The longest walk

19 months actual, 16.5 months adjusted, and Charlie isn't walking yet.

Oh, he gets around, you can be sure of that.  He crawls with astonishing speed and sure-footedness...well, sure-knee-edness, anyway.  He cruises around the furniture easily, fearlessly navigating the treacherous shoals of toys, blocks, and shoes — mine, Tevas, sorry — left in careless drifts on the family room floor.  And he does this weird thing I can only call knee-walking, less bizarre than yogic flying, but not by a hell of a lot.  He gets where he wants to go.

But he doesn't walk.  When Charlie had his last developmental evaluation, the examiner found he was at the 25th percentile on motor skills, but wrote, "I was not at all concerned about his relative lag in motor development as he still falls within the typical range of children and there was nothing worrisome in his neurological exam."  Based on what he was seeing, he predicted that Charlie would be walking very soon.  That was three months ago.  Sure, Doctor.  Real soon now.

He has always had a great deal of strength in his legs, and was an early and enthusiastic stepper as a baby.  But at this point his early ambulatory promise seems to have petered out.  He doesn't stand unassisted for long, although he can do it when he's engrossed in a toy.  He doesn't push up from seated to standing.  He won't stand or walk while I hold his hands.  He won't stand or walk between Paul and me.  While he does any number of wonderful things — sitting in his car seat, tickling his own chest, inviting us to join in from the front seat by chirping a hopeful "Yikes!" — it is impossible to disregard the things he doesn't do but should.

People notice and they ask, with varying degrees of politeness.  A well-meaning neighbor sucked in her lower lip when I answered, and then said, "My oldest was like that.  You know what you need to do?  Stop carrying him.  Just don't pick him up when he wants to be carried somewhere.  He'll cry, but eventually he'll figure it out."  It was all I could do to keep myself from telling her, "Hey, good idea.  I'm gonna try that, because the buggy whip isn't doing shit."

His day care provider was gentler, but because her kind expression of concern included the words, "cerebral palsy," I had to clap my hands reflexively over my ears and recite the entirety of I Am a Bunny like a magical incantation.  (It didn't work.  When I'd finished, she was still talking, Charlie still wasn't walking, and I was still gnawing the inside of my cheek to a bloody wodge of live hamburger.)

Now, I know children are individuals, each developing on his own personal timeline, within a very broad range of normal.  I can't count the times I've been told, "Oh, don't worry — my kid didn't walk until 18 months and now you wouldn't believe it because now he walks almost every single day."  There's no good way to explain this to people who've had children after full-term pregnancies and normal deliveries: Every parent worries, but some of us have reason to.

I've gotten in touch with our local early intervention program.  What finally made me do it was taking Charlie out of his crib, carrying him over to the rocking chair, and noticing that as I sat with him, I was moving his legs myself to put him in a sitting position.  I had a flash of memory as I did it, watching a former boyfriend — a hemiplegic — wrestle his own unresponsive body into bed.

But that's extreme.  I don't want to overdramatize this.  Do I think Charlie has cerebral palsy?  Although his premature birth put him at higher risk for it (and for everything else as well, from asthma to kleptomania to idiopathic Republicanism), almost certainly not. 

But do I think he's perfectly normal, waiting only to be ready?  Harder to answer, but my gut says quite possibly not, and has done for some time. 

Posted by Julie at 11:57:01 AM in Charles in charge

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The longest walk

19 months actual, 16.5 months adjusted, and Charlie isn't walking yet.

Oh, he gets around, you can be sure of that.  He crawls with astonishing speed and sure-footedness...well, sure-knee-edness, anyway.  He cruises around the furniture easily, fearlessly navigating the treacherous shoals of toys, blocks, and shoes — mine, Tevas, sorry — left in careless drifts on the family room floor.  And he does this weird thing I can only call knee-walking, less bizarre than yogic flying, but not by a hell of a lot.  He gets where he wants to go.

But he doesn't walk.  When Charlie had his last developmental evaluation, the examiner found he was at the 25th percentile on motor skills, but wrote, "I was not at all concerned about his relative lag in motor development as he still falls within the typical range of children and there was nothing worrisome in his neurological exam."  Based on what he was seeing, he predicted that Charlie would be walking very soon.  That was three months ago.  Sure, Doctor.  Real soon now.

He has always had a great deal of strength in his legs, and was an early and enthusiastic stepper as a baby.  But at this point his early ambulatory promise seems to have petered out.  He doesn't stand unassisted for long, although he can do it when he's engrossed in a toy.  He doesn't push up from seated to standing.  He won't stand or walk while I hold his hands.  He won't stand or walk between Paul and me.  While he does any number of wonderful things — sitting in his car seat, tickling his own chest, inviting us to join in from the front seat by chirping a hopeful "Yikes!" — it is impossible to disregard the things he doesn't do but should.

People notice and they ask, with varying degrees of politeness.  A well-meaning neighbor sucked in her lower lip when I answered, and then said, "My oldest was like that.  You know what you need to do?  Stop carrying him.  Just don't pick him up when he wants to be carried somewhere.  He'll cry, but eventually he'll figure it out."  It was all I could do to keep myself from telling her, "Hey, good idea.  I'm gonna try that, because the buggy whip isn't doing shit."

His day care provider was gentler, but because her kind expression of concern included the words, "cerebral palsy," I had to clap my hands reflexively over my ears and recite the entirety of I Am a Bunny like a magical incantation.  (It didn't work.  When I'd finished, she was still talking, Charlie still wasn't walking, and I was still gnawing the inside of my cheek to a bloody wodge of live hamburger.)

Now, I know children are individuals, each developing on his own personal timeline, within a very broad range of normal.  I can't count the times I've been told, "Oh, don't worry — my kid didn't walk until 18 months and now you wouldn't believe it because now he walks almost every single day."  There's no good way to explain this to people who've had children after full-term pregnancies and normal deliveries: Every parent worries, but some of us have reason to.

I've gotten in touch with our local early intervention program.  What finally made me do it was taking Charlie out of his crib, carrying him over to the rocking chair, and noticing that as I sat with him, I was moving his legs myself to put him in a sitting position.  I had a flash of memory as I did it, watching a former boyfriend — a hemiplegic — wrestle his own unresponsive body into bed.

But that's extreme.  I don't want to overdramatize this.  Do I think Charlie has cerebral palsy?  Although his premature birth put him at higher risk for it (and for everything else as well, from asthma to kleptomania to idiopathic Republicanism), almost certainly not. 

But do I think he's perfectly normal, waiting only to be ready?  Harder to answer, but my gut says quite possibly not, and has done for some time.