Children's Health

Is Your Baby on Track?

How Parents Can Help

The experts we spoke with suggest the following tips for encouraging your child's development:

Gross Motor Skills

• Place infants on their tummies while awake to develop neck and back muscles
• Create a safe home environment and put babies on the floor to explore
• Give older children time outside where they can run and jump

Fine Motor Skills

• Provide toys with different textures that encourage babies to explore with their fingers
• Provide age-appropriate puzzles, blocks, paper, and crayons
• Encourage older babies to feed themselves

Language Skills

• Play music for newborns to stimulate hearing
• Talk to your child
• Read to your child
• Name objects as you point to pictures in a book

Social Interaction

• Laugh and smile with your baby
• Limit television and play with your child

"Social interaction is more important than we realized in the past," Yeargin-Allsopp tells WebMD. "Don't leave children off by themselves. Being engaged with your child on a daily basis is very important."