How old?

Last week I spoke about some primary school girls and said they looked about 8. Last night I realised that I actually don't properly know how to estimate the age of anyone I meet - and have a particular problem with children (my earlier point about these girls still stands because they cannot be older than 11).

When I see a child I don't know if they should be in nursery or if they should be going to school or what level of school they should be at. I don't know at what age children would start talking, when they would be able to read or if they'd be interested in me reading to them. Which book should I read? I get very confused around young children.

When they reach about the age of 4 I am usually okay because - at least from the experiences I have with the children in my best friend's family - they tend to like me and want to talk to me and tell me what they want. If they want me to read to them they will usually present me with a book. If they want to engage in creative play I will usually be assigned a role by them and I can easily fulfil this. And at that age I can usually understand them and what they want me to do.

But at any age before this I am simply lost.

I try to draw on my own experience when trying to establish how old a child is and what it is that they will likely enjoy or want me to do - but I'm not sure when I learned to talk or read or walk or any of the developmental milestones that children go through. I'm not sure I was old enough to remember when my mum first started reading to me - but I do know that she started early; which explains a lot. Even if I had this information I'm not sure I can really generalise from my own case a lot of the time because I was a quick learner. I have seen pictures of myself from when I was very young (I couldn't tell you how old!) and I am playing with letter fridge magnets. I sort of remember learning the alphabet at about the age of 3 or 4 but I don't know if this is typical.

A similar problem arises when I'm watching programs such as '10 Years Younger'. They ask you to estimate the age of the person before and after the makeover. I realise that I can't do that either. What does a 40 year old look like? How can we have these estimates when we're always talking about people who look young for their age and comparing them with people who look older than they are. If nobody who is 40 actually 'looks 40', then how do we know what 40 'looks like'. And the same with any other age.

At least a part of this problem will be in the rise of plastic surgery and expensive creams and the fact that make-up can hide a multitude of sins. But I still stand by my point.

Is estimating ages something that most people can do or do other people get the same problems as I do? It seems to be that everyone else does it with little effort.

Currently listening: Parrot Stories - Alex Day