Another thing to bear in mind, and it's so difficult because of parental pride, is that precocity is not a virtue. In fact, those who feel like they're "prodigies" or "gifted" more often fall into the trap described here. I know I did.
Parents are made to feel like there's a scorecard -- that your child should walk, talk and read by so many months. That can be useful to identify learning disabilities, but it otherwise is not helpful. There's no causal influence between someone being a late talker, early reader or whatever and being better at anything at age 12 or 16. There is a correlation, as you'd expect, but it's not like kids are losing something if they're "late" to develop skills. Growing up is a marathon, not a sprint to an age of three (or five, or nine) when everything sets like Jell-O.
Malcolm Gladwell has a great lecture about how our exaggerated interest in prodigies leads to erroneous assumptions about achievement. Here's a summary:
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Another thing to bear in mind, and it's so difficult because of parental pride, is that precocity is not a virtue. In fact, those who feel like they're "prodigies" or "gifted" more often fall into the trap described here. I know I did.
Parents are made to feel like there's a scorecard -- that your child should walk, talk and read by so many months. That can be useful to identify learning disabilities, but it otherwise is not helpful. There's no causal influence between someone being a late talker, early reader or whatever and being better at anything at age 12 or 16. There is a correlation, as you'd expect, but it's not like kids are losing something if they're "late" to develop skills. Growing up is a marathon, not a sprint to an age of three (or five, or nine) when everything sets like Jell-O.
Malcolm Gladwell has a great lecture about how our exaggerated interest in prodigies leads to erroneous assumptions about achievement. Here's a summary:
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?...
Bonus Gladwell of relevance, if anyone's interested:
An article about Stanley Kaplan, the original teacher of the "unteachable" SAT. Thesis: "ability cannot be separated from effort."
Examined Life: http://www.malcolmgladwell.com/2001/2001_12_17_a_kaplan.htm
And then, on raising kids in general... well, maybe you, the parent, are a lot less important than you think:
Do Parents Matter? http://www.malcolmgladwell.com/1998/1998_08_17_a_harris.htm
On the contrary, people like Richard Feynman and Edward Teller were all late talkers. Einstein did not speak until he was 3 years old: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_06_24_newy...