Four years old and ready to stand on your own two feet?
Gurgle parenting expert and child psychologist Eileen Hayes believes that four years old is certainly quite late to keep expecting to be carried. The sooner you can stop carrying your little one the better: the health implications of having the weight of a young child on one hip all day can be huge, with your precious cargo literally doing your back in.
So when is the right time for a child to stop being picked up? This is a difficult question, and depends how far you are asking the child to walk. Certainly by four your child should be walking short distances (such as to the car or to the bus stop) without the need to be picked up. One school of thought is that as soon as a child is old enough to walk he should be encouraged to do so whenever possible but this isn't an ideal world and real life can often get in the way: Toddlers can tire easily and aren't ready to walk long distances. Toddlers also don’t walk as quickly as adults, and so are often picked up because adults rarely have time in a busy day to allow a small child to dawdle and explore.
So how do you encourage your child to walk by himself?
If your child simply doesn't want to walk then it seems like the easier solution just to pick him up. But by reinforcing the message that he can be picked up whenever he wants to, your child will constantly turn to you rather than learning the independence that walking brings.Eileen suggests that rather than just insist the child walks (which is likely to be met with resistance) It is best to use approaches like bargaining -"if you can walk to the end of that tree I will carry you the rest", or give lots of praise that the child is really getting grown up and doesn't need buggies or being carried. Before you allow him to reach his target distances though, make sure your child knows how to walk safely.
It is also important to remember that it can be hard for a small child to keep up with an adult pace, and they may demand to be carried if the effort of walking alongside you becomes too overwhelming. The solution is to slow down to the child’s pace and not expect the child to keep up with you: Being allowed to walk at their own pace will encourage a child to keep walking!
Turn walking into a game!
Another of Eileen’s recommendations is that you turn walking into a game, to distract the attention of your child. Here are some great game ideas that can make walking seem fun and encourage your children to stand on their own two feet:• Counting the cracks: counting the cracks in the pavement is a great way of measuring how far you’ve walked and developing numeracy too.
• I spy: An old fashioned game that children of all ages still love, this is a great walking game because the more you walk the more things you spot!
• When you hear... pick a noise the child is likely to hear occasionally during the walk (a dog bark or bicycle bell) When they hear the noise and spot it, the child is the winner!
• Hunting for dogs and cats: Most children love animals and the temptation of spotting a new cat or dog if they walk a little bit further should have them walking in no time.
These simple games will help your toddlers stay engaged and you never know, you may even find they enjoy walking in no time!
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