What Are The Important Milestones & How Can I Support My Child To Reach Them?
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At Toddler-Talk, we focus on the important milestones in the areas of Speech, Language, Communication and Social-Emotional Development. There are broadly seven important building blocks within those areas. These building blocks are; attention, visual tracking expressive language, play skills, social skills, understanding of language and imitation.
These important building blocks interact and weave together to ensure overall optimal milestone development. However, for monitoring and tracking purposes we consider these building blocks as individual domains. Within each domain at seven specific milestone stages, we can identify the specific milestone skills we would expect to see at each stage in each domain.
So, for example at stage 3 (7-12 months), we can look at the Social Skills building block and we can identify if the following milestone skills are in place;
Takes Turns in play routines
Sometimes starts games such as peek a boo
Makes sounds and takes turns in making sounds
At stage 6 (25-30 months) we can look at the Expressive Language building block and we can identify if the following milestone skills are in place;
Uses 50 words or more
Names objects in pictures
Uses more words than gestures to communicate
Uses 2-3 word combinations for example “car go”, “eat it”, “me want” “baby is tired”
Says at least 2 new words per week
If you want to check these milestone skills in the building block domains, the myToddlerTalk passport can help you to develop a milestone profile for your child. By using the passport, you can keep track of and monitor all the milestone skills in those specific building blocks. The myToddlerTalk passport will also help you to identify which building blocks you need to focus on and what are the milestone skills to keep in mind when you are playing and interacting with your child.
You can find the myToddler Talk passport here: https://toddler-talk.com/passport
So, if we note that certain skills are not in place, we can focus on specific play activities that will support their development. The passport will direct you to targeted activities that you can find in The Toddler Talk Activity Box. The Activity Box has detailed descriptions of activities to do to support development of these milestone skills in all seven building blocks at seven specific milestone stages for all children from 0-36 months.
You can find the Toddler Talk Activity Box here https://toddler-talk.com/activity-box
At Toddler Talk we are very mindful that being a parent is a very busy profession indeed !!, so at all times remember that you can incorporate these playful activities into your day to day lives and routines. The overall objective is to equip you with specific and targeted advice and ideas to support you to enrich your child’s early milestone developmental journey.
You can listen to more information the myToddler Talk passport and the Activity Box on our Toddler Talk podcast series here;
Top Tips:
Three top tips to consider when engaging in playful activities with your child are:
1. Use sensory social routines:
Sensory Social routines are a great way to engage your child and have fun when supporting early milestone development. A sensory social routine is a joint activity between two people with a focus on sensory fun and playful social engagement. We have more information on sensory social routines on our Toddler Talk Podcast.
You can listen here;
2. Consider your Interaction Skills:
There are some important interaction skills to think about when playing with your child. Things to consider are:
- Letting your child lead
- Face to Face positioning
- OWLing Strategies
- Commenting as opposed to questioning
For a short demonstration on interaction skills, you can watch here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gVKP_RX-1Y
For more information on Interaction skills when playing with your child, please read our blog.
https://toddler-talk.com/resources/blog/building-interaction-skills
3. Put down the Smartphone.
And finally, please remember to put the smartphone away and out of sight when playing with your child. For more information on the effects of smartphone use at home on your child’s development; please watch our video here.