Shows interest in objects and human faces They vary from child to child, just as hair and eye color do. Most children develop skills and abilities in roughly the same order, but the timeframes involved aren’t exact. Milestones are the things a child can do by a certain age. If there is a delay, identifying it early can sometimes make a big difference for the child. If progress stops or seems to stop, it’s time to talk to your child’s healthcare provider. It may also help to think of development as an individual progression, rather than as a list of boxes you should tick at certain prescribed intervals. Your child’s physician can screen your child for any developmental delays using validated screening tools at or in-between well visits. The measures that doctors use may be different from those that parents can find in print or online checklists. More importantly, just 40 of those developmental milestones show up on all four checklists, which begs the question: Should you depend on a single checklist?Ī good approach, these researchers suggest, is to start by talking to your child’s pediatrician or primary care provider. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital looked at four of the best known child development checklists and found that they mention a total of 728 different skills and abilities. Know that you’re going to see some variation between the lists. But before you put too much stock in a single checklist…
