Rejoice your toddler’s first step

From crawling to cruising to finally toddling... your baby's first steps is a tick off another milestone for every parent and the fun ride begins for all. Once the baby learns to pull themselves up with the help some furniture or their parent's legs, it's just a matter of time that they will independently take that awaited first step. Once they do its practise, practise and more practise that will take them from toddling to walking.

Most kids graduate from pulling up to walking with the help of a piece of furniture or external help by 9-10 months. Once confident of balancing the standing straight act they attempt to take their first step. While most of them don't show signs of walking until after their first birthdays, some even start as late as 18 months or even as early as 8 months. It largely does depend on their gene pool. They seem to follow yours or your spouse's early or late footsteps. Also a hyper active and daring toddler tends to take the leap faster as compared to calm, composed and a very cautious one.

How to help your baby discover independent walking?

• Tempt them into the act: Keep those favorite toys at a distance that encourages the toddler to reach it by taking those few shaky steps. Remember to use the tricks that got them from crawling to pulling up. They always work wonders.

• Assist them in every way possible: If you witness that the baby is not confident and unsure about their safety to take that first step help them by aligning some pieces of stable furniture together which they can use to cruise along. Make sure the furniture is baby proof without any sharp edges and do not tend to tumble over to avoid any accidents. You can also encourage them by holding their hands and help them walk and balance for better self control.
• Try using push toys: Sometimes their favorite push toys can help them learn the art of balancing and graduate to independent walking faster than anything else. Just make sure using support does not turn into a habit and avoid walkers as many experts suggest they tend to slow motor development in children.
• Provide open spaces that encourage walking: While stationery activity centres provide safe environment for playing, they seldom encourage walking. It's important that your baby develop motor skills that strengthen their torso and arm muscles along with leg muscles to walk. Hence provide open spaces that can help overall physical development.
• Let them bare their feet: The best shoes for beginning walkers are no shoes at all. While indoors and even in safe outdoor with smooth, even surfaces let them go bare to develop the arches, build muscle tone and learn balance and coordination. For outdoor excursions, have shoes that are lightweight and flexible and allow free movement. Fancy looking shoes can sometimes restrict free movement and slow down the process of learning.

At this stage the child is learning a lot of new things like trying finger foods, learning their way to the first few words and even walking, This may sometimes take their interest off one of the activities and concentrate on the others for a few days, weeks or even months. A fall, bad tumble or even illness may sometimes take them back to crawling. Give them their own sweet time to learn their way. There's not much that parents can do to speed up a baby's development timeline besides providing lots of safe, fun, supportive opportunities to practice during playtime.