Friends of ours from down the street came over last weekend with their baby Charlie, who is a month older than Elijah. Charlie is a really cute, cool, laid back kid who…drum roll…can crawl!
While I was playing with the now mobile Charlie, I looked over at Eli, who was sitting on the carpet bashing himself in the face with a block, I was overwhelmed with a completely foreign feeling: competitiveness.
Anyone who knows me knows I am the least competitive person on the planet. My brother and I used to play games of tennis that would last hours and hours because neither one of us wanted the other to lose.
But for some reason, that night I was trying to will Eli to crawl with my mind. “Come on, boy. Show this Charlie baby you can crawl. No, in fact, skip crawling. Start walking. Now. Do a summersault. Stand on your hands. DO A BACK FLIP! A BACK FLIP!”
I snapped out of it and thought, what the heck am I thinking? Babies crawl when they want to crawl. The fact that Eli hasn’t gotten mobile doesn’t mean he’s behind. Or, for that matter, we’re bad parents. I realized this is how parents who scream at their kids at soccer games are created.
Truth be told, babies don’t really start crawling until closer to 8 to 10 months and Charlie is an exception and Eli is going to catch him any day now and will probably walk before him because my son is a champ, a champ I tells you…I’m doing it again, aren’t I?
I have a feeling I’ll be punching out a soccer ref in the next few years.
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