Walking children

I am on my paeds prac at the moment. Most of the children have down syndrome and are delayed in their walking. I thought it was quite interesting that the Physios tend to not push the child to walk by assisting them to walk or allowing them to weight bear in a standing frame for instance. Treatments are performed in positions that the children can do independantly to improve their strength and control and hence the quality of movement when they eventually choose to walk. It sounds straight forward that you wouldn't push them to walk, but I never really thought about it in that way. One of the children I see was walking but with no control and no quality of movement because the parents wanted her to walk because they thought it was normal. We had to explain that standing their child isn't the best scenario even if at their age they should be walking. It made me realise that to get the best quality of movement, you should allow the child to develop through all the milestones even if you know they should be doing a particular task at their age normally. It's also important to explain to the parents the importance of this and pushing them to be developing normally isn't always the best approach.