[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)