Your Child’s Development 18-36 Months

Milestones: By 36 Months, Most Children Can:

• Use hands to twist things like turning doorknobs.
• Jump off the ground with both feet.
• String items together, like large beads or macaroni.
• Put on and take off clothes by themselves, like loose pants or a jacket.
• Use a fork.

Physical Development: Your child will naturally learn new skills and likely move from one skill to the next without being “taught” how to do the next thing. By the time they are 36 months of age, your child has learned to do many physical tasks, including running, climbing, jumping, throwing, kicking, turning, carrying, and pedaling. They do all these tasks with some skill and coordination and can combine some; for instance, they can run while holding something, climb and jump, and dance, moving arms, legs, and whole bodies.

Body Awareness and Control:

• Your child can move around objects and people without bumping into them.
• Your child has likes and dislikes over how things feel on their skin.
• They will show increased balance and coordination in play activities

Muscle Development and Coordination:

• Your child can move from one place to another by walking and running with basic control and coordination.
• Your child needs many opportunities to move, run, climb, jump, and throw.
• Your child may enjoy carrying heavy things and building with blocks and other natural materials.
• They love to push things, including boxes, small strollers, and carts.
• Your child will enjoy throwing. You can provide a variety of softballs that they can throw and even make small softballs out of socks or yarn.
• Your child will have more control over their arm and leg movements for walking, running, and climbing.
• Your child can build and stack things (and knock them down). They will do this with almost anything they can find, including cans and boxes from the cupboard, sticks, leaves from outside, small scraps of wood, or sets of building blocks.
• You can also use mattresses, couch cushions, and low platforms for your child to practice climbing up and down.
• Your child can jump off the bottom step or a few inches forward.
• Your child can kick a ball.
• Your child can catch a ball using two arms.
• Your child can walk up or down stairs with both feet on each step without holding on.
• Your child will be able to walk on tiptoes.
• Your child may be able to on a ride-on toy without pedals.

Nutrition: 

• Your child can show tiredness or hunger through predictable behaviors.
• Your child can chew and bite into foods with different textures.
• Your child may develop a willingness to try new foods if offered on multiple occasions.

Safety: 

• Your child will look to you or family members when faced with new people or in new places.
• Your child will love to climb and may climb on anything they can find (chairs, tables, shelves, couches, benches). Decide what is safe for your child to climb on and remind them to climb on those things when they start climbing on other things.
• Your child will sometimes fall when they are climbing. These simple falls are also how they learn. They often want to return to the same spot to try climbing again and will do it successfully because of what they learned the previous time.
• When your child begins to climb, it is important that you look around the area to see if it is a safe environment.

Self-care: 

• Your child will show interest in doing things for themselves, like putting soap on their hands.
• Your child may resist sleeping or napping even when tired.

Milestones: By 18 Months, Most Children Can:

• Talk with you in conversation using at least two back-and-forth exchanges.
• Ask “who,” “what,” “where,” or “why” questions, like “Where is mommy?”
• Say what action is happening in a picture or book when asked, like “running,” “eating,” or “playing.”
• Say their first name when asked.
• Speak clearly enough to be understood most of the time.

Communication: Your child can communicate their needs using simple sentences. They are learning new words they hear you say. They can talk about what has happened in the past and what they would like to do in the future. They have conversations with their friends and with people outside of their family.

Expressive Communication/ Expressive Language:

• By the time they are three years old, you and your child may have conversations that sound like this:
  Child: I like to go to the park. Remember we saw a dog at the park?
  Parent: Yes, that dog followed you around and licked your hand.
  Child: It tickled my hand. Can we go back to the park to see the dog?
• Young children have many words to communicate their feelings, needs, and ideas and can be understood by friends and other people outside their families.
• They have begun to learn the rules of speech but still make some mistakes. For example: “He goed to the store.” “There are two mans in the car.”
• They may use the same word to convey different things. For example, your child may say  “milk,”  which can mean, “I want milk,” “I’m finished drinking milk,” or “I spilled my milk.”
• Your child can combine two words to express wants or needs, such as walking to the car, they may say, “Car go.”
• Your child will begin to understand your gestures even when you don’t say words, such as shaking your head no means “no.”
• Your child may use gestures while they speak to be understood, such as saying “no, no, no” while they shake their head.

Receptive Communication/Receptive Language:

• Your child listens to words that are spoken directly to them as well as to conversations that are happening around them to learn new words.
• Your child will pay attention to the tone of language and understand the meaning of tone and words. For instance, they can notice when your tone is excited, loving, frustrated, or scared and are learning to use tone in their own conversations.
• They can understand 2-step requests such as “Please put your bowl in the dishwasher and get a wipe for your face.”
• Talk about what your child is doing, such as “You are using the side of the crayon on the paper. Look how big the mark is.”
• Use descriptive words to build your child’s vocabulary, such as “Your favorite blanket is green and blue and fuzzy and covered with stars.”
• Talk about what you will do next. This gives children a chance to imagine what will happen before it happens.

Emergent Reading

• Your child may be interested in books. They enjoy spending time reading a book with you or sitting by themselves, turning the pages and telling parts of the story from their memory. They might also pretend to read the book to their dolls or stuffed animals.
• Your child will watch you when you read, turn the pages, point to pictures, name things in the book, and sometimes tell you what will happen next.
• Taking trips to the library provides a fun outing and gives your child new books to look at.
• Take your time reading books. Children often have questions or ideas they want to discuss during the story.
• Ask your child questions about the story. “What do you think is going to happen next? What part of the story did you like the best?”
• You can also show your child where the title is and tell them the name of the person who wrote the book.
• Your child may recognize that a story begins from a clue, such as you saying, “Once upon a time.”
• Your child can hold the book and turn the pages.
• Your child may recognize words around them, such as signs with writing or words on a cereal box.
• Your child may have a favorite book they want you to read them repeatedly.
• Your child may recognize their name when it is written for them.

Writing: 

• Your child will gain more control over the kinds of marks they make, such as making lines instead of circular marks.
• Your child will scribble and draw.

Your child is developing problem-solving skills by focusing on interesting things despite distractions. For instance, your child can make eye contact with family members even with music playing, and older toddlers can stack blocks while someone folds laundry nearby. This concentration helps them learn and solve problems. They can also notice misplaced items, find favorite books, and search for toys while explaining what they are looking for. Young children develop many skills that help them learn and solve problems, including paying attention even when there are distractions, observing, asking questions, gathering information, and exploring different ways to solve problems. These skills may look like this for your child:

• Attention: Your child may be able to sit and listen to a short story or look through a book with a caregiver, which helps build sustained attention and comprehension skills. Your child may have longer attention spans for activities they enjoy, improving their ability to concentrate and engage deeply with tasks. Your child may be able to focus on more complex activities, such as listening to longer stories or engaging in detailed play, which enhances their ability to concentrate for extended periods.
• Problem-Solving: Your child may experiment with cause and effect, like dropping objects to see what happens, encouraging curiosity and logical thinking. Your child may solve problems without trying out all possible physical solutions and ask for help, showing advanced cognitive processing and social learning. Your child may solve more intricate problems, such as completing simple puzzles or learning to operate new toys, demonstrating advanced cognitive processing and logical thinking.
• Play: Your child may engage in imitative play, such as pretending to cook or talk on the phone, enhancing their ability to understand and replicate social roles and behaviors. Your child may engage in pretend play and imitate actions and roles from others, supporting creativity and understanding of complex social dynamics. Your child may engage in more sophisticated pretend play, creating elaborate scenarios and roles that support their creativity and knowledge of social dynamics.
• Executive Function: Your child may initiate simple plans, like taking a toy to a specific place and developing planning and organizational skills. Your child may figure out what might be getting in the way of their plan and persist in following their curiosity, enhancing problem-solving skills and perseverance. Your child may show improved planning and organizational skills, such as setting goals for their play and following through with them, enhancing their ability to think ahead and remain persistent.

Tips to promote cognitive skills:  

• Point out different things you see outside the car, like trees, buildings, or animals. Ask your child to name them or describe what they see.
• While in the car, talk about the sequence of events for the trip, like where you’re going and what you’ll do when you arrive. This helps them understand planning and sequences.
• Let your child touch and explore different fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. Ask them to name the colors or shapes they see.
• Create a routine where they help put clothes in the washer or take them out, reinforcing sequences and following steps.
• Talk about the day’s events and discuss what might happen tomorrow.
• Follow a consistent bedtime routine, such as brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, and reading a story to help them understand sequences.
• Involve them in meal preparation, like stirring ingredients or pouring water, to help them follow steps and stay focused.
• Ask them to help set the table or sort utensils, which encourages problem-solving skills.

Cognitive Numbers

Young children start practicing math skills long before they enter elementary school. During the first years of life, your child learns to count, recognize shapes and patterns, compare sizes and amounts, and notice similarities and differences. They develop these skills through self-initiated play and simple interactions with you. Everyday activities like counting fingers and toes, offering two pieces of banana, and sorting blue and white socks help your child’s math skills grow. They use “more” and “bigger” to discuss amounts.

As they grow older, your child learns to count a few numbers and builds their understanding of quantity through activities like setting the table with plates and cups. They notice how you use counting in everyday life and start imitating you to learn about numbers. Most children naturally show an interest in numbers during their early years, and fun activities involving numbers can strengthen this interest and encourage them to learn more about math concepts.

Your child begins to learn counting skills through everyday interactions such as putting plates on the table, counting their fingers to tell you how old they are, or counting the number of crackers on the plate. During 18-36 months, your child is beginning to count things. They usually learn to say “1-2-3-4-5” (sometimes putting the numbers in a different order) before knowing that each number represents something. They may count their broccoli pieces up to 3 or 4, but they might count the same piece twice or miss a piece. They are still learning the sequence of numbers and might miss a number, for example, “1-2-4.”

They can hold up two fingers to show you their age and hand you two tissues when asked. They are beginning to use the terms “a little bit” and “a lot.” They can choose when you ask if they want a little yogurt or a lot. They may also use their fingers to count.

Skills to promote cognitive number development:

• Talk about the shapes and sizes of bath toys, like “This is a round ball, and this is a long boat.” This helps with shape and size recognition.
• Read books that involve counting and count objects on each page together. For example, “Let’s count the stars on this page: one, two, three.”
• Count the steps in your bedtime routine, like “One, brush your teeth. Two, put on pajamas. Three, read a story.” This helps them understand sequences and routines.
• Use terms like “a little bit” and “a lot,” and let your child choose. Ask, “Do you want a little bit of yogurt or a lot?” This helps them understand quantity.
• When pouring a drink, show them the whole cup and say, “Your cup is full of juice.” After they finish drinking, show the empty cup and say, “Now your cup is empty.”
• When giving your child food, say, “You have more carrots than I do,” or “I have less rice than you.”
• During meal time, try, “How many grapes do you have? Let’s count them before we eat: 1, 2, 3.” Counting food items reinforces the concept of quantity and helps them understand that numbers represent actual objects.
• While getting dressed for the day, try this, “How many socks do we need? Let’s count them: 1, 2.” Counting pairs of socks reinforces the concept of quantity and helps them understand that numbers represent actual objects.