Years ago, I used to read a mommy blogger who talked about deliberately withholding the information that her child was not speaking “on time” from his pediatrician. At the time I was appalled, but while I still don’t condone this behavior, I at least understand it now that I actually have a child of my own who isn’t meeting her milestones.
My daughter, C.N., has missed a bunch of her milestones, most obviously with her speech. Who knows why: There’s some family history of speech delay, and she’s a covid-era baby, so we were locked down HARD for basically the first year and a half of her life. We never went to a single mommy-and-me class or library story time because we were so afraid of her getting infected, especially because the vaccine wasn’t available until she was over a year old; the end result was that her doctor took us aside when she was 18 months old and was like, listen, what you are doing right now is more harmful to her than covid would be. Unclench and take her to a play group.
So I unclenched, and we went to playgroups and story time and even a baby gym (yes, they exist), but nothing worked until we bit the bullet and put her in preschool three times a week. She went from maybe saying ten words total to having a vocabulary of at least 50 words that she uses to make combinations (“Baby eat!”); she even speaks in full sentences occasionally now. She’s come so far, and I’m so proud of her.
But goddamn, now I get why that mommy blogger lied, because when we went back to see C.N.’s doctor last week, none of that mattered! The doctor was just like, she really should be speaking in complete, clear sentences all the time now, and also you should ask her early intervention specialist about physical therapy because she’s not jumping with her feet off the floor, and why isn’t she using utensils all of the time?
The rational part of my brain knows that it’s the doctor’s job to point out problem areas, but the emotional part is like goddamn. Can’t we have a visit where everyone just high fives each other and says, “Nothing to see here, catch you later!”? I would never straight up lie about things C.N. isn’t doing yet, because that’s not productive, but damn do I get it now. It just feels like we can’t catch a break.
(But man—the jumping thing is wild. Do you know that I have been medically advised to buy a tiny toddler-sized trampoline? And now I’ve got to show her how to jump, which is a bummer, because I am an old mom and my bones hurt.)
Anyway, it is what it is, and we’re going to keep working with C.N, because that’s all we can do. But it’s exhausting and demoralizing to only hear what’s going wrong with your precious itty bitty baby. Like seriously, C.N. is a quality toddler! She may not be talking as much as the other kids, but she can say “Fart!” whenever one of us lets a little gas escape. 10/10, would gestate again!