Well that did not go well. We're winding up a long weekend with all the kid's cousins, ages 11, 8, 5, 2, 18 mos, and 9 mos., and the kid has been bouncing around like a ping pong ball. It's like she has no sense at all of how she should act, like a baby, a big kid, or an adult, and as a result, she's been acting like a whiny, clingy, petulant mess.
It's not like she doesn't know all the cousins, but I'm definitely getting the sense that she is inexperienced dealing with kids of various ages. [As if to drive it home, she is, unlike almost all the other cousins, very happy to chat at length with the adults.We are officially raising one of those weird Manhattan miniature adult-children.]
And to top it all off, the kid's gone completely retro on the toilet training, which'd be fine if only she bothered to tell us before she had three accidents a day. We had to send out for diapers, because we'd only brought enough for nighttime and the plane. It's all weird and supremely annoying.
On the other hand, it's also fascinating to see kids at different stages--2.5, 2, 1.5, 0.75--all at once, and to see the similarities, and the differences in their development [and my siblings' parenting styles].
There's the baby who won't use a pacifier and who rolls back and forth across the floor. The one who's still on the binky, even after her mother once tried to go cold turkey by snipping the nip off in front of her. And there's our kid, who has eschewed all cute, short nicknames and insisted on calling it a "facifider", and who only/still uses it for bed. Tip of the iceberg, and a fresh reminder that whatever the commonalities, each kid and each family is different.
One of the best things about my early experience in Japan as an English teacher was getting to go to kindergarten and elementary school on the days my middle school didn't need me... I'm pretty ready for kids from 3-15 -- another year and a half and my own kid will be in my "zone". :)
Interesting about the toilet training regression... we had our daughter almost ready to do it at 14 months (!) and then my parents came for a visit, promptly screwing up our routine and we've never made it back to where we were before.
It's not just NYC. We live in the suburbs of a mid-sized burg in Tennessee, and our 2-year old daughter does a lot of the same things. Chit-chatty with adults, but not entirely sure how to deal with kids her own age. A week at the beach with my brother, his wife, and their kids helped some. We've started sending her to pre-school 2 days a week, partly so she can learn to deal with other human beings.
But man, the first day of school yesterday completely blew up toilet training. The school prefers pull-up diapers, so she got really confused, and had at least 3 "misses" yesterday afternoon after she got home.
Our daughter will be 30 months on 9/1 and she has been doing the baby-big kid thing for a while now. And she totally avoids other kids as if they were aliens, gravitating instead toward adults. We live in Wichita, KS so it's definitely not an urbanite rearing problem.
Is your kid unusually literate? (We always get startled looks from people who say they have never seen such a small child speak so well.) Maybe they just want to talk to other people on their own level?! Who knows. But I think we're in the same situation.
The first day of school brings out the worst in toddler bladders apparently. Our daughter has had zero daytime trouble over the last 8-10 months. Yesterday was her first day of preschool. Accident on the playground. Fortunately, it is barely noticeable when a three year old does it. She knows that she probably should have told the teacher but is not embarassed about the accident. I'm curious to see how often it will happen until she gets used to all the excitement.
Rather than an urban/suburban thing, the talks-well-with-adults-and-not-kids thing is most likely an only child or at least a no-siblings-close-in-age thing....and it's probably more common on our little island than elsewhere due to demographics.
It drives me crazy when parents use baby-names for everything and don't correct the kid when they use it.
One of my cousins does this with their kid and she sounds retarded (I mean speech-challenged or something like that) and the kid is almost 5.
We have been sending our daughter to a small daycare (5 kids) since the age of 1 and we found it has helped her understanding the world (parents/kids/aliens)
We thought we had the whole diaper thing wrapped up (she is now 3) ... until she wet her bed 2 days in a row. We have went back to pull ups.. I am not sure if we jumped the gun a bit too fast?
What is the age of your daughter/son?
My daughter's almost 3 and still doesn't relate to kids well and goes to daycare. She doesn't relate badly she just doesn't have much interest in them. I think at 3 they're only just beginning to move beyond parallel play with peers and getting interested in playing with others.
I don't have much help in toilet training regression. But things could be worse my co-workers daughter took out her unhappiness in getting a new sibling on her mother by peeing in her lap every time she got into it the new child's 3rd weekend home.