My Kid Is So Smart

I'm going to sound like one of those parents here, so if that annoys you, please stop reading now.

My kid is smart.  Yes, I'm a teacher, but I do not push him in any way to be learning above average concepts for his current age (he's 21.5 months right now).  But...he knows five letters of the alphabet already!  It amazes me how quickly he picks up on these things without us even really trying.  Now I understand why they say to teach kids a foreign language when they are little!

Anyway, about a week or two ago we started bringing back out all the things that were too annoying to keep putting away every time our house was being shown while it was on the market.  This included our magnetic fridge letters and numbers.  I got them out, showed Logan how to stick them back onto the fridge (magnet side against the fridge) and let him go.  Around this same time we had started attending Toddler Time at the library (see that post here).  They have the kids check in every week by finding the letter their name begins with and showing it to everyone.  So I started showing Logan which letter was L for Logan.  It didn't take him long at all to recognize that letter, and then he even started bringing it to me randomly and telling me it was "L Logan."

To make a long story short, now he knows these letters, each of which we associate with someone he knows:
L for Logan
J for Jenn Jenn
P for Papa
M for Mommy and Go Blue (he has always associated the M with Michigan and started saying "Go Blue" every time he saw an M)

Today he randomly brought me the W...and told me it was a W (pronounced dubba-oo)!  This one he learned very quickly only because he was mixing up the M and the W and I would correct him by telling him it was a W and not an M.  So now he knows that one, too - no association needed.

Now, I'm not dumb or naive.  I understand that the reason my not-even-two-year-old knows these letters is primarily because he remembers which color each one is.  I know this because I tested him with our bathtub letters tonight, and he didn't know any of them.  But I still think he's doing pretty well for his age, especially since L and P are both yellow, and M and W are both red.  He knows the differences despite their identical colors.  And it's not like every letter is a different color - he still has to know what the letters look like.

So you can humor me or not, but I think my kid's smart, and I'm proud of him!  And he is proud of himself every time he gets one right, which is absolutely the most important thing to me right now.

Next on the list are T for Troy, D for Daddy, and B for Bubba.