During family or friend meetings, it is quite common that parents discuss their child’s progress and ask questions like, “Has your baby started crawling or walking?” “Has your daughter or son started to speak?” and many other questions.
Parents usually tend to compare the development of their children with other children of the same age. But there is a lot of conflicting information received from parents, and interest makes parents more overwhelmed.
The good news is, however, that each child develops in their own special way and at their own particular pace and, thus, “there is more room for ‘normality’ than one might have thought.” However, having a place where you can compare your child’s development to some standards will help you to understand the way your child develops and what actions to take concerning certain issues which may require immediate care.
Further down, you can find a list of child development milestones according to the age group from birth to five years old. There are also certain warning signs of developmental problems.
Why Milestones Matter (and Why They’re Not a Race)?
Milestones are simply those skills that most kids acquire during a certain age range, such as sitting, speaking first words, walking, and so forth. Milestones are set just to have a rough idea of how the child is developing from the perspective of the parent and the doctor and nothing more.
It is completely normal for some kids to develop faster in one field and be slower in other fields. What is far more important here is the overall trend of the child’s development than being behind in a certain milestone; it is whether the child is progressing slowly but surely in all fields or is lagging in everything.
Age Range: 0 – 3 Months
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- Physical: Head held erect for short periods in prone position, jerky movements of limbs, following moving objects with eyes only.
- Language/Communication: Reacting to sounds, making cooing sounds, making vowels, crying in different ways to communicate their needs.
- Social/Emotional: Smiling at people (6-8 weeks), becomes quiet when picked up or talked to, watches faces.
4-6 Months: Reaching and Responding
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- Physical: Can move from a stomach to a back position, can hold his/her head up unsupported, brings hands together, sits with help.
- Language/communication: Makes cooing sounds accompanied by facial expressions, laughs, vocalizes during language interactions.
- Social/Emotional: Makes spontaneous smiles, loves social games, recognizes one’s own name.
- Cognitive: Is curious about objects, attempts to grab slightly out-of-reach objects, watches objects that fall.
7-9 Months: Building Mobility
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- Physical: Sits without support, crawls, and starts to transfer objects between hands.
- Language/Communication: By now, they might start to know the meaning of “no”, makes consonant babbling such as “ba-ba” and “da-da”, understands words, recognizes his or her name.
- Social/Emotional: By this age, they only prefer to talk to their known people, and have little stranger anxiety.
- Cognitive: Searches for hidden objects, investigates objects by means of shaking, banging, and dropping.
10-12 Months: Walking and First Words
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- Physical: Pulls themselves into a sitting position, able to walk with furniture support, and makes a cute pincer grasp.
- Language/Communication: Says 1-2 words with the meaning “mama”, “bye-bye”, “baba”, “dada”. And they also able to understand the meaning of simple instructions.
- Social/Emotional: They have a preference when it comes to people and and shows awareness of their parents’ reaction to his/her behavior, shy with strangers.
- Cognitive: Makes imitations, investigates objects in various ways, understands the principle of causality (by pressing a button makes a sound).
12-18 Months: Becoming a Toddler
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- Physical: Walks independently, walks stiffly and runs, stacks some blocks.
- Language/Communication: Learns many words, indicates desired objects by pointing at them, understands one-step instructions.
- Social/Emotional: By this age, kids start to open up to others. But every child is different; some can get along with others, while some children feel shy to even say hi to others.
- Cognitive: Able to find hidden objects easily, they start to play with their toys, make stories while playing, and point to a picture in a book when named.
18-24 Months: Language Growth
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- Physical: Running, jumping, climbing on furniture, kicking the ball, crayon drawing, and playing games.
- Language & Communication: Vocabulary reaches 20 to 50 words, or more; starts to make two-word combinations such as “I want milk”; ability to identify familiar objects and people.
- Social & Emotional: Exhibiting signs of independence, but children have separation anxiety because they get used to the familiar faces, and when they get separated from their loved ones, they start to cry or panic.
- Cognitive: Classification based on shapes and colours; make-believe or imaginative play; two-step instructions.
2-3 years: Development of Independence
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- Physical: Till now, children learn to control their body, which allows them to run, walk upstairs and downstairs; jumping on both legs; using scissors.
- Language & Communication: Now their vocabulary increases to two-word sentences such as “I see dog”; developing vocabulary; communication skills with familiar adults.
- Social & Emotional: Displaying a wide range of emotions; interaction with other children; asserting independence (“NO!”).
- Cognitive: Classification based on shapes and colours; simple puzzles; number two.
3-4 Years: Expanding Social and Language Skills
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- Physical: Able to ride a tricycle, climb, hold a crayon with the right grip, and hop on one leg for some time.
- Language/Communication: Able to make three-word sentences, speaks in narrative form, and is always understandable to people who do not know him/her.
- Social/Emotional: Able to engage in cooperative play, understands the concept of sharing, and is becoming independent in regards to self-care skills. Some parents enrol their children in school, and this allows them to learn more and become more independent through socialization.
- Cognitive: Understands the concept of counting, understands and follows two or three commands, understands and uses the concept of time like today and tomorrow.
4-5 years: School readiness
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- Physical: Able to hop, skip, catch the ball that is being thrown to him/her, dress and undress with minor help from other people, able to draw realistic pictures and shapes.
- Language/Communication: Able to speak in complete sentences, able to make meaningful stories with a meaningful beginning and ending, and is understandable to all the people he/she encounters.
- Social/Emotional: Likes cooperative play, empathizes with others, gets along with more children of their age and follows class rules.
- Cognitive: Knows the alphabet and numbers, and understands and uses the concepts of more, less, same, and different.
Developmental Delay Signs: When to Consult a Specialist
Although each child follows its own schedule, certain signs should be reported to the pediatrician right away without being ignored and hoping that they will get better on their own.
- The child at one year of age: does not babble, does not react to his/her name, does not show, does not wave, is unable to sit alone.
- The child at eighteen months of age: does not utter any words, cannot walk alone, is not interested in people around him/her.
- The child at two years of age: utters fewer than fifty words, does not use two-word phrases, does not repeat words and actions, regression (can be evaluated at any age).
- The child at three years of age: talks so badly that they cannot be understood by anyone, even by family members; has trouble comprehending simple orders, poor play skills, poor fine motor skills (he/she cannot hold a crayon, cannot turn pages).
- Children four-five years old: have unintelligible speech, trouble with independent self-care, are unable to dress, poor skills of interacting with peers, poor skills of sitting still and following instructions.
What to do if you notice a delay?
Now that you realize that your kid is not developing as he/she should be developing, I would suggest that you choose to go through the process of developmental evaluation of your child instead of wasting all your time browsing different websites and assuring yourself on hopes that someday your child will meet all the requirements. Through early diagnosis, specialists will know about those areas where your child is lagging and will come up with a treatment plan suitable for them, whether it’s speech therapy, occupational therapy or general developmental therapy.
For further knowledge regarding the process of treatment, I would like to refer you to our articles where we discuss speech delay in kids and pediatric occupational therapy.
The value of early intervention
- One of the major things that has already been proven in terms of the development of children is that early interventions are always more effective, regardless of the kind of delay. First, parents need to learn to understand whether their child can achieve the milestones or not, and if not, they need to take them to pediatricians so that they can identify the issues.
- For this reason, we recommend that parents not adhere to the “wait and see” approach if there is any delay. A developmental evaluation will not make you do anything, but it will help you to get an idea, and an idea is always better than a mystery.
- Through early intervention, you can start your child’s occupational therapy on time, which not only helps in their growing stage, but will also help them in their future.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, it would be impossible for all developmental processes to be similar, but there is nothing wrong about that. Milestones listed above definitely will not be used to assess the development of your baby according to some schedule; however, they could help you understand what to expect and when it is time to consult with professionals.
In case you think that your baby faces problems concerning the developmental milestones or you just want to learn more about them, there is no need to wait until the next appointment. It is better to get timely help, because it would be very beneficial for your child. Consult with the experts at Cradle Children Hospital, Jaipur.
