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Know

Infants and toddlers are born ready to learn. They learn through cuddling with a caregiver, listening to language, experimenting with sounds, moving their bodies, tasting foods, and exploring their environments. Their brains go through amazing changes during the first three years of life. This lesson will highlight cognitive development milestones for infants and toddlers.

Milestones

Infants’ and toddlers’ thinking skills grow as they interact with the world and people around them. The key to healthy brain development is through nurturing and responsive care for a child’s body and mind. As you learned in the first lesson, brain development is strongly influenced by the child’s experiences with other people and the environment. Therefore, supporting their cognitive development is critical for brain growth. As infants and toddlers develop, they begin to understand and predict how things work: they open and close a cabinet door over and over, they fill and dump a cup of water in the water table, they bang a spoon on a high chair to hear the sound. 

Watching an infant or toddler make new discoveries is truly exciting. Think of how amazing it is the first time an infant stacks blocks (and knocks them down) or the first time a toddler pretends to read a book to you. The chart below highlights infant and toddler cognitive development. Keep in mind that individual differences exist when it comes to the specific ages at which infants and toddlers meet these milestones and that each infant and toddler is unique. As you may have already learned in other courses, milestones provide a guide for when to expect certain skills or behaviors to emerge. Think of milestones as guidelines to help you understand and identify typical patterns of growth and development or to help you know when and what to look for as young children mature. As a family child care provider, you can use information about developmental milestones and what you learn from families, to create high-quality interactions, experiences, and environments for infants and toddlers.

Cognitive development is a unique process specific to each infant, toddler, and family. Many factors influence cognitive development, including genes, events during pregnancy or birth, and aspects of the child’s environment. A family may wonder about a young child’s cognitive development and feel uncertain about what they are observing and what to expect. As a caregiver, take the opportunity to build a trusting relationship and learn from each child’s family, observe carefully to learn about the each child’s development, and then consider offering families additional information about their child’s development. In your role as an infant toddler caregiver, you may have to sensitively include information about possible warning signs that could indicate a developmental delay.  

The Kids Included Together website, , can be a valuable resource for you, as can be the Developmental Milestones and Act Early information located on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, . These are some possible developmental warning signs for infants and toddlers:

Ultimately, if families are concerned about their child’s development, they should talk to their pediatrician about their concerns. The pediatrician can perform developmental screenings and possibly refer the child to the appropriate specialists. Families should also contact their statewide Early Intervention Program (for children under age 3). These programs will provide a free evaluation of the child’s development. This can help the child get the services and help he or she needs. The video below was developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and offers tips for identifying and acting on suspected developmental delays. .

See

Just as children’s bodies grow throughout infancy and toddlerhood, their brains are growing, too. You will see major changes between birth and 3 years in a child’s thinking skills. Watch this video to learn about milestones for infants and toddlers.

Do

Understanding developmental milestones will help you know what kinds of learning experiences to offer the infants and toddlers in your care. Based on your knowledge of development, you can ensure that your interactions and activities are appropriate for individual children. Remember, milestones are markers that let us know a child is growing in a healthy way. As an infant and toddler caregiver, do the following to support developmental milestones: 

• Give infants and toddlers the safe space they need for movement and discovery (areas for climbing, crawling, pulling up, etc.). 
• Offer safe, developmentally appropriate materials for exploring (foam blocks, board books, musical instruments, containers for sorting and filling, etc.). 
• Provide a consistent, nurturing relationship with each infant and toddler.  
• Read about the stages of development, especially for the ages of the children you serve. 
• Post developmental milestone charts for reference and visual reminders. 
• Recognize that children need different things from you as they move through the developmental stages. 
• Observe children and document their progress on a regular basis to determine where they are developmentally so you can both support and challenge their emerging skills. 
• Remember that children are unique and progress at different rates and that one area of development may take longer than other areas. 
• Consult with your trainer, coach, or family child care administrator if you feel concerned about how a child is developing. Then share your observations and concerns, along with resources, with the child’s family. You may want to encourage them to make an appointment with their health-care provider to learn more about their child’s development.