by Michelle Stein posted in Parenting

My first child didn't crawl until after he was 10 months old, and it stressed me out to no end. Shouldn't he be getting into everything by now" Was something wrong with him"
It turns out there was no need for me to worry. My son eventually decided crawling wasn't the absolute worst thing in the world. He just did it on his own timeline.
He was perfectly happy sitting on the floor playing with his toys. If he needed to go somewhere, he would roll or whine for mama, a source of great anxiety for me -- especially when mom friends posted social media updates when their children crawled at 5 months and walked at 9 months. (For the record, that's definitely on the early side for both of these milestones!)
When I had my second child, a daughter, I couldn't help but compare their timelines. She crawled at 6 months and was walking before her first birthday. (Big brother walked at 13 months.) She started talking way earlier, too, and she was potty trained before age 2. (My son wasn't potty trained until closer to 3.) Basically, she was a genius. Or so I thought.
Except both kiddos actually fell within the "normal" range of development. Had their birth order been reversed, though, I probably would have thought my daughter's slightly-ahead-of-schedule milestones were the norm -- and I would have been even more concerned about my son. It's all about perspective.

By my third child, another daughter, you'd think I'd have al...