Milestones in early childhood development for babies in their first year of life

Most of the information and experiences your baby needs are acquired through play. For your baby, exploring, experiencing, and experimenting are always at the forefront as they get to know their new environment. Through playing together, you stimulate your baby's senses and provide valuable information that your baby needs for the development of their brain, language, and body control. Your baby will thank you for the shared playtime through their progress, and the bond with you and other people will also be deepened by this time spent together.

These activities change constantly in the first months of life and become increasingly complex. In the following chart, we provide an overview of your baby’s “developmental milestones” in the first months of life. These are average values, as every child develops at a slightly different pace. If you are worried about your child's early childhood development, simply seek advice from your pediatrician. Your pediatrician will also automatically address your baby's development as part of the early childhood screening examinations U3, U4, U5, and U6. In most cases, they will find that everything is fine with your baby.

Photo © Paul & Lori: Table of early childhood developmental milestones (1st year of life)

The chart shows you in a table which milestones babies reach in their early development during their first twelve months of life. We look at five milestone areas: mobility, communication, cognitive skills, manual motor skills, and social behavior in babies. The described milestones are considered the most important progress in early childhood development in the 1st year of life:

Mobility

Lying down, sitting, crawling, walking - babies master many important developmental milestones in the area of mobility in their first year. Under the observation of their parents, babies train the prone and side positions until they can lift their heads securely and independently while on their stomachs from the 3rd month. Between the 6th and 8th month, babies finally reach the next milestone of sitting securely and for unrestricted periods with an upright back. This sitting also prepares the baby for crawling, which makes them significantly more mobile at approx. 7–8 months. They crawl further and faster through the apartment, holding onto furniture and pulling themselves up. Towards the end of their first year, babies even take their first independent steps!

Communication

Your baby learns incredibly fast, but it will naturally still take some time before children can speak fluently. In the 1st and 2nd month after birth, babies mainly communicate hunger, discomfort, or pain through crying and body movements. In addition to playing and trying things out, babies learn primarily through imitation. Imitating facial expressions is particularly pronounced in the 3rd and 4th month. They try to copy smiles and funny faces. From the 8th month, babies can already communicate through gestures, e.g., by pointing at certain toys, and they also already understand some of their parents' words. For a long time, a baby will spontaneously babble to themselves using "vowel sequences" (wa-wa-wa, ra-ra-ra) before these develop into the first clear words like “Ma-Ma” or “Pa-Pa” in the 11th month.

Cognitive Skills

In no other phase of life will your baby receive so many new impressions and learn so much as in their first year. In the first 2 months, the sense of sight is perfected above all. While a baby can initially only recognize strong black-and-white contrasts, by the 3rd month they focus on familiar objects with interest and follow them with their gaze. A baby only slowly begins to observe specific sequences closely enough to anticipate situations based on the so-called “cause-and-effect principle” from the 6th month onwards. A baby also notices that things or people continue to exist even when they are no longer in their direct field of vision (“object permanence”) around the 8th month. At the same time, a baby begins to understand complex concepts like “inside-outside,” “open-closed,” “up-down,” etc., and opposites.

Manual Motor Skills

A baby spends the first twelve months of life exploring whether it is better to examine things with their mouth or their hands. To do this, the hand, which was fisted from birth, opens around the 2nd month. Even if a baby still swipes at things uncoordinatedly for the first 5 months, the rapid development toward becoming a fine motor expert begins in the 3rd month with learning the “radial-palmar grasp” (things are grasped with one hand and then passed to the other). In the 10th month, babies increasingly train the “pincer grasp” (cautious grasping by bringing the index finger and thumb together). Towards the end of the first year of life, the sense of touch is refined through ever-improving hand-eye coordination.

Social Behavior

Bit by bit, a baby learns that the world is much bigger than initially expected. While the mother is the number one caregiver from birth, the baby's social environment continues to grow. In the first 2-3 months, babies begin to make more eye contact and respond with a smile to the faces of known or unknown people. Between the 6th and 8th month, the growing social environment can even lead to separation anxiety and “stranger anxiety” in babies. Their own emotions are discovered and become more pronounced. However, other people fascinate a baby from birth, and around the 11th month, they learn to initiate, continue, or end social interactions with others ever better. A baby also notices towards the end of the first year of life that other people have a will and emotions of their own.

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