Thank you for this sensible and compassionate article. Since my daughter's birth I've let my "baby's first year" books get dusty and "milestone" newsletters from various websites go directly to my spam folder. Once I let go of what "should" be happening and embraced what is happening, my parenting life improved so much. Yes, I wish my daughter would take naps that lasted longer than 30 minutes and didn't require my presence (or breastfeeding!!) 100% of the time when she was 6 months old. But fighting it would have made things a lot worse and added to the stress level. Here we are 3 months later and those things are now happening by itself, without a fight, and without frustration. Your point about parental frustration stemming more from expectation than from children's abilities is spot on. I don't expect her to sleep through the night -- maybe not for YEARS. I don't expect her to be quiet, play on her own, etc -- maybe not for YEARS. It's really sad to me that people have babies and then expect them to never act like babies. Why is she crying all the time? Why does she always want to eat and be held? Why won't she sleep more? Because she's an infant. Our job is to conform to them, with total surrender at first and then increasing boundaries as appropriate later on. I loved this article, thank you!

When my first child was born, I read all the books. When she reached a milestone before she was "supposed" to, I was elated, and when she was "late" reaching one, I was terrified that she was developmentally delayed. When my son was born 6 years later, I no longer stressed out about what some book or website said he should be doing. Both kids are healthy, active, and smart. I used to expect too much from my kids, but now I just expect them to do their personal best. I have realized that my kids are strong in some areas, and weaker in others, and there is nothing I can do to make them the best at everything!

I agree to a point. Babies don't sleep when a book tells them to, feed when a book tells them to or walk when a book tells them to. They never read the book, how are they supposed to know. But the fact is we are seeing an overwhelming increase in learning problems. 1 in every 160 kids is autism spectrum? I mean WOW. So to blindly ignore the milestones only sets you up to ignore a much bigger problem that you CAN help your child with. I thought my 3 year old at 18 months was a little slow in speaking. As in -- he wasn't. I had no idea until a few months later that he was autism spectrum. Had I not gotten help early on, God only knows what I could be dealing with now. Instead of a 3 year old catching up to his peers, I probably would have a 3 year old who had been surpassed by his younger brother already.