Malope didn’t crawl. Well, she tried but she just couldn’t. She would push herself backwards instead of forward. Some found this funny… funny because it was different. Well, different is just different, it isn’t funny. Eventually, she moved around on her tummy for a while and thereafter grabbed on to things and stood up.

She didn’t walk unassisted until she was 13 months old. She was one very very chubby baby? and it took her a while to confidently move around on her own.

Her first words were not ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ or ‘bye bye. Actually, she began to call us ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’ long after she turned two years old.

Growth milestones help us keep track of our children’s development. However, they don’t always play out quite like expected and it doesn’t always mean that there is something wrong with your child.

We accept as adults that fellow adults are different. They have different abilities and capabilities. They have different preferences. The look and behave differently.

On the flip side, we don’t extend the same grace to children. We want…or expect them to be the same and to develop the very same way. We forget that each one of them is a unique being… a special one… a precious one in their own way.

It is important to pay attention to growth and development milestones. As a parent pay attention to the reliable information that is available and to your gut feeling. Whenever in doubt, seek medical advise. .

A lot of the time, our fears are founded on blanket comparisons between our child and another.

The questions will come… ‘she isn’t walking yet?’ (because their child walked at 9 months and your baby is still trying to figure it out at 12 months)… or… ‘he hasn’t began to talk properly?’ (because their child was speaking in full sentences by the time they were a year old) … or… their child was fully toilet trained at 3 years while your own 3 year old is still trying to learn this new skill.

No matter what, keep being the best parent you can be❤  Sometimes our children just want to do things at their own pace. And even when they don’t quite catch up, love will bridge the gap because every child has their own special gift(s)❤