toddler reading
Walking well should be fairly easy for your baby by the end of the fifteenth month and they will combine walking with climbing up things without knowing how to climb down and should also be able to bend over and pick up objects.
Toddlers rarely focus with their eyes – everything in their field of vision competes for their attention. Sound is a similar experience for them – a collection of different noises. Their sense of smell isn’t very developed yet and they may need to take a long sniff of things to pick up their scent. Touch is still the main way they are learning and games revolving around that will teach them a lot.
Play is extremely constructive at this age, building your baby’s self esteem by allowing her to test her skills through trial and error as well as teaching her shapes and colours and it is the first outlet for being creative and imaginative. It also helps develop fine motor skills and hand to eye coordination when she builds blocks, completes a puzzle, moulds Play-Doh and draws with crayons, as she has increased precision in grasp and can most likely hold a cup and a spoon as well as being able to turn pages in books and magazines. Active play also hones motor skills such as walking, jumping, climbing, pushing and pulling.
Functional play also begins through games such as mothering a doll, which will eventually lead to pretend play where the imagination is used actively.
Emptying containers of contents may seem like your baby is just making a mess but they are actually honing an important motor skill, and is ironically unable to repack the contents yet.
At this age your baby still has a very short attention span and will be distracted by any stimuli, with the maximum amount of time she can concentrate on anything being a few minutes at most.
A social behaviour that your baby develops around this age is comforting, sharing and helping others and beginning to interpret other people’s emotions. Your baby’s love of physical activity causes her to deepen her attachments such as moving across a room to be close to someone and using eye contact to try and establish communication and strengthening of emotional ties goes along with awareness of physical or psychological pain expressed by a parent.
Mood swings may also begin, especially with regards to frustration, such as when a toddler is happy and excited about going outside to play before becoming tearful when she has to wait to have her shoes put on before being able to do this. Language skills at this age degrade when the toddler is fatigued, hungry or upset although these are often the times that your baby needs to express herself most.
Babies generally need two naps of approximately one hour each day as the average toddler at this age does not get all the sleep they require at night.
If your baby is still waking at night now is the time to teach her how to resettle herself to sleep. Night feeds should be phased out as a baby’s body has taught itself to go into fasting mode during sleep by this age. Continuous night feeds could lead to weight gain and cause a loss of appetite during the day. A toddler of this age should be in a healthy weight range of between 8 and 13 kilograms.
The information provided on Essential Baby is, at best, of a general nature and cannot substitute for the advice of a medical professional (for instance, a qualified doctor, child health nurse, pharmacist/chemist, and so on). If you have any concerns about your child’s development please contact a medical professional.
Discuss your 1-2 year old’s development the Essential Baby Forums here.
