Walking is Very Human
I’m a zoologist by schooling, so I have to qualify that: Walking bipedaly is very human. Among mammals it’s almost exclusively human, actually. You’re probably thinking, “right, duh, what’s the point?!”.
Perhaps this is just something that I’ve experienced and perhaps not. Probably not, so stick with me.
When he was a little baby and couldn’t do anything but roll over and could only hold a rattle for a few seconds, you could just prop him somewhere and have a whole conversation with him and he’d babble back or produce the biggest, most contagious grin I’ve ever experienced. He was a little person, sure, but in a sense he wasn’t quite a full human…and, it wasn’t something I realized at the time.
Then, Parker started crawling, and got really good at it pretty quickly. It didn’t really change the way I related to him, though. Nothing really changed about how I looked at him. He was mobile, but it was just a poor mimic of something that most mammals are extraordinarily good at from birth…walking on all fours.
The point is that Parker is now bipedal about 80% of the time. He took his first step a week or so before his first birthday and has been progressing since then. This has caused a shift in my thinking about him and my relationship with him. Obviously, he’s always been human and I’ve always interacted with him with speech and song and smiling and touch. It’s not a conscience shift in perception, I think it’s more evolutionary and biologically based. It’s as if your child’s grasp of the skill of walking triggers a change in you, the parent. I find myself marveling at Parker as he follows me into the kitchen and wants to investigate the dishwasher or open the refrigerator or feed the dog. He has suddenly graduated from mini-humanhood to mini-personhood in a way that is different from the first 12 months of his life. It peels away one of a baby’s last barriers to not being a baby anymore! He’s suddenly more a small adult than a large baby.
I wish I was a master of the written word, like Maya Angelou, but alas I am not so I can’t explain it better or more eloquently than that.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:38 PM
I get what you are trying to say. My first child started walking at 8-1/2 months old and was walking well at 9 months. That was so strange…I kept thinking “she’s a baby - babies don’t walk!” It makes you see them in a whole new light. I think they change a bit at that point too. And they have new-found freedom to get at things they could only see from below before.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:04 PM
I can totally relate and I think most parents can as well. There’s a reason why they’re called toddlers after they’re mobile, it’s a whole new ballgame. Have I mentioned your son is really cute? Looking at the hat pics from the latest post. The upclose drooly pic is making my giggle.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:41 PM
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