What should a child be able to do at age 2?

A two-year-old child is a great explorer and a very creative person. At this age, the child does not grow and gain weight as intensively as a year ago. But his brain, motor and physical skills are developing very actively. What should a child be able to do at 2 years old?

Physical development of a child at 2 years old

At this age, it is important to develop the child's physical skills: movement, coordination, and fine motor coordination. The more the child trains, the better results he will show. Movement coordination skills include fine and gross motor skills.

Gross motor skills of a 2 year old baby

This includes the ability to control your body in space. This includes running, jumping, walking, turning. What can a child do at 2 years of age from motor skills?

• Run
• Walk up and down the stairs
• Jump or go through a hoop
• Go around or jump over an obstacle that lies on a hard surface
• Jumping on one leg (especially girls)
• March
• Kick the ball
• Walk backwards
• Standing on the horizontal bar, maintain balance

Fine motor skills of a child at 2 years old

A baby's fine motor skills include what he can do with his hands - fingers, palms, fists. This skill must be combined with visual coordination - without it, the baby will not be able to accurately determine the location of objects and manage them. A 2-year-old baby's fine motor skills include:

• Drawing a vertical line
• The child can build a tower from a construction set or cubes (can handle up to 6 cubes)
• Cut paper, and the scissors should be small, children's, with rounded ends

Parents should know that at the age of 2, the baby already has a preference for which hand to use – the right or the left. Watch your child – which hand does he take a pencil or a pen with. Which hand does he grab a spoon with, which hand does he hit a ball with. This way you can determine whether your baby is growing up right-handed or left-handed.

If a child is equally good with his hands, it means that both the left and right hemispheres of his brain work well. Such children are called ambidextrous. This is a very rare feature. You will be able to determine more clearly whether your child is left-handed or right-handed by the time he turns 5.

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How to develop motor skills of a 2 year old child?

First of all, you need to give him the opportunity to do something with his hands all the time. To develop fine motor skills, the child will be happy to draw or put something together from cubes. The fact is that there is a close relationship between fine hand movements and speech development.

According to scientists, there are zones in the cerebral cortex of children that control fine motor skills of the hands. These zones are neighbors of those responsible for speech development. Both zones interact with each other, so by developing manual skills, you can also develop the skills of correct, rich speech.

Intellectual development of a child at 2 years old

The intellectual development of a child at 2 years old involves active cognitive processes. A child at this age studies and learns a lot, therefore he develops very quickly. Speech, attention, thinking, perception, memory develop at this age by leaps and bounds compared to the same processes in an adult. What intellectual skills does a child at 2 years old possess?

• The child can dance to music, clearly distinguishing its melody and rhythm
• The child understands simple requests and commands from adults, according to which it is necessary to perform up to three simple actions
• The child already remembers children's poems and songs and even quotes them to adults
• The child tries to take apart the toy to see what's inside.
• A 2-year-old child can already speak up to 200 words (girls speak earlier and more)
• A child of 2 years old can already speak in short, coherent sentences.

At this age, it is very important to develop the child's speech skills, because speech is one of the most important indicators of intelligence. Therefore, the age period from 2 to 3 years is considered sensitive in psychology. During this period, the child's speech skills are actively developing.

The child's brain learns words of the native language most quickly at this age. If you teach a child other languages at this age, their learning will proceed very quickly, just super-fast.

A 2-year-old child learns several components of speech at once: rules for constructing sentences, correct pronunciation of sounds and syllables, coherent speech, understanding speech and distinguishing individual words in a flow of sentences. If a child does not speak at the age of 2, you need to see a doctor: perhaps the baby has slow development or there was a stressful situation that affected his speech skills in a negative way.

You need to read more fairy tales to children, sing songs, communicate with them – and their speech will develop much faster.

Social skills of a child at 2 years old

Social development of a child at 2 years old is his or her communication skills and abilities. That is, how ready is the child to communicate with people, animals, and his or her little peers. His or her future success in personal life, career, and friendship depend on this. A child at 2 years old increasingly develops self-service skills. What should a child at 2 years old be able to do in the area of social skills?

• Go to the potty on your own or ask to go when necessary
• Try to dress yourself or help mom and dad when dressing him, for example, for a walk or to kindergarten
• Take off your socks yourself
• Wash your hands and dry them with a towel
• Eat from a spoon and drink from a cup yourself
• Be able to hold a toothbrush in your hand and try to brush your teeth with the help of mom or dad
• Talk on the phone while imitating adult behavior
• Answer simple questions

A child of 2 years is already a very smart baby. His behavior may seem funny, but this is the behavior of a person who comprehends a lot in a very short period. Parents should respect this work.