Motor Development
By 24 months:
- Kicks a ball
- Starts to run
- Can walk up a few stairs with or
- without your help
- Eats with a spoon
- Pulls toys behind them while walking
By 30 months:
- Can twist, turn, and unscrew some objects
- Can take some clothes off on their own (for example, an unzipped jacket)
- Jumps up with both feet
- Turns pages of a book one at a time
- Your toddler doesn’t walk with a heel-toe walking pattern after they have been walking for several months (for example, walks only on their tiptoes)
- By age 2, your child can’t push a wheeled toy.
What to try
- Encourage your child to hold the book during story time and turn the pages.
- Continue to build their body awareness by talking about sensations like hunger, fullness, or what it feels like when they need to pee or poo. This awareness will help them when they start toilet learning.
- As always, be mindful of safety! Motor development is exciting, but also means that your toddler can suddenly access new potential hazards.
- Practice motor skills with games. For example, play follow the leader. Walk across the room on your tiptoes (or backwards, sideways, making turns, like an animal) and have them follow. Once they get the hang of it, have them lead and you follow.
- Give them everyday objects for play. This gives them a chance to practice unscrewing lids, fitting boxes into one another, and stacking cups. “Look at how the little cup fits inside the bigger cup."
Social & Communication Development
By 24 months:
- Looks at you to check how you are reacting to a situation
- Notices when people are upset by pausing what they’re doing or looking sad
- Can point to two or more body parts
- Points to things in a book when you ask them (“Where is the dog?”)
- Combines two or more words (“More water”)
- Uses gestures like nodding, blowing a kiss, in addition to waving and pointing
- Awareness of themself as separate from others
- Begins to show challenging behaviors
By 30 months:
- Parallel play alongside other children
- Sometimes might play with other children
- Follows simple routines
- Says around 50 words including some pronouns (“I”, "we”)
- Combines two or more words with action words (“Mommy go”)
- Names some things in a book when you ask them what they are
Talk to your child’s healthcare provider if:
By age 2, your child doesn’t use two-word sentences.
Your child does not imitate actions, gestures, or words.
What to try:
- Try to turn transitions into learning opportunities with songs, conversations and silliness. This can make them more engaging and positive for children - making it more likely that they will do what you need them to do!
- Give praise to what you like, and try to ignore what you don’t. Your toddler will seek your attention no matter what, so think about giving your attention to the good stuff, “thank you for sitting so nicely at the table, ” instead of to the annoying stuff, “stop throwing your food on the ground!”
- Redirect. When your toddler is upset about something, like not being able to play with the TV
remote, you can first acknowledge that, “I know you love pushing all the buttons, but it breaks the remote and then we have to reprogram it later and it’s a big mess.” Then you replace that with something else that your child can play with. “Why don’t you push the buttons on your pretend phone instead?”
Cognitive Development
By 24 months:
- Holds something in one hand and uses the other hand at the same time
- Explores switches, knobs, and buttons
- Plays with two or more toys at the same time (feeds toy food to a stuffed animal)
By 30 months:
- Uses objects to represent other things (for example, “feeding” their stuffed animal a block)
- Follows two-step directions
- Knows one color or more
- Simple problem solving skills
Talk to your child’s healthcare provider if:
By age 2, they don’t seem to understand and follow simple instructions.
What to Try:
- Help your toddler recognize the consequences of their actions. They are at a developmental stage where they can grasp simple cases of cause and effect. “I pulled the dog’s tail, and they growled at me.”
- Recognizing these connections between cause and effect has been shown in research to improve behavior over time.
- Scaffold your child’s understanding of instruction. For example, saying “put on your shoes, please” might be more to process than we realize. Try first taking their hand, saying the instruction, and then moving wit them to complete the task. Over time, they will be able to do more with less support.
- Talk about shapes, patterns, size, and numbers in everyday life. “The cookie is a circle! What happens if we bite it in half? Is it still a circle? Is it bigger or smaller now?”