So many parents don’t want their kids to grow up. They want them to stay in the easy baby stages of life so they don’t have to do the work of taking care of a more autonomous person. I’m not even talking about going from being a kid to a teenager. A lot of growth happens from ages 2 to 5, and parents who desperately want their kids to stay in the baby phase and don’t encourage them to reach developmentally appropriate milestones are doing their kids a disservice. It’s not a big deal if a kid is a little bit behind, but insisting that they’re behind and they’ll never catch up is a losing attitude. Of course, it’s also undesirable to shame kids for not hitting milestones, but that’s not the problem at play in this story. While this girl isn’t suffering Gypsy Rose Blanchard levels of infantalization, it doesn’t seem like her mom is actually listening to her.