Ending Our Obsession Over Developmental Milestones

I had no idea how much would be expected of my kids starting at birth. From the day my babies were born I’ve been required to fill out questionnaires at each well visit to make sure they’re developmentally on track. Not to mention the endless parenting websites that offer weekly birthdate-timed developmental newsletters.

I’m mostly thankful for said questionnaires and newsletters. The majority of the time it makes me feel at peace when I get to check the boxes to confirm my children are where they should be. I don’t disagree with the need for a general developmental timeline to easily catch severe developmental delays. It absolutely serves an important purpose and helps many families.

However, my concern is that having tools and checklists like these at our fingertips can make us hypersensitive and obsessive with making sure our kids are hitting every single milestone exactly on time. As a result, it’s easy to place unnecessary pressure on ourselves and our children. We want our kids to be “normal”, because being normal means they have great chances at being successful, according to our society’s standards anyway. We seem to think that the sooner our kids can start racking up knowledge and experiences the greater their chances are for a lifetime full of success.

This whole topic is fresh on my mind because of a personal experience. When my oldest turned two last October, I took him in for his two year old well visit and answered the appropriate questionnaire. One of the questions asked if he was stringing together words into short sentences. At that point he wasn’t. I talked about it with the doctor and learned that there was this free developmental assessment that could be done for him through the school system that a team would come out to our house to administer. Should he qualify, he would receive free speech therapy. I took the informational pamphlet and brought it home to discuss with my husband.

We went back and forth. My gut told me that he was totally fine and probably just a bit of a late talker, but since he was my first and I didn’t know for sure, the worrier in me wanted to address any potential problems. We decided to go through with the assessment. To make a long story short, the results showed that he was on the fence. If we wanted help they would be able to make a case for it and would be happy to provide speech therapy.

Since January we’ve had a speech therapist coming to visit my little guy on a weekly basis. She does activities with him and gives me strategies to implement.

His vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, but honestly I don’t think it really has all that much to do with the therapy. More than anything, I think he just needed more time. He has a shy personality and he’s more of a thinker and engineer type than the chatterbox. He’s more concerned with learning how something works than talking about what color it is.

I wanted to share that backstory with you because I feel like I jumped the gun and was the obsessively worried parent when I didn’t need to be. If I had to do it all over again, I would have listened to my gut and just let him develop at his own pace. It’s not that I think the therapy hindered him at all, but being around adults whose job is to point out what my kid isn’t doing when it’s not a matter of life or death created an environment that made us second guess his development instead of being encouraged by his progress.

While I agree that we should be doing all we can to set our kids up for success, at the end of the day, my heart tells me that we also just need to let our kids be kids. They have a lifetime ahead of them where they’ll be expected to perform and achieve. They’re bound to be over scheduled like the rest of us. When they enter school their lives will be laid out for the next 18 years and beyond.

I want to soak up these sweet pre-school years with my kids. I don’t want to spend time obsessing over whether they’re doing this or that. I want to take advantage of the teachable moments, and let the rest go. More than anything, I want to love on my kids like crazy, celebrate each victory big or small, and embrace how beautifully and uniquely they were created, which means they’ll each develop at their own pace.

How do you approach developmental milestones? 

P.S. For more reflections on parenthood and life, follow us on Facebook (Hun Let’s Run) and on Instagram: @ambermariekuiper and @jakekuiper! We’d also love for you to subscribe to our Hun, Let’s Run Podcast! For more info about joining our fitness community as a customer or coach, please email us at amber@mommysmetime.com!