A toddler is a child who is 12 months old to 36 months old. At this age, a toddler’s growth and development assessment is crucial to ensure that there will be no problems in your child’s development.
During this stage, it is recommended that your child should see their pediatrician at least once a year for their regular checkup and to track their immunization.
During the toddler stage, your child’s physical growth and development tend to slow down but their cognitive, language, and motor skills will improve by leaps and bounds.
Providing them with a supportive and stimulating environment will greatly help your child to achieve all the growth and development assessment that he will go through. A positive interaction with people around him can make this possible.
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Toddler Growth and Development Assessment Tips for Parents
There are certain milestones in 5 areas of child development that you will need to look out for during your toddler’s growth years. It will be physical, emotional and social, language, cognitive, and sensory and motor skills.
The 5 Areas of Toddler Growth and Development Assessment
Here’s a short list of key things that your child should be able to do during his toddler years.
Remember: every child will has their own pace. While toddler growth and development assessment can help identify where your child is, there’s no need to be alarmed if they are not there yet.
So if they’re not yet able to do some things during toddler growth and development assessment, there is no need to be worried.
If at the end of their toddler years, they still haven’t achieved these skills, then you can consult with their pediatrician about possible development delays.
Physical Skills Development
Your child’s physical growth will slow down at this stage. Whereas he grew 3 to 5 inches when he was just an infant to a toddler, this time around, the focus and development physically will be on his increasing strength and coordination.
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Emotional and Social Skills Development
Your child’s ability to express his emotions, specifically his happiness, frustration, anger, and love will develop at this stage. He will learn to practice self-control. He will understand the concept of hugging, saying goodbye, and other emotions. And he will also learn to share and wait for his turn at this age.
Language Skills Development
The toddler years is the time when your child will understand the full use of language. This is when he will learn to say please and thank you as well as differentiate between the right way of saying things versus just calling something by name.
Cognitive Skills Development
This will be your child’s ability to solve problems. This will also be the time that your child will start to recognize familiar people, objects, and places. He will learn to use his imagination and he will begin to think and understand letters, symbols, colors, and numbers.
Sensory and Motor Skills Development
Part of toddler growth and development assessment is checking your child’s skills. This refers to your child’s ability to pick up objects, hold small items, turn the pages of a book, hold a crayon and doodle. It will be about using the small muscles in his hands and fingers.
Ways to Help Your Toddler’s Growth
As a parent, there are certain things that you can do to help your child through toddler growth and development assessment. First is to make sure that they remain healthy.
Instead of giving them sugary sweets, provide them with plain milk and water at all times. Stock them up with veggies and fruits so that they get their daily dose of go, grow, and glow foods.
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Allow him to be active and lessen screen time. If your child wants to go running, climbing, jumping, or kicking, give him a safe space to do all these so that he can spend up his energy while developing his coordination and muscle strength.
Making sure a child gets the right amount of sleep at night, will help boost their mood and energy to explore the world around him.
Other things that you can do for your toddler’s growth and development assessment:
- Read to them daily.
- Board games that are age appropriate will allow you to bond with your child while teaching him something so play matching games or name me that color or body part.
- Respond to good behavior more than you do with ones you don’t want him to cultivate.
- Encourage him to explore.
Ways to Keep Your Toddler Safe
Since your toddler will be exploring his surroundings a lot more, you need to make sure that he will have a safe space.
This will also help him feel more secure in exploring and will boost his development assessment. Here are some tips to keep your toddler safe.
- Put a socket protector in all your sockets. Since kids are curious, they might insert their fingers inside the socket and get electrocuted.
- Lie down on the floor as if you are about to do a push up. Lift your head and look up but with your shoulders still on the ground. This will allow you to see things from the perspective of your toddler and show you potential danger that you can’t see from your usual point of view.
- Put away and lock up all household cleaners, poisonous items, and medicines. Your child may mistake it for candy or something edible.
- Never leave your toddler alone even for a moment even when you think that he will be safe. Your child can get in an accident in a split second.
- Toddler-proof your place by locking doors that could lead to dangerous places such as the garage or gate. If you have stairs, make sure that it is blocked and can’t be accessed by your toddler.
- Never leave them near a body of water. Drowning is the number one cause of death among this age group.
Key Takeaways
Note that every child will reach certain milestones in their own time and it will be different from other kids. There may be milestones where he will be ahead of his peers, some that will be right on cue, and some where he may be behind. This makes it important to regularly go through toddler growth and development assessment.
If there are developmental delays or concerns, always check with your pediatricians since your toddler’s growth and development assessment are an important part of their overall health.
Your child is now learning to be independent and to explore the world around him. Encourage him and keep him safe at all times. At the end of the day, it is you and your love that your child needs the most to boost his growth and developmental needs.
Learn more about Toddler and Preschooler Growth and Development here.
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