Milestones in Life: Tips For Navigating Through the Baby, Tween, and Teen Years

by Marissa Huntsman on October 15th, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Raising children is full of surprises as each child is an individual, composed of unique personality traits and motivations. One child may prefer to read whereas another child prefers to spend their summer days kicking a ball around. Each child has a different set of milestones. The sports star may set a goal to kick a ball from one end of the field to the other. The reader may have a list of classic books they are working towards reading. Each one has set a goal or milestone. Here are some tips and tricks for navigating through the milestones in life.

Helping Your Child Achieve Milestones

While their are unique milestones per child, there is also a road map of milestones that as parents, we tend to follow in order to promote a healthy development from infancy to adulthood. Learning to walk, ride a bicycle, and graduating from high school are important milestones. Which milestones are your kids working towards?

The Early Years Milestones

One of the first milestones that parents look forward to after coming home from the hospital is to get their newest addition to sleep through the night. Monica from Mommy and Love key to getting her babies to sleep? Make sure you tucker them out. Click here to see just how she does it!
Potty training can be long and frustrating journey but achieving that goal is like reaching the top of Mount Everest. Exhausting, difficult, and gratitude for sticking with it. Kylie from How To Mom, shares her potty training adventures as well as tricks that helped her teach her children to potty train starting at 12 months. Click here.
Growing up means learning new ways to socialize with those around you. As a kid, merely pointing would generate the response you wanted. But the journey towards adulthood is filled with learning manners starting with please and thank you. Melissa from Home on Deranged and Jodi from The Noise of Boys write about how they teach manners in their families. Click here to learn how to teach toddler girls about manners and here for teaching toddler boys.
Kids and their curiosity can get into a lot of messes yet it helps them learn fine motor skills. ABC and 123 recently published a Fine Motor Skills blog post series in which they provide tips and tricks for teaching fine motor skills through crafts like bracelet making and putting puzzles together. Click here for the series.

Growing Up Milestones

Financial responsibility, two words that may bring to mind something negative but teaching your children to exercise responsibility with their finances, sets them on a path for a better future as teens and adults. Adrian from Adrian's Crazy Life (post here) and Stacey from Tree, Root, and Twig take on this sensitive topic. Providing tips from allowance to savings and to voicing their concerns, they've got it all covered. Stacey also provides a detailed run-down of the program Kidworth (post here).
Growing up means that their is an increase of media exposure that your child will encounter on a daily basis. When toddlers, your kids probably showed no interest in television and if they did, they were escactic to watch the mischievious adventures of Mickey and Donald. Going ino the teen years, and their media choices will change. Jill from Just Jilly recounts how she handles Big Kid Tv.
Every year brings new experiences to teach tweens, teens, and young adults the world of being a successful adult. Many times these new experiences can be frightening. Jyl from Mom It Forward recounts her experience with her son's anxiety regarding karate class. Most imporant thing—encouragement. Click here for tips to overcome anxiety.

Capturing the Moments

Parents are always document every moment of their child's development on film or rather Gigabytes. Amber, Because Babies Grow Up, features a fun video that illustrates the combining of photography and videography to capture the fun moments.
Not all milestones are about learning a new skill such as shoe lace tying, sometimes all one needs is a cake and candle. Britni, Talent To Play, inspires parents each week with posts about creating a memorable birthday for kids. Theme party ideas include Veggie Tales, Teddy Bear Picnic, and Nutcracker Tea Party. Click here to get all the sweet details.

Thank you to the Mom It Forward community for sharing these tips and tricks about milestones that is full of fun and memories. Join us on Thursday, October 17, for one of our #gno Twitter Parties sponsored by Babies"R"Us. We will be sharing tips, tricks, and funny stories about milestones - child and adult! Click here to learn more.