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R Valiquette's avatar

One of my boys was taught to tie his shoes by his OT, and that was great. The other had no need for an OT but just would not learn to tie his damn shoes. (He’s 9). Last month I lost my damn mind with it and told him I would give him $100 bucks if he would learn to tie his shoes and show me that he could do it successfully 40 times (over a week or so, not all at once). Shocker - it worked! $100 poorer, but so much richer in no longer tying anyone’s shoes but my own.

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Lara's avatar

I just got back from PT with my 18-month old who refuses to walk. It's not QUITE the same as the utensils thing, but the concept feels so familiar to what we're going through right now. Unlike the utensil thing, his fine motor skills are on POINT (like this kid can throw a ball through a hoop he's so accurate and can put a coin through a coin slot. What the heck.) but he just... doesn't want to walk. He CAN walk if he's absolutely forced to but given the choice he just... doesn't. Is it that he can crawl really fast? Is it that he doesn't know he can walk? Is it that he doesn't trust his walking skills? Who knows. He can't really tell us why and him screaming "DOGGIE!" doesn't give us any hints. I get super stressed about it, especially when other parents try to be helpful and say things like, "oh my son didn't walk until SUPER late... like 15 months!" bc we're well past that stage now. But my husband likes to remind me that you never see a middle aged man crawling on the ground and when you ask them why they're doing it they say, "you know... walking just wasn't for me." So I'm trying to be cool about it and just do the exercises the PT gave us and not worry about it. But man is it hard not to worry about it.

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