When you're pregnant, everyone wants a happy and healthy baby. No one asks for a colicky newborn or a baby with serious health complications. No one says, "I'll take the one who never sleeps, please!" And this desire is legitimate and true. For me, this remained my dominant feeling for the first few months with Leo. I was so happy that he was (overall) a happy guy and we were so lucky that he was (overall) healthy. Yes, I sometimes said, "Why isn't he a better nurser??" or "Must he spit up after EVERY feeding??", but on the whole, I was pretty happy with the child I had birthed.
I think this focus on happy and healthy is easy to sustain...until you hit the time of the milestones. At the beginning, everyone's baby is pretty much the same. Sure, there are better sleepers and eaters but most of this can be passed off as "just being a baby." (Again, see above - I totally was jealous of people whose babies didn't require intensive training to know how to nurse.) However, there comes a time when you start looking for other certain characteristics like rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking, talking...the list pretty much goes on from there until everyone is comfortably ensconced in their forever resting places.
Leo was on track for his early milestones like smiling, babbling, sitting up, and crawling. It wasn't until later that I began to wish my baby would be doing things other than being happy and healthy - namely, walking and talking. One of the very few downsides of having many friends with kids the same age as yours is that comparisons can readily be drawn once kids start developing at different rates. If we lived in South Dakota in 1800 with no Internet, I wouldn't have known that most kids start walking and talking around a year. I would have just said, "Look at my happy and healthy baby!" But, because we live in 2014 and I have the fortune of knowing many kids the same age as Leo, it became "Look at my happy and hea...WHY ISN'T HE WALKING AND TALKING?!?"
Look, of course we all want our kids to be the best at most things and maybe the second best at one thing(you know, to keep them humble). We worry about what people might think about our kids - are they smart enough? cute enough? athletic enough? We want them to be good at something and for that something to help them to be successful in life(hello, someone needs to pay for our retirement). But as an anxiety ridden mother, my main concern when Leo wasn't meeting milestones was that there was SOMETHING WRONG. At the end of the day, I NEEDED to know that he would eventually do all these things. Even though as a teacher I say to parents all the time, "Kids develop at different rates. All kids have strengths and weaknesses. STOP JUDGING AND WORRYING ABOUT YOUR CHILD AND ENJOY THEM.", it becomes much harder to remember these ideas when it is your own child. So, when Leo took his time walking, I was DEEPLY concerned that he had some sort of undiagnosed motoric issue that would probably prevent him from ever walking, not the more likely diagnosis of "he's just developing at his own pace." And, when he finally did walk, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and moved right along into worrying about his talking. You would think that I would say to myself, wow, maybe he'll just talk when he's ready just like he walked when he was ready, but nope, right into undiagnosed cognitive issue that would prevent him from ever talking. I'm just so productive.
When Leo didn't have the requisite "three words at 15 months" milestone happening, we decided to have him evaluated for early intervention. This is an evaluation that you request through your doctor and is basically the most anxiety provoking thing you can do as a parent. An evaluator comes to your house armed with toys and a list of skills that your baby should have. They proceed to "play" with your child while keeping in mind the set list of skills and, at the end, they give your child an "age" based on the skills that they are demonstrating or not demonstrating. Leo was on target for physical, adaptive, and social skills but was the equivalent of around 10 - 12 months for cognitive and speech skills. This was quite the 1-2 punch at the time. Even though we had a happy and healthy kid, I couldn't stop worrying about the results of the evaluation and what it meant for his future. That's right, I was totally predicting everything about Leo's path in life based on this evaluation. To make matters worse, I also knew that there were many wonderful children out there who have real delays and diagnoses. Would I worry about or judge those children in the same way that I was judging my own? Of course not.
Leo has been enrolled in speech and cognitive therapy for around 5 months now and is making lots of progress. He's fully up to speed in the cognitive arena and while he still has speech delays, he's made huge gains since he began. I think these positive developments have made it easier for me to just enjoy Leo for who he is - a happy, healthy toddler. But, I'm working on just appreciating these qualities no matter where he is developmentally and not worrying that it might be indicative of a significant problem if he's behind in some areas. It's interesting how every time he gets sick, it's so easy to focus on just wanting the smile to be back on his face and a healthy body to be behind it! That's what's really important.
I think this focus on happy and healthy is easy to sustain...until you hit the time of the milestones. At the beginning, everyone's baby is pretty much the same. Sure, there are better sleepers and eaters but most of this can be passed off as "just being a baby." (Again, see above - I totally was jealous of people whose babies didn't require intensive training to know how to nurse.) However, there comes a time when you start looking for other certain characteristics like rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking, talking...the list pretty much goes on from there until everyone is comfortably ensconced in their forever resting places.
Leo was on track for his early milestones like smiling, babbling, sitting up, and crawling. It wasn't until later that I began to wish my baby would be doing things other than being happy and healthy - namely, walking and talking. One of the very few downsides of having many friends with kids the same age as yours is that comparisons can readily be drawn once kids start developing at different rates. If we lived in South Dakota in 1800 with no Internet, I wouldn't have known that most kids start walking and talking around a year. I would have just said, "Look at my happy and healthy baby!" But, because we live in 2014 and I have the fortune of knowing many kids the same age as Leo, it became "Look at my happy and hea...WHY ISN'T HE WALKING AND TALKING?!?"
Look, of course we all want our kids to be the best at most things and maybe the second best at one thing(you know, to keep them humble). We worry about what people might think about our kids - are they smart enough? cute enough? athletic enough? We want them to be good at something and for that something to help them to be successful in life(hello, someone needs to pay for our retirement). But as an anxiety ridden mother, my main concern when Leo wasn't meeting milestones was that there was SOMETHING WRONG. At the end of the day, I NEEDED to know that he would eventually do all these things. Even though as a teacher I say to parents all the time, "Kids develop at different rates. All kids have strengths and weaknesses. STOP JUDGING AND WORRYING ABOUT YOUR CHILD AND ENJOY THEM.", it becomes much harder to remember these ideas when it is your own child. So, when Leo took his time walking, I was DEEPLY concerned that he had some sort of undiagnosed motoric issue that would probably prevent him from ever walking, not the more likely diagnosis of "he's just developing at his own pace." And, when he finally did walk, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and moved right along into worrying about his talking. You would think that I would say to myself, wow, maybe he'll just talk when he's ready just like he walked when he was ready, but nope, right into undiagnosed cognitive issue that would prevent him from ever talking. I'm just so productive.
When Leo didn't have the requisite "three words at 15 months" milestone happening, we decided to have him evaluated for early intervention. This is an evaluation that you request through your doctor and is basically the most anxiety provoking thing you can do as a parent. An evaluator comes to your house armed with toys and a list of skills that your baby should have. They proceed to "play" with your child while keeping in mind the set list of skills and, at the end, they give your child an "age" based on the skills that they are demonstrating or not demonstrating. Leo was on target for physical, adaptive, and social skills but was the equivalent of around 10 - 12 months for cognitive and speech skills. This was quite the 1-2 punch at the time. Even though we had a happy and healthy kid, I couldn't stop worrying about the results of the evaluation and what it meant for his future. That's right, I was totally predicting everything about Leo's path in life based on this evaluation. To make matters worse, I also knew that there were many wonderful children out there who have real delays and diagnoses. Would I worry about or judge those children in the same way that I was judging my own? Of course not.
Leo has been enrolled in speech and cognitive therapy for around 5 months now and is making lots of progress. He's fully up to speed in the cognitive arena and while he still has speech delays, he's made huge gains since he began. I think these positive developments have made it easier for me to just enjoy Leo for who he is - a happy, healthy toddler. But, I'm working on just appreciating these qualities no matter where he is developmentally and not worrying that it might be indicative of a significant problem if he's behind in some areas. It's interesting how every time he gets sick, it's so easy to focus on just wanting the smile to be back on his face and a healthy body to be behind it! That's what's really important.
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