THAT OLD COMPARISON GAME, BABY EDITION

I am bombarded daily with emails from various motherhood and baby sites, exclaiming excitedly, “your baby is 47 weeks today!” I tentatively open these emails and scan them on the regular, reading about all the things my baby should be doing at each particular weekly age. “This week, baby is learning to use the iPad, spell words, and run a marathon.”

Okay — that part might be an exaggeration, but it’s not entirely too far off.

See, these emails always make me nervous. Caleb is hardly ever doing all the things they say he should be doing yet. This week, on one of the week 47 updates, I was told that my baby should be helping me clean up his toys. Say what?! He’s just learning to play! He doesn’t even walk! How could he possibly be helping me clean up after himself?!

I think it might be time I start hitting the “delete” button on these bad boys before even opening them so I can save my sanity a bit each week.

We’re constantly being told how to parent. We’re always being given advice, being told what our children should and shouldn’t be doing, but here’s the thing… they’re OUR children, no one else’s. I can tell you right now that my child isn’t picking up after himself, but I can also tell you he is perfectly fine and I know that because I am his mother. Mothers tend to know these things intrinsically, yes?

Here’s a little something I’ve been hesitant to share, and I’m not quite sure why. I’m not embarrassed, per se, but it kind of falls into that whole comparison trap thing we’ve always got going on: is my child more advanced? Is he keeping up with that child, your child, her child?

Caleb is going to start physical therapy very soon. When his doctor discovered that he wasn’t entirely mobile yet at 10 months, he had a slight concern about his gross motor skills and gave us a referral for the county’s Early Intervention team. They came out to evaluate him today, and while he is perfectly healthy and strong, he doesn’t seem interested yet in crawling, standing independently, or even rolling. A lot of this, they believe, is due to his hatred of tummy time and lack of floor time. We have hardwoods, so we were always hesitant to put him down on the floor until he could fully support himself and not bonk over and hit his head. Physically, there is nothing wrong with him, but we’ll be learning some techniques to help get him moving. We did recently get foam mats for the floor and he’s been playing on the floor much more lately. I honestly am not very worried. I know he will crawl, stand, and walk in his own time because that’s just the way he operates — doing things when he wants, not when I want.

I know I don’t need to justify anything and explain why he isn’t crawling yet. I know I don’t need to give you all of our reasons like the hardwood floors, but I did anyway because that’s what we tend to do: give reasons, make excuses, when really… what does it matter? We tend to explain away problems because if we don’t, it makes us feel like we’re doing a bad job as a parent, makes us worry people will think there’s something wrong with our kids when really, they just need a little nudge in the right direction.

There is nothing wrong with my kid.

I could also tell you that I personally know at least five children who have also received the county’s early intervention services for various things like speech therapy, physical therapy, etc. I don’t need to tell you that, but I’m going to because it makes me feel better. It makes me feel more normal to tell you that it’s no big deal because lots of kids get it.

And I tell you that fact about the other kids, as well as the reasons about the hardwoods, because we don’t want people to judge. We want to be normal in this whole comparison game. All of us… every single one of us.

I think it’s about time I stop justifying things… because I don’t need to.

I think it’s about time I stop worrying about who is doing what, whose child is more “normal,” whose child has been crawling since he was one minute old (I kid)… because comparing doesn’t serve anyone.

I think it’s about time I stop reading those damn emails, too… because seriously?!

My child should be cleaning? Nope… nope, I don’t think he should be. My child is doing exactly what he should be doing, exactly when he should be doing it. He’s doing it all in his own time… my perfectly stubborn, beautiful boy.