no.1, 8 weeks for no. 2. First laugh 12 weeks for no.1, much later for no.2 when I realised that the strange honking noise was a giggle.

[Ruth_Baldock]

Seb was a right misery then. His first laugh was at about 6 months! Of course, he giggles all the time now...

[Keef]

No one has mentioned walkin yet. Our little one was 16 months before she finally got round to it. We worry that she seems so small and young to lots of other kids we see. Equally though, we know she's very good at other stuff, and she never shuts up.

[BB100]

My first child did a long and repeated giggle for about 10 minutes at 6 weeks old. He thought the object we spun round on the mobile most amusing. It was like one of those chuckles you have on the current baby milk advert. Unfortunately we had just given back the camcorder we borrowed the day before so no one believed us.

[Rhubarb&Custard]

OK - I'm going to throw a spanner in the works...

Doesn't this kind of thread simply scratch away at our neurosis as parents? That if my child is not rolling over by X months etc.etc., then there might be something wrong? When my children were babies / toddlers I felt the constant comparison and 'ticking off' of 'milestones' to be really negative, at some times competitive, and at other times really quite stressful.

There seems to be so much pressure from all corners to ensure our children seem to be doing certain things 'when they should'. One of my children didn't walk until 22 months: absolutely nothing wrong physically, or mentally - just something that happened 'when it did'. Had I been checking off on a milestone thread such as this I'd have gone into meltdown.

Not a criticism - as I know the thread has been started with good intentions: but just something to be aware of.

[Ruth_Baldock]

Keef Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> No one has mentioned walkin yet. Our little one

> was 16 months before she finally got round to it.

> We worry that she seems so small and young to lots

> of other kids we see. Equally though, we know

> she's very good at other stuff, and she never

> shuts up.

SUCH a wide spectrum. I had a friend whose son walked at 10 months, which had me platzing over S's lack of walking. He did it out of the blue at just-turned-13 months, but I hear anything from 9-24months is okay.

Now, talking on the other hand. S has about 6 'words'. Close friends/family can understand them, but outsiders can't (apart from the incident on the 12 where he shouted 'WILLY! WILLY!' over and over again from Camberwell Green to The Gardens). I have a friend with a 17mo old (girl) who says whole sentences 'Daddy is at work' and such.

In short, I dunno...

[zeban]

I'm with Rhubarb&Custard on this.

I think that's why elderflower mentioned that this thread is better suited to mumsnet!

[BB100]

Rhubarb&Custard Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> There seems to be so much pressure from all

> corners to ensure our children seem to be doing

> certain things 'when they should'. One of my

> children didn't walk until 22 months: absolutely

> nothing wrong physically, or mentally - just

> something that happened 'when it did'. Had I been

> checking off on a milestone thread such as this

> I'd have gone into meltdown.

>

> Not a criticism - as I know the thread has been

> started with good intentions: but just something

> to be aware of.

I suppose it depends how you look at it. You could equally use the thread to reassure yourself that there are vast differences in children's development and there is no such thing as 'normal' - only 'typical' or 'dissimilar'.

It was Jean Piaget who started the whole child development milestones theory and although his theories have been highly influential in the study and treatment of children in the West (such as setting 10 years of age as the age of criminal responsibility in UK) his theories and experiments have been disproved and criticised. This thread is interesting in that it highlights there are no set times for children to do things and children are actually more competent than we sometimes give them credit for.

[Andicam]

Rhubarb&Custard Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> OK - I'm going to throw a spanner in the works...

>

> Doesn't this kind of thread simply scratch away at

> our neurosis as parents? That if my child is not

> rolling over by X months etc.etc., then there

> might be something wrong?

This was my first thought, but whether it be at playgroup or visiting friends with kids of similar age, comparisons are always going to be made.

[dullified]

I had a great book Your baby Week By Week which covers the first 6 months of a baby?s life and actually baby?s are pretty predictable for the first 6 months but after that it is very hard to predict how they will develop (hence the reason the book finishes at 6 months). If a baby isn?t premature the book had first smile about 6 weeks, laugh about 12 weeks, roll over as early as 15 weeks (but of course some babies are much later). It also covered the week a bay uncurls their legs from foetal position and produces real tears unfortunately forgotten what weeks they are.

[spotify]

The youngest could not walk until she was eighteen months, but before she was one year old she had crawled down the garden and climbed barefoot a 4ft high interwoven fence panel to see the neighbours new puppy.

The eldest was walking at ten months and was chattering before her first birthday,

the youngest relied on grunting until she was fifteen months old and then called socks "yocks" and many other weird interpretations of words for months after that.

The youngest was sleeping through the night without a nappy at nine months.

At two years the eldest had become an accomplished shop lifter, she would get outside the shop and proudly show us what she had 'acquired'.

She became accomplished when she showed us what she had stolen after we arrived home and nowhere near the shop to return the stuff.

At two years of age the youngest evicted the eldest out of the shared bedroom and insisted she have her own room,

as she found her sister tried to prevent her from going to sleep. The eldest did not want to sleep alone.

The youngest new where every pen and pencil belonged on her desk,

the eldest one's desk looked as if someone had emptied a dustbin over it, it is still the same 20 years on!