Do Early Childhood Milestones Predict What Your Child Will Be Like Later?
I tripped over a cardboard box of old baby gear in my garage last weekend, and out popped the crinkled blue milestone journal the hospital gave me when my oldest was born. The pages are half-filled, smudged with old baby food, and there’s a stick figure of a dog scribbled on the back cover. I flipped through it while I sat on the concrete floor, wiping dust off my jeans, and started laughing. When Lila was born, I checked every box a full month or two early: rolled over at 10 weeks, walked unassisted at 10 months, first clear word (“dog”) at 11 months. Our pediatrician nodded and marked “advanced for gross motor skills” on her chart, and I went home and posted the update to Facebook, where all my aunts commented that she’d definitely be a college volleyball star someday.
Now Lila’s 16. She hasn’t played a team sport since 7th grade, when she quit soccer after a game where she spent the whole time picking dandelions on the sidelines. These days, she spends most of her free time in her room editing animatics for her fanfiction accounts, and the most exercise she gets is walking our current dog around the block after dinner.
My son, Sam, is 12, and his milestone entries are basically blank. I was too busy chasing a toddler around to remember to write down when he rolled over, and when he hit 15 months and still wasn’t walking, I started spiraling. By 17 months, when he still only said a handful of words, I had him in speech therapy and early intervention evaluations, and I lay awake at night replaying all the things I’d done wrong: I didn’t do enough sign language, I didn’t read to him enough, I let him watch too much Baby Einstein while I got Lila ready for preschool. The evaluator sat across from me at the end of his assessment and said he was just a late bloomer, that he’d catch up, but I didn’t believe her for years.
Today, Sam runs cross country for his middle school, placed third in his division at the last meet, and won the district 7th grade public speaking contest last month. He’ll strike up a conversation with a stranger standing in line at the grocery store faster than any extrovert I’ve ever met.
That got me thinking, after I flipped through that journal, about how much weight we give these early checkmarks. I volunteer in my local elementary school’s library once a week, and I hear parents talking about milestones all the time. One mom was bragging last month that her 3 year old could read sight words, so she’s already planning for AP classes. Another mom was whispering to me in the hallway, worried that her 12 month old isn’t crawling yet, like that means he’ll never hit his stride in school.
What I’ve learned from my two kids, and from watching dozens of kids come through the library, is that milestones tell you almost nothing about who your kid will be as they get older. They’re just averages, not a test you pass or fail. Most of the standard timelines we use are based on mid-20th century studies of a small group of mostly white, middle-class kids, anyway. They’re a general guide, not a crystal ball.
If you want to track milestones for the cute memories, keep doing it. I’m not throwing that blue journal away, after all—it has the note about Lila’s first word being dog, which makes me smile, because she still draws dogs every chance she gets. But stop treating it like a forecast. Don’t assume early walking means athletic success, or early talking means a future as a lawyer. Those early skills are just that—early. Lila walked early just because she was determined to get to the dog’s food bowl before we could stop her, that’s it. When I asked her about it a few days ago, she said, “I just wanted snacks. What did you expect?”
The only rule I tell other parents to follow now is to only worry about gaps that actually impact daily function, not gaps that are just a few months off the average. If your 18 month old isn’t walking yet but they can pull themselves up to the couch, cruise along furniture, and crawl everywhere they want to go, that’s just their timeline. No need for extra evaluations or panic. If your 18 month old can’t bear any weight on their legs at all, or doesn’t make eye contact or respond to their name, that’s when you check in with your pediatrician. That’s a clear line, not something to stress over for months over a small delay.
Third, pay more attention to what your kid is curious about right now than when they hit a milestone years ago. Lila walked early, but even when she was tiny, she’d sit for an hour watching our old dog, drawing pictures of her, making up little stories about what the dog was thinking. That’s the thread that’s run through her whole life, not the early walking. Sam was late to talk, but even when he was 2, he’d spend an hour stacking blocks into towers and figuring out how to make them taller than the couch. That problem-solving energy is what makes him a great public speaker now—he can work a crowd and think on his feet better than most adults.
I put the blue journal back in the cardboard box and closed the lid, then carried the box back to the corner of the garage. I still have moments of what-if, sometimes, about all the nights I spent worrying about Sam when he was little. I think about all the expectations people had for Lila, and how none of them came true, but the things she loves are way more interesting than any of those predictions would have been. Milestones are just little markers along the way, not a map of where you end up. Right now, Sam’s practicing his speech for the regional contest at the kitchen table, and Lila’s editing her latest animatic in her room, and that’s all that really matters. How they turn out is still a work in progress, the way it always is for all of us.
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