Child development at 1 year

The first year of your child’s life is full of amazing milestones. Everything seems to change every day, from their first steps to their first words. Children start to investigate their surroundings at the age of one in ways that show their increasing independence and curiosity.

Their physical development is fast at this point. They might begin to climb, walk, and even throw things, all of which will improve their coordination and muscle strength. They can now explore their surroundings more freely thanks to their increased mobility.

Language proficiency also advances significantly. Many toddlers can say simple words like "mama" and "dada" and understand most of what is said to them, even if they aren’t yet able to form complete sentences. As they imitate sounds and gestures, their communication skills will only get stronger.

Development on an emotional level is equally crucial. Children begin expressing a variety of emotions at the age of one, from happiness and excitement to frustration when things don’t go their way. They need to bond and receive reassurance during this crucial period as they learn to manage their emotions.

Aspect	Description
Physical Development	Your child is starting to take their first steps and can now stand without support. They are also developing fine motor skills, like picking up small objects.
Communication	At 1 year, your baby may start saying a few simple words like "mama" or "dada" and is learning to understand simple instructions.
Social Interaction	Your child may show affection, like giving hugs or showing excitement when seeing familiar faces, and start playing simple games.
Emotional Development	Babies at this age may begin to express a wider range of emotions, from joy to frustration, and seek comfort when upset.

Physiological changes

• By 12 months, a child usually triples his birth weight. Now the rate of weight gain and growth slows down significantly compared to the first six months of life.
• The feet of a one-year-old child are still flat, and they have no arch. If the baby has just started walking on his own, there are still fat pads on his feet. As he learns to walk, they disappear, and the feet develop a curve.
• The average number of teeth that one-year-olds have is 8. Some children may already have 12 teeth, while others may have only 1-2 first teeth. These are all normal options that do not require a visit to the doctor. You should consult a pediatrician only if there are no teeth at 1 year.

Physical development

The baby gains about 350 grams of weight and another 1 to 1.5 centimeters of height during the twelfth month of life. At this age, a child’s head circumference and chest circumference both grow by an average of 0.5 cm.

Although the physical development of children varies, experts have determined the typical ranges for certain indicators by analyzing the signs of a sizable number of children in a given age group. In the table, we have noted these limitations in addition to the average indicators for one-year-old children:

A signpost

Average amount after a year

Boys at one year old

Girls at age one

Circumference of the chest

The calculator can be used to determine your child’s norms. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines for weight and height form the basis of the calculator.

Some parents teach their children to give "change" when they hit furniture. To find out if this is worthwhile, watch the Larisa Sviridova video below.

A child’s development takes off in spectacular ways at the age of one as they begin to explore the world on their own more. Most likely, they’re starting to walk, say a few simple words, and exhibit a general curiosity about everything. This stage is critical for cognitive abilities like problem-solving and basic instruction understanding as well as physical development. Through play, interaction, and providing a secure environment that fosters their growing mobility and curiosity, parents are essential in promoting their child’s development.

What the baby can do?

• A 12-month-old child moves very actively and a lot. Most toddlers by the age of one year can already walk independently and constantly improve this skill. Nevertheless, some children at one year still need their mother"s support while walking or are in no hurry to start walking, preferring to move quickly on all fours.
• Also, a one-year-old child can already sit on his haunches and independently rise from this position. The baby confidently climbs the stairs and climbs onto the sofa.
• A one-year-old baby can take 2 small objects in one hand. The child takes buttons and other tiny objects with the index finger and thumb.
• A one-year-old child can assemble a pyramid and build towers from blocks.
• A child"s speech includes about 10-15 simple words of 1-2 syllables. One word of the toddler can have several meanings. The baby does not yet pronounce all the letters and can confuse syllables.
• A 1-year-old child understands the speech of parents well. He knows the meaning of the words “you can”, “you can’t”, “give”, “take”, “come” and many others. He also knows the names of people with whom he often communicates. The kid can already answer a simple question.
• The baby can perform simple instructions, For example, wash vegetables, decompose cutlery, wipe dust (of course, at your “baby” level).
• The kid likes to hide and look for toys, throw toys, create buildings from cubes and destroy them, fill the boxes and boxes, and then empty them.
• A twelve -month -old baby is interested in plot games And he knows how to play in them. The baby can put the toy to sleep or feed it.
• Hearing the music, the baby will dance And try to sing along.
• Kid knows many animals and can show them both on a walk and in the pictures.
• The baby knows way of using different items.
• Long -term memory the child is developing – the baby is already able to remember events of several days ago.
• The child becomes more independent every day. At the table, he already manages to use a spoon and drinks from a cup himself. The baby already has certain food preferences – some products the baby does not like at all, and some, on the contrary, the child eats with great pleasure.

If you want to make sure the child is growing at a typical rate, you should:

• Assess whether the baby can crawl, stand, holding your hand, and also take a few steps with your support.
• Make sure that the baby uses at least one gesture, for example, shakes his head negatively or waves his hand "bye".
• Check whether the child understands your simple requests, for example, to take a toy or give it to you.
• Make sure that the child"s speech contains at least one meaningful word.
• Check whether the baby has at least one tooth or signs of its appearance in the near future.

Tell the pediatrician during a routine exam after a year if anything worried you during such a check.

Activities for development

• The main skill that a one-year-old child “works on” is walking. If the baby continues to crawl and is in no hurry to take his first steps, you can attract the baby with his favorite toy. Some children are afraid of losing their balance, so a toy in their hands can help them start walking.
• If possible, let the baby walk barefoot on the ground, sand or grass.
• To stimulate gross motor skills, invite the child to play with large cars, balls and other large toys.
• Continue to work with the child on developing fine motor skills. For example, you can attach clothespins to the edges of a coffee can and invite the child to take them off. Playing with beans, cereals, sand, water is still interesting and useful for the child.
• Also continue speech development of the toddler. Talk a lot to the child so that the child can learn a large number of new words. Describe everything you do and the objects that the baby sees.
• Play with your little one, but at the same time allow the baby to do independently what he can. Play out different scenes with toys together, for example, how a bunny shares cookies with a teddy bear, a doll bathes in a bathtub, a mouse invites a teddy bear to visit.
• Play music of different genres for the child, as well as sounds of different objects. This way you will stimulate the development of hearing.
• Engage your baby in drawing, allowing your toddler to make his first scribbles with finger paints, crayons or felt-tip pens. Your baby will also enjoy creating using plasticine and salt dough.
• Go with your baby to the sandbox, offering to play with a scoop, molds, sieve, rake.
• On a sunny day, draw your baby"s attention to your shadows. Offer to step on your shadow.
• Give your child the opportunity play with other children. If the baby does not have a sister or brother, invite familiar families with preschoolers to visit.
• Make for your baby photo album, in which there will be photos of all close relatives, as well as pictures of animals. The little one will look at it for a long time.
• Every day, devote a little time to reading together with the baby. Buy children"s books with bright illustrations for the baby. Allow the child to choose which book he will “read” today.
• During bathing, throw In the bath, small toys capable of swimming, and then give the baby a sieve or a scoop, offering to collect floating objects in a bucket.

Enhance the day with an activity that makes use of the "Little Leonardo" method developed by intellectual development expert O. N. Teplyakova.

Mental development

A one-year-old baby’s mental development is still going strong at this point. The child is able to focus on an engaging game with his mother for several minutes and stays awake longer. For this reason, only games should be used to conduct any kind of developmental activity.

By the time he turns one, the infant has formed either mistrust or trust in the world around him based on his communication with his mother. In addition to feeling safe, a baby that has a positive communication experience will also project positive emotions onto his surroundings.

The child’s sensory and cognitive development is still actively occurring in the second year of life. The characteristics of objects—their shape and color—are taught to the infant. When playing games, parents should always assist their one-year-old child because their actions will become repetitive if they don’t receive outside assistance and prompts. Parents can help their one-year-old child learn everyday skills, improve memory, and compare and distinguish objects by engaging them in simple activities.

These tests can be used to evaluate a child’s mental development at one year old:

• Give the baby 2 cubes and show how to build a tower. The child will not throw cubes or drag them into his mouth, but will put one on top of the other. By 18 months, the baby will already be able to use 3-4 cubes to build a tower.
• Offer the baby a toy in which you need to insert geometric shapes (an insert frame or a sorter). A one-year-old baby should insert a circle into the hole for it.
• Give the toddler a pyramid, offering to assemble it. A baby of 1-1.5 years will try to string rings, but will not take into account their size. Children learn to correctly fold a pyramid taking into account the size of the rings only by the age of 2.
• Evaluate the presence of skills in using household items. A toddler of 12-15 months already knows how to correctly use a spoon and a cup. At 1.5 years, a child is able to take off socks, a hat and mittens.

Motor skills

Determine whether the infant can walk for extended periods of time, whether he can bend over and squat, and whether he can get up from his knees and climb onto the sofa in order to evaluate his gross motor skills. Activities aimed at enhancing gross motor skills will comprise:

• Jumping. Hold your toddler under the arms or by the hands and let the baby jump in place.
• Climbing onto the sofa and lowering back to the floor. For this purpose, you can attract the baby with a favorite toy.
• Climbing. Invite the baby to crawl under a chair, climb into a large box and climb out of it.
• Stepping over. Having laid out different objects on the floor, walk around the room with the baby, holding the child"s hand. When the baby approaches an obstacle, show that first you need to raise one leg and step over the object, and then take the same step with the other leg.
• Playing with a ball. Teach the baby to throw a ball on the floor, first give the ball to the baby in his hands, and then put it next to him so that the child himself takes the ball. Then teach him to catch the ball. To develop his eye, you can throw the ball into the box.

In order to help a one-year-old child develop fine motor skills, you can:

• Draw with pencils. First, hold the baby"s hand with a pencil and simply leave traces on the paper. Try to interest your baby in drawing.
• Painting with paints. Give your baby a dry brush and show him how to leave brushstrokes, and then start learning how to paint.
• Modeling with plasticine. Roll a ball and show your baby how to make a flat cake out of it, then invite your toddler to repeat.
• Stick pebbles, buttons, tubes into plasticine.
• Modeling with salt dough.
• Glue stickers on yourself or on a piece of paper.
• Drawing with finger paints.
• Playing with laces.
• Winding threads on a ball.
• Playing with water, cereals or sand, using a sieve and a spoon.
• Twisting and unscrewing lids.
• Playing with a sorter and insert frames.
• Learning to handle hooks, Velcro, buttons, buttons.
• Playing with clothespins.
• Working with a sensory box.

Development speech

In the infant’s second year of life, speech forms and develops quickly. The baby first starts to comprehend speech, after which he rapidly expands his vocabulary and enters the stage of active speech. The baby’s sign language and facial expressions are enhanced simultaneously. When a baby is a year old, one word can represent an entire phrase.

A one-year-old child’s speech development can be encouraged by:

• Look at pictures in books, voicing what is drawn and asking the child simple questions about the picture, for example, "where is the dog"?.
• Read counting rhymes and nursery rhymes, short fairy tales and poems with the baby, and also sing songs.
• Do articulation gymnastics.
• Do gymnastics and massage the fingers.
• Tell the baby about everything that can interest the baby – about nature, animals, seasons, houses and much more.

Playing finger games will aid in the baby’s development. Watch this video by Tatyana Lazareva to learn how to play with a one-year-old.

Approximate plan for a week for the development of a one-year-old child

It is worth organizing the activities for at least a week ahead of time to make sure the baby is not bored, that they cover all the key developmental areas, and that they don’t repeat themselves. This will enable the mother to address every aspect of the infant’s development and set up resources for educational games ahead of time.

We provide a sample weekly curriculum of learning activities for a child between the ages of one and one and a half years old:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

On Saturday

Sunday

Dance moves to music

Workouts with a fitball

Navigating through obstacles

Using a video lesson for gymnastics

Recognizing the whole in the details

Cube-based games

Arranging items according to color

Pyramid-themed games

Searching for a lost toy

Development of the senses and music

Hearing the sounds of instruments played

Tactile learning resources

Singing along to kiddie music

Utilizing a sensory box for play

Playing classical music

Lacing-themed games

Clothespin games

Sticker-based games

Talk about a narrative image

Examining and talking about images

Paints for finger painting

Making sculptures out of salt dough

Using a constructor to play

Sculpture made with plasticine

This is merely a rough plan that needs to be modified for every individual child. Make sure to incorporate your baby’s favorite activities into your weekly routine. Examine what has been accomplished at the end of the week so that you can add more activities or condense the list of games for the day.

Toys from 1 to 2 years old

Babies benefit from toys in both their physical and emotional development. They assist the child in discovering the world, investigating their surroundings, growing in creativity, taking initiative, and understanding cause-and-effect linkages.

Watch the video by Anna Gapchenko to learn which toys are appropriate for a child aged one to two years old.

A child aged 1-2 years old should have the following toys:

• Cubes.
• A sorter with several simple holes.
• A pyramid with 3-4 rings.
• Square and round cups.
• Boxes of different sizes.
• Outdoor toys – a shovel, molds, a car with a body, a bucket.
• Toys that pull or push.
• Soft toys that the baby can put to bed, feed.
• Toys for playing with water.
• Plastic dishes.
• Toy telephone.
• Toys imitating household items.
• Musical toys.
• Cardboard or fabric books.

Here are some more suggestions for toys for a child who is one year old:

• Do not give the baby a large number of objects to play with at once. They will quickly bore the baby and cause fatigue. Put some of the toys away in a distant drawer or hide them, and after a while replace the missing toys with those that the child is already slightly tired of.
• When visiting friends with children, pay attention to which toys the baby is most interested in. This will give you the opportunity to replenish your stock of toys with objects that the baby will certainly play with.
• Many children like to play with household items (pot lids, sheets, mirrors, and others). Do not forbid them, but make sure that such games are safe.

Some of the baby’s favorite games are ones that involve cereal. Watch the following video to learn how to carry out these activities.

Care

A one-year-old toddler’s daily routine includes a significant amount of hygiene procedures. The child is repeatedly bathed in the morning. It’s crucial that the infant clean his teeth and wash his hands both before and after walks. The infant receives a traditional bath before bed, which includes enjoyable games in the water.

Daily routine

All infants have a set daily schedule by the time they are a year old, which may vary multiple times during the course of a year. Preserving it is crucial for the infant’s health. A 12-month-old child’s daily routine primarily consists of feeding them and managing their sleep and wakefulness.

Sleep

One-year-olds are more awake, but they still sleep for fourteen to fifteen hours every day. A 12-month-old baby sleeps twice a day during the day and gets 10–11 hours of sleep each night. In this scenario, a person will typically sleep for two to three hours during the first day, and for only one hour during the second. By the time a child is 18 months old, they start to take just one daytime nap.

Wakefulness

A 12-month-old’stypicalday consists of walks, visits, reading books, gymnastics exercises, active and quiet games, and much more. It is best to avoid playing active games in the evening and only allow them during the first part of the day. An hour before meals, the child should participate in gymnastics.

Walks

Walking with a one-year-old is advised twice a day, and during nice weather, at least one of the daytime naps should be planned for a stroll. Going outside with the baby is advised in the morning between 10 and 11 am and in the afternoon between 4 and 5 pm. Walks ought to last for at least two hours. Weather will have an impact on it; for instance, a baby can easily walk for five to six hours on warm summer days. You should not walk if there is -10 degrees of frost outside, it is pouring rain, or it is extremely windy.

Nutrition

A one-year-old child still eats five times a day, pausing between meals for three to four hours. It is advised to follow a feeding schedule, giving the infant food at roughly the same time each day and avoiding extended pauses. A one-year-old’stotaldaily intake of food can be calculated by dividing their body weight by nine. Children this age typically consume 1000–1300 milliliters of food per day. This volume divided by the number of feedings will yield a 200–260 ml average portion size.

An infant who is breastfed receives an increasing variety of complementary foods in their diet. The infant is breastfed primarily at night, during the day (in case of falls), and following meals (to help with the dilution of complementary foods). Active early morning feedings are continued at 4–8 am during the night.

An adapted formula can be fed to children on artificial feeding; it can be given in two feedings (the first one being before bedtime). If required, the formula can already be stopped; instead, offer the infant oatmeal for breakfast and switch to a fermented milk beverage before bed.

A one-year-old’sdietshould include spices, greens, salt, and some sweets (like marshmallows and zephyr). For these kids, it’s still too early to introduce them to fatty meats, smoked meats, fried foods, hot dogs, exotic fruits, mushrooms, and chocolate.

Although fresh homemade food is preferable, you can also give the baby ready-made baby food from reputable producers. See the article about a child’s menu at one year old for more information on this.

A typical day

A one-year-old baby’s days are full of discoveries and interesting things to do. In order to ensure a healthy development of the baby’s nervous system, optimal sleep and nutrition, and more time for the mother, it’s critical to establish a daily schedule that works for the whole family. Although it will vary based on the baby’s temperament and biorhythms, we’ll give you one example of a one-year-old’sdailyschedule here. A typical day with a one-year-old might resemble this:

Waking up and the first feeding, which can consist of formula or breast milk depending on the type of feeding.

Routines for personal hygiene.

The second meal typically consists of fruit puree, butter, fruit juice, chicken egg yolk, porridge (with or without milk), and so on.

A stroll, where the youngster spends one to two hours sleeping outside.

The third meal consists of bread, vegetable oil, fish or meat dish, vegetable soup or puree, and beverage.

A period of time spent awake playing different educational games.

A walk, during which the child sleeps for one to two hours in the open air during the second nap.

The fourth feeding consists of fruit puree, biscuits, cottage cheese, and a fermented milk beverage for the kids.

A quiet gaming period while awake.

The fifth meal, which may include formula or mother’s milk based on feeding.

Getting ready for bed and going to sleep.

Babies who are breastfed have the ability to cling to their mother’s breast multiple times, particularly in the morning. At this age, babies fed formula typically sleep through the night.

Common problems

1. Difficulties in falling asleep. These are caused by high activity during the day, because a one-year-old baby walks a lot. A daily ritual that the baby will get used to will help the baby fall asleep. The purpose of its implementation is to set the child up for a night"s rest.
2. Falls. Almost no baby can avoid them, since falling is an important part of learning to walk independently. When a child falls, do not rush to run to him, but let the baby get up on his own. But be sure to help the baby if he cannot get up, and also if the child hits himself and cries.
3. Crisis of the first year. At the age of 1 year, children experience a difficult transitional moment, which is called the crisis of the first year. The toddler becomes stubborn, disobedient, refuses help, behaves inconsistently, gets irritated, is very whiny and touchy. Such behavior indicates the formation of independence, self-will and a change in the child"s perception of the world. It is important to remember that this is only a temporary change in the baby"s behavior.

When they turn one year old, kids start to become more independent and curious about the world around them. Whether they are learning how to walk, make new sounds, or operate objects, they are learning from every interaction. Every little accomplishment serves as a foundation for larger ones in the future.

Parents should use this time to gently and supportively support their child’s development. You can encourage your child to develop confidence by providing a secure environment for them to explore, attending to their needs, and showing patience with their advancement.

It’s crucial to remember that every child develops at their own pace and that it’s okay if they don’t reach developmental milestones at the same time as other kids. The secret is to give them lots of opportunities to learn and develop naturally, along with lots of love and attention.

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