21–30 of 62 posts
If you make sure the kid is safe and happy and has some good opportunities and don't push, the rest will take care of itself.
This is quite common. You have kids who talk and walk late, but they might be strong in other forms. I see it sort of like assigning skill points, they just grow in different direction, but you're not the one who gets to pick where.
Probably the worst thing you can do is send them to a bad nanny. We've had several, whose roles I describe as "keeping them alive" but these will often be little different than putting them in cages like a chicken. Those development points are wasted only because they're forced to not develop. I think school can have a similar effect. A lot of teachers and classmates can be envious and vicious, so kids try not to stick out.
Our first child was behind the other kids, but second and third were far ahead. I'd say there's a strong role model effect too. The kids imitate older siblings. Older sis draws, and the youngest will pick up a pencil at 1 year old. So don't worry too much if your first child is statistically behind.
Also from experience, my kids can stress themselves plenty. They will get pissed that they can't walk or put on their pants or talk. As a parent, just give them hugs and reassure them. Adding to the stress has the same negative effects as scrum.
We have two kids, both in college. The milestones don't matter unless they are a true diagnostic indicator of something wrong. Yes we stressed over the milestones anyway. You will too. That's as normal as everything else you're experiencing. It's worse if you know other parents, because then you'll start comparing. Don't do that.
Straightforward fatigue could be part of what you're experiencing, so you should try not to blame yourselves.
A thought that occurs to me is that the brain is to a large extent self organizing, and also making up a lot of its own stimuli. It is not a function that produces certain outputs upon certain inputs. There are no specs, no unit tests, no code coverage, the code is not human readable, there is no diff. Your daughter is doing most of what's important.
I have a 9 m.o. myself. Kid’s way out of whack, plays my (digital) piano somewhat convincingly (can’t hack notes and scales, of course, but alternates hands and sounds musical in a Cecil Taylor kind of way) but seems to be behind with the babbling. I mean, whatever — I didn’t sign up for a gifted child, I signed up for a child period.
It may help to remember the poem that says “your children are not your children — they’re sons of Nature…”
He said our generation have bane of abundance of time and money we end up inventing problems.
He said sitting and having a close watch on kids like the way we do is like digging everyday to see if a seed you have seen is growing well.
Give the seed a bit sun, soil, water and time.
Same way give your child safety, love and guidance.
All of us learnt to walk one way or another don’t we.
You guys are going to be great parents for her. Just relax and enjoy the time watching her grow.
Just let it go, focus on soft skills like being nice and patient, eat not too much crap and accept some authority and you'll be fine.
As to the practice, on its own terms: your doctor is at least partially right in that if -- in the unlikely case -- your child is suffering from some kind of developmental delay then it's better to know this sooner rather than later (before she starts getting teased by other kids, or put in the "slow" bin by teachers, say).
That said -- there's a lot of variability in how people develop, and some people do just fine even after egregious-seeming delays (such as not being able to learn to read by a certain age, for example).
So the good news is you can listen to the doctor's advice -- "your child should be doing with their eyes after N months" -- but you don't need to keep scorecards and checklists, and you certainly don't need to get her to "perform" -- à la Scrum -- on anybody's schedule.
Just think of these checks as an early-warning protocol for potential (but unlikely) difficulties down the road -- nothing more.
They tried to get us all freaked out that our kid had a speech delay and that we needed speech therapy, and possibly other interventions. It was obvious that he understood what we were saying and could act on what we were saying so it seemed to us like his lights were on and that the language parts of his brain were working. Plus friends of ours had been down this road and gave us similar advice.
In a few more months he started talking and talking and talking, and hasn’t shut up since.
He’s in first grade now and his teacher is super impressed with his elevated vocabulary, and generally how articulate he is.
Sometimes kids just take their time getting somewhere.
Of course, there are times when something might be genuinely wrong, but if your kid seems happy and healthy and their “lights are on”, for lack of a better expression, just enjoy the hell out of this time because it goes crazy fast, and you never get it back.