At 13 months your baby is now officially a toddler, but of course they’re still your baby! After turning one, your little one’s physical growth and motor milestones won’t be evolving as quickly as they did during the first year. Now you’ll notice most of their developmental milestones within the language, cognitive and social-emotional areas. That’s not to say that after turning one, your toddler will reach one of the most exciting milestones for parents: walking independently!
Let’s break it down
The walking independently milestone has quite a few micro milestones you will notice just before they accomplish it. So, what milestones leading up to walking can you expect to see between 13 and 15 months?
- Baby pulls up to stand using furniture or another support.
- Then, cruising: they’ll build up the courage to take some steps to the sides while holding on.
- Later on, they’ll stay balanced while standing without holding onto the furniture they were just leaning on.
- It will build up from just a couple seconds, to no time limit!
Next up: they’ll stand up without support! It looks like this: they crawl, stop, and out of the blue stand up.
The last milestone of standing up without support goes to show your baby has gained sufficient strength and balance to stand up using only their body, paving the way for the most exciting (and maybe life-changing) milestone: walking independently. Check out this FAQ video to help your baby with their first steps!
Why is it life-changing?
Yes, we mentioned the word life-changing and that’s because walking changes everything!
In many cases, your baby was a professional crawler right before they reached this milestone, moving around quickly and falling or bumping their heads rarely. Now, they’re walking. At first just a couple of steps at a time, building up to more very wobbly steps. There will be falls, there will be bumps. It’s life changing for your baby AND for you! They will start off slow again as it was when they started crawling, and it will be a bit clumsy. You will need to be very alert and feel an urge to shadow their footsteps because you don’t want them to get hurt and crash into a table corner or a door frame. When they were crawling, carrying or transporting objects in their hands was barely an option. Now, their hands are free!
To walk holding objects in their hands is quite an exciting milestone for your little one. Exploration has reached a new level– literally and figuratively. Before, they were close to the ground, now they’re a whole foot taller and the world looks different. You might notice your child opening drawers, taking objects out and walking them to another room, or finding a ball, picking it up and throwing it somewhere else, over and over again. These repetitive movements are their way of exploring all the possibilities of their new capabilities, taking on new challenges, testing themselves to the limit and trying to accomplish feats they see older people performing. To sum up, your baby will now look so much bigger and sturdier: they are undoubtedly a toddler.
What else can I expect my baby to do, other than walk?
It’s not ALL walking! There will be more physical milestones your baby will accomplish or start to practice between 13 and 15 months old. Their fine motor skills will continue to develop, and now you might catch your baby trying to put small objects into narrow spaces like coins in a piggy bank. They can now also hold a crayon or thick marker with their whole fist and make their first marks on paper. You’ll love this mess free painting activity for your little one! This skill goes hand in hand with their ability to feed themselves with a spoon, since they can now grasp the spoon using their whole fist, they can also bring the spoon into their mouth and back down to the plate. This goes to show that they have improved their eye-hand coordination and their imitation skills will now be used to copy how adults use tools and utensils like a phone or a hose.
With walking comes the possibility of developing more gross motor skills too! Your little one will now be able to kick a ball while holding on to a helping hand, walk up a ramp and push and pull objects while walking. The stairs will become appealing to climb up by alternating their feet (like grown-ups do) and further along they’ll want to try the same thing to go down the stairs. Make sure you teach them how to crawl backwards down the stairs to avoid any accidents, especially since this is also a milestone they should reach between one and two years. Check out this activity for climbing stairs.
Here’s a list of the physical milestones your child might reach between 13 and 15 months:
- Stays balanced while standing without any help
- Goes from sitting to standing without any help
- Can take a few steps without support
- Walks by themselves with short, unsteady steps
- Goes from squatting down to standing up without any help
- Stops to squat down to grab an object while walking
- Can carry an object (like a small toy) while walking
- Inserts objects into narrow spaces (like coins in a piggy bank)
- Holds a crayon with whole fist
- Kicks a ball while walking if held by the hands
- Pushes or pulls toys while walking
- Walks up the stairs with an adult’s help, alternating their feet
- Crawls backwards to go down a few steps
- Walks down the stairs with an adult’s help, alternating their feet
- Kicks a ball while standing
- Walks up ramps
- Uses an object as a tool to pull or push another object
- Goes to get objects after tossing them
Play activities from our catalog to help your baby master their new skills:
Can you reach the sticky note?
