Psychomotor development of the child - 13 to 18 months

Your child made in the last year a big advance, which is mostly visible in the physical abilities. It learned to crawl, creep and stand, and perhaps it started to train walking. The motor skills development won’t be as significant as it was in the first year. Most visible development will be in the area of personality of the child, speech and gentle motor skills. Evaluating the psychomotor development after a year of life, is not as strict anymore as it was during the first year of life. (previous article)

ROUGH MOTOR SKILLS

12th month

the child is shortly after the first year able to stand. You should support the child emotionally with joy that the child is able to do such demanding task. Rejoice with your child, clap your hands and praise your child enough. That way the child will get more confident and try to do more demanding steps. You can also support your child by placing the toys around furniture so that the child could get a support when needed.

Definitely don’t rush with putting on shoes. Child in this age doesn’t need any shoes, until when the child starts to walk outside. On the other hand, soft and big enough shoe offers enough space for healthy development of the bones and joints of the foot.

15th month

The child will in this time period learn to sit down from a standing position and get back up again, without the help of someone else or an object. The child can climb up into stairs and back down on all fours. When the child walks, the steps are evenly long, but each step has slightly different direction. Steps are uncertain and unevenly high.

When learning to walk you should a lot of attention to your child. If the child will fall too often, the falls will discourage the child in further trying and advances.

18th month

Eighteen months old child can climb up the stairs without any help, even though the child has to hold by using the hands. Walking is more stable, the child is even able to walk backwards, falling should happen only rarely. You can use the backwards walk in games. Children also love to dance to music, getting past obstacles or kicking into a soft ball. At home you will surely find many options how you could support your child in learning how to walk and changing directions during walking.

GENTLE MOTOR SKILLS

12th month

The child is within a year able to eat with hands. The attempts to put food into the mouth is usually with minimal waste. But the child is not yet able to work with a spoon. In this age you can start to teach the child to use cutlery. Place denser food in front of the child, which will not drop down from the spoon. Children like to throw things around.

If children upset you by throwing food from the table down, throwing toys out of a stroller, don’t think it is because they want to drive you mad, they only need to check the third dimension of the place. The child knows very well, how far are thing, but how deep is something is what the child is interested in.

15th month

In this age the child will be able to hold a cup or glass to drink from, without spilling the content and placing the cup again back on the table. The child can also now use a spoon independently and makes small mess or none at all.

When reading a book with thin papers, the child turns several pages at a time. When building a tower from cubes, the child is able to build three cubes on top of each other without falling down.

You can show your children how to put on socks, shoes or beanies. These simple acts are something they could be able to do themselves.

18th month

The child is able to independently eat and drink from the cup as well.

When reading from a book it turns now only 2 to 3 pages at a time. When building a tower from cubes it is able to build now 3 to 5 cubes on top of each other.

The child likes to doodle on a paper, the direction of lines is more horizontal than vertical. The pencil is held usually with a whole hand. Once you offer a paper with pencil, caryons or brush with colors, the child will be thrilled and eager to create beautiful abstract „pictures”.

PERSONALITY OF THE CHILD

12th month

One year old child knows its name and understands the term „no”. The child has a sense of humor, it can show affection by pressing his cheeks on your cheeks, alternatively you will receive a strong hug.

If you place the child on a potty after the meal, it is possible to achieve positive results. However the child is not able to control the discharge. Let your child lead you through this process.

15th month

Child in this period likes to enter into conversations of adults by shouting, the child is able to ask non-verbally for things, or say the word „no”. In this period you can start to teach your child word „thank you”.

„Do number two, not number one yet". Your child starts to realize that it wants to urinate. But the ability to hold it is not very efficient yet, therefore the need to pee will be very sudden and strong. It is better to start placing the child on a potty or toilet while doing the number two. This act is the one children understand and control the best.

When is the child mature for using potty or training toilet seat?

In order to succeed and reach satisfaction for both, mother and child, we recommend to start placing the child that is mentally mature, on the toilet or potty. Simply in time when the child is able to express the need to go to the toilet. It is necessary for the child to be willing to sit for a while (you can interest the child by reading a book). We recommend to „decorate” the environment for the child. For a frequent use, it will be surely motivating to get a potty or training seat in a shape of animal or or with some picture.

18th month

During this period the child will start to help you more and more with dressing and undressing. Enable the child to dress by himself (simple parts of the dress).

Eating and drinking alone.

Showing love to the family members, pets and dolls.

Enjoying playing next to other children, but not playing with the children directly yet.

Urinary bladder and nerves of your child are already sufficiently developed, so the child can warn you in case he needs to go to the toilet. Praise your child during any success and overlook all the failures. Don’t expect that the child won’t have a urinal release during the night, the capacity of the urinary bladder is still insufficient.

SPEECH

12th month

One year old child can say 2 to 3 meaningful words. Long before being able to correctly pronounce certain things, the child is able to identify objects when pointing at them. Some children are learning words from the back (for example: „g”...„og”...„dog”) and some words from the start („c” as „car”). If you ask the child while reading a book to identify animal such as dog on the picture, the child will search with eyes for the dog.

15th month

Such big child uses his own jargon, which is just a set of child’s own expressions for objects, people, animals etc. The child may also pronounce real words. Some children repeat a short sentence, which they often repeat („what is that?”), but this sentence is usually blended as one word.

18th month

Child in this month is able to point at many things in the book and even real life. The active vocabulary of the child should be consisted of approximately 10 words.