[john_other_john]

Oh, yes! I do understand, second hand, something of what you face: my friend's daughter called her contemporaries babies and bossed them around, as if playing tea parties with her dolls, too! Now she's 15...

I don't know if I was clear in my editing, because this is a thought I've first attempted to express, since reading your comment nearly 12 hours ago, since when I could hardly think of anything else. --

Just a arbitrary question: if your child speaks as if years ahead, but is not yet two, do you speak to them as their age suggests, or as their precocious age suggests?

I mean, can we as parents afford to "start acting adults" in communication, or should some more "childish" vocalisation be maintained, e.g. to affirm closeness, affection etc? Another issue, but when my mom reached her eighties, I found she couldn't engage with "adult talk", but all I had to do to get her engaging, was intone my voice as I would more a child: I realized she needed the emotional connection, but still understood the rest just fine. Maybe she was excluding the unfamiliar, a natural response to age and frailty which would make her feel unsafe outside family.

I couldn't find the word, earlier, but if I was plotting a critical path analysis for verbal engagement conducted by a mentally and linguistically 10 year old, if this was about understanding emotional contexts, there would be far greater homomorphisms in the chart I plotted, than if I was testing a child for ability to appreciate e.g. related concepts or word / idea groupings. In theory, basic emotion is simpler, but there are more paths being evaluated by a more advanced child, before life experience catches up to their intellectual age, and we measure intelligence not on the basis of finding routes to a very few states, but in way we measure intelligence by ability to distinguish paths, outcomes, and differences. We emphasize the differences, and I question whether when a child wants to know how she will feel, in any given situation, this emphasis on different paths through thought, creates a sense of dislocation or remoteness from comforting emotional states. I think this is the "big wide world, big scary wide world, effect" when our minds boggle at, say, a first sight of a major landscape or city map. There at that many possibilities, and we don't know how we feel about them. And that is us as adults.

(I didn't mean to pretend i know anything serious behind my ideas, just remembered some words that seemed to help describe my thought.)

So I'm harping on about something quite narrow here, about whether we mess up, for example by pushing kids with potential amid a tense or stressful atmosphere, among parents whose love may be felt conditional on performance (and teachers can be vile, one friend's daughter had half her school problems turn out to be ridiculous expectations from one teacher, in the one class she excelled in, so they let her flunk almost every class and this teacher pushed her, "or prove she's not stupid or lazy and just disrupting the other classes" -- sorry letting off steam, the kid's got dyslexia, not known a the time, but was killing it in history because of older family providing 24/7 oral histories at home..) anyhow, trying to return to pre-school..

For myself, this is when things happened for me, just I didn't get that memory back! So I'm reconstructing thoughts best I can...

One friend, a retired head teacher, firmly believed 5 thru 8 are most important. But I believe the 3 or 4 years before then, really are, just not educationally, but obviously affecting education.

I think exposure to adult age ranges is so important, in pre-school years. I grew up in a retirement resort demographic, small town, and exposure to friendly seniors did wonders for my social development, which was still lacking or notably disjointed well into my life. I was constantly challenged, learning how to help folk do gardening, not chores but proper growing and planting etc, whch i loved, and ettung what elderly folk want done, the right way for them is a particular skill. That was specifically very useful, later, comprehending nuanced instructions.

I realize my childhood had some lucky, even idyllic, parts to it. I have been trying to understand my life's calamities linking directly back to education an parenting, pretty much forever.

But back to this: unstructured, semi -formal engagement, and if it can be provided with individual attention, providing a variety of situations, contexts, people, challenges...

If I could create such a possibility for every child, I would, and I would require parents pushing still to my view infants, through formal education plans at that age, to justify themselves formally, before being allowed.

Social exploration, then, is even more valuable to your daughter, in my book.

If there is any way to find her friends who are older, approach parents whose kids need babysitting jobs, with the none too subtle, "you should be paying us for tuition" pitch, ,... No, I'm serious, if not serious I'd say it just like that! Young girls like to help, appreciate the role and status that that attracts to them in society, so as and when such a time comes, sell the idea as the status symbol it really is. Oh, and older kids have better toys, wondering if the older play date can supervise tablet access responsibly or not..

I can't tell from your comment, what nature your daughter's inquiry and inquisitiveness assumes, what direction it takes, whether you have local resources whether countryside or a town with a high young parent demographic, and so I've no idea how you are reaching limits. (Not no idea how you reached a limit, just no idea in what ways possibilities may be limited or available)

The key thing is what human resources do you have?

If your and your wife's parents are far away, I'm not joking, change that! If you've a brother sister or cousin house sharing in the same city, and could persuade them with cheaper rent or such like, get them moving in!

My friend's daughter, who was wowing everyone with her history appreciations, even if they were plagiarised, they were not Wikipedia rip offs, but from her own aural comprehension, is now a 15yr old right little miss, and trouble smouldering into her teen years, but when she was oh simply a whole other level of hard work - and it turns out basically her education was updended by late diagnosis for dyslexia, there's major trouble now in progressing her at all, I'm livid and still speechless how her school was run - I've known with varying degrees of social life bringing me around her parents, from when she was 2 and a half I think now, and almost shocking in her advanced and precocious demand for insights, was immeasurably helped by the variety of people in her immediate environments at home, which was a long while a larger home only ad hoc divided into apartments shared by colleagues of her dad, nobody strange at all, but a constant input from ages of 20 through 70, whom she overwhelmed with demands for what I now realize so belatedly, and not unmeassurable anger, she was unable from at school.

Yet if I have to take her any place, I immediately found a completely charming, curious, engaging, character who made me feel rotten good, when moms in parks complimented me on my friends' daughters' good behaviour. Because she was a delight of proper manners and politeness, on her own, around me. Just back home, chaos resumes. Since she has been analyzing her parents (all agree that is a vital nsurvival skill for her her since burth),usuallywhisoering excuses for them in my ear, I say she'd make a useful sociologist. Just the retaking a year at school...

I can only think, after all that, if you could move to a community where kids can get about, like I did, in our small home town (I doubt you could now, though, this was really when we rarely locked front doors), a gated community even, or if you have links to a church possibly...

We teach parents and sticvtly define in pomotional society how they are supposed to cope with everything all prim and proper, an aligned with neat values and formalized "advancement" I prefer to call it, even if merely "progression" is the uninspiring word i hear from "education professionals". But we are helped out so little what to do, in event we are faced with life unconventional in any way.

There surely must be some online - and real, physical,- communities who share experiences in wealth far beyond my little thoughts. The unmentioned benefit of my friend's family living semi communally during a real tough time, was they had powerfully articulate advocates, when CP got called by a teacher with a ugly attitude and no good reason, one time, and though that nearly became a .., well a nightmare was averted, because CP couldn't twist up two overloaded parents, as I've sadly seen happen a few other families suffer. I really doubt that sort of bonus is important or needed near you, but I mention it as how a little community real close to you, always defends its own. That safety and assurance, is priceless, i think when growing up. It's the next 16 years of your life, I guess, so you can afford to plan slowly and act carefully, and administer cures sparingly since real problems rarely show overnight.

best wishes - j