Developmental Update

Part of an ongoing series ...

Wild Thing's development is rather uneven (which is creating some minor child care problems). Here's a rough tally of where we stand circa 32 months.

Cognitive/linguistic: WT uses extremely long and complex sentences. He identifies number through ten, and can count at least six objects; he counts to twenty with mixed success, usually forgetting a couple of numbers in the teens. He spells his name, and isolates consonant sounds at the beginnings of words with a pretty high success rate. He knows the names of shapes and colors, including some more obscure ones (turquoise, semicircle).

Social: He's quite friendly with adults and older children. He's not especially interested in kids his age, perhaps because they don't talk as well as he does yet. Kids six months older than he is are preferred, but even then he still prefers adults.

Emotional: Here's the big hitch. He's quite independent, but he doesn't seem able to translate this independence into a desire to do things for himself (washing hands, toilet training, etc.). His independence expresses itself mostly in efforts to resist our directives and desires. Anything that involves the routine of getting ready to get out of the house is likely to produce particular resistence. Ditto naptime. (For some reason, the nighttime routine works fine, and he rarely puts up a fight about it once the toothbrushing/pj donning is over with.) This creates problems for him at his child care center, too, where he strongly resists conforming to schedules.

That's all for now.