The Day My Youngest Boycotted His Checkup

Hi, friends. The other day my youngest had his U7, the German well-child checkup around age two. That's where the doctor checks how tall and heavy he is, and whether he can do a puzzle, hop, and put together two-word sentences. I think he's pretty far along for his age, both physically and with language, which is surely thanks to his three big siblings.

So I wasn't exactly “worried” going in. The pediatrician is also the dad of one of my daughter's friends, and my youngest knows him well. A piece of cake, I figured. My son, however, staged a full-on boycott.

First he refused to step on the scale. The fix: I stepped on first, then again with him in my arms. A little subtraction gave us his weight, and gave me the news that I should probably cut back on the sweets.

Measuring his height and head circumference only happened amid screaming, and no amount of sweet talk helped. After that he simply plopped down on the floor and refused to look at anyone. “What's your name? Do you have a brother? How old are you? Do you like dinosaurs?” The lovely medical assistant tried everything to coax him out of his shell. And I pulled out the oldest, most desperate line in the book: “When we get home, you can have a lollipop.”

Who Did the Puzzle at the Checkup? Me, on the Floor

The medical assistant and I sat on the floor doing puzzles, building towers, and tossing balls back and forth. At some point we got the giggles, because we were getting absolutely ZERO reaction from my youngest. We agreed that she'd simply ask me what he can and can't do yet, and the pediatrician soon after did only the bare minimum of an exam, very gently. The second we walked out of the office, my little guy started hopping around happily and asked, “Lollipop?”

At home I thought, “Thank goodness this didn't happen with my first!” I think I would have been mortified back then, because I probably would have wanted my child to “perform” well. I might even have assumed the doctors were wondering what kind of mother I was, and why my child wouldn't cooperate. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have stayed cool, and I would have taken it personally.

Kids Aren't Robots

Now I know my little guy is perfectly healthy, even if he doesn't build towers for doctors and doesn't show off everything he can do. I also know that kids' brains sometimes do the funniest things, things we adults can't always make sense of but that make perfect sense to the child. I don't drive myself crazy anymore over whether a child has to be able to do some particular thing at some particular time, because I know every kid has their own pace. I don't compare my child to other kids his age anymore. I just enjoy that he is who he is.

I'm not writing all this to make fun of first-time moms who might be on edge before appointments like this. I'm writing it because I was exactly that mom, and I drove myself crazy over it more than once. I remember that with our oldest, I was handed a list of words she was supposed to know about 30 of. I was supposed to check off which 30 words she could already say. She only knew about half, so out of embarrassment I just cheated and checked off 15 words she had never said. I wouldn't do that today.

I just want to tell you: we all grow and learn as parents. We keep evolving, we get to know our kids better and better, we stop sweating certain things, and we can laugh at ourselves more. Parenthood is probably the biggest adventure of our lives.