Between 13 and 18 months, toddlers experience rapid growth and development across physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and language domains. Understanding these milestones can help parents provide appropriate support and encouragement for their child’s emerging skills. This guide will cover a variety of topics to address expected developmental milestones and possible red flags for a toddler’s motor, feeding, sensory, speech, communication, social and emotional, and sleep development. Some of the topics that will be discussed through video, written guides, and downloadable resources include:
Independent eating: Teaching toddlers independent eating skills is an important milestone that fosters self-reliance, fine motor development, and healthy eating habits. Our guides will help parents support independent finger feeding, utensil trials, independent cup drinking, positioning and mealtime routines.
Feeding schedule: During this stage of development, there are many elements to juggle with feeding schedules. The guide will support parents with weaning from bottles and/or nursing, as well as those that plan to continue nursing while expanding solid intake. The guide will help parent develop routines that work within their household while also giving their toddler appropriate exposure and opportunities to learn about feed and develop appropriate intake.
Food expansion + Oral motor skills: Oral motor skils are often not addressed in pediatric settings outside of therapy, however many toddlers can benefit from simple interventions to improve chewing and swallowing efficiency, our guide will help families navigate this. Food expansion will also be discussed in detail with many resources for support!
Toys + Equipment: The guides will help families navigate necessary and beneficial toys and equipment for this developmental stage to help toddlers in exploring their independence, refining motor skills, and developing cognitive abilities.
Joint play for speech development: Joint play refers to interactive, shared play experiences between a child and a caregiver that involve mutual focus and engagement. It is a key strategy for promoting speech and language development in young children. Through joint play, children learn to communicate, take turns, and build their vocabulary in a natural and enjoyable way and our expert guide will help families facilitate this in their daily routine!
Verbally requesting and protesting: Verbally requesting and protesting are foundational communication goals for children developing speech and language skills. These skills help children express their needs, wants, and dislikes, giving them a sense of autonomy and reducing frustration. Our guides will help parents create an environment that creates opportunities, provides reinforcement, and models this skill.
Walking + other Gross Motor skills: Between 13 and 18 months, toddlers make significant progress in their gross motor development, particularly in walking and related skills. The guide will help to facilitate age appropriate gross motor skills like pulling to stand, cruising, standing without support, squatting, climbing, walking backwards, walking while carrying objects, and dancing!
Regular sleep schedule + self soothing: At 13–18 months, toddlers' sleep start to become more consistent and self soothing takes a big role in success. Proper sleep routines and schedules are crucial to their development and well-being, and our guides will help parents to establish and carryout established skills and utilize strategies for soothing.
Dressing skills: Between 13–18 months, toddlers begin developing the foundational skills needed for dressing themselves. While they are not yet fully independent, they start participating in dressing routines, gaining motor skills, and learning body awareness. Our guides encourage these early efforts to foster independence, coordination, and confidence.