From birth to 5 years, your child should reach milestones in how he plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves. Track your child’s development and act early if you see a concern.
Sathish Chandra Segar, MSc, OT — Clinical Director, QISH, Doha provides answers to commonly asked questions...
Baby Development – How does it happen?
Baby development in the first 12 months is amazing. Through warm and responsive interactions with caregivers, as well as play, babies learn to communicate, think, move, express emotions and much more. In general, development happens in the same order in most children, but skills might develop at different ages or times. For example, children usually learn to stand, and then they learn to walk. But this development can happen any time between 8 and 18 months.
What are developmental milestones?
Developmental achievements are called, ‘milestones’. Growth and development milestones are a useful guide for tracking your baby’s development. Developmental milestones are grouped under headings according to the parts of the body they refer to:
• Large Body Movements (gross motor skills) involve the coordination and control of large muscles, and skills like walking, sitting and running.
• Small Body Movements (fine motor skills) involve the coordination and control of small muscles, and skills like holding a rattle and picking up crumbs.
• Vision is the ability to see near and far, and to understand what you see.
• Hearing is the ability to hear, listen to and understand sounds.
• Speech and Language is the ability to make and understand sounds those form words.
• Social Behavior and Understanding is the ability to learn and interact with others. It includes skills for play and connecting and communicating.
What is Developmental Delay?
When young children are slower to develop physical, emotional, social and communication skills than expected is called developmental delay.
Developmental delay can show up in the way children move, communicate, think and learn or behave with others, when more than one of these areas is affected, it might be called global developmental delay.
Developmental delays might be short term or it might be the first sign of a long term problem. Long term developmental delays are also called developmental disabilities.
Examples include cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, learning disabilities, and autism spectrum disorder
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