What do you mean by not fermenting much? I'm not familiar with that concept. There no little or big, or good or bad fermentation. If you have fermentation, then it's fermenting. Tiny krausen, big krausen, bubbles in airlock no bubbles in the airlock, fast ferment done in a few days, slow ferment that takes weeks- it really doesn't matter.
There is nothing "typical" in brewing...
every fermentation is different, and should not be used to compare one with another...you can't do that.
Just because you may have never had something happen before on your beers, doesn't mean that the yeast are doing anything wrong. It just means that you haven't experienced one of the infinite NORMAL behaviors that living organisms, living wildcards, are capable of.
you can't compare one brew to another. No two fermentations are ever exactly the same.
When we are dealing with living creatures, there is a wild card factor in play..Just like with other animals, including humans...No two behave the same.
You can split a batch in half put them in 2 identical carboys, and pitch equal amounts of yeast from the same starter...and have them act completely differently...for some reason on a subatomic level...think about it...yeasties are small...1 degree difference in temp to us, could be a 50 degree difference to them...one fermenter can be a couple degrees warmer because it's closer to a vent all the way across the room and the yeasties take off...
Someone, Grinder I think posted a pic once of 2 carboys touching each other, and one one of the carboys the krausen had formed only on the side that touched the other carboy...probably reacting to the heat of the first fermentation....but it was like symbiotic or something...
With living micro-organisms there is always a wildcard factor in play...and yet the yeast rarely lets us down. So it is best just to rdwhahb and trust that they know to what they are doing.
Don't assume the worst with the yeast, realize that they've been making beer since long before our great great great grandfather copped his first buzz from a 40 of mickey's out back of the highschool, so they are the experts.
Yeasts are like teenagers, swmbos, and humans in general, they have their own individual way of doing things.
So it's best not to try, and also not to worry about things, based on what you might experience.
The yeast are pros at doing there job, if we let them do it, we rarely have to monkey with our fermentation, once we pitch our yeast. Next time, trust them,