When we find ourselves impressed by precocious babies, we’re usually talking about and sharing videos and stories of ones closer to the “toddler” end of the baby age spectrum. Newborns are beautiful, precious and adorable, of course, but let’s be honest— usually they don’t do that much beyond sleeping, eating, and, ah, digesting.
Usually.
Sometimes, though, a prodigious little treasure comes along to totally blow our minds, and today that baby genius is coming to us from the town of Pennsauken in southern New Jersey. His name is Adam Power – doesn’t that just sound like a superhero’s name?! – and his impressive ability lies in some seriously advanced motor skills.
Put more simply? Adam’s able to feed himself— at only 18 days old.
Now, of course we don’t mean that the little guy’s able to walk into the kitchen and prepare himself a snack. What he can do, however, is hold up a bottle with his teeny tiny little hands all on his own. While those of us without children might not realize — and what parents of much-older children might have forgotten — is that’s a task most babies don’t do until several months after birth, much less a little over two weeks!
So just how advanced is the young Mr. Power? Most of you parents out there probably have an idea, but as the reporters remind us in the video below, every baby is different. So we turned to the guides at Baby Center, and according to them:
Some babies have the fine-motor skills required to hold a bottle — and get it to its target — as early as 6 months. For others, it will be closer to 10 months. The only way to tell if your baby can hold his own bottle is to hand him one and watch what happens.
Apparently, that’s exactly what happened to Adam! His mom, Navy, told ABC 7 Action News that “her mother-in-law gave little Adam a bottle to see what would happen when he was just one week old. To her surprise, the Pennsauken infant tilted it up and started drinking.”
Somehow, we’re not surprised that it was the baby’s grandmother who started this whole thing. After all, if there’s anybody who’s going to believe in a child’s genius even more than his parents, it’s definitely going to be grandma!
Of course, Navy — like all moms — absolutely believes her son is special, but she wasn’t quite expecting him to be showing off this early in his life. Still, once he and grandma revealed his skills, she had to record him doing it to show off to family and friends. She ended up posting it on YouTube, and pretty soon, the simple clip was going viral.
To see little Adam perform his bottle-holding prowess for yourself – you’ve got to see the funny thing he does after he’s had his fill! – and to see the interview with his impressed, doting Mom, check out the video from Chasing News below!
What do you think of this infant’s advanced abilities? Can you think of any explanation for how he came to be able to do it so early? What milestones did your own children hit earlier than you expected them to? How accurate do you think typical baby development predictions really are? Share with us and with each other!