Developmental milestones

[Shopgirl1980]

Does anyone else get frustrated with these developmental milestone charts?? I know it can be good having someone telling you what your child may be able to do but i am so sick of reading what my child is definitely doing at this age. My little one is 9 months old, still has no teeth and still cant crawl, definitely cant stand or cruise round the furniture and still isnt sleeping through the night. Rather than reassure i find all these charts do is make me feel like my child may have learning abilities. Its so frustrating!! Am i alone in this???

No. Most of them are really just guidelines- crawling isn't even a milestone, loads of babies never crawl, just bum shuffle or skip straight to walking! I've only been a mum 6 months and the "does your LO do....x,y,z yet?" is already getting a bit tiresome. And I quite like baby talk!! Reading one that said babies should respond to their name by 7 months ended up with me shouting DS's name at him from various places in the house going "do you think he knows it's his name?!!??" to OH. No. No he doesn't but I imagine he will by the time he leaves home

I agree, I don't mind it when they say most babies can xyz or a few babies are starting to xyz but when they say things like "your baby will already have found his feet and be walking or running around" I just feel like saying how do yiu bloody know!?

The worst one was the wonder weeks app, I can't remember exactly what it was they expected babies to be doing but it was very optimistic, something like putting their own shoes on at 10 months.

I think it's a good idea to have an idea of the main milestones and when they are expected and keep that in the back of your mind but there are so many milestones it's unlikely any baby/toddler will be hitting all of them at the "right" time.

I've found it's way more interesting to see how differently babies of the same age develop. In our NCT group, there are 8 babies roughly within a month of each other; we are pretty much the same age as your DS. About half can crawl, some have been babbling for ages, some can clap and wave - others don't do some of these things. It's all normal, it's just interesting to see what their different priorities for development are.

It's important to know roughly what should be happening when, but it's nothing to get hung up on.