A Promise to my Knee-Walking Lily
by littledodogirl
So yesterday was bad. I had a low point as a mother. I tried to force my little one to walk.
It was ugly.
And it ended with her crying in my lap, her face all like “why are you doing this to me?”. And the worst part? It hit me (bad) how dependent she is on me, that even when I am horrible to her, she has no where to go but me.
I do realize it is my problem and not hers that she is not walking. She is a perfectly fine 17-month-old who discovered knee-walking (months ago) and can get around everywhere hands-free. Then why am I driving myself nuts with this issue? She can walk, and has been cruising for ages, and took free standing steps on several occasions. She’s quite the flexible little monkey climbing and squeezing into all sorts of corners. She even climbed FOUR stories on her own without looking back once. She is just scared of tripping and falling, and the knee-walking makes her feel stable, hence it is her favorite mode-of-transportation.
But my own hangups are hard to let go. I worry watching younger babies already running around. And it sucks hearing the question “She isn’t walking yet?”. I hang my head down in shame because I have succumbed to the horrible thought that my baby needs to be ahead of other babies. Why? I cannot for the life of me come up with logical answer. I can come up with an answer, but no, not a logical one.
The truth is my baby needs to be. She needs to know that she is whole the way she is.
I ended the evening with a horrible case of mother’s guilt. The one where you feel some kind of authority should have you put away because you suck as a mommy.
This morning, I did what many mothers do. I got up and decided to learn from the crap I did, change my ways (or at least try my best to) and make a promise. I am putting this promise out there.
Alina baby, I will not force you to reach milestones anymore.
And I’ll try to remember what Goethe said:
‘If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.’
For my Little Dodo Girl 
Awww… don’t worry too much about. Kids grow out of all their funny mannerisms I think. Besides, she’s kind of careful with that just like you. Didn’t you use to crawl all funny on your butt and didn’t start walking till you were like a year and a half (according to dad at least).
I think when you simply of all the little weird things each of us did as kids, every single one of us was “behind”. I read somewhere that different kids develop different things at different speeds or points in life, sometimes due to an accident of what they discover first.