Child development is a process through which young children go through growth and developmental stages. These growth and development includes not only the physical changes but also emotional, personality, behavioral, speech and language and cognitive. At each stages children develop skills necessary for understanding, manipulating and interacting in the world around them (Lock, 2023), these skills are called developmental milestones. Children develop at their own pace so they may reach these milestones at different times. It is important to observe and monitor how children are developing to ensure that they meet their developmental milestones. Child development can be actively enhanced through best practices, intervention and therapies (Stanborough, 2019) which all aim to ensure children are supported in meeting their milestones or to at least help them master these developmental skills. Developmental milestone checklists and charts are used as a guide to track and montior what is considered normal development and to identify if or when a child might be delayed at certain stages.
Developmental Milestones
Birth to 12 Months
The first year of child development is a very crucial and fragile stage. While at this stage children tend to grow quickly, it is important to monitor their development. Children learn in many ways and at different paces understanding this will help identify typical and atypical development. There are important domains of child development, cognitive, social and emotional, physical, and language. At this stage monitoring and catering to effective development is crucial as children's brain begins to develop memory, language, thinking, and reasoning skills needed for cognition. Creating a safe, healthy, and nurturing environment is important for long-term continued development. Safety is very important for infants and healthy babies grow and develop into healthy toddlers.
The cognitive domain includes intellectual development and how children gain the ability to pay attention, process thought, develop core memories, and problem solving. An infant need to interact with their environment to learn about it which is done by using their senses. Creating an opportunity for repetition so babies and infants can organize their experiences and the world around them is important factor in cognitive development at this stage.
The Social and emotional Development Domain works hand in hand as most children build an awareness of their feeling and that of others by building and showing empathy and morality. This can be achieved through much needed social interaction with peers and adults alike. The ability to understand and control emotions through interaction is important for developing social and emotional development.
The Physical Development Domain focuses on the body and those physical changes it goes through as children grow. Children's growth can be measured through their bodily strength and size simply by monitoring their fine and gross motor skills. Infants need activities that stimulates growth through movement such as tummy time to strengthen muscles resulting in well-developed gross motor skills necessary for initial crawling, rolling, etc.
Finally, The Language Domain covers communication and speech. Developing infants need exposure to sound and language to help build those language acquisition skills needed for language development. For instance, reading to babies and infants exposes them to tone, facial expressions, body language and words necessary for communication later in their development.
Strategies for Families
There are strategies families can use to aid in their child's development. For one family can read to their birth-12-month-old children to cater to all the domains of their development as reading aloud develops communication skills, empathy, literacy skills, sound recognition, and dramatic play. Also, families can play with their infants as play is an integral part of catering to the whole child. It builds relationships and bonds as well as it is fun.
Developmental Milestones
13-24 Months
The second year of a child's life is just as magical as the first as children begin to blossom into their personalities as they begin to experience many firsts. They use their first words, take their first steps independently, and navigate the world around them. At this stage, children are energetic and more aware as they have these new experiences. Most importantly their motor skills are developing at a rapid rate as they are walking and moving about. Creating opportunities for self-discovery and movement at this stage helps prepare them for the more advanced stages of development. These advanced stages provide more opportunities for long-term growth through more attempts at new and existing activities to build confidence in trying new skills while expanding on the ones they already have.
Cognitively they start to understand and process the world around them better as their thinking and reasoning skills continue to develop. By this, they are beginning to be more expressive of this cognition. Young children at this stage of cognition are very observant so creating opportunities for them to learn by being engaged in the ever-changing world around them is important. Children need outside activities to build those cognitive skills necessary for exploration and observation.
At this stage, social and emotional skills are developing as young children start to independently regulate emotionally, have self-control, and build self-confidence. With these skills, they can show interest in peer play by sharing, exchanging, and exploring toys and other play objects. Additionally, they start to feel more emotions like anger, excitement, or shame in reaction to all that is happening around them through interactions. Even though at this stage toddlers use temper tantrums to express those big emotions, they are actively learning to manage these emotions through social interactions.
Looking at the Physical Domain of child development at this change it is evident toddlers are more active as they are walking and being active. Additional to those gross motor skills that are noticeable, fine motor skills are also being developed. Toddlers at this stage begin to scribble as their grasping skills improve. With this, they may start to show a preference for using one hand over the other. Even though physical development entails bodily growth, children's eating habit plays an important role in that regard. They usually start eating less and become very picky eaters. With this, it is essential to provide healthy food options to aid in this aspect of physical development.
Developing Language skills are apparent at this stage as toddlers begin to mimic sounds, words, and gestures that are familiar to them. Usually, speech isn't well developed at this stage and spoken words are few, so language and communication skills are something toddlers slowly develop. However, introducing more opportunities for language development through activities like playing, reading, storytelling, and simply speaking to toddler’s aid in their language development as they also need to learn listening skills that will help them be effective communicators as they grow older.
Strategies for Families
These developmental milestones are important at this stage as it becomes more evident in a normally developing child or if there are any delays. Families can aid in their children's development by providing more opportunities for exploration. Exploration has been proven to help children make discoveries that probe them to think, investigate, problem solve, think, and have self-directed learning. Families can also do developmental screenings to take a closer look at how their child is developing as a way of staying on track or identifying missed milestones.
Developmental Milestones
25-36 Months
Toddler years are fun and exciting as children continue to explore the world around them in many ways and become more independent. By this time cognitively, social and emotionally, physically, and lingually their developing skills should be more evident as children become more curious, active, and regulated. Nurturing their developing skills plays an important role in their long-term development as not only does it help to identify delays, but it allows for children to be supported (Fraser-Thill, 2019). At this stage it is important to focus on nurturing those developing skills necessary for a healthy well-developed child. Catering to these developing skills have long term importance as a discrepancy in development can lead to misdiagnosis, and unidentified development challenges and delays.
While most Cognitive skills are being developed there's a lot that needs to be established to ensure effective development. For instance, something like a sense of safety takes more shape at this stage so creating an environment or opportunities to encourage safety will help build their awareness of this skill of cognition. Children need continued support to have those experiences that cater to improving those skills.
As children grow so do their skills and the social and emotional domains of their development are an exciting aspect of their growth. Loving relationships give young children a sense of belonging and comfort that is needed to build their sense of trust, empathy, compassion, and awareness. Children express and experience these skills when they begin to play interactively with peers. They are capable of empathy, and they understand others' feelings.
The Language Domain at this stage has more developed skills as toddlers are more expressive in their spoken vocabulary. It can be seen in the way they speak in two-word sentences and even begin to join three words together to express a thought or feeling. At this age, their vocabulary typically contains an average of 50- 250 or more words.
The Physical Development Domain is responsible for the development of all those related fine and gross motor skills. They will be running, jumping, and climbing in an age-appropriate manner. Coordination is more advanced at this stage and to be well-developed children need an opportunity to be more engaged physically. This can be obtained through more independent activities as simple as turning book pages to more advanced skill like dressing and undressing themselves.
Strategies for Families
It can become very challenging for young children to navigate these newfound skills, so as parents one strategy you can use to aid in your child's development is to create a healthy and safe environment to encourage continued development. While learning, growing, and developing are all fun and exciting making it safe encourages children to learn responsibility along with many other needed skills. Another strategy for families is creating opportunities for play. Through play young children learn about the world around them while they improve their developing skills in all the domains of child development.
Identifying Developmental Delays
Developmental delays refer to the slowed, stopped, or reversed progress related to children's developmental milestones (Morelli et al., 2014). The milestones are cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development that children go through as they are growing. Developmental delays occur because of many different factors that often begin from in the womb. Factors such as genetics, environmental factors, parental practices, birthing complications, etc. Characteristics associated to developmental delays may show up in the form of developmental disabilities and varied syndromes that affects speech, social, emotional regulation, and movement, and coordination. Early identification of possible developmental delays is the first step into intervention as a way of supporting the delays (Gill, et.al, 2021) and requires appropriate screening, testing, evaluations, and monitoring to improve developmental skills. While most parents may be the first to notice these delays, they would usually need a referral for intervention which may come from an educational professional, special education specialist and/or medical professionals. They have the most appropriate tools needed to effectively address the early intervention process. Irrespective of the developmental delay, there are a plethora of resources available to provide support especially for families such as websites. These are set in place to offer support and assistance to special needs children and their families.
References
Choo, Y., Agarwal, P., How, C., & Yeleswarapu, S. (2019). Developmental delay: identification and management at primary care level. Singapore Medical Journal, 60(3), 119–123. https://doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2019025
Fraser-Thill, R. (2019). The Major Domains in Human Growth and Change. Verywell Family. https://www.verywellfamily.com/definition-of-domain-3288323
Gill, K. Stanborough, R. (2021). Resource Guide for Children with Developmental Disabilities. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/childrens-health/resource-guide-for-children-with-developmental-disabilities
Lock, K. (2023). Understanding Childhood Development. Prevent Child Abuse Utah. https://pcautah.org/2023/03/27/child-development/
Morelli, D. L., Pati, S., Butler, A., Blum, N. J., Gerdes, M., Pinto-Martin, J., & Guevara, J. P. (2014). Challenges to implementation of developmental screening in urban primary care: a mixed methods study. BMC Pediatrics, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-14-16
Mosley, A. (2020). The negative effects of screen time for adults and children. Valleywise Health. https://blog.valleywisehealth.org/negative-effect-of-screen-time-adults-children/
Stanborough, R. J. (2019). Understanding the Stages of Child Development. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/childrens-health/stages-of-child-development
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