Helicopter Parents

I found this great article recently. I think I do okay with not being one of these parents, but it's still pretty early. I do let Maddie fall over and explore her body, and play by herself. When she gets vocally frustrated enough, I'll help her. That's true for any situation all the time.

I've definitely gotten better at letting her overcome physical situations that she doesn't know how to deal with. Many many months ago I would always help her if she seemed frustrated in the slightest. And pretty much anytime she was on her tummy, she'd start grumbling. I soon enough realized that she was never going to get any quality tummy time if I always saved her from her slightest grumblings. I realized I was being a bit extreme.

In fact, just yesterday she wowed me with what she was doing and she did it all by herself. She's sitting and playing with toys and went after a toy that was out of reach. She's leaning forward (too far to get back up to sitting, I think) and ends up on her belly with her legs under her somehow. She looked at me and started whining a little. I looked back at her and told her I wasn't going to help. Then she got up on her hands and had her head up, leaned her head over, pushed her arm forward and kicked her leg up. And bam! she rolled over. And she was so excited! (So was I) This was the first time that I saw her go through this whole sequence of getting from sitting to on her back. And I doubt it would have happened if I had gotten involved.

I think it must help Maddie tons to see Sebastian, her new Nanny share friend, cruising around the house. He's a really solid crawler (and super cute to boot!) and a pretty mellow kid.

I have a game that involved lost of crawling that I started doing a couple months ago to help her see what crawling looks like. She's so freakin cute when we're playing this. I basically pretend I'm a bear or some animal and crawl in circles around her and growl at her and mock bite her arms/legs/body and push her around with my head and give her lots of kisses. It's one of the only guaranteed ways I have of getting her to laugh that hard. Sometimes I do it to her on the changing table too. (She'll always be my cub.)

(Maddie's sitting solidly; has been for a while now. She even is stable with her hands and toys above her head.)