At 19-24 months, toddlers are becoming more active, curious, and independent, demonstrating rapid development across multiple areas. Toddlers are refining their gross and fine motor skills, a growing curiosity and problem-solving skills are developing, language skills are rapidly expanding, with both comprehension and expression improving, emotional expression and social awareness are in full bloom. 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:
Jumping with both feet: This is an important skill that builds legs and core muscles needed for future motor skills like running and climbing. Jumping with two feet improve their ability to maintain balance while in motion and understanding their body’s position in space. By 24 months, toddlers should be able to achieve small jumps consistently from two feet and jump off small objects like a step. Our guides will highlight red flags and provide support of how to overcome them. We will also demonstrate games, obstacle courses and visual cues parents can use to encourage this skillful movement and self confidence within the child.
Running: Toddlers running at this age represent their growing physical strength, balance and coordination. At first, it might look like a wobbly, fast walk with difficulty stopping or tripping often but over time it should become more fluid and coordinated. The guides will provide video support of running and red flags for parents to address early on with expert exercises to retrain and build optimal muscular strength for the child to feel confident and comfortable when running.
Kicking a large ball: Kicking a ball is an important gross motor milestone for toddlers aged 19-24 months. It reflects their developing coordination, balance and muscle strength. Initially, toddlers may need support by holding onto something or pushing the ball forward while walking. As the toddler grows closer to 24 months they should progress to kicking a stationary ball while standing on one foot. This helps learn to shift weight from one foot to another, enhance their vision with physical action and to judge distance and direction. Language and communication development play an important role when kicking a ball back and forth with a partner, understanding turn taking and sharing. Our guides will highlight how to support this gross motor development through games, courses and age appropriate equipment and how to problem solve if red flags are present as well.
Climbing: Climbing is a significant milestone for toddlers 19-24 months. At this stage, toddlers are naturally driven to climb as they explore their surroundings, develop strength, and practice coordination. Toddlers seem like they are climbing everywhere and on everything at this age, whether it is climbing onto low furniture, attempting stairs with support or climbing playground structures, all are good surfaces for gross motor development and strength. Climbing is a key skill that promotes spatial awareness, problem solving skills, coordination and balance and independence. The guides will provide video support for climbing activities, how to create soft landing zones, ideal equipment and safe strategies for toddlers.
Identify + sort shapes and colors: Toddlers begin to explore basic concepts of shapes and colors at this age. They are showing new interests in more academic tasks, such as grouping objects based on color, especially if the differences are obvious, and recognizing shapes and matching them, such as a basic large piece puzzle. We will provide support to help set up games, select toys and engage in play that enhance these new academic interests along with visual, auditory, speech, language, gross motor and sensory development. The guides will also identify red flags within these academic tasks and how to best support the child for growth and development.
Deconstruction + construction: At this age, toddlers start to build things up and knock them down…or knock their siblings toys down. Toddlers enjoy this relationship because they find joy in cause-and-effect relationships and appeasing their curiosity of how things work. Building simple structures up to 6 blocks or objects such as chunky puzzles, snap together toys or blocks enhances problem solving skills. Children might start to engage in pretend play at this age, like building an abstract representation of a “house” or a “car”. Engaging in this play is helpful to build vocabulary, understand spatial concepts, adjectives, identifying colors, shapes and even more. Our guides will demonstrate how to engage in play while easily promoting speech, language, cognitive and gross motor development. Also, how to adjust play if red flags are present and how to provide a supportive environment.
Expresses two word phrases: Toddlers are experiencing a significant language explosion with words they can express and understand by 24 months. Toddlers typically learn 1-2 new words a day, with a receptive and expressive vocabulary of 200 words by 2 years old. Two word phrases forming simple sentences, such as “mommy sit, car go, big car” are beginning to emerge. Communicating wants and needs are getting easier at this age, also following 2 step directions and understanding more complex questions (“where are your shoes?) are becoming part of their new toddler routine. Speech and language skills drive a child’s social interaction, emotional expression, foundation for literacy and cognitive development. Our guides will demonstrate videos of how to enhance a toddler’s ability to clearly communicate their wants and needs, provide a rich language environment throughout the day, and further strategies and tools for continued speech and language growth.
Able to transition to a new place or activity: Transitions can be challenging but it is an important skill for fostering emotional regulation and flexibility. Toddlers crave the desire for control and independence, making it difficult to transition from preferred activities and places. They have a limited concept of time at this age, paired with big emotions like frustration or excitement lead to difficult transitions. Strategies such as simple warnings, plain language, countdowns, auditory or visual cues along with establishing routines with sequencing cues, talking about it first, offering choices and making it fun when possible, are all topics the guides cover to create smooth transitions for the whole family.
Sleep quality: Sleep is crucial for overall development, affecting a toddlers cognitive growth, emotional regulation and physical health. At this age, many toddlers are refining their sleep patterns and may experience new challenges related to sleep due to their growing independence and evolving needs. Toddlers need 12-14 hours of sleep between night time and naps. Creating good sleep quality is a multifaceted task consisting of sleep environment, schedules, nasal hygiene, identifying optimal airway, how to solve night terrors, bed wetting, night wakings and oral habits. Our guides will provide an indepth look at quality sleep vs quantity of sleep, red flags and why they are happening but also how to fix them and which intervention would be appropriate in order to accomplish restful sleep.