Back in March, we began helping our little one, K, 8 months at that time, learn to walk. She loved being able to walk around while we held her hands. But she never really tried to walk on her own. She would reach up for us for help and then would walk.
Four days after K’s first birthday, she began walking on her own without me tricking her into believing that she’s holding onto my hands, but really walking by herself. She walks across rooms, down halls, and she’s all over the place now. And sometimes it’s a tough thing to deal with.
Now she eats dirt, tries to eat rocks, pulls out everything from cupboards, tries to climb onto chairs and boxes, and can run away from me really, really fast.
So what do I do?
I let her explore. I feel like it’s important for her to use her new-found ability to walk to see what’s around her. If I try to keep her from everything all the time, she’ll remain curious until I let her see whether it’s interesting or not. There are things she likes to return to every few hours because she knows something’s fun but there are other things that she really wants to see until I let her. Once she knows there is nothing interesting about it (and usually just dangerous without supervision), she’ll leave it alone.
Also, making sure everything is baby proofed is really important. Because of how quickly she can move, baby proofing everything first is imperative. If she gets a hold of something that she’s not supposed to have because I didn’t look around first, it’s a lot harder to get it away from her than if I had just removed it in the first place.
