Explaining Infant and Toddler Growth and Development Milestones

Hey everyone, today I am going to be writing about our developments, I mean human development and growth from childhood till we get to adulthood. I decided to write this post because a friend of mine had a child last Thursday, and was looking really confused with basic information like when is the child meant to grow his first tooth, and which set of teeth are going to be the first to show. he also didn't understand a whole lot of things when it comes to human growth and development, so I decided to do the honors to explain in a comprehensive way the human growth and development but in this post, I will be looking at children and toddlers then in subsequent videos, I will explain other stages. So let's get into the day's business.

In this post, I will not start with the prenatal milestones and growth as this is another topic on its own, but I will be discussing Postnatal development and growth from infants to adulthood. So starting with the infant developmental milestones, I will be looking at children between the age of 0 to 1 year old. Infants would experience body changes, and have motor and cognitive changes. Infant usually a fontanelle, in case you do not know what that is, it is the soft spots on the babies head. They are about 6 different types of fontanelle but the two large ones are the anterior fontanelle and the posterior fontanelle. The anterior fontanelle closes between 18 to 24 months of age, while the posterior frontanelle close at about 2 months. A baby feeding properly should have doubled his initial weight at birth, and should have trippled it at age 1 year. Infant increase in lenght at about 1/2 to 1 inch per month for 6 month, while they increase in lenght at about 3/8 inch per month from the 6th month till about 1 year old. When it comes to teeth, infants are known to grow ther lower center incisors teeth first. They tend to erupt in babies about the age of six to ten months.

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At the age of 2 months, infants should be able to move their head from side to side (sideways movement), they should be able to follow objects and faces with their eyes, make verbal noise and smiling, they should be able to hold their head up on their stomach. At the age of 4 months, baby should be able to play with parents in a simple way, and enjoy the play. Children will start to create babbling noise, and be able to hold things such as toys, they should be able to remember faces, and roll over while lying down. At 6 months, the infant should be able to be in a sitting position with support, they start to have stranger anxiety, children will start to produce babbling sounds with vowels in it, ability to respond to their name, they smile while looking at themselves in the mirror and should be able to crawl because you just had a new mobile member of the family. At the age of 8 to 9 month, the child start to sit alone without support, they are able to crawl effectively, and stand by holding up to an object, they start to use the pincer grasp to get thing, and start to move object, and object premanence. At age 10 months to 12 months, infant should be able to stand and walk with or without support (at a beginning stage), ability to follow simple commands, starts to bang object, ability to pronounce simple repetitive words like mama. Children would begin to feel seperation anxiety such as crying when not seeing their care-giver.

Before he age of 1 year, children can die suddenly, which is referred to as Sudden Infant Death syndrome (SIDS) with over 200 children dying in the UK yearly. The cause is basically unknown but certain activities can reduce the risk of such occurence, such as laying babies on their back, avoiding tobacco smoke, not overdressing the baby, not adding unnecessary things in their crib, and sleep seperately from infant. Another syndrome to be concerned about is the Shaken Baby Syndrome. It is important that people do not shake babies as the brain of the children is very fragile inside the skull. Shaking the baby can cause the brain to rock back and forth the skull causing a traumatic brain injury which can cause disability in the child or can lead to death. Children can choke on almost everything as infant, including breast milk, mucus, and food. It is important to prevent giving children uncooked food, fruits, and snacks like popcorn as they can cause choking. It is important for mother to help children with CPR when needed to prevent choking. Children could also suffer burns from hot temperature including that from water. It is important to watch the temperature of water and food to feed children.

Toddlers which are children within the age of 1 year old and 3 years old. These children experience physical changes, mental change, and developing in motor skills. Toddlers are more aware of their environment unlike infants and are willing to test that environment. Toddlers starts to run, to pla balls, they are able to talk in 3 words, climb, and disorganize things. After 1 year, a toddler would have gained about 4 to 6 pounds per year, which is about four times their birth weight. Toddlers should increase by 2 to 3 inches per year, with the average hight of a 2 year old toddler to be 33 to 35 inches. Head to chest circumference are equal at about 2 to 3 years. At the age of 2 to 3 years, toddlers are likely to be on the move and readily available for dangers such as drawning, nose-dives, suffocation, choking, eating toxins. It is important to get anything that could cause serious injury out of the reach of toddlers. The development stage theory of toddlers can be divided into two which are piaget's theory, Erickson's theory. In the Piaget's theory it is divided into the sensorimotor and pre-operational. In the Sensorimotor stage (2 years), children uses their senses and motor abilities to understand the sorrounding environment. They start to understand object permanence and start to understand how to solve simple problems. At the preoperational stage (within 2 to 7), children begin to understand and use symbols, words, image, identify and represent objects. At this stage, children starts to develop memory abilities, but their thinking is still egocentric. With the Erickson's theory, the toddler experience stages such as Trust vs. Mistrust (birth to 18 months) where the child is learning to trust their environment, in toddlers, I will discuss the second stage which is Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt where the toddlers learn to control their own bodies, and start to develop a sense of independence, and struggle between dependence and indepence.