Toddler Care

Watching Infants Become Toddlers

Around the time your child turns one year old, important developmental changes start taking place. The 12-month milestone marks the turning point in the development from infants to toddlers - physically, mentally and emotionally. Caring for your baby mostly involved taking care of his physical needs. But from now on, toddler care will encompass several areas of development.

Toddlers Physical Development

Through an infant’s first year of life, they learn to lift their head and chest, reach for certain small objects, roll from back to stomach and stomach to back, sit and keep their heads erect, and crawl. But somewhere around the age of 12 months, the transition from infants to toddlers occurs. Your child will be take his first steps. Toddlers can walk, or toddle, though still quite slowly and often only with help. In later stages, they learn to run, jump and achieve total physical control and comfort.

Mental Development

The most obvious and characteristic development from infants to toddlers occurs when the child is able to use meaningful words to express his needs or feelings. The infant is not yet capable of using language. He will explore the world intellectually more and more in the first months of his life, shake, and touch objects, pay attention to certain shapes and sounds, recognize familiar faces, even babble, imitating human talk. However, by saying the first word, and the subsequent simple words, like ball for example,  toddlers language development begins. A toddler will generally be able to follow simple commands and to express himself more and more effectively with the help of language, while the infant is not yet capable of such intellectual skills.

Emotional Development of Toddlers

The emotional development from infants to toddlers is marked by the development of self hood and social skills. An infant will completely depend on the mother and will not really have a true sense of his own separate self and distinguish between other people. Toddlers start exploring themselves and the world around then. This often results in tantrums, emotional outbursts, and crying, which do not express simple needs any more, as in infancy. Eventually, toddlers will be able to establish their personal self hood, will be able to refer to themselves and recognize others, and will start participating in social interactions with other toddlers, though only to a limited extent yet.

The difference between the development of infants and toddlers is that the toddler is already able to understand and imitate the behavior of those surrounding him, while the infant is not yet able to understand these, and does not yet have an established selfhood. That makes toddler care a little trickier for you, the parent.