Transcript

CHARLOTTE MOORE:

George was a very noticeable baby he was the sort of baby who people would come up in the street and sort of comment on. And he was very, very alert. And the usual comment was, oh, he must be terribly bright because he gave the impression of paying such an enormous amount of attention to everything that was going on around him.

That's enough.

He slept very, very little-- I mean really little for a newborn. And this has continued to be the case. He's 12 and 1/2 now, but he still doesn't sleep very much. He really did seem to be very advanced right from the start.

That was a strong characteristic. He smiled very early. He stood on his own at seven months old and walked on his own on the day he was nine months old.

He spoke very early. He spoke very, very clearly. He loved stories, and we would read to. Him and he would learn these off by heart.

I remember about 13, 14 months when I started pausing. And he would always fit in the missing word. He was a very good mimic. And he would learn phrases from books or videos or songs or even from just adult conversation. And he would use these phrases quite accurately.

Which often did sound very poetic. Just one little example that springs to mind of many is he was trying to persuade me to walk to the pond. And I said that he couldn't because it was too late. And then the next morning, he said, the water lilies have opened their eyes now, meaning that he wanted to go to the pond.

But he wasn't capable of simply saying, let's go to the pond now. It's morning. So he was like a foreigner with a phrasebook. And he had to flick through and find the right phrase or what he hoped was the right phrase for a situation.

Tell me an animal that is pink.

GEORGE:

A pig.

CHARLOTTE MOORE:

Yes. Can you spell pig?

GEORGE:

P-I-G.