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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:

  • Gross motor
  • Grasp patterns
  • Scissor skills
  • Toilet skills
  • Home chores
  • Dressing skills
  • Scissor skills
  • Pencil grip development

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. 

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Early exposure to sensory activities

“There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” – Aristotle

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

  • For effective sensory processing, all sensory systems need to work together. It should be recognized that the sensory system is indeed composed of seven senses; these sensory systems process information as the building blocks to most of the individual skills.
  • Visual Sense: This is the ability to understand and interpret what is seen. The visual system uses the eyes to collect information about the contrast between light and dark, color, and movement. It receives sensory information from the environment by light waves that stimulate the retina then by the optic nerve to the visual cortex on the back of the brain.
  • Auditory Sense: is the ability to interpret information that is heard. The auditory system uses the external and middle ear to obtain sound information. They collect information about volume, pitch, and rhythm to the brain’s side parts by the 8th nerve.
  • Olfactory Sense is the ability to interpret smells by Receiving the chemical makeup of particles in the air to determine if the smell.
  • Gustatory Sense: it is the ability to interpret information regarding taste in the mouth using specialized buds on the tongue’s upper surface.
  • Tactile Sense: It uses skin receptors to receive sensations of touch, such as fine touch, pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain. This is the first Sense to develop (in the womb), and, as such, it is vital for the overall neural network.
  • Proprioceptive Sense is the ability to interpret where your body parts are in relation to each other. It uses information from the nerves and sheaths of the muscles and bones to inform about body posture and movement by muscle contraction, stretching, bending, straightening, pulling, and compression.
  • Vestibular Sense: is the ability to interpret information relating to movement and balance. The vestibular system uses specialized channels in the inner ear to transmit information on movement, change of direction, change of position of the head, and gravitational pull.
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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:

  • Poorer language development by age three.
  • Later behavior issues.
  • Deficits in school readiness.
  • Anxiety, Aggression, and depression.
  • Impaired cognitive development at age three.

The Importance of Sensory Play

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! 

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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

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TOP 10 Sensory Activities for 2 years olds

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:

  • Promotes mindfulness
  • Helps children focus
  • Encourages them to play independently
  • Promotes fine motor skills
  • It is calming
  • It’s portable

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:

  • It helps develop fine motor skills
  • It helps develop gross motor skills & control
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Learn colors

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:

  • Supports language development
  • Builds gross motor skills
  • Builds fine motor skills
  • Learn science concepts
  • Strengthen hand muscles

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:

  • Cognitive stimulation
  • Language development
  • Fine and gross motor skills
  • Social interaction
  • Calming and comforting
  • Develop a sense of awareness

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: 

  • Develops fine motor skills
  • Calming
  • Encourages creativity
  • Enhances hand-eye coordination
  • Improves social skills
  • Supports literacy and numeracy
  • Promotes playtime

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:

  • Language development
  • Problem-solving skills
  • Cognitive function
  • Fine motor development
  • Develop creativity

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:

  • Develop Pincer grip
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Calming
  • Fine motor strength
  • Learn colors
  • Language skills

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:

  • Fine motor skills
  • Strengthening hand muscles
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Coordination
  • Explore colors

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:

  • Fine motor skills
  • Coordination
  • Exploration
  • Learn colors
  • Promotes creativity
  • Teaches science
  • Hand-eye coordination

Unitl next Blog!

Hiral

Do you have questions such as..

  1. What activities are best for my 10 months old? or
  2. From when should I start my child’s potty training? or
  3. How to develop correct posture for handwriting and get my child ready for School? 

Anything regarding 0-8 years, you can have a Free-consult with our CEO and Award winning pediatric Occupational Therapist – Dr. Hiral Khatri. 

Book your free 20 minutes consult today!

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!

Click the link below to get your box now!

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Why Kids Use “Non-Words” And Tantrums? How To Teach Them To Use Their Emotions With Words?

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:

  • The child may be tired, hungry, or uncomfortable.
  • They can’t get something that they want, like a toy.
  • They get frustrated because an adult can’t understand what they want.
  • The child wants to do it themselves but realizes they can’t.
  • The child gets told ‘no.’

 – 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: 

  • Better out than in – When we cry, we are literally releasing stress from our bodies.
  • Crying may help your child learn – after they calm down again, they have cleared their mind after expressing their frustration and can learn something new.
  • Your child may sleep better – Stress can cause a child not to be able to fall asleep and wake up from sleep. Crying and releasing that stress will allow your child to relax.
  • Saying ‘No’ is a good thing – Saying no to your child sets boundaries, and they need those.
  • Your child will feel safe telling you how he feels – most times; the tantrum is not because you said no; it’s them showing you how they feel about it.
  • Tantrums bring you closer together – After the tantrum, hug them, show them they are loved.
  • Tantrums will help your child’s behavior in the long run – Having a tantrum helps your child release the feelings that can get in the way of his natural, cooperative self.
  • If the tantrum happens at home, it’s less likely to occur in public – when children are allowed to express their emotion fully, they will often choose to have their upsets at home.
  • Your child is doing something most of us have forgotten how to do – They cry to release their stress and anger, and as adults, we tend to avoid crying to ‘fit into’ society.
  • Tantrums are healing for you, too – Staying calm takes practice, but when we manage it, we are literally rewiring our brains to become calmer, more peaceful parents.

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:

 

  • Use Words or Illustrations – Explain the feeling to your child by using easy words they can understand. Using picture books is a great way to illustrate feelings.
  • Teach Your Child Sign Language – This gives them tools to express their wants and needs.
  • Help Them Find A Solution – Teach your child different ways to deal with feelings and allow them to come up with solutions.
  • Encourage with Praise – When you see your child positively expressing their feelings, always praise them.
  • Practice – Practice strategies for expressing emotions by talking about feelings during daily life.
  • Name the Feeling – Help your child give their feelings labels.
  • Identify Feelings in Themselves and Other – Describe emotions they see around them.
  • Accept Your Child’s Feelings – they will feel like you understand them, and that will help them cooperate with you and make them feel better.
  • Listen to Your Child’s Feelings – They need to feel like you care.
  • Talk About Others Feelings – When your child is upset about something that involved another child, talk about your child’s feelings, but also discuss how the other child may be feeling.

 

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!

 

 

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