Normal childhood development is a series of agreed upon averages meant to represent the age range during which most children achieve certain physical, mental, and emotional milestones. Many children develop at their own pace, and may lag behind or be somewhat ahead of the majority of others their age. These children are still considered normal by doctors as long as the physical or mental stage is achieved in a reasonable frame of time. Children who lag behind significantly and who miss completely certain stages of recommended milestones may be showing signs of a developmental disorder and be in need of special assistance from a trained health care professional.
Children progress rapidly through social and emotional development stages during their first year of life. Babies tend to exhibit a general fear of strangers and an extreme reliance on their mothers to meet their every need. She feeds the child every meal, cleans and cares for him, and protects him. The mother is often the first face the child learns to focus on, and he learns to recognize her voice immediately from across a room.
As the child grows in motor skills and the ability to be independent from his mother, he begins developing his first social skills. He learns to recognize the familiar faces of other family members, and possibly daycare workers. He learns to smile and laugh when pleased. During months six to twelve of the child's life, he usually learns to crawl, pull himself into a standing position, and walk. These physical achievements are often marked by occasionally limited resurgences of extreme attachment to the mother as the boundaries of the child's known world expand.
Many doctors provide mothers with developmental guidelines for physical and mental stages during routine physical wellness exams of the child. These guidelines are meant to provide a basis for a parent's expectations of normal childhood development, and most doctors encourage parents not to be concerned if their child is one month ahead or behind in age of the milestone markers. Every child is unique and tends to do things slightly different than another person's child. The given markers are the results of studies involving many children and parents from different nurturing environments, and only reflects the averages of the information gathered.
Children who lag behind significantly and do not appear to be catching up by performing certain activities later in life are often tested for disorders specific to the normal childhood development markers they are missing. For example, a baby who fails to kick her feet or move her head by six months may be tested for a spinal muscular disorder that affects the coordination of her muscles and joints. A 12 month old baby who has not shown signs of interest in any types of play, whether with stuffed toys, musical toys, or colorful objects may be enrolled in tests for certain types of mental retardation.
Tracking normal childhood development can continue in an individual's life until between 12 and 14 years of age when adolescent development begins with the onset of puberty. Physical milestones begin to decrease gradually as a child masters most major and fine motor coordination between ages two and three, however, his social and mental development tends to increase dramatically. Each year a child grows, his vocabulary improves, he expands on his understanding of himself as an individual, and he begins to value more highly the opinions of his peers. Some social and mental forms of retardation do not appear until children reach a certain age, and noticeably fail to progress at a similar rate to the other children around them. These disorders are typically more difficult to diagnose than during early developmental stages, which are focused more on obvious physical achievements, as the child may fail to exhibit noticeable signs of behavior modification in front of his parents.
The stages of normal childhood development are not intended to exclude children who behave differently as an extension of their personalities. Not all children choose to be as social or as physically active as those around them, but they can remain alert, healthy, bright, and well developed while still maintaining their differences from the others. Parents who struggle to understand whether their child is exhibiting a unique personality phase or entering the first stages of a mental disorder can benefit from consulting with a doctor or child therapist who is skilled in diagnosing developmental disorders.