As your baby celebrates her first birthday and becomes a toddler, she may not be toddling yet. Most children learn to walk between nine and seventeen months of age. Each child has his or her own developmental timeline, and the ways in which babies and toddlers approach those first steps are as unique and varied as the children themselves.
My oldest son Dylan was a very fast crawler. Crawling worked well for him and got him where he needed to go. He was standing and pulling up before his first birthday but he was not walking yet. He was, however, watching my every move. My husband and I think that he simply watched and watched us, and waited until he was sure that he could do it before he took his first steps at thirteen months old. When he did take those steps, we were amazed at how solid he was on his feet and how rarely he fell.
Blake appears to be approaching walking with a different strategy. This may be because he has an older brother that he wants to imitate – many parents have noticed that their second child walks earlier than their first one did. Blake will be ten months old in a couple of weeks, and for about a month or so he has loved being placed in a standing position so that he can hold onto a table or other piece of furniture. Over the past couple of weeks, he has grown more and more steady on his feet and more and more daring, cruising sideways a bit and taking one hand off to reach down for a dropped toy or wave “hello”. He also likes it when I hold his hands so that he can take some steps with my support. I am not sure when the progression to independent walking will take place, but it is interesting to watch the process unfold because as I said before, he is doing it in his own way.
Watching your child learn to walk and aiding them in that process can be a very wonderful experience. Observe your child and the unique way that he or she is approaching this major milestone. Keep in mind the large time frame within which children learn to walk, and do not get too wrapped up in worrying about exactly when it will happen. If you do have concerns, discuss them with your pediatrician so that you can get the information that you need in order to feel more at ease. Also, don’t get too upset if you do not get many pictures of those early steps. Unless someone else is at home with you when baby is stepping out on his own, you may want to make sure that you are right there to catch him in case he takes a nose dive instead of trying to grab that shot with your camera.