Your Toddler's Development: 24 and 30 Months

Motor

• 24 months: Catches a large ball from a few feet away using arms and hands; jumps with both feet off the ground, balances momentarily on one foot; walks up stairs placing one foot after the other on each step; can run; can stack more than four blocks; can both scribble and make a single stroke with a crayon or pencil.
• 30 months: Throws ball; can walk on tiptoes; stands on one foot; walks up and down stairs; can turn a knob, remove a cap, fold paper, make a tower of more than eight blocks, draw a line with crayon or pencil.

• 24 months and 30 months: Enjoys or tolerates various types of touch, including cuddles, roughhousing, and different types of clothing; brushes teeth or hair; is comfortable with loud sounds, bright lights, and movements in space.

• 24 months: Understands simple questions ("Is Mommy home?"); uses simple two-word sentences ("More milk!"; "Go bye-bye"); begins to use some pronouns.
• 30 months: Understands sentences with two or more ideas ("You can have a cookie when we get home"); understands directions with two or more ideas and organizes sentences with two or more ideas ("Want apple and banana"); refers to self using personal pronoun.

• 24 months: Can attend or focus for more than 30 minutes; can do pretend play alone; can search for favorite toy where it was the day before; can do simple shape puzzles of two or three shapes and can line up objects in a design (make a train of blocks); can point to parts of a doll's body, name some objects in a picture, put round and square blocks in correct place on peg board.
• 30 months: Can make a train of blocks after seeing one in a picture; can name objects in a picture and point to some pictures from a verbal description; can repeat two or more numbers.

More on: Babies and Toddlers

Excerpted from:

Copyright © 1999 by Stanley I. Greenspan. Excerpted from Building Healthy Minds: The Six Experiences That Create Intelligence And Emotional Growth In Babies And Young Children with permission of its publisher, Perseus Books Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.