Physical
- Physical: Overview (0-6 months)
- Touch: feels pain (0-1 month)
- Vision: color vision is limited (0-1 month)
- Can take swipes at dangling objects with hands (1-5 months)
- Vision: attracted to high-contrast patterns/edges (0-2 months)
- Vision: focuses on objects from 8 to 15 inches away (0-2 months)
- Vision: tracks slowly moving objects (0-2 months)
- Hearing: well developed, except for very quiet sounds (0-3 months)
- Smell: prefers sweet smells over bitter or acidic smells (0-3 months)
- Smell: recognizes scent of mother’s breastmilk (0-3 months)
- Taste: prefers sweet over bitter tastes (0-3 months)
- Displays rooting and sucking reflexes (0-4 months)
- Can raise the head from a prone position (0-2 months)
- Vision: can discriminate among basic colors (1-5 months)
- Vision: can focus on objects up to 3 feet away (1-5 months)
- Brings hand to mouth (1-3 months)
- Opens and shuts hands (1-3 months)
- Grasps and shakes hand toys (1-4 months)
- Vision: can use movement to identify objects (1-5 months)
- Touch: can distinguish between lumpy and smooth objects with mouth (1-7 months)
- Can reach voluntarily for things (3-6 months)
- Vision: depth perception begins to develop (3-7 months)
- Vision: develops full color vision (4-7 months)
- May sit easily without support (5-7 months)
- Can reach out and grasp moving objects (5-8 months)
- Physical: Overview (6-12 months)
- Can sit alone (7-10 months)
- Crawls forward on belly (8-10 months)
- Lets objects go voluntarily (8-11 months)
- Uses pincer grasp (8-11 months)
- Places objects into and out of containers (8-12 months)
- Capable of poking with index finger (8-13 months)
- Walks holding on to furniture (9-11 months)
- Stands alone easily (10-12 months)
- Begins walking alone (10-13 months)
- Physical: Overview (12-24 months )
- Uses thumb and forefinger to explore objects, turn knobs and dials, etc. (12-20 months)
- Capable of copying simple horizontal and vertical lines and building towers (14-24 months)
- Can walk up and down stairs holding on to support (15-24 months)
- Can scribble with a crayon (16-20 months)
- Can turn over containers to pour out contents (16-24 months)
- May begin to show hand preference, but may not fully decide for several more years (17-33 months)
- Masters the skill of unassisted walking (18-24 months)
- Begins to run (20-24 months)
- Physical: Overview (2-3 years )
- A Good Helper
- Can make on own vertical, horizontal, and circular strokes with pen or crayon (24-36 months)
- Capable of turning rotating handles, such as doorknobs (26-37 months)
- Capable of walking up and down stairs, alternating feet (27-36 months)
- Capable of holding pencil in writing position (28-38 months)
- Can screw and unscrew jars and lids (29-36 months)
- Capable of turning pages one at a time (29-37 months)
- Bends over easily without falling (30-36 months)
- Capable of pedaling a tricycle (30-36 months)
- Runs easily (32-39 months)
- Physical: Overview (3-5 years)
- Becomes primarily left-handed or right-handed (38-48 months)
- Capable of standing on one foot for up to five seconds (39-47 months)
- Capable of using scissors with some dexterity (40-48 months)
- Goes upstairs and downstairs without support (40-48 months)
- May begin to copy some capital letters (41-48 months)
- Draws a person with two to four body parts (41-50 months)
- Can throw a ball overhand (42-49 months)
- Can move forward and backward with ease (42-51 months)
- Copies triangles, squares, and other geometric patterns (49-60 months)
- Capable of dressing and undressing without assistance (50-59 months)
- Hops, somersaults, swings, and climbs (51-59 months)
- Stands on one foot for ten seconds or longer (52-58 months)
- Draws a person with body, some details (53-57 months)
Learning
- Cognitive and Learning: Overview ( 0-6 months )
- Capable of imitating facial gestures (0-2 months)
- video:Copycats: How children learn from the actions of others
- Can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces (0-3 months)
- Capable of mathematical reasoning (a quantitative skill termed numerosity) (0-3 months)
- Recognizes that objects remain the same size and shape even if they are distant (0-5 months)
- Capable of making predictions, creating and testing hypotheses about the real world (0-6 months)
- Capable of demonstrating certain types of memory (0-7 months)
- Cross-modal Perception: Can relate what they feel with what they see (1-4 months)
- Language learning begins (1-6 months)
- Cross-modal Perception: Can relate what they hear with what they see (2-4 months)
- Struggles to get objects that are out of reach (3-6 months)
- Explores the world (4-7 months)
- Cognitive and Learning: Overview ( 6-12 months)
- Can perform simple addition and subtraction exercises (5-10 months)
- Acquires the notion of object permanence (that a hidden object still exists even if one can't see it) (7-12 months)
- Memory improves (8-12 months)
- Attempts to use objects "correctly" (using a phone, drinking from a cup, etc.) (8-15 months)
- Explores objects in many different ways (shaking, banging, throwing, dropping) (8-16 months)
- Take a Break with Books
- Can distinguish between two vs. three objects (9-12 months)
- video:Peek-A-Boo
- Cognitive and Learning: Overview ( 12-24 months)
- Recognizes the difference between self and other people (12-20 months)
- video:Copycats
- video:Testing 1,2,3: How children learn through repetitive behavior
- video:Dad's Club: Making reading fun
- video:Baby See, Baby Do
- Recognizes own facial features (15-24 months)
- May show an interest in being potty trained (16-25 months)
- video:Testing 1, 2, 3
- Begins to pretend in play (18-24 months)
- Cognitive and Learning: Overview ( 2-3 years )
- Pretend play includes symbolic use of objects (24-36 months)
- video:I Know This Word
- Develops an understanding of other people's intentions and goals (25-36 months)
- Capable of completing puzzles with three or four pieces (26-36 months)
- Can make mechanical kinds of toys "work" (28-36 months)
- Capable of some deception (28-37 months)
- Cognitive and Learning: Overview ( 3-5 years )
- Increasingly inventive fantasy play (36-48 months)
- video:Story Time: Helpful skills for pre-literacy
- video:Tell Me a Story
- Capable of approaching problems from a single perspective (38-50 months)
- video:Gone Fishing: Understanding that written language carries meaning
- Capable of verbal knowledge of a few numbers (30-48 months)
- Can correctly name some colors (40-48 months)
- Learns to verbally count objects accurately (40-49 months)
- Begins to have a clearer sense of time (42-50 months)
- Becomes capable of deliberate lying (46-53 months)
- Realizes other people can have inaccurate perceptions of the world (48-57 months)
- Shows increased sophistication in understanding the concept of time (49-59 months)
- Realizes that people may have different visual views of the same object (50-58 months)
Communication
- Language and Communication: Overview ( 0-6 months )
- video:Getting In Tune with Baby
- video:Parentese: Why its never too early to start a conversation
- video:Talking to Baby
- Prefers sounds of familiar language to those of other languages (0-3 months)
- Can discriminate between syllables within words (0-4 months)
- Can discriminate mother’s voice from other women’s voices and prefers her voice to other women’s voices (0-4 m
- Capable of spontaneous ooh sound (0-4 months)
- Heavy reliance on communication through crying, which can occur for several hours a day (0-4 months)
- Pays more attention to human voices than to other sounds (0-4 months)
- Smiles at the sound of a familiar voice (0-4 months)
- video:Talking with Infants
- Babbling commences (1-3 months)
- Attempts to imitate some sounds (1-4 months)
- Coos back and forth with caregiver (1-4 months)
- Begins grouping language sounds into specific categories (1-6 months)
- video:Careful Frank: Communicating through emotional expressions
- Begins lip reading (2-8 months)
- Language and Communication: Overview (6-12 months)
- Capable of responding to own name (4-5 months)
- Attempts to respond to sounds by making sounds (4-7 months)
- Can verbalize happiness and displeasure (4-7 months)
- Capable of responding to "no" (5-7 months)
- video:Mommy, Is This Okay?
- Responds to and begins to map sounds of language (6-12 months)
- video:Snuggle Up for Reading
- Babbling includes short strings of consonants (6-9 months)
- Learns to wait until someone else is finished talking before beginning to speak (7-10 months)
- Can respond to simple verbal requests (8-10 months)
- Begins to use gestures and sounds to communicate (8-11 months)
- Capable of uttering "dada" and "mama" (8-12 months)
- Begins to understand that words can refer to physical objects (9-12 months)
- Babbling appears less random; inflections apparent (9-14 months)
- Language and Communication: Overview (12-24 months)
- Begins to imitate spoken words (10-14 months)
- First words are often spoken at this time (12-19 months)
- video:What a Chatterbox
- video:Keep Talking: The importance of conversation
- Recognition of sounds of own language complete; may have difficulty discriminating certain sounds of foreign languages later in
- Identifies names of familiar people, objects, and body parts (14-24 months)
- Can correctly identify a picture with its spoken name (14-25 months)
- Commonly uses two- to four-word sentences (15-25 months)
- Typically has a vocabulary of 200 words (16-24 months)
- A rapid increase in vocabulary begins now. Infants add 10-20 words per day during this period. (18-24 months)
- Begins to use combinations of words in meaningful ways (20-24 months)
- Language and Communication: Overview (2-3 years)
- Can utter a grammatically correct declarative sentence (24-31 months)
- video:Keep Talking
- Strangers can understand most of the words spoken by the toddler (26-36 months)
- Uses pronouns (I, you, me, we, they) and some plurals (26-36 months)
- video:Look Who's Talking
- Two Languages Spoken Here
- Understands physical relationships such as under, over, and in (28-37 months)
- Can say name, age, and gender (29-38 months)
- Understands most of what adults say (30-36 months)
- Vocabulary consists of 1,000 words (32-39 months)
- Language and Communication: Overview (3-5 years )
- Can ask a grammatically correct question (35-41 months)
- Inserts articles, auxiliary verbs, and grammar not previously seen (37-44 months)
- Understands the concept of "same" and "different" (39-48 months)
- Capable of speaking in sentences of five to six words (40-48 months)
- Speaks in complex sentences (51-59 months)
Developmental Timeline
The Parenting Counts Timeline offers access to research-based information about your child's development from birth to five.
