I read this quote somewhere and it said
‘Don’t compare your child to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and the moon. They shine when it’s their time.’ And it’s absolutely right.
I know I’m not the only parent to have done this as it’s so easy to feel under pressure to meet guidelines and to worry about being judged because ‘your child can’t do something yet’ but all children are individuals, each and every one of them is unique and special in their own way so why would they all meet milestones at the same time? They wouldn’t. They are each reaching their own personal milestones. Kory learned to walk quite early but his speech is something we’re continuing to work on. Where as another child may have took longer to learn how to walk but can say all sorts of different words.
I don’t do it as much anymore but in the past I was guilty of comparing Kory to other children his age. For example, I would see other children speaking clearly and in full sentences and wonder why my child wasn’t doing that yet. Kory is in no way behind or anything like that so then I would get upset and start to wonder was it because of me.
Was I not spending enough time speaking to him or learning and teaching him different things?
When actually I spend every waking moment talking to Kory, when he asks what something is I explain to him, we always go on days out, on little adventures, he’s always seeing new places and things, we always play together with his toys and I always make sure I read to him. That’s when I realised that as parents we’re so quick to blame ourselves and to put ourselves under pressure to be the absolute best parents we can be, no matter how good of a job we’re doing it’s never enough and we always strive to do more, to be more and that’s absolutely fine but let’s not forget that we’re already doing everything we can and there’s no need for the extra stress, Kory isn’t even 2 years old yet and I feel like him putting myself and him under massive amounts of pressure and why is that? Because another child his age can do something he can’t yet?
Children will do things when they’re ready and there is no need to rush them.
I did some research of my own on speech with toddlers and I learned that although a toddler may not say much, it doesn’t mean they don’t know words, in fact their vocabulary is bigger than you think, they are like sponges and everything you say to them they will be taking in so they might not say the words, but they understand them.
Funnily enough, whilst working on this blog post Kory’s speech has come on a lot. I’ve been teaching him all the different animals and their sounds and I was amazed at how quickly he learned them. I only repeated each one a couple of times and when I asked him about each one he knew what animal they were and what sound they made.
He now knows the cat, dog, frog, fish, cow, goat, rabbit, mouse, lion, bird, duck, pig, dinosaur, horse, sheep, snake and monkey!
What I’m trying to say is, don’t feel the need to compare your child to others, if you feel like you need to compare them, compare them to themselves a month ago and see how far they’ve come!
This will tell you all you need to know.
Life as The Lonsdales 