Magic Milestones?

Those magic, magic milestones!  You know the ones you discuss at mothers group, or rather avoid discussing.  The ones the child heath nurse asks about at those well baby checks and of course the ones every family, friend or random woman in the grocery line seems to want to know about.  "Are they walking yet?" "My baby could sit at 4 months" "Oh by age 2 my child could speak fluent sentences in three languages" - you know the ones I'm talking about, right?

I, like many first time mums fell into the magic milestone trap.  At 4 months I sat around at mother group listening to all the other mothers talk about how their babies were rolling - back to front, front to back, left, right!  I sat and I told myself that it didn't matter, all babies reach milestones at different times.  By five months I was starting to worry - you see it wasn't so much that he wasn't rolling, it was that he didn't seem to want to. 

I, being the naive 'never been around kids much' mum thought that babies must need to learn how to do these things.  So I set about teaching my son how to roll.  I had nothing better to do with my day.  So for 10 minutes at a time I would lie with my son, rolling him from side to side. trying to coax him with toys to roll.  I would place him on his tummy and he would grunt at me until I picked him up.

I'll be honest with you now - my son never rolled, ever.  But I lied and said he did it once.  You see this series of pictures here - the proud sequence that everyone tries to capture?  Yep I admit it - I pushed him over.  

The closest we ever got was onto his side.  I never told anyone that, until we were fighting for a diagnosis at age 4.  I admitted to our OT after watching my neurotypical daughter not only teach herself to roll but crawl and walk and run, that I had literally taught our son everything in my own brand of physical therapy - never realising that most kids just do it themselves.