By Katy Barnes, OTD, OTR/L
When your baby reaches for a toy, rolls over, or takes those first wobbly steps, it is building its brain-body connection through experience. Motor milestones, such as crawling, cruising, and walking, are a window into your child’s developmental journey.
What are Motor Milestones?
They are the big movements (gross motor skills) like rolling, sitting, crawling, and walking, and smaller movements (fine motor skills) like grasping, stacking, and pointing. These skills are interconnected with your child’s ability to:
- Explore and make sense of their world
- Build balance and core strength
- Develop visual-motor coordination
- Establish a sense of safety and confidence in their body
Why are these milestones more than just movement?
In occupational therapy, we see movement as foundational to all areas of development. When your child learns to move, they learn how to regulate their body, plan movements, and interact with others. For example:
- Rolling helps develop core strength and the ability to weight shift, essential for later skills like writing, typing, and playing sports
- Crawling integrates the right and left sides of the body, key for bilateral coordination and visual tracking
- Climbing builds problem-solving, body awareness, and confidence
A DIR/Floortime lean on movement milestones
In this approach, we understand that each child has a unique individual sensory profile and way of learning. As clinicians, we become curious about:
- What motivates your child to move?
- What does movement feel like for their body?
- How do they engage with others during movement?
- When do they feel most secure and supported?
We meet your child at their developmental level by providing emotional safety and co-regulation to help them explore, adapt, and grow.
Practical tips for supporting movement milestones
- Follow your child’s lead: Let their interests guide the way. If they love rolling, build on that with songs or simple peek-a-boo games.
- Create safe opportunities to explore: Tummy time on different textures, low furniture to climb, or a safe space for big body movements
- Use high affect (big facial expressions and reactions) and rhythm: Incorporate different voices and characters or sing silly songs during play to create an emotional connection around movement
Need a little extra guidance?
Wherever you are on your journey—just starting to wonder about motor milestones or already actively seeking occupational therapy—our team is ready to support you. We’re dedicated to helping families understand their child’s sensory world and connect through the power of play.