Your Baby's Second Year
Now that the first year of physical development is done and your baby has started learning how to use its body well, you can expect an exciting new set of adventures in the near future. It is time for walking instead of crawling and now your child will be exploring everywhere and everything in your home it can reach. Eye/hand coordination is good and grabbing things to look at them and taste them will make it necessary to "childproof" your home.
Your child will now be able to understand simple instructions and is beginning to try to verbally communicate although it will still be some time before it develops understandable speech. This is when imitation of observed activities really starts to develop and makes it more important that your child sees socially acceptable actions as these things are forming the groundwork for how your child will understand actions in its adult life.
At a year and a half, your child should be running and beginning to explore away from its caregivers. It will be recognizing objects and stating preferences. Your child should have developed enough that it can now feed itself with a fork and spoon although it will be a while before the need to clean up the mess has abated. Your child will also be learning to control its bowels and toilet training will soon begin in earnest.
By the time your child reaches its second birthday you can expect it to be able to jump and run and throw a ball. Your child's speech should be understandable at least half the time as
its vocabulary grows. Now is the time they will be starting to learn how to dress themselves as well as learning such basic hygiene as brushing their teeth and hair. The more you help your child expand its activities, the faster and better it will develop into a self sufficient individual.
