Childhood milestones

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I’m doing a bit of “digging” into my past while searching for patterns and other previously overlooked data-points that might help me learn more about the science of my physiology.

Even though I’m a parent, I have NO idea about what is normal for kids (I have no idea what is normal for adults, so at least I’m consistent lol). I often get told off by the wife for having expectations that are way too high … and I’m deviating. Anyway I thought this might be a bit of a fun discussion.

Me: “Hey mum, at what age did I say my first word”?
Mum: "Word? hahaha You never gooed gahed AT ALL. I caught you practicing “mum” and “dad” from around 7 months, but once you noticed me notice, I didn’t hear another word again until you just came out speaking in sentences as clear as crystal at 14 months."
Mum continuing: “From around 6 months, even though you didn’t talk, you could accurately identify different animals and colours.”

She went on to explain that she randomised things in order to isolate memory techniques etc.

I’ll stop the first-person part and just add a few more milestones to kick things off.

I knew the alphabet at 18 months. (She tested me with randomisations because no one believed her [is that too young or something?])

I could read and arrange words into meaningful sentences and apply them in context at just before 3.

An example: mum said that when I was 2.5 I arranged the sentence “My Dad is a dog” and couldn’t stop laughing at how funny I thought I was.

She said I had a disproportionately large head that interfered with my physical milestones. I first crawled at 7 months. I didn’t walk until 14 months. She said I had chronic ear infections and even though I tried to walk, I would fall due to balance issues. She said I learn to walk and talk (as above) within the same week. And that I was “running” within a month from there.

So far I don’t know if any of this is significant. Your feedback will make it fun, but also be educational for me :slight_smile:

Mum is going to bed and won’t answer any more questions for now, but I’ll continue when I can!

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An interesting topic especially as delayed developmental milestones are more likely to occur with schizophrenia/psychosis?
I have no idea. I have pictures of me in what seem to be the early stages of walking but it’s hard to place an age on it.
I have facebook messaged my dad and asked him but after 58 years or so such information may be lost. Ideally my mum would have been the one to ask but she is no longer alive. If I get an answer I’ll post it.

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Thanks, mate.

This is a part of what I’m looking into. Different types of delays can give different clues. For me, it’s all just about collecting as much data as possible so the patterns become more clear.

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I started talking at 8 months, first cantonese (I had a nanny) and then portuguese like a month later. My first portuguese word was “água” (water)

Started walking at 9 months, and I was a climber, I basically climbed everything that was climbable.

I was good at school, basically all subjects especially if the teacher was good, but was better at smoking pot in my teens, so school got on the background. I had a lot of issues with sitting still for an hour listening to a teacher. If I was in the states I probably would have a diagnose of ADHD.

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Água de beber, camará! I love the song, but it makes my emotional vocabulary appear stone-aged. Maybe why I like it!

I can’t speak Portuguese, but I can pick up bits and pieces from my understanding of Spanish.

Minnii - you remind me of me if I were less worried about everything, only nothing was going to hold you back! I used to get my brother to take all my risks for me. Shame on me. Then again, nowadays, he requires NO encouragement. He invited me to a trivia night (I refused because I am unwell presently and cannot cope in crowds) and although he didn’t win the trivia, he won the dance-off, which wasn’t even a part of the curriculum. lol Does that sound more like you?

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Reminds me of my unmedicated manic self :smile: I used to be so much fun, I feel old now

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You seem fun to me and not old either. Maybe you should put your dancing shoes on again and see where it leads :wink:

Note to others: see, it’s not personal - I even derail my own threads. It’s pathological. Sorry :stuck_out_tongue:

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I was a very early talker - seven months, speaking in sentences by 10 months. Reading at a little before 3 years. My first word was “hello?” said while picking up a toy phone and holding it to my ear.

Physically, I was very delayed. My first six months were spent with my legs in casts, and I was well over a year old before I could walk. I suspect that having to put all my energy into communication rather than movement accounts for most of my early progress in that area :smile_cat:

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All I could get was that I started crawling, walking and talking in that order before my first birthday. For some reason I had always thought I was quite late on the walking front.

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@Rhubot I guess that shows babies can vary in the time they take to do things. Sometimes precocious in some things while being delayed in others. I think generally girls start talking earlier than boys.

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I spoke gibberish for almost a year to myself before I started speaking full sentences at around 2. It was as if I understood the social rhythm of language but not the content. I’d seem to carry on conversations with myself and laugh, but there were no recognizable words.

I also crawled for a long time before walking. I could get around very fast and pull myself up on things but didn’t walk. They took to locking me in my room because I was an escape artist.

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  • a few things got deleted…oh yeah - before I walked, when I was close to the floor I tried to stand on my head a lot. Also I tried again + again to do something until I succeded. There’s a movie of me learning the hard way to climb up on the see saw. I still stubbornly persevere like that. I don’t give up.

I started to school late in the year - with 6 weeks left till school was out. I quickly mastered reading. However I dreaded going out on the playgropund.

I was very shy + didn’t know which people were in my class. I was terribly afraid the teacher would call my class to go in + I wouldn’t notice = be stranded out there. I stayed close to the teacher and held on to her dress. She tried ti shoo me away.

Inside - she showed me which cubby was mine but I wasn’t sure it was or if I really had one. I kept asking the teacher if this was mine. Till she got tired of me asking. Some kids had tickets. I was afraid I was supposed to have a ticket for something + wouldn’t have one. I kept asking the teacher if I needed a ticked.

Looking back I see they must have been bus tickets. That was a fear most of my life - not having a ticket or getting in the wrong line. All of these things the teacher told me things were ok about them, but I didn’t feel that way.

Through out my school years until things became so overbearing that I quit, I was metaphorically ‘good in the class room, but not on the playground.’

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I identify strongly with everything you posted. Kind of like a feeling that there’s a whole level of language that everyone around you seems to understand but you never learned.

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I guess my baby milestones were rather average or par for the course. However by the time I got to school there must have been problems. I am saying this because my first school suggested I might have what is now called cerebral palsy. My parents took me to Great Ormond street for testing around the age of 6. The tests came out negative but I think were rather limited re spotting other problems in those days.
I had problems with handwriting,drawing and constructional things like using building blocks like Lego from a young age. I also struggled with using scissors though I put some of that down to being left handed.
School reports mention me as being the clown of the class whether that was to mask insecurities I don’t know. I can’t remember having many, if any, friends.
When I went to boarding school at 8 things changed. I stopped being the class of the clown and became more shy and withdrawn. I started wetting the bed again almost daily for the next 3 years but didn’t do so at home. Academically I started off well at boarding school but then I missed the start of my 5th term with mumps. That term I dropped dramatically done the list class standings wise. Boys I had previously outperformed overtook me. I think this was the effects of what I suspect would now be called a non verbal learning disorder kicking in. Unfortunately it was not a recognised diagnosis then(it still isn’t in the DSM/ICD but is recognised more by neuropsychologists rather than psychologists), and I have never been diagnosed with a learning difficulty though I undoubtedly had one. My parents didn’t seem to be that bothered by my declining academic performance. I guess they thought well we had him tested at 6 and the all clear was given.
Physically I was quite clumsy and uncoordinated with rather poor balance. I was bad at PE and other sports. When we did obstacle races in PE I would often do things wrong like going the wrong way round an obstacle.

By the time I reached my teens and went to public school I guess my physical and social awkwardness was very noticeable to my peers enough to be verbally bullied and socially rejected.
I guess if it had been nowadays I would have come to the attention of a child counsellor and been sent to see a child psychologist if I had been going to a state school. Back then especially in private(boarding) schools there wasn’t such things.

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(I’m not sure any parents know what’s normal for kids) My mother was a 1st grade teacher and she was absolutely unprepared before we even hit our teens, now…of course their borderline insane both of them to this day and would eat their own for their social standing and good name. I don’t get it as our house was a madhouse when I was growing up half the time, I mean everyone knew there was crazy ■■■■ going on at our house.

But early childhood (my own) is something that interests me as I feel I was an extremely aware child, I’ve been told I became conversational while still a baby and that it was “a little scary” I have vivid and real memories of who I was in preschool/kindergarten. I know I was girfted in art and socially a bit of a tyrant but gifted there as well. I can remember the first girl who ever challenged me as I would not let girls play pirates with my friend’s and I at recess, she pushed a chair between me and the wall until I agreed to let her play with us. This left an impression upon me, she was later to show up at a private school I transferred to in the late or mid 3rd grade where I went from an extroverted leader to the sidelines of someone who lived very much in their head but managed at least one or two friends always.

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I was reading at an abnormally early age. I’m not sure how early, but I know that when I was in grade one my mother freaked out when she got back from a nursing shift and discovered that I had pulled out the Joy of Cooking, read the section on baking, and then followed the chocolate chip cookies recipe perfectly. Between having helped her before and having instructions, I pulled it off on my first solo attempt. I was five.

Serves her right for leaving a five-year-old alone for hours at a time after school, I figure.

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@pob I really enjoyed learning about you in school, thanks for cheering me up again.

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