[rmolin88]

>both my kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old, and my 2 year old is drawing Chinese characters

I honestly find this hard to believe. Maybe you have one special kid that knows the alphabet before one. But two??

The US Department of Education says [0] by age 3-4 start working simple things, like I love you.

[0]: https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html

[klik99]

Reading the guidelines now, "Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as "I love you."" - they weren't WRITING letters before 1. That would be crazy, simply because their muscles aren't nearly developed enough to do that kind of detailed work by 1. My oldest didn't start writing his name out until 3.

Also, the US Dept of Education guidelines are really like "if this isn't happening by this age, then there's a problem" - in terms of brains, kids develop at vastly different speeds - they can jump ahead and then fall behind - I personally didn't get math until a very late age thanks to a good teacher, thank god standardized testing wasn't the norm or else I would have been put on the "slow track". My older son is advanced in some ways, but way behind in others.

There is no blueprint for what kids should know when, and advancement is closer to a random walk than a linear progression. (how the physical body develops, which bounds stuff like speaking, writing, etc is pretty linear though)

[klik99]

It is true, though I'll give two minor concessions/clarifications:

My 2 year old is basically 3 - his birthday is in Feb, close enough that calling him 2-year-old is bending the truth, but not technically breaking it :)

The alphabet thing is totally true - Largely due to Endless Alphabet, which is a rare really well designed learning app - but I will say that learning what sounds go with what alphabet letters is a specific type of education that really plays to the screen strengths and isn't as transferable to other types of education. The fact that I don't have another example like that one to demonstrate the power of educational apps shows that this might be exception rather than the rule.

On Endless Alphabet, when you drag the letters around (something kids get right away) it repeats the letter pronunciation again and again in different ways, and it still cracks them up. Then we finish dragging them, you get treated to a little funny animated video that are really well made. So they could play with that for hours, and knew all the pronunciations from there, and the order from the song (well the song is basically how I still know it). We'd test them when we pass signs on the street/sidewalk, and they did struggle, but both would get all the letters before they turned 1.

You wouldn't believe how badly most kids apps are made, even the big ones like hooked on phonics. Things like supporting multi-touch are essential since they don't have great motor skills, and not nailing that can be really confusing and frustrating for a child, who tends to think everything is because they can't do it, not because the app didn't implement it well. And the rest of the "Endless X" apps teaching other skills (maths, music) don't work as well as Endless Alphabet, I think it works exceedingly well for the specific memorization task of matching sounds to icons.

[siegecraft]

Do you have any other app (or even linux/Windows/Mac software) recommendations? There's just so much crap out there..

[ianhawes]

I also find this hard to believe. We use similar alphabet learning apps with my 15 month old, who is progressing very well in other aspects, but she has not yet grasped the alphabet.

[roland35]

I would not worry about it! It will all even out by the time they get to school and see what all the other children are doing!

[jessaustin]

But two??

Wouldn't we expect the performances of siblings to be correlated?