Working on the confidence to walk...

As I've mentioned before, Molly is definitely a very cautious little girl. She tends to be quite analytical with new things, carefully observing and watching others first before deciding whether she wants to try it herself. We try hard to encourage Molly so that she gains the confidence to try something new, always offering lots of praise, using positive modes of discipline (i.e. "stop, please" instead of "no"), but in the end it's clear that she's going to do things only when she's good and ready to.

This has been particularly true with walking... Molly's been pulling herself up and cruising for quite a while now. I can remember a couple of months ago her teachers at daycare saying that they thought she was going to start walking "any day now".  Knowing Molly's cautious personality, I was doubtful and correctly so. It's been about two months now that Molly's been walking all over the place with her walker or holding onto our hands and not at all really interested in trying to walk herself. She's gotten quite good with the walker, maneuvering through small spaces, turning corners like a race car driver, etc. We've tried to encourage her to stand on her own to work on her balance, but generally, she almost instantly cautiously lowers herself down to the floor rather than stand there. She's quite good at going from standing down to the floor and clearly has the control and balance to lower herself without just plopping to her butt or knees. Yet, still she hasn't had the confidence to stay standing on her own.

However, in the last week she seems to finally be moving in that direction! As she cruises around with her walker, she'll stop, let go and often start clapping. Whether she's applauding her efforts or just clapping to the music that's often playing in the background, who knows but it's encouraging seeing her start to gain the confidence to "let go". Here are two clips of Molly working on her balance... The second clip I think is good evidence that she's got the skills, but just needs to gain the confidence. You'll see her actually lifting the walker up (which I think is her imitating how we move the walker around)!

It's exciting to watch her get closer to walking, but at the same time I suspect we'll wish she was still just crawling once she starts!