Note: This piece of writing is not a scholarly opinion, but rather a little guide for understanding the First-year developmental milestones of children.
Journey With Newborns:
When a baby is born, it’s like a new book- untouched and unfamiliar. Each passing day is a new page that needs to be imprinted by positive experiences for creating a healthy personality. The very first year of a baby’s life witnesses an enormous growth rate, not only physically but also cognitively and socially. While physical developmental first-year milestones are equally important, intellectual development in early childhood holds special significance and needs extra attention from both the parents and society. Let’s have a look at different milestones to determine during early childhood, especially the first year.
Types of Developmental Milestones:
There are basically four categories of developmental milestones, altogether these four create the basis of a healthy personality consequently developing a healthy and progressive human being.
These four areas are:
- Intellectual or Cognitive milestones
- Physical milestones
- Social-emotional milestones
- Communication & Language Milestones
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The Need-to-know Developmental Milestones:
Before we head on to discuss different milestones of a child’s first year, we need to know why these milestones are important to meet.
These milestones are laid down after numerous research and experiments and they are good indicators of the healthy growth of a child. Parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals understand normal child development through these milestones while identifying potential developmental problems that can hinder healthy growth.
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1. Intellectual Development in Early Childhood:
Intellectual development is also known as cognitive development. As Einstein said, “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
2. Physical Milestones:
Physical milestones include both fine motor skills and large motor skills.
Large motor skills also known as gross motor skills include large muscular movements that are involved in crawling, running, jumping, walking, etc.
Gross Motor Skills:
Following are the highlighted gross motor skills for the first year of a baby’s life:
| Age | Milestones for Gross Motor Skill |
| 3 to 4 months | Raising head and chest when lying on the belly |
| 6 months | Rolling over both ways, from the stomach to back and vice versa |
| 7 months | Sitting up without support |
| 8 to 9 months | The baby may start to crawl |
| 12 to 18 months | Walking on their own, welcome to toddlerhood! |
Fine Motor Skills:
Fine motor skills develop a bit later in life as compared to gross motor skills. These include using spoons, holding a crayon, and picking up delicate objects safely. Following is the list of expected fine motor skills development during the first year.
| Age | Milestones for Fine Motor Skill |
| 0 to 4 months | Bringing hands to their mouth, sucking thumb/finger |
| 4 to 8 months | Grab onto objects within reach, pass objects from one hand to other |
| 8 to 12 months | Drop and pick up toys, bang two objects together, pinch and point towards an object, hold spoons/colors/crayons, wave hands, clap, put and take things out of a container |
3. Social Emotional Milestones during the First Year:
Social Emotional milestones include a child’s ability to display their emotions effectively, understand and follow directions, develop positive relationships with others, and build confidence. These milestones are affected by a child’s growth, life experiences, and social environment.
| Age | Milestones for Social-Emotional Skills |
| 0 to 2 months | Smiling at parents/other people and looking at/searching for parents |
| 4 months | Smiling and playing with people, copying facial expressions and small gestures |
| 6 months | Recognizing familiar faces, beginning to recognize strangers, responding to other people’s gestures/emotions |
| 9 months | Reluctance towards strangers, clingy towards familiar people, have favorite toys |
| 12 months | Develop a special connection with people and things, play and respond to games, shyness towards strangers |
4. Communication & Language Developmental Milestones:
Humans have been given a unique and outstanding quality of language to communicate with each other. Like all other areas of development, babies also develop their communication and language abilities during the first year of their lives. They start from babbling to playing with different sounds, then they learn to copy sounds and join different sounds together.
| Age | Milestones for communication Skills & Language |
| 3-4 months | Starts making eye contact with people, tries out sounds of vowels and consonants (e.g., aa, ghoo), combines vowels and consonants (e.g., ba, ma, da) |
| 5-7 months | Copy nearby sounds, like coughing or clicking, develop familiarity with commonly used gestures like waving, and clapping, and plays with different sounds |
| 8-9 months | Starts putting sounds together in a rhyme known as the jargon phase. Starts mixing vowels and consonants in groups like baba, and mama, while not exactly knowing their meaning |
| 10-11 months | Tries to communicate through sounds and gestures with the aim of asking something, negating something, insisting about something, etc. |
| 12-14 months | Starts saying a few words knowing what they mean, like mama, baba, dada, etc. |
As a final note, parents should understand that these milestones are established for babies on a generic level. Not every child can fall into the same criteria because no two babies are the same in this world. Every child is unique in his/her own self and has his/her own path (milestones) to pursue. Happy Parenting! 🙂
