When should I worry about my baby not walking?

the milestone comparison game that's so easy to fall into

I asked my son’s physical therapist at 14 months, “So, when do we…”

“Worry?” she filled in for me, reading my mind.

“Yeah… that.”

“We don’t. He’s showing all the signs of progressing and he’ll walk when he’s ready.”

This is absolutely my son’s story and not everyone’s story. I’m learning that’s the problem with Google. We want answers, yes, but we also want answers specifically catered to our individual child’s abilities and temperament and unique rhythm. We want to put in qualifiers along with our search to pinpoint solutions for the independent (read: stubborn) child who has attended regular physical therapy since he was five months old and was born prematurely and makes his own rules for when and how he’ll move to the next milestone.

When he started crawling, he army crawled like he was training in bootcamp and the physical therapist thought he might skip using his knees all together. But then, one day, he engaged his knees and never stopped.

He went on to crawl at lightening speed, so fast that anyone in public would stop and say, “WOW, he’s really fast.” So he had zero interest in learning to walk. Why would you? If you can get where you want to go quickly, why switch to something where you need balance and patience and you’ll probably fall down trying?

I’ve spent a lot of months comparing my son’s walking progress to everyone else’s baby. I would tell myself that I wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t care about that superhuman baby who walked and talked fresh out of the womb. Good for them. I found myself saying, “Well, he’s very advanced in teeth,” like I had earned a Girl Scout badge to put on my new-mom vest for my child’s exceptional dental achievement. As if we haven’t all suffered immensely in this house for how quickly he popped every tooth in his mouth.

Just as soon as I would tell myself that I wouldn’t compare him to anyone else, I would turn around and Google some variation of, “When should I worry about…”

Really, I just desperately want life to be fair. I want to get out the reward for exactly the amount of effort that I put in.

For the last ten months, I’ve schlepped my baby in his car seat, with the bulging diaper bag hiked up on my back (neurotically overpacked as a first-time mom), and a nursing pillow or a lunch box to visit the physical therapist and feeding specialist once a week. Eventually it changed to twice a month, but in those early days, it felt like I was running a marathon every time I had to get him to appointments 30 minutes away at a specific time. We were always late and I was always winded and my hands were always so full.

I nursed in front of strangers. I held my baby when he flailed his whole body on the floor halfway through our appointments. I made friends with the therapists and specialists who listened patiently to my mountain of worries. I learned and learned and learned. I came home with notes and diagrams and workout plans.

I cried a lot.

Why did we have to go through all of this while other moms took their babies to the library for story time? Why did packing everything up and getting him to these appointments all fall on me? What did I do wrong?

***

At nearly 15 months, my son took his first steps. We were at a playground with his Grandmom and there was a rainbow in the sky.

“I keep thinking about the rainbow,” my mother-in-law said later. “It was so unexpected.”

It came out of nowhere. The whole sky was glowing that evening with no signs of rain, the sounds of clanging softball bats and balls hitting mitts and cheering from the field nearby, a little girl on the swings next to us who whispered to her friend, “Wait… are YOU the one who wrote the love note?!” She blushed.

The crisp smells of fall hit my nose and the sky showed off and my son walked. It came out of nowhere. Well, it felt like it in the moment, but the truth is this: he walked when he was ready.

I did nothing right or wrong to get to that moment in time.

I’m not a better mom because my son can walk.

***

Last night, my son put his tiny hand in my hand as we walked down the windy lane at our house that’s littered with acorns, something I imagined doing before he was even born and I walked down to the mailbox rubbing my round belly while I whispered, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...” Now, he’s here, he’s really here, and we’re walking together.

The leaves are finally changing. All the pops of red and orange and yellow startle me every year, as if I’ve forgotten how beautiful it all becomes in due time.

Sometimes the unexpected catches you off guard when you’ve felt stuck with no progress for so long. Suddenly, you start to believe that change is possible. People really can grow and change and learn to take one step at a time.

When I’ve shared the video of my son’s first steps with family and friends, many have commented, “He looks so proud!”

He’s a cautious and stoic observer by nature (we call him Mr. Indifferent), so his smile speaks volumes. He’s so, so proud. And he wobbles all the way until he falls into my arms.

Give these a try…

1. This toy is a must buy for any baby shower. We started our physical therapy journey when our doctor noticed my son had a head tilt and torticollis, which just means he had a stiff neck and it was painful for him to turn to one side. Our PT used this light up singing toy on day one to encourage him to turn his head both ways while on his back. It was magical. We ordered one on the car ride home. This thing became his drug. On some particularly bad vaccine days when he was tiny, we would play it over and over again and it was the only thing that stopped his crying. Just sayin’… worth the $10.

2. As a first-time mom, I knew nothing about “tummy time.” Now I know that it’s critical for them to develop the strength to sit and crawl and walk. We waited a while to fully commit to tummy time, so by then, my son hated it. We used this water mat and he grew to love his swimming time.

3. When he was ready for pulling up and standing, our physical therapist used gel cling ons on a big mirror on the wall to encourage him to reach and stay standing. She would pull them off and stick them again in different spots, higher and to both sides. He loved it. Here’s a cute fall themed set.

“The boys were doing great [in their new schools], but they had a lot of questions, and what I realized was that there were deeper questions under their questions—they were asking about piano and recess and buses and lockers, but what they were really asking was, Have I failed? Have I fallen behind? Am I dumb?

I said, Oh my darlings, you’re not dumb—you’re new. We’re all new. And we’re not failing. But we’re learning, and it’s exhausting and humbling and fun and hard…

I guess I haven’t learned that yet. I wrote that sentence because I wanted us to have a common language for what it means to be a learner, a beginner, to be curious and make mistakes and get back up. To ask questions and figure it out as we go…

There’s so much I don’t know, so much I’ve gotten wrong, so much I still want to learn and experience and understand as life unfolds. I keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other, holding tightly to the greatest gifts I’ve been given in recent years—curiosity and self-compassion. Apply as needed, over and over and over.”

-

Shauna Niequist

, author of I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet