When should a child be expected - Page 3

[elmh23]

I knew at age 4, but my 5-year-old has no clue what our phone number is or our address. She knows how to get to our house or Nana's or grandma's house from any of the areas we go to often though (and it's not a small town.)

Huh, maybe we'll work on this as a summer project.

[limabean]

We started working on it around age 4. The address was easy for him, but since we live on the border of two area codes the phone number was harder (10 numbers to remember instead of 7). We used a tune and that helped, but he really became able to consistently say the phone number correctly when he was about 5.

[lnitti]

My kids are now 2 and 6. I thought it very important that they knew mommy and Daddy's real name. They both learned that young. My 2 year old knows this. First name, last name, her first and last name, etc.

As for address, my 2 year old can tell you parts of it with much prompting. If you just ask for the address without giving her part of it, she doesn't realize what you mean. The 6 year old can give you parts of it too, but still needs some minimal prompting.

My 2 year old told me the other day that her phone number is "62 Thousand". And the 6 year old has been trying forever to get it, but only gets some of the numbers and not in any particular order - lol! She told me her friends number was 30920. She demanded I call her friend!

[Evan&Anna's_Mom]

They knew full names and phone number by the time they left preschool (not sure exactly when). They had to memorize address as part of K, and I taught them both cell phone numbers at the same time.

Before they were in school I thought they should know full names in case we got separated. They learned the home phone as part of the preschool curriculum, though I would have preferred cell phone as that was more likely to reach me.

By the time they were in K the address was good in case someone they were carpooling or playdating with forgot it (happened several times). Cell phone for emergency or for calling and saying "playdate needs to end now" or "baseball practice is over early". By grade 1 and 4, the school expects them to be able to call me on their own if they need something (like to come home sick).

[sunnysandiegan]

I don't know when a child *should* know these things. I think it depends on family circumstances.

My DD was around age 3 when she learned all of our full names. That was real fun when she decided she was going to call me by my full name all the time. When I didn't react, she eventually stopped. At age 9, I'm still "Mommy".

When my dad moved to town, he ended up buying a place in our exact HOA. We live 60-90 seconds apart on foot. (Cannot see each other's homes, though.) DD was 4.5 and she learned his phone number and ours at the same time. I made it a point to have her call grandpa when she wanted to visit him and he made it a point to have her call me when she was ready to come home.

She learned our street address before Kindergarten and learned our complete mailing address (including zip code) later on. She can recite our address easily with no mistakes even though she has never needed to use it, ever.

Our cell phones have a different area code than our home phone. She can call Daddy's cell phone, but doesn't really KNOW it yet. She couldn't just tell someone what it is. She could figure it out if a phone was handed to her, though. Just this school year, I started having her call Daddy during the day sometimes for random reasons to get her used to the idea. Again, she has never needed to know this, so it hasn't really sunk in. She knows my cell phone number is very similar to DH's (because she has heard me say that many times to people), but she has never once called me on my cell and I doubt she knows any part of my number. I'll probably work on both of these numbers more with her over the next few months.