Step One: Age Report
Developments: Social/emotional, Physical Gross, Physical Fine Motor, Intellectual, and Moral
You’ve been a parent for one to two years now and there’s still so much for you to learn. Your child is one, two, or somewhere in the middle, and he or she are just growing up so fast it’s making your head spin. The last thing you knew you were your child’s independence. Now it just seems like he or she can do so much and that’s a good thing.
Your child, at this stage, should be growing more, and around twelve months he or she should be able to use their feet to push themselves around. This may not seem much, but that means they can move faster than what they were able before when they were crawling. That means that you need to start childproofing your house. No one wants their kids being shocked by putting their finger in an outlet.
At fifteen months your child should be able to walk on his or her own without any help from you or anyone else. There will be times of falling, so there’s going to be a few scrapped knees or elbows, but nothing too bad most of the time. This, however, means all of your nice pictures, plants, vases, whatever you have on shelves that your child can reach; you need to put them up in higher places. Children don’t really know the outcome of pulling things off the shelves or tables in your house, and they don’t know they could get hurt, or break things. They can be extremely curious, and it will be your job to make sure that is taken care of.
At the age of 18 months, your child will start to climb. This scares many mom’s and dad’s. There could be times where you wake up in the middle of the night, and your child is making pancakes on the counter covered in gunk, smiling up at you. Most parents would think either, what a mess? How’d you get up there? Or they could be thinking, what if he or she fell? This is why you will want to start to childproof your draws and cabinets, and there’s nothing wrong with childproofing your fridge if you can.
Also at the age of 18 moths, your child has grown an “artistic” point of view, and will start to scribble on paper. Paper, however, isn’t always the only thing they scribble on. Walls tend to be a child’s favorite thing to scribble on. If you’re worried about this, don’t solve the problem with never letting your child put his or her hands on pencils, markers or anything in that nature, just be sure that they are in your site, and that you put up everything after their done to where you can only get to them. But scribbling on the walls can’t be avoided at all times, and chances are, if your child ever scribbles on your wall, punish them as needed.
By the time your child is two years old, he or she can push buttons, tern door knobs, run, take of cloths, and pull thing. This is when parenting starts to get the hardest. You’re constantly running around, closing doors, turning off lights, getting after them for running in the house, badgering them about taking off their clothes, and so on. With all that your child can do now, he or she are more prone to getting hurt, so at this stage you have got to be much more attentive, or the hospital bills will me much more expensive.
Those are the main milestones your child will have within the years of one and two, but like so many people say today, it’s the small things that count, and they truly do. Throughout your child growing between the ages one and two, he or she should also be able to do little thing that will make you feel like he or she is just growing up way to fast. Things like, building towers out of blocks, or turning over containers to pour out contents, and they could use one hand more frequently than the other.
Hint: The best way to tell whether your child is left or right handed is to lay a piece of candy out on the floor and tell them to reach to it. At age two, whatever hand they grab that candy with, is the hand that is more dominate. (Left or Right)
Your child should grow socially as well through the ages two and three. They can communicate though body language and words. He or she will know when something is theirs, and when they want it instead of crying, they will point to it to let you know that’s what they want. They will be able to recognize the names of familiar people, objects, and body parts. The more you work with them, the more they’ll know. At the ages of one and two, they can’t just learn everything on their own; they’ll need mommy and daddy’s help as well.
At fifteen to eighteen months your child should be able to say a number of single words and between eighteen and twenty-four months they should be able to say simple phrases that have two to four words in them. Best part of all is this is the best time to work with them on simple instructions and rules. Be careful because this is also the age that your child becomes a parrot and will mock anything that you or anyone else may say.
If you want to hide something from your child, don’t try to hide it under anything because they can find things even if it’s well hidden under something. So because they can climb and stack things up to get to where they want to be, try hiding it better than what you think you should need to. Your child is curious at this age, and unaware of major danger it can put itself into when they climb all over cabinets and chairs.
Your child can sort things by shapes and colors, and at twenty-four months would be a great time to work on putting things back after your child is done with it, and help with cleaning its room. This is the time when your child may have a “Make-Believe” friend in between the ages of one and two because this is the stage that they take some part in make-believe play. They could also want to absorb your time in playing small games like, three little pigs if they have a big enough box to hide in.
Your child’s social and emotional life will start to take its first steps and they will start to imitate behavior of others. They’ll mainly look at you and your significant other, if you have one, and any other older family members, and imitate them as well. Your child will begin to realize that they are a separate person from other children, and people in general. If they have older or younger siblings and you punish them differently than you would your one or two year old, explain to them why they are treated differently from the other child.
For example, if a five year old doesn’t share his or her toy with another child, and they begin to fight over it, you could take it away. If a one year old or two year old were to not share their toy, you could give it to the other child and tell the one or two year old that they need to share. It will take less to punish a one or two year old than it would a five or six year old.
In this stage of life your child will become more independent, and will show even more independence as they continue to grow to be three years old. This is the time when most parents get headaches every often, because your child will start to through its fits from time to time, but it will get even worse after their two. Your child will also hate to be separated from you, because they haven’t been able to learn that if you leave, you’re going to come back. But this only starts around midyear, and fades by the time they are two.