Thanks. What was wrong in the family described - parents corrected their son all the time - bet they did not distinguish between minor improvable behavior and serious bad behavior. And they just said their correction, but never continued, never tried really stop the wrong action, like carrying their son away from a place of bad behavior. Kid just continued, and nothing followed. They were like a background radio. In result, their child thought that "do not bet your cousin in face with steel rake" is of the same unimportance as "do not run along the path because you can fall down".
I had to physically defend my child because his parents did nothing except continued talking in prayerful voice. And this boy continued his bad behavior for rather long time. If he disliked something, he did spitting, and he continued it from 1 year to almost 4 years. Once he spit on me and I said to his parents that they should do something or I will put soap in his mouth. And that was the last day he did spitting; his parents stopped it. So, in general, his parents did not do the real correcting and stopped the wrong activity only when others did not bear it anymore, and that was after 3 years of continuous objectively bad behavior. The same was with aggression. From 1 to 4 years he was attacking my girl who is highly sensitive and never beats. There was that accident with steel rake and I started actively correct that child but his parents continued to act like broken radio. It continued for almost a year and than I said to his father just a small part of what I think about his parenting and about his son (you may imagine) - and the bad behavior was stopped in one day, and his aggression towards my daughter never repeated. So their daily correcting was totally useless and unheard and very seldom they did a real correcting.
Well, I will stop about this boy. You may see that I have a problem. Because I am sensitive too, and I do not know how to defend me, and for too long time I did not know how to defend my daughter.
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Now I want to talk about our EL children. Well, my son is definitely much brighter than the kid I described above, and always was. Besides my first kid, almost every other kid seems delayed and I can not evaluate properly.
I know a family where first two kids are very intelligent (PhD and entrepreneur) and the third one is different. In a regular family this third son would have simple job like builder, and be happy. In this highly intelligent family (parents are very intelligent too) he tries to reach intellectual jobs but he cannot. His self-confidence is very low. He looks broken. He tries to participate in intelligent discussions but he is able just to take single words from context. He is talking nonsense using long and complex sentences. He has no friends because people of his IQ use another language and are different. Although his parents do not show any dissatisfaction with him. So I think my both kids should be in a similar level, for their self-confidence. They will never be the same because their tempers are very different. But my second one should be above the average, to feel good in his family.
I am often thinking about the connection between logical thinking and talking. And which qualities are depending from the overall development and which do not. This is what I would like to discuss with you 
I have documented the development of my kids.
The first one.
8 months - first 3 words.
1.2 years - explosion of vocabulary.
1 year and 5 months: first dialog with me (4 turns); saying "yes"; understanding consequence "you will get your milk if you will let me to dress you".
1.6: counting up to 6; distinguishing and commenting calls of common birds;
1.8 - saying "I want bread" instead of "L. wants bread" (in our language it means also adding a proper ending of word).
2.2 - trying to tell a story.
2.3: complex sentences with proper times of verbs etc; compiling a story about events of this day.
4.5: reading; adding up to 20; counting above 100 (it started suddenly).
My second one did exactly the same but one year later. When he was 2.2 his vocabulary suddenly (in one day) expanded from some tens to some hundreds of abbreviated words. When he was 3.3 he started to build complex sentences etc.
The most important thing is that the development of his logical thinking had exactly the same delay. He was 2.5 when he understood "you will get A if you will do B". There are a lot of other parameters which can describe the development of logical thinking. Throwing ball from one person to another. Making sand cake.
Do you also observe this
pairing between thinking and talking?
My son definitely was physically able to talk sentences with questions because he was reading them from this powerpoints. But it took half year for him to start to use such sentences by his own.
What was the same for both kids:
they both learned their phonics when they were 1.10;
colors at 1.8;
they both knew at least 100 sight words when they were between 2 and 2.5.
2 years: understanding numbers up to 3;
3 years: understanding numbers up to 4 (I mean understanding the quantity and not mechanically counting like rhyme).
(I know that some kids are more successful in math but I do not succeed; I demonstrated counting and math them every day but they are where they are)
So, these skills depend on something else than logical thinking.
What is special with my second one:
he is reading since 2.10; he is very creative in his playing (much, much more creative than my girl); he is singing all the day and is already singing better than my 5 years old; he likes to play alone.
Probably it seems weird, to bother about the delay of child who is reading since 2.10. It is about my feelings. And I read the newsletter of Testing Mom and here I see that logical thinking is the only that counts, for the evaluation of how smart is a child. Early reading does not count. And in our case, reading really do not pair with thinking.
I find it very interesting. Do you have opinion?
Digg
