Understanding your child's developmental stages and what to expect.
A baby is born with a sensory system that has been preparing for the outside world for months and that will be reshaped, in specific and irreversible...
The conversation about screen time for babies tends to collapse into two camps that talk past each other. One camp cites the AAP and WHO guidelines an...
The strange thing about singing to a small baby is how much is going on that neither of you can see. The baby quiets, settles, maybe drifts off — and...
Some children cover their ears in the supermarket. Some gag when certain textures touch their mouths. Some seek constant physical movement or pressure...
"He understands everything -- he just doesn't want to talk." This is one of the most common descriptions parents bring to their health visitors and GP...
There is a stretch between 18 months and 3 years when "I do it" becomes the most-used phrase in your house. The shoe goes on the wrong foot. The yogur...
Child development is faster, messier, and more personal than the milestone charts make it look. One baby walks at ten months and says nothing for anot...
Growing up with more than one language is normal in much of the UK and most of the world. Yet bilingual families still get told, by well-meaning but u...
First independent steps are one of the most celebrated milestones of early childhood, and with good reason — they mark a transition to a fundamentally...
Most babies protest tummy time at first. Most parents, seeing the protest, do less of it. The result is that what should be 30 minutes a day in small...
"Back to sleep, tummy to play" is the line every paediatrician quotes, and the reason it became a slogan is that the two need each other. Back sleepin...
The 2-year-old who isn't really talking yet — when their cousin the same age is making sentences — is one of the most common reasons parents call the...
A 3-year-old wrestling a jumper onto themselves — head poking out of an arm hole, eventually emerging triumphant with the label at the front and the b...
There is a stage somewhere between two and five when a child discovers the word "why" and applies it to everything. Why is the sky blue? Why does Dadd...
You'll feel it before you measure it. For months, your toddler has been adding the odd new word — "ball", "dog", "more" — slowly enough that you can l...
"Me do it." Said with absolute conviction, usually about a task the child has never successfully completed. Followed by 8 minutes of struggle, sometim...
Around 18 months, something changes. The toddler who happily let you spoon them yoghurt last week now grabs the spoon, tries to scoop, gets some on th...
A toddler wrestling with a single sock for 5 minutes, refusing all help, then asking to do it again — this is one of the defining scenes of the second...
Fine motor skills are the foundation for many of the practical daily activities of childhood — self-feeding, dressing, drawing, and eventually writing...
The period from eighteen to twenty-four months is one of the most transformative in the first years of a child's life. The toddler who was a fairly de...