First and foremost, it is important to remember that no two children are the same and developmental milestones, while generally occurring in the same order, will not always occur at the same time/age for every child.
There are 5 main developmental areas including;
Physical, Social, Emotional, Cognitive and Language
"The Wonder Weeks" which can be helpful for some families, is a guide to some developmental "Leaps" that occur within the first 2 years of a child’s life. They tend to occur around the same time for every child and can contribute to slight regressions in a child’s sleep/eating/social skills. While not hugely important to our work in the pool, it is important to keep them in mind when discussing childhood development – Think of a leap as a child’s system upgrade… they need time to load the update, turn off and reboot before we see the new improvements.
We can pair these leaps with other milestones that may be occurring in home life – Teething, becoming part of social groups, starting childcare or Kinder.
All of these milestones are big for children but also big for parents – especially first-time parents – who can also be impacted by all the change and sometimes they need just as much support as the children.
