Am I Wrong For Posting a Toddler Milestone Video Comparing My Son To His Friends?
I was sitting at the playground picnic table last month, sipping a lukewarm iced coffee that had been sloshing around in my cup holder for 20 minutes, scrolling through my notifications after dropping my 2-year-old, Leo, at playgroup, when the comment popped up on my TikTok. It was from another mom in the group, someone I’d carpooled with for library story time twice: “Kinda weird that you’re bragging about your kid doing stuff ours aren’t, right?”
I’d posted the video the night before, 37 seconds of Leo stacking eight wooden blocks into a wobbly tower, counting to 10 (six comes before three, but you get the idea), and climbing up the step stool to grab his own sippy cup off the kitchen counter. I’d filmed it first to send to my sister, whose 2-year-old still refuses to climb anything higher than a curb, and then decided to post it to my small local mom account, where all my followers are parents I’ve met through playgroups and story times. I captioned it “So proud of my little guy hitting these big milestones lately! 💙” and didn’t give it another thought. Until that comment. Ten minutes later, another one popped up from a mom I’d had over for playdate two weeks prior: “My son has speech delay, this doesn’t feel great to see.”
I froze. I’d known about her son’s delay, had even listened to her talk about the stress of waiting for his early intervention evaluation while our kids played with playdough at my kitchen table. I’d just forgotten, in the rush of being excited about Leo’s new skill, that any of that context existed. I typed out three different replies, deleted all of them, and eventually just took the whole video down. For the next three days, I replayed the moment over and over, wondering if I was actually the bad guy here, or if everyone was just too sensitive.
I ended up talking through it over soggy tacos with my friend Sarah, who’s a pediatric speech-language pathologist who works with toddlers all day. She didn’t call me a jerk, and she didn’t say the other moms were overreacting. She just said what I’d already half-known but never connected to social media: all milestone numbers are averages, not a finish line to cross first. She said that as someone who meets with parents every week, the number one thing that makes parents delay asking for help for their kids is seeing other kids the same age hitting skills online, and thinking their own kid’s slower pace means they’re overreacting. That’s the part that never occurred to me: my throwaway post didn’t just hurt feelings, it could actually make a parent wait longer to get their kid the support they need.
She didn’t tell me to stop posting about my kid, either. She just said the way we frame milestones matters, especially when we’re posting to a group of other parents with kids the same age. That got me thinking about the small changes I could make, that don’t mean I can’t share my excitement, just that I’m being more intentional.
The first thing I changed is I now lead with what the milestone means for me, not how it stacks up to other kids. I don’t lead with implied comparisons, because even if I don’t say “look how far ahead Leo is” out loud, that’s how it reads when every other follower has a kid the same age. Instead of talking about what other kids aren’t doing, I talk about the silly, mundane win for me. When Leo climbed up to get his own snack, I can write “Today Leo learned to get his own goldfish crackers, which means I get 10 extra minutes to sit on the couch and finish my coffee. Win-win.” That frames it as my little personal win, not a competition.
The second thing I do is, if I’m posting about a skill that’s commonly a point of concern for delays—speech, walking, self-care skills—I add one short line at the end: “All kids hit this on their own timeline, just sharing our little moment!” It sounds tiny, I know, but it takes the edge off. It reminds anyone scrolling who might be worried about their own kid that this isn’t a judgment, just an update from my house.
After I took the video down, I texted both moms individually, not on the public comment thread. I said “I didn’t think before I posted that, that was thoughtless, and I’m really sorry it hurt you.” One wrote back saying she’d just gotten off the phone with the evaluation clinic that morning, and they’d pushed her son’s appointment back another two months, so the post hit way harder than it would have any other day. The other said she appreciated the apology, she knew I didn’t mean anything by it.
I still post Leo’s milestones. I still get excited when he does something new, and I still want to share that with the other parents I know. I still catch myself wanting to lean into the little hit of validation that comes from a post that gets lots of likes and comments about how advanced he is. Some days I see other parents post stuff that gives me that little twinge of worry too, when I see a 2-year-old who can count to 20 and I realize Leo still thinks every number after five is “monkey.” I have to remind myself that that’s their moment, not a judgment on mine.
I don’t think there’s a perfect rule for posting about your kids online. I was wrong to be so thoughtless, but that doesn’t make me a terrible parent, just someone who got caught up in her own excitement and forgot everyone else is dealing with their own stuff. Right now, the small changes I’ve made are working. I don’t know if I’ll get it right every time, but I’m trying to be a little more careful going forward.
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