Your Baby is Almost One Year Old: Tips from a Holistic Pediatrician

As a holistic pediatrician and mother with experience in caring for babies, I know how important it is to understand normal development in infants. In this article, I’ll share some tips on caregiving and cultural variations, as well as milestones that babies typically reach in their first year of life. 

Physical Development in the First Year of Life

Often categorized as fine motor and gross motor, physical development encompasses the physical changes and skills your baby acquires in the first year. Gross motor skills like turning their heads, rolling over, crawling, scooting, and eventually standing and walking develop in the baby’s first year as they build strength from head and neck to their trunk/core, and finally balance on two feet. Fine motor skills like scooping and raking objects to pincer grasp for holding small objects get honed and sharpened so that your baby becomes adept at selectively picking up objects of interest.

Social and Emotional Development

Babies from the start learn to develop social and emotional skills vital for survival and for signaling to their parents their needs. They learn to recognize familiar faces like the ones of mom and dad; use facial expressions to show delight and hunger, and use gestures to communicate as they develop a sense of self. With time, parents learn to tune in to their baby’s needs from the tune and tone of their cries. They also learn to respond to their baby’s gestures, both verbal and nonverbal, and learn their cues. With each attempt at comforting, parents are learning vital information that helps them understand what their baby needs, which in return supports your baby to turn to their parents for comfort. 

Cognitive Development in the First Year

Cognitive development refers to how babies learn and process information. They may start of recognize objects, strangers vs family, understand cause and effect, and imitate sounds. You can encourage your baby’s cognitive development by offering toys and objects for them to explore, talking to them, and reading to them. In this interaction, you are offering information that is sensory, visual, and tactile that teaches your baby about the world and people around.

What if your child hasn’t reached some of the one-year-old milestones? 

What if my child skips crawling? My one-year-old is not taking steps. Why isn’t my 15-month-old speaking more words? 

These are common and valid concerns that many parents have when their child seems to fall behind the usual “milestone target.” As a holistic pediatrician, I assess your child’s development in the context of their environment and cultural influences. Some children completely skip crawling and go right to cruising and walking. Some babies get picked up often by their caregivers, so they are not having to practice finding their way around on their feet. Sometimes, speech delay can run in the parents’ family, or multiple languages are spoken at the house which can delay the first words. 

An evaluation should be done integrating these important pieces of information to determine if there are developmental delays that warrant further intervention and therapies. 

Development should always be assessed at every child visit, as it is the undercurrent for your child’s growth and wellness. At Little Roots, our goal is to provide careful and holistic evaluations of your child and offer compassionate care and guidance to our families.