4 Things I wish I’d known when my kids were little

by Heidi Scrimgeour 

Oh, the joys of early motherhood. Not only is your sleep stolen and your body snatched when you become a mum, but you’re also catapulted headlong into one long anxiety attack - or so it seemed to me when my first baby arrived almost ten years ago.

From walking and talking to potty-training and mealtimes, it seems like parenthood is an exercise in angst. Why is my child the last among their peer group to walk? Why can’t your tot recite Flower of Scotland backwards like your best friend’s baby can? And what if they never crack toilet-training by the time big school looms?

The good news is that nearly ten years of parenting have taught me that the stuff we worry over endlessly when our kids are little rarely turns out to be anything of real consequence. This too shall pass really is the perfect mantra for early parenthood. So while you’re reciting that and waiting for your child to grow out of whatever phase is most rattling your cage right now, here are four hard-won things I’ve learned which I wish someone had told me when my kids were younger…

They’ll walk when they’re good and ready
My first child didn’t take his first unaided steps until he was 18 months old which, at the time, seemed a fair way behind all the other children we knew of the same age. While friends were revelling in their children’s first steps and enjoying the relative freedom of finally letting them toddle around the play park on their own two feet, I was missing out on conversations with other mums as my son insisted on dragging me around beside him like a human comfort blanket.

But now that he’s almost a strapping ten year old with more energy than one person could ever need, it seems laughable that I worried about whether he would ever walk. I wish I’d known that it really is true that most children will walk when they’re good and ready. There’s no point rushing kids to reach those milestones - you risk overwhelming them and actually making them feel more inhibited - so the best thing you can do is practice patience and work to reassure them that whenever they’re ready to take those first steps, it’ll be perfect timing in your eyes.

As my friend Natalie - whose second child had hip dysplasia and so was slower to walk than his peers - says: “Neither of my boys went to school crawling or wearing a nappy or without being able to chat, in the end.”

Food issues are normal, and they don’t last forever
I have yet to meet another parent whose child hasn’t gone through some sort of fussy eating phase. (Never believe the parents who claim their kids don’t ‘do’ such things - I am increasingly realising that those parents are either deluding themselves or simply struggling to accept the reality that their child isn’t perfect.)

But while it’s normal for kids to experiment with food and go through stages that could make you want to tear your hair out with frustration, I wish I had known back when my kids were at this stage that it really doesn’t last forever. And that actually whatever you try in a bid to ‘fix’ the problem probably won’t make all that much difference, so you might as well conserve some energy and simply wait for them to outgrow it.
”Each child is unique so treat them as such, was the advice of my fab Health Visitor,” agrees mum of three Kerrie Laverty. “All of my children turned into adventurous eaters in their own sweet time, albeit not until they were at University in some cases!”

Speech doesn’t have to be a drama
Language delay isn’t something I encountered with my own children but I’ve seen the anxiety it can cause for many parents. And as with so many of the issues we lose sleep over when our children are little, it isn’t necessarily something that will require intervention to address. I’ve seen many children seemingly just ‘decide’ to start talking after months of agonising worry for parents who have wondered why their tot isn’t babbling away like all their friends’ children are.

“When my first child was little she was mute except at home and at her grandparents’ houses,” says my friend Pippa, a GP and mother of two. “She never said a single word anywhere else. It was very stressful because we thought she would be like that forever - and it was very embarrassing because of course she never said ‘thank you’ if anyone gave her anything when we were out. Her first nursery suggested we contact psychologists but her second nursery were very relaxed about it all and made us much more relaxed as a consequence. The day she started primary school she started talking and she hasn’t stopped since. She’s just started secondary school and I worried - a bit - that she might regress, but actually she sounds as though she’s talking as much as ever at school.”

It’s ok for your baby to hate baby groups
This one’s especially pertinent for me right now. My youngest child has just had her first birthday and I’ve yet to take her to a single playgroup, except for the short-term classes that my local baby clinic put on for new mums in their first few weeks of motherhood. It’s just not really practical to drag her out to Rhyme Time or or whatever else we ‘should’ be going to together - she naps at almost exactly the time of day that all the local baby groups are on, and as a freelance writer who squeezes work around my kids’ crazy schedules, nap time is pretty much my best chance at getting any work done. So there’s just no way I’m going to throw a spanner in the works by giving in to my inner fear that my child will be unsociable and uncivilised if I don’t drag her to playgroups.

Heck, the truth is that some of my kids’ earliest bad habits were picked up from other kids at baby groups, and I’m not even convinced they’re really for the babies - it’s the mums who benefit from having somewhere to hang out together. That’s well and good if you’re a first time mum adjusting to your new life, or if your lifestyle affords you the chance to drink tea and chat to other mums while your baby bops others on the head with a plastic hammer. But I’m not going to feel guilty because I’m prioritising work and nap time over that.

“I persevered far too long with things like baby gymnastics and music classes - which Toby loathed - thinking those things were ‘good’ for him,” agrees my friend Catherine, mum of two. “I fretted that he was unsociable for not liking those kind of groups but in retrospect they just weren’t his thing. I wish I’d realised that two-year-olds can have valid likes and dislikes too.”

It’s amazing how many challenging elements of parenting boil down to this: they will grow out of it. Eventually!