Month 11: Preparing to walk and learning to let your child fail

Walking will be a huge milestone for Your Child. In evolutionary terms, it’s maybe the biggest for mankind — it set us apart from apes. 

Be ready to provide adequate support during this stage of development, but you should learn to balance between giving Your Child space to explore and ensuring safety.

How are you and your baby
Your Child’s coordination and movement are becoming more fine-tuned, as the little one prepares for walking. You will notice that Your Child now exerts more weight on the legs when standing and cruising. If the little one has started crawling, Your Child will primarily move this way from place to place or when trying to get an object. If the little one is not crawling yet, no problems; some babies are known to skip crawling and go straight to walking. 

Knowing the different kinds of crawls
Every baby is different anatomically so is their development. There are many crawling styles. Some babies may crawl on the belly using the hand to propel forward (or backward!), while others stand on hands and feet without knees touching the floor (bear crawl). But there are also babies who never crawl and go straight to walking. As long as Your Child gets to practice using body parts to move and strengthen their muscles, sit back and enjoy the ride. 

How to support crawling and walking

Creating an enabling environment: Creating a safe space for Your Child to practice climbing, falling, and crawling gives you peace of mind while you watch the wonders of human evolution unfold before our eyes. The environment can be challenging, as the little one may want to climb on different forms of furniture or crawl under the tables. Just make sure everywhere is safe.

Letting Your Child explore:
Give Your Child plenty of time and space to practice standing, cruising, and crawling on a daily basis. You have to be patient and get used to seeing Your Child fall and get back up and fall again, over and over, as the little one becomes more adventurous day by day.

Motivating and promoting confidence: Being motivated and feeling confident is probably the most significant factor driving a child to explore and learn new things. Clapping and holding out your hands while Your Child is standing up and attempting to take a step, or playing music to encourage your little one to dance to the beats, is a great way to make crawling more fun. Try to limit unnecessary intervention and verbal warnings that discourage or scare your child.

Why you should let your child fall and fail
All of us will face challenges, life disappointments, and other traumas at a certain point in our lives. Learning to get back up and try again is a quality of resilience, a vital trait for anyone who desires to thrive in this unpredictable world. Accepting failure, learning from failing, improving from the lesson learned, and trying again is an important mindset a child must develop to become an independent and happy adult in the future. Children’s daring sense of exploration and creativity can also be cultivated with the help of adults’ support and encouragement in ordinary everyday moments like this.