Harvey Howard is the owner of My Gym Children’s Fitness Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He is a certified special education teacher, elementary teacher, guidance counselor, and student assistance professional located in New Jersey. In this article he outlines a few of the major developmental milestones for children.
First and foremost, parents need to have some flexibility when it comes to developmental milestones. Too often, parents get wrapped up in the specific skills their child is able to do at a young age, and the truth of the matter is different kids will pick up these skills at different ages. In general, parents need to calm down, stop worrying so much, and just let the child be.
Typically, the biggest of these milestones that parents focus on is walking. For example at My Gym we have a child who is what you would call a “scooter.” That basically means he is up and moving around, but he isn’t crawling on all fours or walking—he is just scooting on his bottom with one leg in front of him.
Now some parents would be very upset about this—if their child is not meeting the developmental milestone for walking they think something must be wrong. But truth be told, by the time that child is 3, he is going to be walking and nobody is ever going to know that he used to be a “scooter.”
As long as the child is showing mobility, he is on his way to developing his own patterns to get there and eventually he will get up on two feet. If for no other reason, he’ll eventually get there because walking is just faster and he’ll want to get where he is going in a faster way. So parents don’t need to twist their kids into pretzels to try and get them to stand up and walk. They will do it on their own in their own time.
Parents need to realize that some kids can waddle at 7 months and some who are just getting it together at 15 month. Everyone would do themselves a great service if they just took a deep breath, looked at that fact, and relaxed knowing that their child is on the right track.
Of course, parents should keep putting their children into situations where they can see something and may want to go get it—i.e. by walking. They should also make sure there are things around for the child to grab on to and step up to. And parents should still step in and assist the child with standing up on his feet if it looks like he is getting close. But by and large, most parents would be better off if they could be calm and not overact if their child isn’t walking yet.
Another important thing to mention on the topic of walking—in terms of teaching appropriate behaviors—is that kids take lots of falls. It is part of growing up. But one of the worst things a parent can do is to run over and freak out every time the child falls down. A lot of bumps are just normal falls. That’s how kids learn to walk. But usually they will look up after the fall to find out whether it was funny or whether that was something that hurt. So if the parents and people around the child are laughing and smiling, then the child will laugh as well. In fact, if you set the tone and the environment where the kid thinks falling over is funny, you eliminate 80% of your pain and you really help that child learn how to brush it off and move on.
With that said, you should still be nurturing if the child takes a bad spill or if he bursts into screaming pain. Picking him up and nurturing is exactly what you are supposed to do. But what parents need to realize is that ever fall is not a life-threatening issue, and most of them are just a part of the learning and growing process.
