Age Of Baby. I Am Puzzled

[G54]

The g/f has a baby she says is 1 year and 3 months old. She has consistently given the age too. Yet the baby looks too tall (almost a metre tall) to be so young and the baby also walks and even runs very well. Having seen other children of 2 years old and younger and comparing them against her son I am puzzled.

Is there something I am missing about the age here?

[Boo]

My son was walking at 11 months & has been running for the last couple of months & he is just 1 year & 4 months. He is also over 2 1/2 ft tall. Maybe her baby is just a fast progressor & well developed for her age. I can't see any valid reason why your gf would be lying to you & there is no special age timetable in thai that woul dmean 1 year & 3 months is actualy less than the childs real age.

[Pushit]

The g/f has a baby she says is 1 year and 3 months old. She has consistently given the age too. Yet the baby looks too tall (almost a metre tall) to be so young and the baby also walks and even runs very well. Having seen other children of 2 years old and younger and comparing them against her son I am puzzled.

Is there something I am missing about the age here?

Your point is?

[G54]

My son was walking at 11 months & has been running for the last couple of months & he is just 1 year & 4 months. He is also over 2 1/2 ft tall. Maybe her baby is just a fast progressor & well developed for her age. I can't see any valid reason why your gf would be lying to you & there is no special age timetable in thai that woul dmean 1 year & 3 months is actualy less than the childs real age.

Thanks Boo

Been a long time since I was around babies and watching them develop from crawling to walking etc.

Not that I thought she was lying. I have this strange idea from a distant somewhere that Thai's use a different age range whereby we in the west would say a baby is 2 years old and a Thai would say their baby is 1 year old. Yes, crazy, but sometimes these crazy ideas stick in your head. That would have made the baby 1 year older.

Maybe the baby is going to grow up as fast and as clever as the mother is. Then I will have to go for genetic brain cell implants to keep up with the pair of them

[Boo]

lol, before I had my son I thought any baby that could sit up alone before a year was some sort of child genius, imagine how annoyingly proud (as I am being now ) I was then when my son not only sat up but learned to crawl & could pull himself up on furniture & walk around holding onto it at 8months Child developement wasn't my strongest subject so it was a shock to realise he wasn't the only baby in the world to do this so young

[Tim207]

The g/f has a baby she says is 1 year and 3 months old. She has consistently given the age too. Yet the baby looks too tall (almost a metre tall) to be so young and the baby also walks and even runs very well. Having seen other children of 2 years old and younger and comparing them against her son I am puzzled.

Is there something I am missing about the age here?

You are not alone G54 but you have it backwards. I have heard people using birthdays as age and counting the actual birthday as 1 thus where we would call someone 2 (having completed two years full of life) in Farangspeak they might be referred to as 3 (in the process of their 3rd year of life) by some Thais.

[G54]

It is strange where ages are concerned. some I know have said they are - for example - 25 but in fact they are 24 and 25 next birthday. Others give their actual age. It can get confusing. All part of the fun of life.

[G54]

lol, before I had my son I thought any baby that could sit up alone before a year was some sort of child genius, imagine how annoyingly proud (as I am being now ) I was then when my son not only sat up but learned to crawl & could pull himself up on furniture & walk around holding onto it at 8months Child developement wasn't my strongest subject so it was a shock to realise he wasn't the only baby in the world to do this so young

Yeah, I can see that child development is not what it used to be. It is good to know, though, that this particular child does seem to be doing so well.

I think I also half expected a 'third world' child to be less well developed physically and not as advanced. That in itself goes to show stereotyping and how misconceptions can be applied. We live and learn throughout our lives and I am happy to still be learning. I do hope to be around to see this child grow and develop.Maybe to contribute to his development and his life even if it is in some small way.

Congrats on how the little one is doing, too, Boo.

I do like children. They can be a great source of pleasure as well as pain and heartache but life would be very dull without them. (I'd better be careful here, my family instincts are now being awoken from their dormant state and if the g/f found out about them she might want to get married or something silly )

[philo]

My son was walking at 11 months & has been running for the last couple of months & he is just 1 year & 4 months. He is also over 2 1/2 ft tall. Maybe her baby is just a fast progressor & well developed for her age. I can't see any valid reason why your gf would be lying to you & there is no special age timetable in thai that woul dmean 1 year & 3 months is actualy less than the childs real age.

Thanks Boo

Been a long time since I was around babies and watching them develop from crawling to walking etc.

Not that I thought she was lying. I have this strange idea from a distant somewhere that Thai's use a different age range whereby we in the west would say a baby is 2 years old and a Thai would say their baby is 1 year old. Yes, crazy, but sometimes these crazy ideas stick in your head. That would have made the baby 1 year older.

Maybe the baby is going to grow up as fast and as clever as the mother is. Then I will have to go for genetic brain cell implants to keep up with the pair of them

The OP is somewhat right: Time is a strange thing here. If it is 7.01 AM my wife says it's 'Soong mong leaw' (8AM). Also my wife does not know how old she is: Her parents wrote her birth date on one of the pillars of the house. It was washed away by dust and rain... She was registered at the amphur at an age of 1 year +. Reason: No car, no bus, no motorcycle - and nobody is in a hurry to walk 20+ kilometers.

Also - if a child was not ready for schooling, or was needed for some domestic/agricultural purpose, or could not yet join the military service - they used to go to the amphur and change its age. Is this still being done?

(reason for editing: Typos)

Edited September 25, 2008 by philo

[thaihome]

It is strange where ages are concerned. some I know have said they are - for example - 25 but in fact they are 24 and 25 next birthday. Others give their actual age. It can get confusing. All part of the fun of life.

Actually it is just common sense. No one is ever 0 years old, so you start at 1. Called rounding up

TH

[Boo]

Also - if a child was not ready for schooling, or was needed for some domestic/agricultural purpose, or could not yet join the military service - they used to go to the amphur and change its age. Is this still being done?[/quote]

Not sure how easy it is today with the technology but one of our poster's thai husband had some issues with getting his letter from the police so he could apply for a spouse visa due to his parents having his d.o.b. fixed so he could avoid the draft. He had a fake i.d card which was then lost during the tsunami & there was no record of him in the system to get his police record. He ended up having to "donate" a large sum of money to get his i.d. put back legitmately into the system. This was only in the past year but it was a difficult situation becuase of everything now being on computor whereas 20 years ago when his i.d. was botched it was a lot simpler.

[Tim207]

The OP is somewhat right: Time is a strange thing here. If it is 7.01 AM my wife says it's 'Soong mong leaw' (8AM). Also my wife does not know how old she is: Her parents wrote her birth date on one of the pillars of the house. It was washed away by dust and rain... She was registered at the amphur at an age of 1 year +. Reason: No car, no bus, no motorcycle - and nobody is in a hurry to walk 20+ kilometers.

My ex had a similar situation, she was registered when she was 5 months old. This meant she had two birthdays, 1 real and 1 official. This doubled my odds of remembering one but sadly, also doubled my anual failure rate.

[G54]

It is strange where ages are concerned. some I know have said they are - for example - 25 but in fact they are 24 and 25 next birthday. Others give their actual age. It can get confusing. All part of the fun of life.

Actually it is just common sense. No one is ever 0 years old, so you start at 1. Called rounding up

TH

LOL

[PeaceBlondie]

In two years of teaching Thai teenagers, their stated age seemed to agree with our Western aging system. Maybe some cultures are not so specific. I recall asking a refugee from Guatemala, an indigenous pubescent living in Mexico, his age. He said twelve and his mother said, "No, in two more months you will be fourteen." The kid did not know how old he was!

The stated age of Koreans can be two years older than Western style. But kids want to grow up fast and overstate their age, unless they are abnormally small for their age.

[sbk]

Our neighbor's daughter was speaking words by 9 months, sentences by a year, yet she stayed small, so development and growth varies from child to child.

I remember when my husband and I got married, we needed his parents birthdates for his visa application and he didn't know them. Shame on you, I thought, until we went to their house and asked his mom. "Oh let me go get my id card, I can't remember". Adults don't celebrate birthdays and generally count their age from the year, so my nephew, for instance, who turns 27 at the end of this month (oops! gotta send a card!) would have said he was 27 since January since he is 27 this year.

[yeti]

The stated age of Koreans can be two years older than Western style. But kids want to grow up fast and overstate their age, unless they are abnormally small for their age.

If I'm not wrong Koreans count their age from the conception, ie they consider themselves 9 months older than the western way of counting.

[bina]

some thai start at the one year of age, and some use the way we do... and birthdays, non existent.. if i dont remind anon he wouldnt know when his is, (together with mine actually)...but here its a super big thing... he doesnt even understand the concept that we have of giving large gifts for certain ages (12/13 bar/bat mitzva , 18 = army, etc)... he hasnt a clue s to his parents' birthdays or ages (dont think they know really either), nor his siblings and their children.) as i had asked once so i could send gifts for the kids or whatever.

as far as times, anon does the same: 7:15 = 8:00. he misses busses chronically due to his inability to accept the fact that busses here run on times like 9:47 (well this is israel so the bus is supposed to be at 8:35 but is always late), things are either 9:00 or 10:00 rounded out for him. several thai workers missed their flights back to here because of this .... i remember posting about that years ago on the forum as we discussed this once.

thankfully anon's birth certificate was fed epressed to us for use in the thai consulate here, and here it stays cause it was falling apart by being stored in a shoe box in a wooden platform in a tree in korat .

bina

[IMA_FARANG]

The g/f has a baby she says is 1 year and 3 months old. She has consistently given the age too. Yet the baby looks too tall (almost a metre tall) to be so young and the baby also walks and even runs very well. Having seen other children of 2 years old and younger and comparing them against her son I am puzzled.

Is there something I am missing about the age here?

You are not alone G54 but you have it backwards. I have heard people using birthdays as age and counting the actual birthday as 1 thus where we would call someone 2 (having completed two years full of life) in Farangspeak they might be referred to as 3 (in the process of their 3rd year of life) by some Thais.

An old Chinese tradition is to consider a baby being born as 1 year old...because the nine months in the womb were regarded as the first year of life.

So what a European/westerner/farang might consider a 1 year old baby would be called two years old by that reckoning.

You might see such a method of calculating age in Thailand, especially with families that have some Chinese influence in them. But I think it is considered rather "old-fashioned" or traditional now, and going out of favor.

[coventry]

The g/f has a baby she says is 1 year and 3 months old. She has consistently given the age too. Yet the baby looks too tall (almost a metre tall) to be so young and the baby also walks and even runs very well. Having seen other children of 2 years old and younger and comparing them against her son I am puzzled.

Is there something I am missing about the age here?

Ask to see the birth certificate. If she's nothing to hide she'll show it you straight away. If she deliberates or can't find it then plan B. Almost a meter tall. For a Thai child at I year 3 months that is big as you say. Don't look at their abilities due to age. Some babies are slower or faster accordingly but size is different. In the Thai countryside, if that's where you live, Thai children usually learn to walk late as Their mothers carry them around a lot longer than in a built up area, This is because of working in the fields and the lack of patience to teach them.

Edited September 28, 2008 by coventry

[sbk]

Actually, its the opposite to where I live coventry. Kids here start to walk very early, perhaps even too early. I rarely see a child crawl but see them jump from being held to walking. Potty trained (well to go outside in the dirt) from a very young age.

And its wise to remember that alot of kids these days are getting bigger. My husband's cousin's son is a bit over 6 feet tall, he is about 18.

[coventry]

I rarely see a child crawl but see them jump from being held to walking.

That I have to see.

[torrenova]

Some Thais say they are a year older than they really are on their ID card as they are in the X+1 th year. You have to check IDs carefully.

Had one girl want to work for me but though I really believed her story about not being registered for 2 or 3 years, her ID said she was too young.