coaching Rynus, just not as easy..

I often emphasize on the theory of "every kid is special in their own way, and they will achieve their development milestones sooner or later at their own pace.", whenever my friends comment that Renzo is advanced compared to other kids at his age. But when I re-read my post about Renzo's funny patterns at 17 months, quite frankly I can't really keep my cool when I then look at our 17 months old little man, Rynus Chan, with a vocabulary list he's built to date like this:
- words used most frequently: "mama", "korkor";
- words with most syllables: "mama", "korkor";
- only words he seems to know: "mama", "korkor"...

-_-!!

Am I worried? Nope..
Am I concerned? Nope..
Am I bothered? YES man, I am!! Why? Because I feel that it is more because being the 2nd child of the family, Rynus wasn't getting 100% attention from us, and unfortunately, he could never get that..

I remember our ex-helper singing the ABC song countless times a day, reading number 1-20 to Renzo at least 5 times till she could memorize the entire numbers poster. I recite 6x Chinese poems + 三字经 at least 4 times a day, I sing along the alphabets and their phonics sounds introduced by Leapfrog whenever Renzo is watching the DVD, I carry Renzo to the window and spend at least 15 minutes a day to teach him how to differentiate car, taxi, van, bus, motorcycle, etc. And before bedtime, I sing about 6-7 lullabies to Renzo non-stop till he slowly drifted off to lalaland. My full 4 months of maternity leave, plus another 4 months of working from home, plus another half a year that Daddy worked half day in the morning, definitely allowed us to provide more support to Renzo's academic growth.

But for Rynus, I left him to helper alone since he was 2 months old. In order not to distract or rather say over-stimulate him before bedtime, I usually off the room light after his last feed and carry him quietly till he dozes off. That leaves me with no time to really teach Rynus anything. I tried to make some effort, but it seems that Rynus has super short attention span, he could not even sit still for long to play a toy, so forget about books, or study.. He's a happy kid who eats and sleeps to pass time, playing is fun, but not with the same toy for more than 5 minutes. Renzo is the opposite, he's always attentive and he doesn't need much sleep, so most of the time he's awake, he's absorbing new knowledge! And if he is doing something, he can spend hours on it without getting bored.

So my conclusion, it might not be 100% true but if  you want to know whether your kid is a great learner who can be easily coached, just look at how focused he is with whatever he does.

Last night, I finally decided to put in even more efforts, by introducing all the alphabets and numbers to Rynus before bedtime, while carrying him and walking around his room. Even Renzo seems to be concerned with his little bro's progress and he was trying to teach Rynus "sticker", "octopus" and "water", like a real teacher! I've joked with Daddy many times that Rynus doesn't need to be smart, his job for now, is just to stay cute and sweet, so to keep us entertained and melted all the time. LOL..