Knowledge of Developmental Milestones is essential to offering quality care
Date :
Friday, October 16 2009
Source:
Autourina Mains
Baby’s first couples of years are a lot enjoyable and entertaining because it’s like watching a flower bloom in front of your eyes. Babies grow very rapidly and develop amazing skills during the first year. They go from being completely dependent to walking and feeding themselves independently.
No one knows your child like you do and there is not a child in this world that is exactly like your child. Each child develops at his/her own pace, however, having knowledge of developmental milestones serves as a guideline for the parents and providers to check the progress of the baby and to help recognize possible delays, schedule early screenings and if necessary offer early intervention.
By 3 months:
Vision
- Begins watching faces closely
- Begins following moving objects
- Is able to recognize familiar objects and people from a distance
- Shows signs of eye/hand coordination
Large and small motor
- When lying on stomach, raises head and chest
- When lying on stomach supports upper body with arms
- When lying on stomach or back stretches legs out and kicks
- Begins to opens and shuts his hands
- When feet are placed on a firm surface, pushes down on legs
- Brings hand to mouth
- Reaches for and swipes at dangling objects with hands and feet
- Begins to grasps and shakes hand toys
Social and Emotional
- Smiles and is social
- Enjoys playing with adults and may cry when playing stops (a good time to begin playing “peek-a-boo”)
- Communicates with face (facial expressions)and becomes more expressive
- Imitates some movements and facial expressions
Large and small motor
- When lying on stomach, raises head and chest and is able to supports upper body with arms
- When lying on stomach or back stretches legs out and kicks
- Begins to opens and shuts his hands
- When feet are placed on a firm surface, pushes down on legs
- Brings hand to mouth
- Reaches for and swipes at dangling objects with hands and feet
- Begins to grasp hand toys and shakes them
Hearing and Speech
- Recognizes your voice and smiles when he hears it
- Begins babbling and imitating some sounds
- Is able to turn head toward direction of your voice or when hearing a sound
By 7th month:
Cognitive
- Is able to look for and find partially hidden object
- Exploring with hands and mouth begins at this age
- When objects are out of reach, he reaches for them
Social and Emotional
- Social play starts to develop
- Finds his image in the mirror interesting
- Is able to respond to other people’s expressions of emotion and demonstrates joy in interacting with others
Large and small motor
- Starts to roll front to back and back to front
- Can sit with and without support
- Legs muscles strong enough to support body weight
- Transfers object from hand to hand and begins reaching with one hand
Language
- Is able to recognize own name and responds to it
- Begins understanding “no” and will respond to the command
- Able to recognize tone of voice and emotions
- Mimics and responds to sound
- Babbles sounds and uses voice to express delight and irritation
Vision
- Vision has developed to see in full color
- Distance vision matures and develops ability to track moving objects improves
By 1 year:
Cognitive
- Enjoys exploring objects by shaking, banging, throwing, dropping
- When you hide an object he can find it easily
- Able to recognize pictures when the image is named
- Begins to drink from cup, brush hair
- Likes to dial phone, put the receiver to his ear and listen, talk to grandma
Small and large motor
- Creeps and crawls on hands and knees
- Gets from sitting to crawling or prone (lying on stomach) position
- Can crawl and sit without assistance
- Begins pulling himself up to stand
- Holding on to furniture he can walk and may even stand momentarily without support
- Starts to bang objects together
- Puts objects in and out of containers
- Starts to use develop fine motor skills and may be able to scribble, user pincer grip and use one finger at a time (to poke)
Language
- Tries to imitate words, says “mama, dada” and babbles, uses exclamations, such as “oh-oh!”
- Responds to simple verbal requests and responds to “no”
- Uses gestures (shaking head for “no”)
Social and Emotional
- Prefers mom over anyone else and Shows specific preferences for certain people and toys and cries when parents leave
- May be fearful in some situations and may be shy or anxious with strangers
- Begins imitating people in play
- Able to feed self (finger foods)
- Likes to see parental responses to his actions during feedings
- Likes to get attention by repeating sounds or gestures
- Helps getting dressed by extending arms and legs
By 18 months:
- Walks without help and likes to run but may fall frequently due to lack of coordination
- Likes heights and may climb up onto small chairs without help
- Can walk up the stairs
- Shows interest in building with blocks and can build a tower of two to four blocks
- Likes to push and pull objects
- Shown interest in feeding self and able to use a spoon and cup with help
- Shows interest in writing material and Imitates scribbling, makes marks on paper with crayons
- Shows interest in books and can turn two or three pages at a time and when you name a picture in the book, she can point to it
- Pushing and pulling toys or object are fun
- Able to say a few words (at least six and up to 50) may point and make sounds, tries to use words to ask for things
- Listens when spoken to and able to follow simple directions
- Develops self-help skills and tries to pull off shoes, socks, and mittens
- Able to walk backwards
- Growth slows down which means he may have less appetite (children go through growth periods and you’ll notice that sometimes they have great appetite and other times not so)
- Toilet training can begin as the toddler is physically able to control the muscles (sphincter muscles) that control urination and bowel movements