My nieces and nephews

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Just a couple of questions about children.

One of my nieces is only 19 months but can say a lot of words and can even count. She'll probably be reading next. Does this mean she's going to be gifted, or just extroverted? Her development seems to be coming along extremely fast and early. Could this cause autism? I read that autism can occur if the brain develops too fast but I don't know a lot of information about that so forgive me if I'm wrong. She's extremely social but that doesn't mean a thing, as I was a very social toddler too.
My two nephews are 22 months but hardly say any words yet, they just babble. They seem more like typical nearly-2-year-olds than my niece.

My older niece is 5 but is extremely shy when around adults. Is this normal? A couple of weeks ago I went to a family get-together, and when my 5-year-old niece arrived she wouldn't show her face and she clung to her mum with her head buried in her mum's jacket, and every time she spoke she only whispered it in her mum's ear. She followed her mum around the whole time after that and didn't talk to anyone else, even though she knew who most of us were (although I hadn't seen her since she was 3, and she was just as shy then).
Is this normal for a 5-year-old to be this shy? Her mum (my sister) says she's fine at school and was perfectly ready to start school last September.

Oh and Prince Louie covered his ears at the sound of the loud jets at the jubilee and looked rather worried, is that autism?

My youngest daughter was shy as you describe. She had selective mutism. We found that sometimes we could communicate in writing to help work around the difficulty she had in communicating face to face. As she grew older she worked at developing management skills to better deal with an anxiety causing world.

I didn't talk until age two, but that may have been a result of parental neglect. It is suggested that a verbally rich environment is helpful for language skill development.

Babies typically start talking around 9-14 months. Your niece sounds pretty advanced, though not unusually so. Between 18 months and 2 years babies tend to go through a language explosion. She sounds like she's a couple of months early. I doubt she is truly counting, though. Kids at that age can learn the names of simple numbers and might be able to count one, two, three, but true counting comes later.

Your nephews are behind; they should probably be assessed for hearing problems or other issues, to be honest.

Shyness is... very common.

I don't know what age children are supposed to start counting. I didn't think it was 1 and a half. Most 4-year-olds I have met are still learning to count to 10.

I didn't say my first word until I was 14 months, apparently. But I was told I babbled a lot before then and often pointed to objects or people.

My youngest niece seems to be more forward in her development than the other 3 are/were. It seems like she's 1 and a half, going on 5.

Kindergarten around here just tries to get the kids to count to 10 by Christmas.

It's maddening for the kids who've already made it to 20...

All children are different. You haven't described anything that falls out of the range of "normal" to me. Physicians have some key markers they look for but everything else really is up for grabs.

I discourage parents and relatives from reading too much into how a child develops at these young ages. People were always trying to tell me that X meant my son was this and Y meant he was that, and all it did, really, was set up false expectations and make it that much more surprising when I learned he was ASD. Young children should have the gift of developing on their own unique timelines, and revealing who they are to themselves and the adults around them as they are ready, with no expectations or assumptions.

Statistically, most advanced academic gains made by toddlers in the pre-K years will even out with the other kids by 3rd grade or so. If academic activities interest a child and they take to them, great; let them learn. I'm not suggesting anyone shouldn't follow a child's interests and engage with them. Just ... don't use it to set expectations and measure future performance. It's an easy trap to fall into for parents of smart toddlers, but not one that is positive for the child.

I know from experience. I do have smart kids, I still have smart kids, but there were bumps in the road we could have avoided if I had spent less time reading into things and more time just being with my kids in the moment.

^I know of a couple who somehow got both their children diagnosed with autism before they turned 2, even though they were developing at the normal rates (made normal eye contact, had no speech delays, were social, etc). God knows how they managed to get two children diagnosed so young when they seemed to be developing so well. They children are 3 and 4 now but I haven't seen them for a while now so I don't know how they are.

Well the way I see it, all toddlers show autism-like behaviour, so to actually get a diagnosis so very young the toddler needs to exhibit symptoms very prominently, like enough to stand out and cause concern.

Typical toddler behaviour can include hand-flapping, repetitive behaviours, spinning, meltdowns, putting hands over ears, and extreme shyness in some social environments. It's all quite normal, which is why most autistic children that learn to speak at the average age and seem social don't really get a diagnosis until they're children or teens or even adults. I was a social toddler and developed typically, so if I did flap or do other autistic-like behaviours at like age 2 it was probably just put down to typical toddler behaviour.