I have a baby in care (15 months old) and he's been here for 3 months. The parents only speak French at home and I'm teaching him English along with his little friends. His parents are so impressed because he's saying the English and French words together sometimes so they know he understands the meaning of the words in both languages. He obviously has a high aptitude with languages.

However, I have a little girl who just started talking at about 20 months of age. All of a sudden she started learning words like crazy and we were starting to worry. She turns 2 this week and she's doing great now. Then I have a 25 month old boy who has been speaking clearly and repeating everything everyone says for months and months. However, he can't understand questions and answers and just repeats everything that others say over and over and over. So he has language skills but no comprehension skills and it's maddening.

One trick I use is that I talk to the babies whatever I'm doing: let's put on your booster table, time to wash your hands, show me the car, whatever, just talk about everything you are doing while you do it and they learn the words quicker. I swear it helps anyway.

My point is that they are all soooooo different! But they all catch up if there isn't any developmental problems.

As far as a child picking up a toy, dropping it and moving onto something else without cleaning it up, oh.my.god that is all I do, ask them to clean up the last thing they were playing with and run around tidying up blocks, toy dishes, small cars, dolls and blankets and puzzle pieces and how on earth do they manage to cover the whole room within 2 minutes???