Developmental milestones by age 6
Developmental milestones or developmental indicators are a set of behavioural or functional skills thresholds that map the course of your child’s development. These behaviours are categorised into five domains – communication and language, physical and motor, social and emotional, adaptive and cognitive. Parents must keep in mind that India has great linguistic diversity, and children may have to be taught the same words in different languages. By age six, a child normally attains the following skills in each domain.
Developmental milestones by age 6 – Language Milestones
- Has a sentence length of 5-6 words
- Has a vocabulary of around 2,000 words
- Defines objects by their use (you eat with a fork) and can tell what these objects are made of
- Knows spatial relations like “on top”, “behind”, “far” and “near”
- Knows her address
- Identifies a penny, nickel and dime
- Knows common opposites like “big/little”
- Understands “same” and “different”
- Counts ten objects
- Asks questions for information
- Distinguished left and right hand in herself
- Uses all types of sentences, for example, “let’s go to the store after we eat”
- Praise your child when she talks about her feelings, thoughts, hopes and fears
- Comment on what you did or how you think your child feels
- Sing songs, rhymes with your child
- Continue to read longer stories
- Talk with him as you would an adult
- Look at family photos and talk to him about your family history
- Listen to her when she talks to you
Developmental milestones by age 6 – Motor Skills Milestones
Gross Motor
- Runs lightly on toes
- Walks on a balance beam
- Can cover 2 meters hopping
- Skips on alternate feet
- Jumps rope
- Skates
Fine Motor
- Cuts out simple shapes
- Copies triangle
- Traces diamond
- Copies first name
- Prints numerals 1 to 5
- Colours within lines
- Has an adult grasp of pencil
- Has handedness well established
- Pastes and glues appropriately
Developmental milestones by age 6 – Social Skills Milestones
- Chooses own friends
- Plays simple table games
- Plays competitive games
- Engages in cooperative play with other children involving group decisions, role assignments, fair play
Developmental milestones by age 6 – Cognitive Skills Milestones
- Retells a story from the picture book with reasonable accuracy
- Names some letters and numerals
- Rote counts to ten
- Sorts objects by single characteristics
- Begins to use time concepts of tomorrow and yesterday accurately
- Uses classroom tools meaningfully and purposefully
- Begins to relate clock time to a daily schedule
- Attention span increases noticeably; learn through adult instruction; when interested, can ignore distractions
- Concepts of function increase, growth in understanding of why things happen;
- Time concepts are expanding into an understanding of the future in terms of major events