Child development includes many domains such as: social and emotional, language and literacy, cognitive thinking, physical well-being, and approaches to learning. Providing meaningful experiences in each domain supports children's growth. Temperament, culture, heredity, and environment all combine to create the uniqueness of each child.

Click on the age of your child to get an overview of typical development.

Infant
Toddler Preschooler School-age
1-4 months
18-24 months
3 years
5 years
5-8 months
2 years
4 years
6-8 years
9-12 months
     
12-18 months
     
domians

Click on the graphic for more information

about the developmental domains.

How do I find out about...

+ What are some warning signs that a child may have a developmental delay?
This document gives an overview of possible warning signs in four areas: behavioral, gross motor (large motor skills), hearing and vision.

+ What activities will stimulate a child's brain development?
There is new research on brain development that shows that providing multiple activities that stimulate brain development can impact the overall growth of a young child. The first step is creating a safe, loving environment for children to explore. The next step is to provide an enriched learning environment, continuously introducing a child to new experiences. Finally, make sure to give gentle and open-ended feedback on how children interact with these materials. Focus little on right and wrong answers, and "concrete" properties of objects (e.g., color, shape and size), and focus much on open-ended questions (e.g., "What will happen if we move it this way?") and more abstract properties such as comparisons and predictions.

+ What to do if I am concerned about the development of my child, or a child I care for?
Click on the age of the child to find agencies that will provide a developmental evaluation for a child who is birth to age 3, or age 3-5.

+ Why should we promote age-mixed play?
In this series, Peter Gray, PhD, discusses the roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning and emphasizes the advantages of an age-mixed educational environment for both younger and older children. Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory textbook, Psychology.

Series: Why We Should Stop Segregating Children by Age

Part I -- The Value of Play in the Zone of Proximal Development: Age segregation interferes with children's natural means of learning

Part II --The Unique Educative Qualities of Age-Mixed Play: Age-mixed play is more playful than same-age play

Part III -- Older Children Are Excellent Models, Helpers, and Teachers: Why age-mixing is crucial to children's self-education

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