Developmental Milestones

Your child will learn more in their first five years of life than at any other time. Developmental milestones are a way of tracking this progress. Generally kids development skills in the same order, but there is a range of when we might expect this ‘typical’ development rather than an exact age. These checklists are a useful guide if you feel things are not quite as they should be for your child. 

Developmental milestones measure your child’s skills to engage with the world. Skills like communication, play, sight, hearing, and their movement, known as motor skills. Your family doctor and public health nurse will look at the following milestones:

• Language: making and understanding sounds and including hearing,
• Social: play and interactions with others around them,
• Emotional: forming attachments and bonding with people,
• Cognitive: learning and engaging with the world,
• Physical: large body movements such as sitting, crawling, and walking, and small movements such as holding things, passing from hand to hand, and hand-eye coordination.

These charts are for information purposes and not an assessment. However, knowing what to expect and roughly when to expect it can help you understand and monitor your child’s development.