Babies love to sit. They love to stand even more. Parents will put babies in those positions because they look adorable AND it seems to make the baby very happy.

Babies love to stand because they get to see the world from a completely different point of view. However, there are several reasons not to do this before they’re ready.

1. Babies who stand before they’re ready can be bow-legged. Putting them in the standing positions is also problematic for their developing spine. The same goes for sitting. When you put a baby in a sitting position, if they fall forwards or backwards, it means they are not ready to be sitting. Don’t let them stay in that position for long. Bumbo seats are designed to keep baby in sitting positions before they are ready, do not put your baby in one of those. It is detrimental to their development.

2. Holding your baby up to stand or putting them in contraptions that keep them in those positions, like the walkers, are very bad for your baby. Children who are put in those contraptions tend to move on to the next movement milestone (sitting, crawling, pulling up, walking) LATER because they don’t have the motivation to learn to do those things on their own. Even more importantly, they don’t develop the proper cause and effect, “When I do this, I get to see this.” Instead, they don’t need to do anything and they get to see the world from the point of a view of someone sitting or standing. It skews their understanding of their body and movement – which is something they spend so much time exploring and learning the first couple years of life.

So help them develop the proper cause and effect of movement.  Be patient with them. Allow them to reach the stage where they can pull up to stand on their own. The joy and confidence they develop when they can finally do it by themselves is a priceless gift you can give them.

It is unrealistic to expect a child between 0-2.5 to obey you. They obey their own inner drive. A child at that age who bit another child is sorry that the other child is hurting, but they are not sorry they bit, because they had a NEED to bite in that moment.

A child between 2.5-4.5 know the rules, but sometimes they just have to disobey the rules. They don’t know why, they just can’t help themselves. If you have a child at that age, choose your battles. Don’t punish them over every single thing. Most of the time, their own guilt is punishment enough.

Great story from my friend Penny Conlon: A little boy spat in his mother’s face when she bent down to kiss him. She asked him why he did it, but he wouldn’t say, so she sent him to his room to have a think. When she went to him after 5 minutes, he was wringing his hands and said “I don’t know WHY I did it Mummy, I was going to kiss you, but my brain said SPIT at the very last second.”

50 yrs ago, kids spoke in full sentences btn 2-2.5 yrs old. Kids today speak in full sentences btn 2.5-3. That’s a 6-month delay. Why? Kids in front of TV/computer spend less time absorbing language. Studies show kids of deaf parents who are put in front of TV to “learn” language can mimic words, but they do not understand that spoken language is used for communication. TV doesn’t teach. Human interaction does.