Am I Wrong For Posting My Toddler’s Early Milestone Video: What I Learned About Comparing Child Development
I was folding Jax’s dinosaur pajamas on the couch last month, Bluey muting in the background about a magic xylophone, when my phone dinged with a text from Lila. We’d been in the same prenatal class, our boys are three weeks apart, and we text at least once a week. The text only said: “Saw your TikTok. Can we talk?”
Two days before that text, we’d all met at our weekly playground playdate. Jax has been obsessed with the big rock wall by the slide for months, spending ten minutes every playdate pulling himself up one rung at a time, falling, and grinning while he climbed back on. That day, he hauled himself all the way to the top and rang the little bell before I even thought to pull out my phone. I fumbled it out, caught the last ten seconds of him pumping his little fists in the air, and added a quick text overlay: “My little monkey hitting milestones his 2-year-old friends aren’t even trying for.” I posted it to my small mom account, mostly followed by family and our playgroup, and didn’t think twice about it. I was just proud.
I called Lila back right away, and she got quiet before she said anything. She told me Milo, her son, had just started weekly physical therapy for gross motor delays. They’d been doing evaluations for months, she’d barely told anyone besides her husband and her mom, because she was still scared something was really wrong, and she didn’t want everyone looking at Milo differently. When she saw my video, and then the comments rolling in from other playgroup moms saying “Wow that’s incredible, mine can barely climb the small slide,” she had to leave the grocery store because she started crying in the cereal aisle. She didn’t think I did it on purpose, but it made her feel like she was failing Milo.
I sat there on the couch, holding the phone, and my face got hot. I deleted the video ten seconds after we hung up, and texted her a long apology, then brought her a latte with extra oat milk to her house the next morning, stepping around a sticky blue popsicle wrapper Milo left on her porch. I kept turning it over in my head after that: was I actually the jerk here? I was just sharing a win for my kid, right? Isn’t that what social media for parents is for? Then I remembered when Jax was 18 months old, and he still wasn’t saying more than three words, and I’d scrolled past a video from another mom in our group captioned “My 16-month-old already knows 50 words!” and I cried to my pediatrician at his next checkup, convinced something was wrong with him. I’d completely forgotten that feeling, until Lila called me out.
My sister-in-law teaches early intervention for preschoolers, so I asked her what she thought about all this. She didn’t lecture me. She just said that every kid hits milestones on their own timeline, and even when you know that, it’s hard not to compare when all you see online is everyone’s biggest wins. But the mistake wasn’t sharing my win—it was tying my win to other kids being behind. She gave me a couple small things to change, that I’ve actually been able to stick with, no big lifestyle overhauls required.
First, whenever I post a milestone now, I only frame it around Jax’s own progress, not anyone else’s. Instead of saying he’s doing things other 2-year-olds aren’t, I say “Jax has been practicing this rock wall every week for two months, I’m so proud he stuck with it and made it to the top.” That’s it. No comparison, just celebrating his work. Second, I started sharing small struggles too, not just the big wins. Last week I posted a 15-second clip of Jax having a full meltdown on the kitchen floor because he couldn’t get his sock on over his heel, captioned “Some weeks we climb rock walls, some weeks we can’t master socks and that’s just how it goes.” I got more comments from other parents on that post than any milestone I’ve ever posted, because so many of us are living that part and don’t talk about it. Third, for anyone who scrolls and feels that twinge of panic every time they see a milestone post? You can mute anyone that makes you feel bad, no questions, no guilt. You don’t owe anyone your engagement. And if you’re worried about your kid’s development, skip the social media comparison and pull up the free CDC milestone checklist online, or talk to your pediatrician. That’s way more accurate than whatever random video you see on your For You Page.
Lila and I are still fine, she started bringing Milo to our playdates again, and last week she told me she posted a photo of Milo at his PT appointment on her own Instagram, because she wanted other parents who are going through the same thing to know they’re not alone. I still get excited when Jax does something new, I still want to share it with the people who follow me. Last week he counted to ten all by himself while we were waiting for our pizza at the store, and my first instinct was to write a caption that joked about how most 2-year-olds can barely count to three. I stopped, deleted that line, and wrote “Jax has been practicing counting on our walks every day, can you believe this little guy got all the way to ten?” That’s it. No brag, no comparison, just a happy moment.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get this social media parenting thing perfect. Sometimes I still get caught up in the excitement and almost post something that compares. But I pause now, and I think about Lila in the cereal aisle, and about me crying in my pediatrician’s waiting room, and I reword it. It’s a small change, but it feels better. I’m still allowed to be proud of my kid. I just don’t have to be proud at anyone else’s expense. That’s enough for me right now.
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