He seems so behind compared to the toddlers in his play group, all my friends babies of similar age and just toddlers in general and I’m getting very worried.
He says mum and daddy and ‘elo’ for hello thats it. He pretends to say other words but doesn’t open his mouth so he’ll sing along to a song but will mumble in the tune. Or babble away but without opening his mouth.
Walking anywhere other than grass is too stressful. He doesn’t pick his feet up properly EVER and falls over far too often. He started walking at 13 months but 7 months down the line isn’t good at it! I can’t let him play in the garden without being there constantly because we have slabs on some of the garden and he’ll just faceplant them. When i say faceplant i mean a&e with chipped teeth and a face full of blood every single time. It’s giving me anxiety because i feel even at big open parks he isn’t steady enough to not get seriously hurt. He’s had 3 full on black eyes since he started walking, from falling on tarmac, hitting his head on the tv stand and hitting his head on a pole at the park.
He doesn’t eat well he picks his food apart and throws it on the floor almost every meal time (i get this is semi normal but he can skip 2 meals and still throw his dinner on the floor)
He can’t tip his bottle / beaker up. I’ve given up on trying to show him he just can’t / wont do it. To have a drink he lays himself down on the floor. If i give it him in his highchair where he can’t lay down he will just keep sucking air out of it til he gets tummy ache. I can move his hand positioning and tilt it 100 times and he will still return to the first position.
I’m getting very stressed with all this. I feel like i’m not doing this right at all, seeing videos of babies the same age doing so much more than him is really upsetting me! I feel his lack of balance is making me too protective and at the park / anywhere in public I look like such a helicopter parent but he’s been to a&e 6 times and he’s not even 2. I’m worried if he gets badly hurt again they will blame me or judge me. I don’t want my baby hurt anyway. I’ve tried backing off abit but he just keeps having accident after accident.
How do i stop him falling so much? How do i teach him how to drink? I speak to him and sing to him so much but he just grunts at me. We don’t have a health visitor, when i moved house (same city different zone) i was told i would be appointed a new one, she came round and booked an appointment to follow up on his speech but never turned up and has not answered her phone since. I rang the office to ask for another / info and they said i’d get a letter with an appointment date on. Nothing. Rang a few months later to see where the letter was and got hung up on so health visitor isn’t an option