A mom’s moment of pride is when baby begins to walk. Every mom wants to see her little bundle of joy walk or even run around the house or in the park. Of course, this is a developmental stage and one has to be patient enough not to push the baby too much. My daughter learned to walk when she was 14 months. Yes, she is a lazy one! She wasn’t really interested in walking longer distances, so I had to find some cool tricks to encourage her.
As a parent, you have an important role to play in enhancing growth and development of your child. Here you will find some useful tips on how to encourage your toddler to walk longer distances.
How to Encourage a Toddler to Walk Longer Distances
Make Walking Fun
You should find ways of making your baby have fun when walking longer distances. One way of doing so is by finding an environment that is exciting for the baby. A park, for example, will stimulate your child to explore around and thereby make him or her walk longer distances. You should take your child to some unknown places, so don’t go to the same park every day. Change the scenery and your baby will be excited to explore around.
Introduce Small Challenges
If your child is old enough to recognize a challenge you can easily set milestones which he or she has to walk. Of course, having a reward for completed challenges will be a terrific motivator. Adults are performing better when they have some interesting challenges, so it’s the same thing with the kids too.
Take Your Baby out for Nature Walks
Nature trails have a way of inspiring babies to walk long distances. As they walk around picking things, playing, having fun and seeing new sights, they forget to get tired. If the trails you walk are fascinating enough, your child will actually look forward to the walk. And of course, being outside in nature will do you both some good.
Play Tricks on Your Baby
One mom on Quora had an interesting trick to make her daughter keep walking. When the girl said she was tired, the mom would suggest that they run instead. Amazingly the baby always fell for it. Don’t feel stupid for using tricks, relax and have some fun.
Understand Your Child
Sometimes when a baby says she is tired she might in the real sense be bored. At other times, the child may say she is not tired while she is actually very much exhausted. Every mom knows her baby best. If your baby is having trouble walking you just have to find best ways and tricks that make him or her love walking. Every person is unique, so just trust your instinct and do what you think it’s best for your baby.
Do you have some cool tricks to encourage your kid to walk long distances? Share them in the comments!
Lol…can totally relate to this. My daughter LOVES cuddles. She would much rather be cuddled than walk…anywhere! We only have to get out the car and she tells me that her legs hurt from walking! The amount of times I have gone around the shops with her pram is beyond counting. It does the trick, but makes the outing take 5 hours instead of half an hour…lol
Thanks for linking up to Marvelous Monday on Smart Party Planning.
I use a doll stroller to encourage walking too all of my boys have loved having one!
Great tips! My daughter went through a phase where she wanted to be carried everywhere went, even when I knew she was capable of walking on her own! I’m glad to say that phase has mostly passed, but these are great tips to keep in mind for when the next one comes!
Thank you for sharing with us at #MommyMeetupMondays!
Toddlers can be a challenge! Especially when in the grocery store or the mall! Great tips!
Nature walks are a fun idea!
The playing tricks always works! My kids are no longer toddlers (sob) but I find they still need a little motivation! Nature walks are perfect.
Great tips. My son is not a toddler anymore but sometimes I have trouble getting him to walk long distances so we make it fun by letting him do cartwheels or let him choose where we go. The playing tricks really works. LOL.
These are great ideas! Another that worked for me is walking TO someplace. Of course this requires being in a place where you CAN walk to anything of interest; we are lucky to live in a very walkable neighborhood. The branch library is slightly less than a mile from our house; my son was quite willing to walk there and back by the time he turned 2, but walking the same distance just to “go for a walk” was not always something he wanted to do.
Great advice! I find tricking always works with everything! 😉 #kidscorner
We are working on getting more distance with our walking right now. My kids are a little older, 6 and under – but we still have to work towards it. I always bring the double stroller, as the baby can’t walk yet, and that way we can rotate breaks for the bigger kids. We are hoping to do some two miles walk this summer….
Thanks for your tips!
Marissa
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I need a list on how to encourage my toddler to walk less. My little one is constantly on the move and being eight months pregnant, I am having trouble keeping up! hahaha Thanks for linking up at #MommyMeetUpMondays!
My daughter’s near;y 4 and still maintains that her legs hurt as soon as we get out of the car. I despair most of the time!
Monkey is just about to turn 3 and sometimes no matter what I do he won’t walk he wants to go on our shoulders! Theres nothing we can do. On the days when he less stubborn I am definitely going to try out some of your tips 🙂 #KidsCorner
Great tips, we also use the ‘fairy’ who leaves a sweet or two at certain points in the walk to keep our toddler going! #KidsCorner
My daughter is 18 months and still not walking. My son didn’t walk until really late either.y son now loves to walk everywhere but his favorite part of the day is being outside. I can’t wait until my daughter is walking so that I can watch them run around together – not to mention that she is getting really heavy. She is not a small baby lol
See i find my youngest 16 months wants to walk everywhere even if it takes hours she will walk it but its my older two who are whining saying there legs hurt after 5mins i think making a game of it the best thing to do gets us home alot quicker anyway! thanks for linking up to #kidscorner x
These are great tips! My 6 year old can make it pretty far, but my 3 year old gives up pretty quickly. Hopefully this will help! Thanks!
Haha love the running trick! Thanks for sharing in #KidsCorner x
That is such a great idea!! I will keep it in mind!
I love all of these tips. I remember when our kids were toddlers and we would take them to Europe where they walked A LOT. We would alternate walking with stroller time and try to have a destination they would want to walk to like the park. If we told them they were going to a playground, they were more likely to walk without complaint. Eventually they all get tired, but they walked a lot more than we ever expected.
You make some great points here, Marina! I remember when we were teaching Robbie to walk, and it was a challenge. (Now I can’t get him to stop!) But we would always head off to a local park, and that seemed to distract him to walk more. Thanks for sharing these tips! You’re always a fountain of knowledge when it comes to parenting topics. 🙂
I’m smiling at the idea of saying, “Let’s run!” That is brilliant. I remember walking with my little ones and counting.. steps or blocks of concrete or mailboxes.. something that kept our mind busy while walking. Of course, they didn’t always know how to count, but they were intrigued by it. I agree that sometimes it is boredom, more than true exhaustion, at play.
Aww, that picture is so cute <3 Love the idea of nature walks; getting fresh air is always so nice this time of year especially when we tend to feel cooped up inside (ahem). And going to parks!
Hope you're having a great week! XOXO
Keeping it fun is a good idea 🙂
Hi Marina, my two were total opposites when it came to walking. My son was over eighteen months when he started walking, we now know he has autism and a muscle disorder which didn’t help, but my daughter took her first unaided wobbly steps at ten months old and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a total nightmare after that. Life was a blur at least with my son I could plonk him down and know he would still be there ten minutes later (he didn’t move)… Saying that it was lovely to be able to take a slow stroll to pick my son up from school whilst exploring…. Making walking fun and interesting is key for sure. My daughter used to love collecting flowers and grass to ‘cook’ when we got home, she’s always been a bit of a foodie!
xx
I think my kiddos were more excited to walk long distances when they were a lot younger. Now that they are five and nine they don’t really care to do a whole lot of walking unless it’s somewhere they have been excited about visiting for a long time.
I could not agree more! Walking in nature can be really amazing, especially during this challenging times.
Have a great week too! XOXO