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Can your 4 year old...


momma2three
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Can your 4 year old give any sort of reliable retelling of anything that happened today?

 

Can s/he draw anything recognizable?

 

My 4 year old cannot seem to do either. Is this something to be concerned about? He turned 4 in February, so he's still a young 4. But at this age my older daughter could do both without any problem. I know that comparing your children is wrong and all, but the difference seems particularly vast to me and I want to know if I'm off base.

 

We're on vacation, and I'm keeping a travel journal for him. I did this exact same thing with her when she was this age (2 months younger, to be exact) and it's adorable. She dictated what we did that day, and then drew a picture. It's one of my favorite things, because her take on the events of the day were sometimes so different from mine, and the pictures are really cute. Hardly about to send them off to the Louvre, but recognizable stick figures and buildings and whatever.

 

When I ask him what we did today, he looks blank. I ask leading questions, and he still looks blank. Then he starts guessing. Some of his guesses are from TV shows he watched ages ago. I finally get something down, and he gets all excited to draw something next to the text. But al he makes is a big scribble. He holds the marker right, if that matters.

 

Do you think it's something I should ask his pediatrician about, or does he just not really care? I remember at her 5 year appointment the pediatrician wanted to see DD draw a person (I guess that's a milestone?) and I know that's another 10 months off, but it doesn't even really look like we're headed there.

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The range of normal for 4 year olds is huge. I have taught preK for several years and every year there are children who love to talk and tell you stories, can write their names and letters with ease and draw wonderful pictures of people with all their parts including eyelashes. Then there are the children who only talk if necessary and every time they get a writing utensil in their hand make lots of scribbles. Most kids fall somewhere in between but both ends of the spectrum fall within the range of normal.

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My daughter didn't do very well at narration until the end of her 4th year, I see a huge jump now that she is 5. My son didn't do good at narrations until he was almost 6. Every child is different. My son doesn't hear what I read, and needed to read well enough to read the passage on his own to do a narration.

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My ds4 soon to be 5 can give wonderful playback/narration but that's just his thing. He's been doing it since he could talk (which was late). Drawing things well, it's just not happening. We do some kind of art just about everyday for the last 2 years, everything is blobs. (But he can tell great stories to go with the blobs.). Recently he has begun to draw happy and sad faces. I'm hoping by his 5th b-day (next month), I'll get a stick figure. Myds3.5 does not really retell things like his brother did at his age but he has on occasion drawn a stick figure or two.

 

So I would say don't worry.

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My oldest at four couldn't do narrations and couldn't draw anything. I had to ask his preschool teacher what happened that day. Now he is six and can tell me what happened that day, write stories and draw pictures. My youngest is four years, three months and he can tell me a detailed account of his day. When I misplace something he is usually the one who can remember where I put it and what we were doing when I set the item down.

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My 4yo can only just in the past few weeks occasionally tell about her day. She turns 5 in a month. Her drawings are becoming semi recognizable if you use your imagination... But 6 months ago they were scribbles. And she LOVES to draw so she actually tries. Many her age aren't interested and still do the scribble thing.

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I would not be worried in the least. My 4 year old is odd. He knows all letters and sounds but since he is a lefty he has NO recognizable pencil grip. He also insists on spelling his name wrong, He won't retell the day but will give you his analysis of it lol.

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My son just turned 4 a few weeks ago.

 

In general, he can't tell you what he/we did that day. He is also oddly baffled by the daily sequence of events even though we stick to a pretty normal routine. He asks questions like, "Did I already wake up today?" and (right after dinner) "Why didn't we eat today?"

 

His drawing is changing in theory, if not in practice. He still scribbles just like he did 6 months ago, but now he tells you what the scribbles are: a dragon on a bike, a house full of soap bubbles, etc. Occasionally we pull out Kumon's My First Book of Drawing and use those to practice fine motor skills and using shapes to draw something recognizable.

 

Wendy

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My 4.5 year old just this week started to give narrations of what went on in her day, but she still uses timing incorrectly. For instance, she will say yesterday when she is talking about this morning, and if she happened to take a nap, gets pretty confused when I correct her.

 

Her drawing is still a lot of scribbling, but is slowly starting to look a little, kinda/sorta like what she tells me it is...if I really, really use my imagination. :laugh:

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When my kids were 4...

 

They absolutely could not give a decent recollection of the day nine days out of ten. Sometimes they would have great details about something totally different, like a random day two weeks before. They just weren't that linear.

 

They could draw a few things that were recognizable. They could draw shapes when I asked them and could occasionally do a simple stick figure sort of thing. And they could write a very messy version of their names. But they did "modern art" a lot more often than anything representational.

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DD (5 in June) can narrate no problem. She's been telling us stories and relaying events since about 2.5, actually. But she can barely draw a recognizable circle. :/ Kids develop at their own pace and not by a milestone chart. They'll get there when they're ready.

 

 

Exactly this....Down to my DD turning 5 in June, lol.

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My 4 year old was exactly like yours. I tried a lot to get him to recall things as well as worked on his drawing and coloring skills. Everything he drew was a scribble. He could not draw a circle or a straight line. In desperation, I even hired an art tutor to teach him drawing once a week to see if he could get through to my son. We gave it all up because it was so futile. Then, when he was 4 years and 9 months old, he went through a growth spurt - that seemed to affect his brain too in a good way. He could remember many things that happened in a day and also his drawing skills improved to the point where we could recognize objects that he drew. He still is not good at drawing at 5, but it gets better when they reach 5.

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DS 4.5 can talk about things he did that day but he rarely draws anything recognizable. Although he can tell me what he did he often won't really tell me what happen at school if I ask. I attempted handwriting with him and he just wasn't ready for it. He can do something that resembles a letter but his formation is really off. He has a really good memory and picks up on lots of details of what he hears. He can sound out words and spell simple words but he isn't fluent. I think my dd could draw at that age a little and do some letters but it was barely recognizable. I'm not sure if she could narrate her day or not. I think she could but she still has trouble with that at 6 in certain situations.

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My 4.5 daughter can. Around 2 or 3 we began retelling our day while lying in bed at night until she feel asleep. We'd start off by saying in a calm, relaxing soft voice saying "Let's talk about it. Let's talk about our day". Before you knew it, she refused to go to bed without doing it. Eventually she began doing it all by herself once we opened up with the line.

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I love these kinds of posts because it assures me that my kid isn't the only one! My 4.5 year old will answer my husband's, "What did you do today?" with "We went to the zoo" or something similar - even if we haven't been to the zoo in months. I've found that he can tell me what happened in a book I just read him, though. We're working on narration, and I think that will help.

 

He also can't draw or write much of anything. He just recently started making stick figures with HUGE heads and eyes. That's the first non-scribbled drawing I've ever seen from him. :laugh:

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Maybe it's a difference between boys and girls?

 

Dd4 is pretty good recalling events (in her own quirky ways) and can draw simple people, butterflies, houses etc. Mostly just people with huge crowns on their heads lol.

 

My nephew however who is about 2 months older. The vacation journal would not work with him at all. He does have some speech delay, and he is a scribble and run away because he isn't interested at all fella.

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I have three in this age range, 4.5yo boy/girl twins and a 5.5yo boy. Their abilities to do the things you listed vary WIDELY. My daughter can (and does!) retell you the events of EVERY day in excruciating detail. She draws, she colors, she writes. The boys? Yeah, not so much. They can usually give you the "big event" of a day, but just as often if you ask them what the best part of their day was, they'll tell you something random like "We ate sandwiches." True, but it was AT THE AQUARIUM. They seem to miss the point a lot. :lol: Both boys can write their names, but it doesn't look good. And my oldest one is just as likely to write the 4 letters of his name out of order as in the correct order. He (the 5.5 yo) just learned to draw a person with a body last week, like I literally had to show him how to NOT make the person's legs come straight out of their heads. I thought all kids grew out of that phase? He didn't.

 

Short answer--I'm not worried. I don't think you should be, either.

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  • 1 month later...

I think every child is very differnet. My ds could draw and retell a story very well from a very young age. My dd wasn't really good at this until age 7. I didn't focus on it much . One thing that seemed to help is we started reading a chapter book. One chapter daily then she drew a picture. I did this with her daily and within 2 weeks I saw a huge difference. One thing that seemed to work well was letting her know that art doesn't have to be perfect. She hated to color or draw until I told her this. Once she understood her art improved by leaps and bounds. I would not worry about it at this point and sounds like you are already working on it.

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DS (almost 4) can summarize the day and draw identifiable pictures. DD (2) can summarize, but I can't tell what she's drawn just by looking at it. DS is a chatterbox and it rubbed off on DD, I guess. I remember my brother having trouble with the whole concept of yesterday/today/tomorrow, though. To him, yesterday meant any time in the past, and tomorrow was any time in the future. So there's definitely a pretty wide range at that age.

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Sounds normal to me. :) My current 4 year old can draw reasonably well (I'm still floored at the alligator he drew one day - it really looked like an alligator!), but my oldest at this age could NOT draw anything. He didn't even get into stick figures until he was 5. At Kindergarten orientation (private school), the teacher asked the kids to draw a picture of their family while she talked to the parents. There were some little girls who had these elaborate drawings of their families with proper bodies (not stick figures) and a sun shining and flowers and birds and such. Most of the boys drew stick figure families. My son? He took 5 crayons in his fist and drew a "rainbow". :lol: Now he is capable of drawing normally (he's about to turn 9), but whew... it took a while. He still mostly draws Star Wars stick figures with light sabers. :rolleyes:

 

As far as narration goes... I think there is a reason why both SWB and CM recommend starting oral narrations at age 6. Some kids can do it earlier, but I think on average, most kids probably aren't ready at 4 years old. None of mine have been able to tell a coherent story at that age, and they've all focused on strange things (like the PP mentioned the sandwich being focused on and skipping the aquarium part :lol:). My 4 year old will often come home from errands with Daddy on Saturday morning (this is a weekly thing), and he might tell me they went to 4 stores, or he'll tell me they ate BBQ (they eat BBQ at the same place every week), or he might tell me they went to Lowes (they go there every week). But he does not tell me step by step what they did or where they went. That's way above his ability level, despite him being a very talkative kid. :)

 

My 6 year old was in speech therapy this past year. The SLP said that at the beginning of the year, she'd ask what he did the night before, and he'd start with going to bed, then eventually end with eating dinner. :D He'd leave out major details and definitely couldn't tell a story. Earlier this year, around February or so (a few months after he had turned 6), something suddenly clicked, and he was able to retell a story. He could finally tell you in order what he did last night. He could retell a story he learned in Bible class (with great detail - frankly, I was shocked the first day he did this!). His SLP was amazed at the difference. Now, I think he'll find WWE easy. :D

 

Anyway, I don't expect a 4 year old to be able to properly retell a story, nor do I expect them to be able to draw recognizable objects. My oldest (who is advanced in reading and math) couldn't even write his name at age 4. My current 4 year old is an anomaly in my family, actually being able to write his name and sometimes draw recognizable pictures. He has crazy good fine motor skills (he could even buckle his car seat and button his shirts at age 3 - my other kids couldn't do either of those things until closer to 5). My middle son was more "average" in the fine motor skill department. I think he could kind of write his name at age 4 and draw some stick figures (copying his big brother's stick figures). My oldest could do neither of those things at age 4. He can do them now. :)

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