The Baby Steps Game Disaster and How to Actually Teach Walking

It was somewhere around 3:17 in the morning, a time that I'm increasingly convinced exists solely to punish parents for their past life choices. Maya, the slightly more reasonable of my two-year-old twin daughters, was fast asleep in her cot, looking like an angel who wouldn't dream of throwing mashed banana at the television. Florence, on the other hand, was wide awake, fully caffeinated on what I can only assume was pure atmospheric oxygen, and attempting to scale the side of the sofa like a tiny, nappy-wearing mountaineer.

In a desperate bid to find an activity that might physically exhaust her enough to trigger sleep, I grabbed my phone with my free hand (the other was currently being used as a chew toy) and blindly typed a search for a developmental walking activity I had vaguely heard about from another dad at the park. I hit enter, fully expecting to see a cheerful, pastel-coloured listicle about holding your child's hands while singing nursery rhymes.

Instead, my screen was immediately flooded with images of an unemployed, thirty-five-year-old man named Nate, stumbling through a surreal fantasy landscape populated by anthropomorphic donkey men. And, because the universe has a highly specific sense of humour, I had stumbled right into a massive internet controversy involving visible, cartoonish genitalia.

The search history incident of 2025

I sat there in the dark, Florence momentarily distracted by chewing on my watch strap, trying to process what I was looking at. I assumed I was simply hallucinating from sleep deprivation, which wouldn't have been a first. But no, the internet had just done what the internet does best: taken a completely innocent phrase and turned it into an adult entertainment hazard.

From what I could gather while frantically trying to close tabs before my wife walked in and demanded a divorce, an indie developer had recently released a physics-based comedy walking simulator for the PlayStation. The entire premise is that you control this tragic bloke, Nate, and have to manually operate his individual legs to re-learn how to walk. It's entirely inappropriate for children, heavily features crude slapstick, and includes a tribe of donkey creatures that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

I foolishly ended up deep in a thread about the baby steps video game on Reddit, trying to figure out if the dad at the park had genuinely recommended this to me or if I had just misunderstood a conversation about actual human development. It turns out, half the internet was furiously searching for an uncensored version of the baby steps game because the developers cheekily ask you upon booting it up if you want to censor the mature content. Naturally, this sent the gamer community into a tailspin, resulting in thousands of search queries about nudity in the baby steps game totally obliterating any helpful information for exhausted parents.

So, if your teenager is suddenly very interested in infant developmental milestones, you might want to check their browser history. They're not studying for a childcare qualification.

What the doctor actually mumbled about milestones

Having safely closed the terrifying donkey tabs, I brought the issue up with our GP a few days later, trying to sound like a father who reads medical journals rather than one who gets his parenting advice from accidental gaming forums. From what I managed to interpret between the doctor's heavy sighs and Florence attempting to eat the crinkly paper on the examination table, walking is less of a sudden event and more of a messy, prolonged, and highly unpredictable spectrum.

My paediatrician seemed to think that anywhere between ten and eighteen months is completely normal for a first independent step, which is an absurdly large window when you're the one carrying a twenty-pound toddler who refuses to use their own legs. He explained that walking isn't just one skill, but a weird accumulation of micro-failures. First, they pull themselves up on your trousers (usually right as you're carrying a hot cup of tea). Then they cruise around the coffee table like a tiny shark. Finally, they let go, stand there looking terrified for three seconds, and immediately fall on their bottom.

The great furniture cruising olympics

Once I understood that I couldn't just download an app to teach them, I had to resort to actual, physical effort. The most successful tactic we found didn't come from a book, but from sheer desperate improvisation in our cramped London flat. We turned the living room into a bizarre obstacle course designed specifically to bribe them into moving laterally.

I started placing brightly coloured sticky notes along the wall at their eye level, spacing them just far enough apart that Florence had to let go of the radiator to reach the next one. It essentially turned our hallway into a low-stakes climbing wall. When I wasn't sticking office supplies to the skirting boards, I was doing the infamous finger-hold walk. For months, I walked around bent double, holding their hands high above their heads like a referee signalling a touchdown, which completely destroyed my lower back.

It was only later that a health visitor casually mentioned you're supposed to hold their hands at shoulder height so they can actually learn to balance their own forward momentum, rather than just dangling from your grip like a fleshy pendulum.

Why wheeled walkers belong in the bin

Let me tell you about sit-in walkers, because I've a vendetta that burns with the heat of a thousand suns. When my mother-in-law proudly presented us with a plastic, wheeled contraption that looked like a miniature spaceship, I thought my problems were solved. You just strap the child in, and suddenly they can zip around the kitchen while you desperately try to load the dishwasher.

It took exactly three minutes for me to realise this was a terrible idea. First of all, Florence used it to achieve speeds previously unknown to infant-kind, immediately ramming her plastic bumper into the dog's water bowl and flooding the linoleum. But more importantly, from what our doctor later explained to a horrified me, these things are actually detrimental to development. They hold the baby up by their crotch, which forces them to scoot around on their tiptoes. This apparently builds up their calf muscles while completely ignoring the core and upper leg strength they seriously need to walk on their own. They're essentially learning how to ice skate instead of walk, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has apparently been trying to ban the things for decades because babies keep launching themselves down staircases in them.

Just keep them barefoot indoors and let them figure out the friction of the floor on their own, it saves you eighty quid and a trip to A&E.

Wooden structures currently dominating our living room

Instead of the plastic death-trap, we ended up investing in things that genuinely forced the girls to use their own muscles. If you're going to clutter your house with baby gear, it might as well be something that doesn't scream nursery-rhyme tunes at you in a robotic voice every time you accidentally kick it in the dark.

The undisputed champion of our living room floor became the Bear Play Gym Set. When the twins were still in that potato phase where they mostly just stared at the ceiling, this thing was a lifesaver. It’s a beautifully simple A-frame made of untreated solid wood, so when Florence inevitably decided to start gnawing on one of the legs like a beaver, I didn't have to panic about toxic paint. The little crochet hanging toys and wooden rings honestly produce a soft rattling noise that doesn't make my teeth itch, and watching them reach up and swat at the toys was essentially the very beginning of the hand-eye coordination they'd later use to destroy my house. You can find more of these quiet, sanity-saving wooden structures in the wooden toys collection if your living room is currently drowning in loud plastic.

On the other hand, we also bought the Tent & Ring Hanger and Wood Play Bow, and honestly, it was just alright. Don't get me wrong, the construction is brilliant and the wood is lovely and smooth, but Maya took one look at it, gave a deep sigh, and decided she vastly preferred playing with an empty cardboard box. It's also slightly bulkier, which in a London flat means you spend a lot of time awkwardly stepping over it to get to the sofa.

We did have better luck with the Leaf & Cactus Play Gym Set when they started rolling over. The contrasting colours of the unfinished wood and the pastel silicone beads seemed to hold their attention just long enough for me to drink a cup of coffee while it was genuinely still warm, which is the highest compliment I can give any baby product.

Building a yes space without losing your mind

The final, exhausting stage of this whole walking business is the realisation that once they can move, they'll immediately gravitate toward the most dangerous object in the room. I spent a solid month just following Florence around saying "no" until I sounded like a broken metronome.

The only solution that doesn't involve locking them in a padded cell is creating a "yes space." You eventually find yourself shoving the antique coffee table into the hallway, throwing thick sustainable play mats over the hardwood, and securing the bookshelf to the wall with industrial brackets so they can climb and fall and cruise without you having to hover over them like an anxious drone. It looks ridiculous, your flat essentially becomes a giant soft-play area, but the peace of mind is worth sacrificing your interior design aesthetic.

If you're currently staring down the barrel of the toddler walking phase and want to equip your home with things that genuinely support their development without ruining your decor, have a browse through Kianao’s nursery essentials before you resort to buying plastic monstrosities at 3 AM.

Answers to questions you're probably googling at 2 AM

Is my baby behind if they aren't walking at 12 months?

From the terrified research I did when Maya outright refused to stand while Florence was already scaling the curtains, absolutely not. My paediatrician basically told me to stop looking at the calendar. Some babies walk at 10 months because they're chaotic, and some wait until 16 months because they're cautious and smart enough to know that walking means less being carried. Unless they aren't pulling up or trying to bear weight at all by around 15 months, pour yourself a tea and enjoy the fact that you don't have to chase them yet.

How do I stop them falling backward onto the hardwood floor?

You don't, really. They're going to fall. A lot. It's deeply distressing to watch, but it's literally how they learn the physics of gravity. Best thing you can do is throw down a really thick, soft play mat in their main cruising area and let them tumble. Oh, and take off their socks—bare feet grip the floor way better than those little cotton foot-prisons.

Is cruising the same thing as walking?

Cruising is the gateway drug to walking. When they shuffle sideways along the sofa while holding on for dear life, they're really building the lateral hip strength needed to eventually move forward. I spent weeks moving favourite toys just out of reach on the sofa cushions to trick them into letting go of one hand.

Are baby walkers really that bad, or are doctors just being overly cautious?

No, they really are rubbish. The sit-in ones with wheels, I mean. They build the wrong muscles, they teach babies to walk on their tiptoes, and they give a creature with zero impulse control the ability to cross a room at speed to grab a hot oven door. Ditch the wheels. If you want a walker, get a heavy wooden push-cart that they've to physically stand behind and push with their own strength.

What if one twin walks and the other absolutely refuses?

Welcome to my life. Florence was running while Maya was perfectly content to sit on the rug and demand things be brought to her like a Roman emperor. You can't compare them, even if they share the same DNA. Just focus on the one who's currently trying to climb the bookshelf, the other will figure it out when she decides walking is finally worth the effort.