Pointy Pointer-Finger and Brainy Brain

When you have your first child, unless you're around other people's children a great deal, you aren't quite sure what to expect. You try teaching them things, and you see them grasp it and you build on it. It's not until you ask your 2 year old a question the way you might ask a peer in front of some one in public and they are either impressed or amused do you realize, "Oh, yes, that's right, he's only two".

With Tristan, we taught him everything. As soon as he was born we started teaching him things. When he turned 2 he knew all of the letters of the alphabet, not the alphabet song, I mean, he'd see a sign and start telling us what all the letters were. And he knew his shapes and other things too. He didn't know all this because he was smarter than other kids, but because we thought he could, and showed him, and he could.

For some reason, with a second or subsequent child, we tend to think or say, "Oh, he's too little for that". or "He won't understand that yet". I've seen the trend in other families too. I think it's because we have a benchmark now, something to compare to. Tristan is big and Dorian is little, therefore, Tristan can and Dorian cannot. It isn't true, not completely, only to a certain extent.

Something happened last week that made me think of all this. I'm glad it happened because so much more has happened since. Here's the story:

I was sitting with Dorian, reading him his current favorite book called Henry. It is a story about Henry the Green Engine in the Thomas and Friends collection. On the back of the book (marketing ploy) there are pictures of other books in the series. Each picture has the face and name of an engine or other vehicle from the Island of Sodor. So, Dorian started his ritual of pointing at each picture while I told him whom the picture represented. It is repetitive and boring (to me). After a while, I got one wrong because I was expecting his little finger to land elsewhere. He was sitting in my lap and we were both facing the book, but when I got one wrong, he turned around and looked at me. I looked back and said, "what?" then he moved his little finger to the one I'd said. Suddenly, I wondered, "Could it be?" and so I said, "Where's James?" He smiled and pointed at James. I said, "Wow! Good Job!" Then, "Where's Terrance?" He smiled and pointed at Terrance. I went through all of them. He knew them all, and he knew the bar code, and the Hit Entertainment logo. I was floored. What a waste! I could've been teaching him something useful all this time. :)

Since then, we have gotten out Tristan's old ABC computer. It has all the lower case letters, numbers 1-10, and four shapes. Each letter, # and shape is a button and when you push it, the computer voice says what it is. Dorian seems to like it a lot. Circle seems to be his favorite. We also got out the Sesame Street place mats that teach numbers and shapes. Mostly he points at the Sesame Street characters though. He knows Elmo, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie. He also knows all the parts of my face, and loves to poke my eye and say "Aye". It's really nice to know that things are happening up there in his brainy little brain.

Of course, we always thought he was smart; it's not that. It's just that he's the baby, and people don't expect as much from a baby as they do from a kid. And when you only have one child, that transition from babyhood to childhood seems to happen sooner... because you just can't wait! And when you have your last child, you can wait, because you see your older child growing up so fast. And you know they're both going to be adults that know how to read, write, tell colors apart, etc. for a long, long time, so it doesn't seem to matter as much how soon it starts. (Except potty training... we started much sooner with that the second time, cleaning up another person's potty is the pits). :)