One of my twins, Niel, wasn’t walking at 16 months old. He didn’t seem to be too interested in standing up, or learning how to walk. He didn’t enjoy being assisted to walk or held up by the hands.
Twin brother Ethan has started to walk months before. He has gone through the standard stages of cruising by 12 months old, standing alone from a pull up position, standing alone from a squat, standing to observe, taking the first step on his own, and progressively increase the number of steps before losing balance. The process was months from the first time he stands on his own to being called officially a ‘toddler’, but we can see progress every week.
It’s a lot of pressure being a twin, one is continuously compared to the sibling for development, performance, and physical achievements. Though I vowed not to do this to them before they were born, it is certainly hard not to benchmark each other as they progress.
I was never worried about my little Niel before. He is always the bright one, always showing interest, alert and responsive his surroundings. He has always been the first to reach his developmental milestones before he contracted Kawasaki disease. Now Ethan seems to be months ahead of Niel; Niel is yet to toddle, repeat words from a book, able to nod and say ‘no’ in response to a question. Now I have valid reasons of getting quite worried about Niel. He was breech, and some statistics show breech twins may have hips problems. He had Kawasaki, and statistics also shows that kids that contracted Kawasaki may have developmental and learning delays.
My concern about Niel’s lack of interest in standing up, lead our GP to order a hip scan for Niel. The scan turns out normal, so the doctor assured me that it is certainly too early to worry at this stage; many children starts to walk at 18 months. Children will walk when they are ready, certainly right that is.
It was Thursday morning, and its library rhyme time for my kids. Niel loves Rhyme Time sessions, he is too young to join in the action, but would happily sit through book reading and watch others sing action rhymes. When the session is over, the cheerful librarian gave out bottles of bubbles for everyone to blow indoors. Niel squealed in excitement as he watched bubbles fill the room. He quickly crawled to find a good spot, kneeled and stretched his hands up to catch the floating bubbles. And then it happened: in his excitement, he stood up and took 3 steps toddling to catch a flying bubble. I held back tears, I am so thankful not to miss this, to be able to see his first steps in the midst of a crowd of energized children. He stood up again, this time I got Malakai to witness his baby brother’s first steps, and we counted together: 1…2…3…4…5…6, “Niel, you’re walking!!!” I shouted to him. He stopped in his tracks, turned around, saw us watching him, he looked down on his feet, realize that he’s standing up, and quickly get down on the floor and crawled back to us with a biggest grin on his face.
Three days later, Niel has officially become a toddler by performance. He would always stand and toddle to move around the house. True, he didn’t go through the traditional phases. My little Niel has lead me to believe he’s not interested in standing, and unexpectedly, in his own time, he just stood up and walk. That’s my Niel. Yes, children will walk in their own time. When they do, there’s no way of stopping them!
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