1-Year: Milestones, Activities, Gear, Dad Tips, & More
The first year around the sun is complete! Your baby hit the year mark and you can almost stop doing the math in your head to tell curious strangers how many months old she is.
Here’s a comprehensive guide to 1-year milestones, activities to do with your baby, what to expect with food and sleep, toys and gear, and ways to master being a dad.
1-Year-Old Milestones
Walking 2-3 steps independently.
Falls by sitting down
Uses arms to play in unsupported standing
Using their fingers to point at objects
Imitating words and sound
Understanding simple commands, such as "no" or "bye-bye"
Responding to their own name and familiar sounds
Engaging in pretend play
Using simple words, such as "mama" and "dada"
Playing with toys in new and creative ways
Finger pincer grasp and a palmar-supinate grasp
Reflexes
Quadruped tilting (onset age 9-12 months): The quadruped tilting reflex is elicited when the baby is in a quadruped position (on all fours) and tilted from side to side. The reflex causes the baby to move their arms and legs in a way that helps to maintain balance and stability. This reflex helps to develop coordination and balance, and may also play a role in the development of crawling and other gross motor skills.
Standing tilting (onset age 12-21 months): The standing tilting reflex is elicited when the baby is in a standing position and tilted from side to side. The reflex causes the baby to move their arms and legs in a way that helps to maintain balance and stability. This reflex helps to develop coordination and balance, and may also play a role in the development of more advanced gross motor skills, such as walking and running.
Self Care Skills
Dressing: Cooperates with dressing by holding out arms and feet and pushes arms and legs through sleeves and pants. Takes off socks and shoes
Toileting: Has regular bowel movements and is uncomfortable when soiled or wet.
Housework: Imitates housework around 13 months.
Activities To Help Your Child Thrive
Bag painting. Grab a large freezer bag, put goops of different colored pain in it, seal it, tape it to the window at your baby’s head height, and have them make a masterpiece without the mess. Want to get your kid messier? Do yogurt finger painting on a dark piece of paper.
Make edible slime. Use simple and safe ingredients to let your kids enter the world of slime (with plenty of supervision). The Soccer Mom Blog and Team Cartwright both have great lists of edible slime recipes.
Make an edible sensory bin. Put a bunch of edible items in a bowl or bin and let your baby have at it. The goal isn’t to eat the contents but to let him get immersed in them. Do this outside for an easy “clean up.” Only use items that your baby is safe enough to eat at the age they play with it and always supervise them. Some examples of items are cooked noodles, ice chips, raw or cooked oats, water, and rice.
Food
Consumes about 24-32 ounces of formula or breast milk per day
Bottle nipple size: Level 4 or Y-cut (based on the Dr. Brown bottles)
Eats about 3-4 times a day (3 meals and 1-2 snacks a day). Encourage your baby to eat all meals with you. See the complete guide to baby-led weaning for more info.
Sleep
Typical sleep total per day: 11-14 hours
1-year-olds will soon begin to transition from the morning and afternoon nap to the single afternoon nap by 18 months
Red Flags
It’s important to note that babies develop at different paces. If you’re not seeing these 1-year-old milestones, reflexes, or patterns with sleep or food then talk to your pediatrician.
Stuff
Toys (with a purpose)
Here are some toys recommended by an occupational therapist to help your 1-year-old’s development.
Wooden activity cube. This versatile powerhouse of a toy improves fine motor and gross motor coordination, promotes standing, encourages problem-solving, and, best of all, there’s no cleanup. Simply move it over there.
Gear (that you actually need)
SpoonfulONE Oat Crackers. This company combines 16 common allergens into one food while somehow making it palatable for kids. This early exposure decreases the risk of allergies. My kids loved them and they have zero allergies.
See the BLW article for a deeper dive into this.
Battery Daddy. The Battery Daddy is a must-have for every parent. It beats the last minute trip to the store to find overpriced batteries and it’s a heck of a lot easier to know what you’ve got (and what’s actually working) than the bags-o-batteries we used in my house as a kid. Buy batteries in bulk and keep it stocked.
School lunch essentials. If your child goes out of the house during the week (daycare, grandparents, etc.) then start packing their lunches in non-toxic, durable, and convenient containers. The best items I use and recommend are the Thermos Funtainer (great name but ditch the plastic spoon), WeeSprout stainless steel bento box, WeeSprout containers, silicone cupcake liners (to put inside the bento box), a Thermos Funtainer straw bottle, and Stasher bags.
School supplies. A Wildkin nap mat and backpack and insulated lunch box are some other essentials for school.
Medicine cabinet essentials (that are safe). In addition to Genexa’s Acetaminophen Pain and Fever Reducer, they have a Kids’ Cold Crush and Kid’s Cough & Chest Congestion meds which our kids have used on more than one occasion for their coughing, runny noses, and congestion. Genexa’s products are a way safer alternative to other meds because they have “No artificial sweeteners or artificial preservatives, artificial dyes, parabens, common allergens, or artificial flavors. Certified vegan, gluten free, organic, lactose free, & non-GMO.”
Dads
”The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.”
-Plato
Dad focus
Gratitude. This milestone focus may sound trite but the benefits of gratitude can’t be overstated. Gratitude improves sleep, mood, relationships, and resiliency, and it lowers blood pressure (and here are 30 more benefits). You’ve had one heck of a year. You’re out of the thick of it so get into a habit of practicing what you’re grateful for. You can use a gratitude journal, use a gratitude app, have a family ritual (below) where you each say something you’re grateful for, or set a calendar reminder on your phone to force you to pause and come up with 1-3 things you’re grateful for.
Dad tips
Make a healthy smash cake. It seems like it’s a ritual into toddler-hood to have your baby do a “smash cake” in a high chair surrounded by a giggling adults with a multi-colored balloon arch in the background. So introduce your baby into this new world with a cake void of excessive sugars, artificial dyes, and seed oils. See a good list of healthy smash cakes from Mama Natural and Tales of a Messy Mom (and don’t forget the cake topper).
Reverse the sleep sack. If your baby hasn’t started getting out of her crib (and her sleep sack) yet, she probably will soon. Reverse the sleep sack so that the zipper is in the back. This worked wonders for a long time for us.
Wrestle. Start roughhousing, wrestling, rolling around, and doing any other gentle physical activity on the floor that you can think of. Doing this has pretty significant benefits including teaching your child boundaries, improving social and emotional intelligence, helping to manage impulses, regulating emotions, and, of course, bonding. Take turns “winning” and avoid terms you wouldn’t want your child using at school such as “fighting.”
Start some rituals. Rituals allow consistency and predictability for your child and foster bonding. It doesn’t have to have a big build-up with an intricate display. We have a bunch of very simple rituals such as wrestling matches (above), family meals, practicing gratitude at dinner, a secret handshake and a hug before school, weekend picnics in the living room, and bacon and egg breakfast on Saturday mornings. Other ideas are kids-pick-dinner night, new food night, weekly or monthly nature hikes, and the rose, bud, thorn exercise on the way home from school. The most important parts are the consistency and your child’s involvement.
Rotate toys. Every 1-2 months rotate your child’s toys. Take a box of toys that your child hasn’t relegated to the far corners of the couch yet and put it in a separate location he can’t access. Replace those toys with a separate box you used a month or two ago. Every time we do this a beam of nostalgia and excitement hits my son’s face that wouldn’t have been there if the toys were all sprawled out. It’s a regular mini Christmas/Birthday. (Also make sure to put a few new ones in the diaper bag for game-saving situations.)
Lunch productivity hack. Making lunches the night before is crucial for a more seamless morning but making them days ahead of time is a game changer. I pack the silicone cupcake liners (see dad gear) with food they’ll have in the upcoming days (e.g. carrots, peppers, berries, etc.) and then I put them in a cupcake carrying dish with a cover in the fridge.
Don't compare your baby to others (most of the time). Humans develop but they don’t always develop linearly. Some have quicker developments in the obvious areas you tend to hear beaming parents humble brag about (walking, talking, getting out of the crib) while others have less obvious developments with problem-solving abilities, visual processing skills, fine motor coordination, and comprehension. Still, others are just slower to develop. And it’s all okay as long as there is development. Refrain from the natural tendency to compare your child to others unless there is a stark in which case you should talk to your pediatrician.
Resources
Article:
Why You Probably Shouldn’t Break a Fever (MindBodyDad)
Am I a Bad Parent If Don’t Like Playing With My Kids? (Let Grow)
Introducing the Flavor Window: Why Early Food Varieties are Important (Serenity Kids)
Podcast Episode:
The Ready State with Katie Wells (The Ready State)
How to Have the Healthiest Babies (Weston A. Price)
Book:
Boundless: Upgrade Your Brain, Optimize Your Body & Defy Aging by Ben Greenfield
Live up the time with your little buddy. Celebrate the 1-year milestones and remember that you’ve got it good.
Got any suggestions that worked for you and your baby at this age? Leave them in the comment section.
