Child development milestones by age: markers and red flags

This page exists for one purpose: to help you work out whether your child's development is going smoothly or whether it is time to see a specialist. The markers below are averages. Healthy children spread out in both directions, and one isolated delay means almost nothing. What matters is the whole picture: how many points have been missed, whether there is forward movement, and whether anything that was already there has been lost.

The first year

Age	Movement	Speech and communication	Cause for concern
1-2 months	Holds the head up briefly when lying on the tummy.	Looks at a face, follows it with the eyes, a responsive smile appears.	Does not fix their gaze, does not react to a loud sound.
3-4 months	Holds the head confidently, props up on the forearms.	Coos, turns towards a voice, brightens at the sight of family.	Does not hold the head up, does not smile, the body is excessively tense or "floppy".
6 months	Rolls over, reaches for a toy and takes it.	Babbles, uses different intonations.	Does not roll over, does not reach, makes no sounds.
9 months	Sits without support, crawls, pulls up to stand.	Syllables such as "ba-ba", "da-da", understands "no", plays peekaboo.	Does not sit, no babble, no response to their name.
12 months	Stands, takes first steps, picks up small objects with two fingers.	A few words, the pointing gesture, waves bye-bye.	No pointing gesture, no babble, does not follow simple requests.

From one to three

Age	Movement	Speech and play	Cause for concern
18 months	Walks confidently, squats, climbs steps with help.	15-20 words or more, points to body parts, feeds a doll.	Fewer than ten words, does not point, does not imitate actions.
2 years	Runs, kicks a ball, builds a tower of several bricks.	A two-word phrase, simple pretend play, eats with a spoon.	No phrase, the vocabulary is not growing, no interest in other children.
2.5 years	Jumps with both feet, pedals.	Simple sentences, "what's that?" questions, refers to themselves as "I".	Speech only in separate words, communicates by gesture, leads the adult by the hand.
3 years	Climbs stairs with alternating feet, draws a circle.	Expanded phrases, talks about what happened, role play, dresses partly unaided.	No phrase speech; speech unintelligible to strangers; no interest in other children.

From three to six

Age	What appears	Cause for concern
4 years	Stands on one leg, draws a person with several parts. Tells a story, asks "why", plays with other children by rules.	Gross errors in word endings, unable to retell a simple event, does not play with other children.
5 years	Hops on one leg, cuts with scissors, draws recognisable scenes. Retells a story, almost all sounds in place, counts objects.	Slurred speech, does not tell similar sounds apart by ear, cannot hold the thread of a story.
6 years	Handles a pencil confidently, copies letters. Splits a word into sounds, understands jokes, can wait their turn.	Cannot pick out the first sound in a word, does not memorise verse, cannot stay with a task for 10-15 minutes.

Red flags at any age

What to do if several points do not match

1. Do not panic and do not look for a diagnosis on the internet. Being behind on one or two points is ordinary.
2. Check hearing and vision. That is the first thing to rule out whenever there is any doubt about development.
3. Write your observations down. What the child does, what they do not do, from what age, and whether anything is changing. At a consultation that is worth more than any questionnaire.
4. Come for an in-person assessment. We look at the child, not at the paperwork: speech understanding, play, motor skills, oral praxis, attention.

If it turns out that help is needed, the program is assembled individually: it may be high-frequency therapy, visual wave therapy, micropolarization or SpeechLeader. If this is a variant of normal development with a slight lag, there are programs for typically developing children, where the aim is not correction but support for development.

Frequently asked questions

How strictly should the milestones be taken?

Milestones are a range, not a timetable. Being a month or two behind on a single point happens in perfectly healthy children. What is worrying is not one delay but a combination: several skills missed in a row, no forward movement over several months, or the loss of something that was already there.

My child was born prematurely. How do I count their age?

Up to two years, corrected age is used for premature babies: the weeks of prematurity are subtracted from the calendar age. A child born two months early should, at eight months, be able to do what a six-month-old does. After two years the correction is usually no longer applied.

He never crawled and went straight to walking. Is that bad?

Skipping crawling is not a catastrophe, but it is not a trifle either. Crawling on all fours trains the coordinated work of the right and left sides of the body, hand-eye coordination and weight-bearing through the arms. If a child has skipped it, those skills are worth picking up in play — they will be needed when learning to write.

Which signs call for attention regardless of age?

Loss of skills already acquired; no response to their name and no eye contact; no pointing gesture after eighteen months; marked asymmetry — the child clearly does not use one hand or leg; episodes of freezing. These are the cases where "let's wait" is a poor strategy.

From what age is a consultation worth having?

From the moment you have questions. A consultation does not commit you to starting therapy: its job is to work out whether this is a variant of normal development or a disorder. We take children for restoration from the age of two, but we can look at a child and advise you earlier than that.

See also

• Speech development delay: when to wait and when to act
• Alalia: when speech does not start by itself
• ADHD: where character ends
• General speech underdevelopment: the levels
• Development programs for typically developing children

This material was prepared by the specialists of the Vlada Tarasenko Speech Restoration Centers. This material is for information only and does not replace an in-person consultation with a doctor or a speech pathologist. Only a doctor can make a diagnosis.