Babies start learning from the day they are born. Everything they see, hear, feel, taste and smell helps to develop their perceptual abilities. In infancy they also start developing cognitive powers of memory, language, thinking and reasoning, which enable them to organize and use their knowledge. Developmental milestones are the achievements that show your baby's progress in gaining skills and abilities. Almost all infants reach the milestones in the same order, though at varying rates.
The first two years of life correspond to Piaget’s sensorimotor stage of development, when knowledge comes from exploring the world through the senses while gradually developing the ability to reason, remember and talk about it.
First Month
New babies can see an object about 12 to 15 inches away--for example, their mother’s face while breastfeeding--and will watch it move. They can distinguish sounds of different pitch and volume, and will turn towards and quiet for the mother’s voice. Facial expressions show how they react to different smells and tastes. Being able to tell the difference between such sensory perceptions forms a foundation for future cognitive development.
Age 1 to 3 Months
Your baby notices different colors and changing light. She recognizes different faces at increasing distances, learns to smile at people and reacts to or imitates facial expressions. She responds to your voice with cooing and gurgling and may try to imitate sounds. She reaches for colorful objects, swipes at dangling toys, grips and shakes ones she is given and investigates things by putting them in her mouth.
Age 4 to 8 Months
Your baby is getting better at coordinating perceptive and motor abilities--for example, by watching and copying your actions or by rolling over to grasp something he hears or sees. Mentally he starts to organize his knowledge of the world: he can judge how far away something is by its size, tell the difference between pictures of one and many things and realize that inanimate things get thrown or pushed while people and animals move by themselves. He anticipates food by opening his mouth for the spoon. He recognizes his name and several other words, including “No.” Memory develops, so that by around 7 months he realizes that objects still exist even out of sight; for example, he will look for a toy he has dropped.
Age 8 to 12 Months
Powers of communication develop fast. Your baby tries to talk with you, using a range of sounds and occasionally recognizable words. She imitates sounds and actions, responds to simple instructions, reacts to music and gets upset if she sees you distressed. When you look at picture books together, she can point out things you name. She can use simple items like her hairbrush or spoon, and explores things by trial and error in different ways–for example, trying to fit blocks into a box, or seeing what happens when she turns the box over.
Age 12 to 24 Months
One-year-olds imitate whatever you do or say, and begin to play at make-believe. They work out the difference between who is “you” and who is “me,” can understand how other people are feeling and will try to comfort them if upset. Language ability is developing fast: they respond to hundreds of words, ask for things by pointing to or naming them and may use short sentences. They can match similar objects and sort things by type, shape or size. They have the memory and perseverance to hunt for well-hidden toys. Most are extremely curious about how things work and will try to find out by taking them apart.
Considerations
All infants learn at a different rate and seem to speed up or slow down from time to time. The rate may be influenced by how much attention they get and how stimulating their home environment is, but has little to do with progress or intelligence later in life. However, you may want to consult health care professionals if your child does not achieve the majority of milestones within a month or two of the usual timespan, or if progress stops for several weeks, because developmental delay may be easier to tackle earlier than later.
References
- University of Georgia; Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology: Piaget's Stages; K. C. Wood, et al; 2001
- University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development: Developmental Milestones: Birth to 12 Months
- PBS: The ABC's of Child Development: Thinking Skills
- Healthy Children: Developmental Milestones: 3 Months
- Healthy Children: Toddler: 1-3 yrs.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Important Milestones: By the End of One Year (12 Months)
