According to one of my parenting bibles (“What to Expect: The Toddler Years”) children “should” be able to clap their hands by the time they hit 13 months. Previously resistant to our clapping lessons, Zoe must have sensed it was about time (a week shy of turning 13 months) to give clapping a try – because that’s all she’s been doing since coming home from daycare tonight. It’s so funny: once kids learn something, they suddenly do it non-stop. It was that way with crawling and saying “hi,” and now it’s like that with clapping.

Seeing Zoe’s little hands together tonight reminded me of a short period of panic I experienced a few months back – when I suddenly realized that Zoe had hit all her developmental milestones except for clapping. (Though 13 months is the “should” age, this same book indicates that most children clap or wave much earlier. And all of Zoe’s friends were interested in clapping and waving months ago.) What could this mean? Was this a sign of something bad, like autism? Could she be developmentally delayed? (I spent a few terrifying hours on a website devoted to detecting signs of autism; my advice to any new parent out here is to NOT visit these sites!) I would have been so relieved had I seen Zoe’s hands go together even once, but instead I had to wait months for it. (And by the time she finally did it, I wasn’t worried there was anything wrong with her anymore!)

Zoe showed me tonight that she’ll hit her little milestones when she’s good and ready – and she reminded me that there’s no sense in worrying about it. Now, I just hope I can remember this for next time…

-M

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 8:20 pm and is filed under 15.One year old. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.