Achieving Milestones

Developmental milestones are a set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that most children can do at a certain age range. Every child has an average time frame for physical, social, mental and emotional development. The first five years of a child's life are the most important for a child's development. Skills such as crawling, standing, taking a first step, keeping balance, reading, smiling for the first time, eating, drawing and waving are considered to be important developmental milestones. Children reach milestones in how they play, learn, speak, act, and move (crawling, walking, etc.). Although each milestone has an age level, the actual age when a normally developing child reaches that milestone can vary quite a bit so children may achieve developmental milestones sooner or later than the average and reaching these milestones later than expected does not necessarily indicate cause for concern; many infants develop at their own pace but parents breathe a sigh of relief when their child achieves a milestone at the right time. In case there is a delay, parents experience a great level of anxiety about it.

• Assessing a child's development is a team effort. The family plays an important role
• Spend time with your child by reading to them, playing with them
• Having a professional like a pediatrician to ease out those anxieties can help you become efficient in guiding your child better.
• Parents should be equipped with information about developmental delays and how to identify them in their child
• In case of developmental delays, reaching out to a specialist that caters to these specific concerns would be recommended.
• Interventions should be taken as early as a delay is identified to make speedy progress
• Reaching out to parents who are in the same space - taking care of a child with developmental delays can prove beneficial