Development

Incredibly, Jake turned 10 months old on Friday. I say incredibly, it was always going to happen, but time seems to be going by faster and faster as the year goes by. I remember at the start marveling that he was a week old, then 10 days, whilst now it's easy for a month to go past now without any of those sorts of thoughts.

At the start of each month, we've always given him a "check-up" against the list in our What To Expect In The First Year book which outlines what your baby should, could and might be able to do. Jake has always been average, meeting milestones like being able to pick stuff up and sit up alone at roughly the expected age, but as the developments move towards gross motor movements like crawling, bum shuffling and standing, he seems to be taking no interest.

Admittedly, he has started to move himself in small movements on the kitchen floor if you put something out of his reach, and he is able to cope with tummy time for longer than before. However, he enjoys sitting and playing or eating and being carried around much more.

My internal struggle, as always, wavers between doing things that make him happy (giving him toys to play with, standing and looking out of the windows for cats) and creating opportunities for him to develop these gross motor skills. I think it's because I can't see how he'll learn to crawl if we don't put him on his stomach or learn to move himself around if we don't put things out of his reach and make him move himself to get there.

I desperately don't want to be a father who makes their child do things that will help their development that the child doesn't enjoy and I know that I was late meeting just about every developmental milestone as a baby and I have turned out ok. There's always that nagging voice, however, that says that I should be doing more to give Jake opportunities to learn new skills. As with all of these debates, I think there's a middle ground between the two to be found and that regardless, Jake will continue to develop in his own unique way.