The Importance of Developmental Milestones for Every Child 0 to 6 Years of Age
Developmental milestones are barometers for skills that each child should be able to do by a set age. They are the primary standard that kids are measured by to make sure they are developing appropriately. Each skill builds upon one another. When a milestone goes unmet or is delayed, several problems can ensue. Developmental milestones are skills that you should always consider as a parent of kids 0 to about 6 years old.
Typical milestones categories include Social-emotional, Movement, Language/Communication, and Cognition/Problem Solving. Here at OT Park, we have compiled a list of milestones for children ages 0-6 years old in the areas of:
So, how do you know if your child is developing appropriately and meeting age-appropriate milestones? After downloading your OT Park Milestone checklist, based on your child’s age, try skills in the category younger age-level and then the older age-level to see what your child can do. If you realize that your child is having difficulty completing age-level activities or younger, reach out to your pediatrician for next steps to better help your child. OT Park is gearing up to launch telehealth services and will be available and honored to help your child in any way that we can. If you find that your child is meeting the age-appropriate milestone, this is great. Keep working on the next skill.
Either way, providing your child with what we OTs like to call the “just right challenge,” or a challenge that isn’t over or underwhelming, can help your child build confidence, strength, and endurance without making them feel as though they are incapable!
Keeping an eye on your child’s development is vital for their future success and well-being!
Also, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.
Did you know that when your baby crawls around a room touching objects, playing with toys, listening to you singing songs, or putting things in his mouth, he’s doing a lot more than just playing? Toddlers use their senses to learn about and explore their environment. As a parent, you can enhance this learning by providing a positive sensory experience.
Sensory play or experience would then allow your child to interact with his surroundings and learn about his world.
Once your child is born, his brain is ready to gain knowledge about the world. They’re actually learning long before they walk and talk. This learning takes place through hearing, touch, taste, sight, smell, and movement. They hear our voices, enjoy bouncing, chew toys, and touch everything they can.
The more positive sensory experiences your baby has, the stronger newly built brain connections become. Sensory play not only has a positive effect on your child now, but also helps to promote learning and development even in adulthood.
Researchers have found that a baby who is not given an appropriate set of opportunities and is kept in a swing most of the day or is kept in a dark, quiet environment for long periods can have his learning and brain development stunted by lack of exposure to sensory stimuli.
These sensory systems don’t develop simultaneously, but rather in a specific order that does not vary.
This is tactile > vestibular > chemical > audio > visual. The infant has five senses functioning at different levels at the time of birth.
Building blocks essential to an efficient sensory system
Most human critical periods exist within the early years postnatal, which is why sensory play is especially important for young children.
A critical period is a phase in which brain cell connections are more plastic and receptive to the influence of a certain type of life experience. These connections, called synapses, can be formed or strengthened more easily during this period.
A recent study has linked the lack of sensory play and negative home environments, especially during children’s first three years with several developmental problems, including:
Building Nerve Connections
Research indicates that sensory play builds nerve connections (synapses) in the brain pathways that contribute to a child’s ability to perform more complex learning tasks.
Cognitive Development
Children first learn to understand new things through their senses. Every time they encounter something that is sticky, cold, or wet, for example, they gain a better understanding of which types of objects have these characteristics. Your child will then begin to make connections between things that have similar properties.
Strengthening Fine Motor Skills
Sensory play often involves touching, pouring, pinching, sorting, and moving actions. Toddlers primarily use their hands to explore, building on their fine motor skills, which will later be used for writing, zipping jackets, buttoning clothes, and tying shoes.
Enhancing Language Skills
By exploring new smells, tastes, and textures through sensory play, children can learn new ways to describe things found in the world around them. For example, a rock will be more than a rock when they feel it – it’s either smooth or rough or cool to the touch. Also, your kids begin to describe food as sweet, salty, spicy, or crunchy.
Sensory Play Is Calming
You may have noticed that your kid is calmer after bath time or after a particularly rough session of jumping around the room, crashing onto his bed, banging into furniture, or pillows. This type of sensory activity calms children as it helps them manage their internal discomfort, whether it is boredom or restlessness.
Early taste experiences
Early life nutrition is an important factor affecting later health. Your child’s food habits are shaped in infancy and are tracked back to adolescence and beyond, meaning that supportive eating activities are important to prevent eating disorders later in life.
Italian researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Milan have shown that early repeated experiences with different tastes and supportive feeding increase the children’s desire to try new foods and greatly decrease the risk of having a picky-eater kid in a healthy social environment. In other words, you, as a parent, can modify the innate food preferences of your child!
By paying attention to these things, your baby will gain a lot of benefits and get exposed to various wonderful activities that will really help him develop properly!
Until Next blog,
Hiral
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References:
Blair C, Granger DA, Willoughby M, et al. Salivary cortisol mediates effects of poverty and parenting on executive functions in early childhood. Child Development. 2011; 82(6):1970-8.
Son S, Morrison F. The nature and impact of changes in home learning environment on development of language and academic skills in preschool children. Developmental Psychology. 2010; 46(5):1103–1118.
De Cosmi V, Scaglioni S, Agostoni C. Early Taste Experiences and Later Food Choices. Nutrients. 2017;9(2):107. Published 2017 Feb 4. doi:10.3390/nu9020107
Howard-Jones P, Taylor J, Sutton L. The Effect of Play on the Creativity of Young Children During Subsequent Activity. Early Child Development and Care. August 2002:323-328. doi:10.1080/03004430212722
Rosenzweig MR, Bennett EL. Psychobiology of plasticity: effects of training and experience on brain and behavior. Behavioural Brain Research. June 1996:57-65. doi:10.1016/0166-4328(95)00216-2
Why Is Sensory Play Important for Children?
– Sensory is important for children because it allows them to be messy and enriches their awareness of their bodies and senses. Sensory activities can help kids focus on their experience in the present moment.
Here are 10 sensory activities for toddlers!
1.) Slime
Kids love playing with slime, and it is so beneficial for them. It is an amazing, tactile sensory experience. Most parents aren’t fans of slime because of the mess it can make, but it’s a great sensory tool for children. Manipulating slime and measuring ingredients can strengthen fine motor skills, and experimenting with slime recipes helps kids learn about cause and effect.
Slime helps kids get in touch with almost all senses; they focus on how it feels, sounds, looks, and smells.
Benefits are:
2.) Ice Painting
This activity allows children the opportunity to explore color mixing, patterns and to feel the texture of the slippery, cold, wet paint. It will enable your child to be creative and use their imagination. As the paint melts, they will learn how when colors mix, they make a new color.
Benefits are:
3.) Play Dough
Playdough provides a great sensory medium, and the possibilities are limitless and will evoke your child’s imagination. The malleable properties of play dough make it fun for investigation and exploration. Playdough can be squashed, squeezed, rolled, flattened, chopped, cut, scored, raked, punctured, poked, and shredded.
Benefits are:
Develops Fine Motor Skills
Calming
Encourages creativity
Enhances Hand-eye coordination
Improves social skills
Supports literacy and numeracy
Promotes playtime
4.) Oobleck
Oobleck is a fascinating way to engage in sensory play and understand science. It is great because it is inexpensive, quick, easy, taste-safe, and so much FUN! All it takes is cornstarch and water, and it is environmentally friendly.
– Your child can drive cars through it, play with it in your hands, mix colors, dribble and paint with goop on the sidewalk or driveway, or make sudsy goop.
Benefits are:
5.) Sensory Toy
A sensory toy is specially designed to stimulate one or more senses. They may also help and be appealing to children on the spectrum because they can help them remain calm and provide the sensory experience they want. Much of what young children learn is through touch and stimulation of the senses.
– Types of sensory toys are rattles, crinkly books, teething beads, toys with mirrors, sensory shapes, and activity walkers.
Benefits are:
6.) Finding Small Items Hidden in the Kinetic Sand
Playdough is fantastic for encouraging imaginative play. Children love to play hide and seek and love playdough, so why not combine the two. Hidden treasure playdough is a fun way to present small toys that children can use in their imaginative playdough play.
Benefits are:
7.) Noodle Play
Kids are designed to explore the world through their senses, and exploring sensory materials helps kids’ emotional development. This sensory activity allows children to be creative. Different noodles provide texture-related tactile sense development. Kids will love the feel of playing with noodles.
Benefits are:
8.) Color Papers Hidden in Rice
Children learn best through hands-on experiences. It can be very calming to run your hands through a textured material like rice, and it is a wonderful invitation to play and create imaginary worlds.
– Fun sensory bins with rice are rainbow sensory bin, alphabet search, and watermelon rice sensory bin.
Benefits are:
9.) Stamping
Creating art expands a child’s ability to interact with the world around them and provides a new set of skills for self-expression and communication. They will love creating aesthetically pleasing works and experiences.
Benefits are:
10.) Water Beads
Water beads are soft, squishy, and smooth to touch. Children will love the feel of the water beads and will love scooping them with their hands. They are soothing to touch and look at. You can even add these to your child’s bath. Children will also love watching the water beads grow bigger.
Benefits are:
Unitl next Blog!
Hiral
Do you have questions such as..
Anything regarding 0-8 years, you can have a Free-consult with our CEO and Award winning pediatric Occupational Therapist – Dr. Hiral Khatri.
Do you love these ideas/activities of our blog and want more of them? You can have a box with age-appropriate activities that are developmentally correct and pediatric designed, shipped right to your door!
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We have all seen it, and most of us have experienced our children throwing tantrums and acting out! So why do children throw tantrums instead of just using their words?
Temper tantrums range from whining and crying to screaming, kicking, hitting, and breath-holding. They are equally common in boys and girls and usually happen between the ages of 1-3. Every child is different, some have tantrums often, and some hardly ever have tantrums but just know that tantrums are a normal part of child development.
Tantrums are how young children show that they are upset or frustrated.
Reasons Why A Child May Be Throwing A Tantrum:
– Toddlers can’t yet say what they want, feel, or need; a frustrating experience may cause a tantrum. Learning to deal with frustration is a skill that children gain over time.
Believe it or not, tantrums are an essential part of our child’s emotional health and well-being.
10 Important Reasons Why Your Child’s Tantrum Is Actually A Good Thing:
What Should You Do During A Tantrum?
The most important thing to do during your child’s tantrum is to stay calm; if you get upset and angry, it will only make the situation worse. Everyone’s child needs different reactions, so know your child and what they need from you.
Sometimes it is best to ignore the tantrum! If you ignore it, they realize that they will not get your attention when they throw a fit.
After a tantrum, the most important thing is to praise your child for calming down and hug your child, reassure them that they are loved, no matter what.
Helping Your Child Learn How to Express Their Feelings
Young children have a hard time identifying how they are feeling and how to express those feelings appropriately. The first step is to help your child identify their own emotions and why they feel that way.
Here are 10 ways to help your child express their feelings:
Children just want to feel loved and understood. Remember, when your child isn’t calm, your NUMBER #1 JOB IS TO STAY CALM!
Do you love these ideas/activities and want more of them? You can have a box with age-appropriate activities that are developmentally correct and pediatric designed, shipped right to your door! Click the link below to get your box now!