There are certain growth and developmental milestones that every parent is aware of (and inherently concerned about). Is your child rolling over at the right time? Crawling? Standing up? Talking? But one pediatrician says there are a lot of signs of healthy development that aren’t on the traditional milestone checklists—and in a viral TikTok video, she’s sharing them all for the anxious parents of the world.
Dr. Sami is one-half of the TikTok account @thepedipals, which features two pediatricians who share evidence-based advice and information with parents. In a recent video, she revealed her “superpower:” being able to predict certain actions that babies and toddlers do when their parents bring them into her clinic.
“It’s not like I’m some kind of genius, although if you want to think that for me, that’s totally fine,” she says. “It’s more that I just know because I’m a pediatrician.” She then proceeds to name some of the milestones parents tend to miss:
@thepedipals ♬ original sound – The PediPals (Pediatric Pals)
“If you have a newborn, one of the secret milestones is that they hiccup a lot. Totally normal,” she says. “The other thing is that they scream bloody murder for everything, right? It doesn’t matter if they’re hungry, if they’re wet, if they’re bored. It’s always just one setting, and it’s like, ‘I’m dying.'”
That one should help put some parents’ minds at ease.
“Four months is that stage where they’re super cute and smiling all the time, but they also grab your hair and won’t let go. And you’re literally bald because of it because they just pull all your hair out,” Dr. Sami says. “Between six to nine months they start to do weird things that you’re like, ‘Is that normal?’ They start to shake their head all the time or maybe they start to stick their tongue out a little bit? Totally normal. Milestone.”
Dr. Sami even busts some myths about milestones parents think exist.
“A lot of people think temper tantrums start when they’re like two and up. But, honestly, they start between 12 and 15 months. That’s a milestone,” she says. “Also around 15 to 18 months they all totally try to kill themselves every day. That’s totally a milestone.”
Related: 4 Things Parents Need to Chill Out About (According to a Developmental Expert)
Some other milestones she notes for toddlers are that they’re selfish, unreasonable, and picky eaters. For slightly older ones between ages 4 and 6, there’s the nonstop talking and asking “why” about everything. And for kids ages 9 to 11, Dr. Sami says starting to feel anxious is a milestone, but that parents should be sure to “talk to your pediatrician about that because if you don’t, it can get away from you.”
So if you have an app—like Tinybeans!—that tracks your baby’s milestones (or you find yourself checking the CDC master list over and over), you can rest easy—those are great signs of a healthy, growing baby, but so are things like hiccups and hair pulling, and your baby is probably doing just fine.
