to get really fed up with 'milestones'

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"At 11 months, your baby should be cruising around while holding onto the furniture or your hands. He might even let go of your hands to try out a few tentative steps alone. Some babies at this age experiment by standing on their toes or on one leg."
Um. No, doesn't even stand on his own. Or crawl. He bumshuffles.

"As your baby?s hand-eye coordination improves, he?ll enjoy learning how things work by arranging toys by size and color as well as taking them apart and putting them back together."
Oh, no again.

"Your baby should be feeding himself by now, either with fingers or a spoon."
Fingers yes. Spoon, no chance.

"When you name something like the family dog your baby can point at it."
Guess what? No, again!

"Encourage your baby to start becoming more independent while dressing, eating, and getting ready for bed."
?!

So, I know there are variations. But as a first time mum, I find these utterly disheartening and sometimes downright worrying. Everyone says there are ranges, but milestones always seem to be at the more advanced end of 'normal'. Almost every place I see milestones is like this.

AIBU or should they be a bit more aware of the other end of the scale and not scare us so much?

independent at 11 months?!

throw whatever book away you are reading coz that is bollox

YANBU. My 15 month old can't point to the cat yet. Nor can she walk. It's so hard not to panic about these things.

I gave up on books when DD was little, they caused me more worry than help! They all do the stuff in their own time, sod timescales

DS walked at 10 months, but is only just using a spoon. He's 18 months. When kids are five do you think we'll be able to tell? Nope.

milestones are just indicators really and should be ignored where possible where you getting that info helping with dressing at 11 months old

neither of my dds were crusing at 11 months dd1 was a bum shuffler and dd2 did a comando roll kinda thing , as long as baby seems happy and healthy and can move at 11 months dont worry about it

Since we moved to the country, I know no one with a child anywhere near my 16 month old's age, and have zero idea whether he is Baby Einstein or at the back of the pack.

Yanbu, they are just there to make people worry. Shape sorting by colour at 11 months!?

hi op, yes fortunately the babies don't read the books do they!

my dd4 bum shuffled until 18 months old while ds1 walked at 11 months.

throw the books away and enjoy your baby.

unique is good. 😃😃

TBF they are not there to make people worry HV use milestones as do Drs and childcare providers to indicate problems but I do think they make parents worry and the parents who worry are the parents who notice, I deal with parents who dont care how their child is developing .

oh my dds didnt walk till they were 15 and 16 months old

Ugh! OP I know exactly what you mean. I don't read stuff but people are always reminding me what my 15 month old should be doing. She's only just starting to point, she isn't walking ... my now 7 year old was very slow and it doesn't show now!

Actually at 5 you can often still tell.

Not because they're not walking or whatever - but because they've got other, mild, developmental problems.

All 3 of mine missed their milestones. All 3 of mine look fine now. But they're all on the SEN register for various things.

Remember 30% of kids end up on the SEN register.

My kids couldn't walk till 16 months. Not massively scarily late. But now I know was an early indication of future problems.

Not sure how typical my experiences are. Because I don't think anyone keeps any stats on this sort of stuff.

Milestones are just an indicator, and some people need them to be able to recognise if there is a delay in their child's development that they might need help with.

When there are problems, early intervention is a good thing, so I don't think we should completely ignore milestones, and problems could be missed if they were placed at the later range of normal. Plus you would end up with lots of crazy mothers of PFBs trying to get in touch with Mensa because their completely normal child is doing things at the early part of the range.

Really, don't worry about it. Children all seem to have grown teeth, be able to point and walk by the time they get to pre school.

Just to put another point of view!

If your child is missing a lot of milestones, it can be an indicator that there might be something amiss, and often the earlier intervention the better.

When I realised that ds was not hitting milestones, he was referred to a paediatrician, and as it turns out he does have global developmental delay, and a range of other complex issues, but he has been under a team of therapists and accessed support from a very young age, which will have been of benefit to him and us as a family.

Most children will be ok, but there are many children ds, who have delays of some sort, and need a little (or a lot!) of help to progress.

I know there are always posts on threads like these that say, 'well he/she won't be feeding himself with his fingers/ not walking/talking etc when they are older'.....when actually there are some children who struggle with all these things and need help.

Having milestones make us aware of the children that do need extra support.

Dd1 bumshuffled it was amazing/hilarious. Dd2 crawled at 6 months and she is a pain - house is now like a fortress of stair gates and safety equipment. Weirdy dd1 was so much easier!

But the Thing is with many milestones, the window of 'normal' is really big. So for walking, anything between about 9 months and 20 months is within the normal range. So how can you say that a child 'should' be cruising by 11 months - ds certainly wasn't! I understand that milestones are useful markers for indicating issues, but I don't think they can be too specific.

By the way, was the book 'What to Expect - The First Year'? my sil gave me that book and it totally shit me up!

you are right duchess they really are just markers I said they should be ignored in my first post i didnt mean ignore them altogether obviously just realise that not all 11 month old babies will be walking and dressing themselves (what is THAT about) at 11 months

Hah, I misread cruising as cursing fleetingly! Now that would be something!

Seriously I wouldn't look at guidelines in too much detail, the more detailed they are, the less accurate they'll be, for a large proportion of children. Safe to say babies, learn to laugh, sit, walk, talk, point, eat food etc - just encourage all these things.

They just make you worry. Out of curiosity, I read the MN milestones for 2yo's and noticed that 18mo is already doing a few of those things. But can she stack cups? Use a spoon? Identify things that are the same colour? Can she buggery.

There's a vast difference between babies/toddlers and an earlier poster is right, by the time they are 5 no one will have any idea.

by the time they are 5 no one will have any idea.

unless there is a problem (which may have been highlighted by a baby missing some of it's milestones)

I'll never forgot a horrible article I read about a tribe of people who still declare a child 'Mingi' if they missed milestones or developed in an unexpected way, this is done even with their teeth having to grow in the expected order. They are rejected after being declared 'Mingi', it denoted that they were somehow unclean, bewitched or something. There was this man, in the article who had set up charity orphanages to take on these children and raise them.

I think this is similar old superstitions about changelings in Britain, also references were made to being born with teeth. The last known case was recorded late 19th or early 20th century I think.

That is why I think it is important to recognise how we all develop slightly differently, because the extremes of 'what is normal' type thinking can be horrific. It is definitely a dark side of human nature.

True, hazey, but I think more checks from HV etc would be useful, just going by what you read on a milestone list can make parents worry unecessarily.

It was the sleeping milestones that really got to me. Your baby will be sleeping through at 9 months or some such bollocks. Some will no doubt, but DS was 3 before that happened, despite our efforts of gentle sleep training.

Also the ones about drawing and using scissors. Some books/sources will insist that DS 3.10 should be drawing people with faces now and cutting shapes with scissors. A german programme on child development I watched seemed to suggest that children are mostly 5 or 6 before they can cut with scissors. It's all a bit unclear. I think you have to just stick with your gut instinct. E.g. DS doesn't particularly enjoy drawing, so can't draw that well, whereas my niece 8 months older draws amazingly (like I did at that age). But, she does practice all day and really enjoys it. On the other hand she doesn't recognise numbers or letters, whereas DS does. He really enjoys counting and learning about reading, etc..

In our case, dd being at the very far end of the range with all the weight bearing/walking milestones was an indication of a problem. By the time she was 10 she was in a wheelchair and in horrendous pain. At 16 she can function due to hefty doses of tramadol. Early intervention might have made a difference. Looking back the risk of me being unnecessarily worried seems such a pathetically small price to pay compared to dd missing out on large chunks of her childhood.

Milestones are much better expressed as "most children will", "some children will" and "a few children will" like this but with more detail.