Reading, writing, arithmatic?

Yes, our child is brilliant. No, he's not doing differential calculus. Yet.

In some senses, it seems like Mats is developing overnight. For example, some developmental milestones like walking backwards have taken us totally by surprise (largely, I suspect, due to our ignorance to the fact that this is indeed a developmental milestone). And then there are those that are slow in coming. Like learning the alphabet. First we waited full of expectation. The expectation quickly turns to concern as we notice most of Mats' friends starting to master singing the alphabet song*.

I was actually starting to worry that Mats was, you know, s-l-o-w. Every day we read the alphabet book followed by singing the alphabet song. Now, my singing is nothing to write home about, but I like to think that I can at least master the simple melody of the ABCs such that it is recognizable to a toddler. Nonetheless, unlike all of Mats' friends, he never joins in singing or in filling in the letters. I thought he just didn't "get" it. You can imagine my surprise when I handed him a sippy cup (all still meticulously labelled from the daycare days) and he pointed to his name and said "M for Mats!" I was ready to call the local paper with the news, when he (apparently hoping to seize on my disproportionate joy) exclaimed "A, T, S! Mats!"

Harvard, here we come!

Don't you hate uptight parents?


* Note: most of Mats' friends are girls (well, and Joey, who is Mr. Social and even puts the girls to shame in linguistics). For those of you without children or PhDs in early childhood language development, girls generally tend to learn to speak earlier than boys and the difference is quite noticeable at this age (21 months) when girls are stringing together sentences and boys are just getting a grasp on basic words