Your baby’s first words, smile, step and so much more is an important milestone in every parent’s life. Child development experts have created lots of different charts and checklists that can help you keep track of child development across several key domains. From cognitive development to physical and language development to socio-emotional milestones, it’s vital to recognise the milestones and work towards them. But should you depend on a single checklist? A good approach, researchers suggest, is to start by talking to your child’s paediatrician or primary care provider.
And to address this and many other similar concerns and questions about a child’s developmental milestones, TC46 connected with Paediatrician & Neonatologist Dr Santosh Kumar of Motherhood Hospitals, Bangalore. Here he talks about the cognitive skills of a child, the need for early intervention evaluation and crucial tips for parents and caregivers.
1. What are some of the common cognitive skills a child develops in the first year?
Most children by age 1:
- They are curious about everyday activities and how they run. Your child will try to turn the knobs, click buttons, and open the drawers and cupboards.
- Start to remember things that happened a couple of hours or even a day ago. Your child will illustrate this new ability by doing simple things, such as stacking blocks or getting excited when you talk about going to the store.
- Can recognise an item they’re watching you hide. For example, if your kid is watching you cover a teddy bear with a blanket, he or she can “find” the teddy bear by removing the blanket, like playing peekaboo.
2. How do coordination and motor skills develop at different ages?
Within 2 months:
- Start pressing up on the tummy while lying face down
- Starting deliberate motions with the arms and legs
Within 4 months:
- Keeping the head straight
- Bearing weight on the legs when the feet are flat on the floor
- Pushing up from the belly to the elbows
Within 6 months:
- Sitting without help
- Rocking on knees and hands
- Rolling over
In 9 months’ time:
- Creep, crawl, scoot and start pulling to the position of standing
- Pointing at stuff
- Reaching for and seizing a toy
- Begining to pick up small pieces of food
In 12 months’ time:
- Drinking a beverage from a sippy cup
- Shaking and tossing objects
- Standing with help and may start standing unassisted
- Taking a few changes while holding on to a person or a piece of furniture
3. How do social-emotional skills develop at different ages?
Infants & Babies
By 2 months:
- Crying to get needs met
- Start to smile and look at you directly,
- Self-soothing sometimes by sucking on hands and fingers
By 4 months:
- Cry in various ways to demonstrate hunger, pain, or fatigue
- Smile In response to the smile of the caregiver
- Playing with toys by making them shake
By 6 months:
- They are more aware of familiar individuals and strangers.
- The child can respond to the feelings of other people by crying, smiling, or laughing
- Enjoy watching oneself in the mirror
By 9 months:
- Start demonstrating foreign anxiety
- Can cry if familiar faces are not around
- Begin to favour some toys over others
By 12 months:
- Playing favourites with familiar individuals
- More engaging behaviour (such as handing over a toy or a book or making a particular noise to get the attention of a caregiver)
- Enjoy easy interactive games such as patty-cake and peekaboo
4. Could you share the physical, psychological feature and social and emotional milestones of crucial development among kids under the age of 1?
New Born
Physical milestone:
- Makes reflex motions like ingestion and surprising
- Has uncontrolled, jerky arm and leg movements
Cognitional milestones:
- Learning things by feeling, sound, vision, and scent
- Begins to repeat motions to help brain development and memory
Social and psychological milestones:
- Starting to be told to be comfortable by caregivers
- Starting to be connected to caregivers
3 Months
Physical breakthrough:
- Props au courant the perimeters whereas the belly is on
- Holds up head unsupported for a quick amount
- Follows associate degree entity from one hand to the centre with eyes however not all the approach around
Cognitive breakthrough:
- Begins to concentrate to, track, and bear in mind faces
- Recognizing acquainted people at a distance
- Shows signs of ennui once doing one factor too long (fussiness)
- Uses eyes and hands and plans along, like seeing and reaching for a toy
Social and emotional milestones:
- Smiles ad lib
- Likes to play with folks
- Coos and babbles
- Develops numerous cries for numerous desires (hungry, tired, wet)
- Responds to like and warmheartedness
- Shows happiness and unhappiness
- May imitate facial expressions
5 Months
Physical milestones:
- Reaches for and grabs objects
- Tummy rocks; could also be able to roll from tummy to back
- Weight on the legs whereas the feet on the ground ar flat
- Moves things from hand at hand
Cognitive and language milestones:
- Putting everything in thought, begins to explore
- Curious regarding things that are out of management and looking out at new things
- Can flip the head after hearing sounds
Social and emotional breakthrough:
- Starts to acknowledge and react to strangers
- Tries to urge caregivers to play (sticks out tongue, pats toys)
7 Months
Physical milestones:
- Sits while not support
- Rolls from tummy to back and tummy to back
- Does “push-ups” and tries to manoeuvre forward
Cognitive and language milestones:
- Practices turn-taking once “talking” with caregivers
- Starts testing cause and impact, like seeing what happens while shaking a toy
- Jabbers with variations of vowel sounds (eh, ah, oh)
Social and emotional milestones:
- Is fascinated by trying with the mirror
- To specific happiness, sadness, and anger, use sounds
9 Months
Physical milestones:
- Starts scooting, creeping, or travel
- Moving into and out of a sitting posture
- May stand with support
- Follows a falling object with eyes
- Using thumb and fingertips to select up tiny things (pincer grasp)
- Look for a hidden object, however as long as your kid sees that you are active
- Plays a child’s game and patty-cake
- Starts to grasp no
- Makes vowel-consonant sounds (mama, baba)
- Points and copies different gestures
Social and emotional milestones:
- Begins having trespasser anxiety
- May be upset once separated from caregivers
- Has favourite objects or toys
12 Months
Physical milestones:
- Walks holding on to hands or article of furniture
- May stand alone
- May take a number of steps alone
- Can abandoning of things while not facilitate
Cognitive and language milestones:
- Finds hidden objects
- Looks at or points to an image after you name it
- Bangs, throws and shakes things to visualize what happens
- Explore everyday objects within the right approach (using a cup to drink) and within the wrong approach (puts a toy in a feeding cup)
- Follows ballroom dancing directions
- Shakes head no and waves
- Tries to repeat words
- Social and psychological milestones
- Unexpectedly smiles
- Likes to play with people
- Coos and babbles
- Develops numerous cries for numerous desires (hungry, tired, wet)
- Reacts to warmheartedness and love
- Plays joy and sorrow
- Able to mimic facial expressions
5. When should parents consider an early intervention evaluation do their child with the help of a paediatrician?
- Early intervention is intended for infants and toddlers with a delay or impairment in growth. Eligibility is assessed by testing the infant (with the consent of the parents) to see if the little one really has a developmental delay or an impairment. Eligible children can receive services for early intervention from birth to their third birthday (and sometimes beyond).
- For certain children, from birth. From the moment a child is born, it is often understood that early intervention programs are necessary to help the child grow and develop. This is also the case with kids who are diagnosed with a particular disorder at birth or who undergo extreme prematurity, extremely low birth weight, disease, or surgery soon even before heading home from the hospital after birth, the parents of this child may be referred to their local early intervention office.
- Some children have a very routine entrance into the world, but can grow more slowly than others, encounter setbacks, or develop in ways that appear somewhat different from other children. For some, because of delays in growth. A visit to a developmental paediatrician and a comprehensive assessment may lead to an early intervention referral for these children.
- Parents don’t have to wait for an early intervention referral, however. You should contact your local program directly if you are worried about the progress of your child and ask to have your child assessed. That assessment is given free of charge. If you’re not sure how to find your community’s early intervention program, keep reading. We’re giving the data a little further down the path.
- Early intervention services provide vital support so that children with developmental needs can thrive and grow, but a child is referred, assessed, and determined to be eligible.
6. What tips would you share with parents or caregivers for helping their child reach these milestones?
In developmental monitoring, which observes how your child develops and evolves over time and whether your child meets the traditional developmental milestones of parents, grandparents, early childhood providers, and other caregivers may participate. playing, studying, speaking, acting, and moving. The developmental screening takes a closer look at how you grow your child. If your child has missed a milestone you would want to consult a doctor and get him checked.
If an area of concern is identified by the screening tool, a formal developmental assessment may be needed, where a trained specialist takes an in-depth look at the development of a child.
It is important to get help as soon as possible if a child has a developmental delay. When a developmental delay is not found early, children must wait to get the help they need to do well in a social and educational setting