Most experts define a toddler as a child from 13 months old to the age of 24 months. This seems to be a generally accepted rule of thumb, since, according to babycenter.com, three-fourths of toddlers are walking on their own by then. For simplicity, we say children are toddlers at 13 months, even if they are not walking. If your child still hasn't stopped crawling, it just means walking on his/her own is going to take a little longer.

While my son, Carlos, was walking by 13 months, my daughter, Angelina, did not start walking until she was 18 months old. Since she was not learning to walk, Angelina was learning other things like finger dexterity and good hand/eye coordination. When I compared her to other children her age who were walking, I thought she seemed to have better hand-eye coordination and greater finger dexterity. For example, she could pick up Cheerios with two fingers while the other child could not.

We did not realize how different our daughter and our son would be. My daughter liked to sit still and play with all the toys within her reach. While she crawled around a lot, she could be content in a single spot for 20 minutes at a time.

My son, Carlos, definitely toddled when he was first walking. I used to tell people that he trips over the cracks in the ground, because he was constantly falling over things and tripping on anything in his path. He is different from Angelina, because he will not stay in one place for longer than about 5 minutes.

Soon after he started walking, he would also push things around the room. Chairs and baskets, boxes and toys--if they moved, he would move them around the room. Once his sister, Angelina, showed him how chairs could be used as stools to climb to higher locations, nothing is safe any more. Carlos and Angelina both move chairs over and then climb up on them to reach anything they want off tables or countertops. Since Carlos learned some of this from his sister, he is displaying the same behavior despite being 2 years younger.

But often Carlos will climb just because he can. He has many scrapes and bruises from his climbing adventures. In addition to climbing, now that he is approaching his 2nd birthday, he has moved on to running. This does not mean he has mastered turning in time, but instead corners by running into walls to help change directions quickly.

In April (2006) I will no longer have a toddler in the house, as my toddler will turn 2 years old, and four days later his sister will become 4 years old. Now that both children can run, they spend a lot of time doing exactly that. In fact this desire to always be moving and playing is what makes