Age Five
Parents always want to know whether their child is developing normally or not. Here are some basic development milestones that your five-year-old child should achieve. If you are concerned that your child may not be developing at the same pace as her peers, then take a look at the Developmental Alarms and find out if you need to make an appointment with your child’s pediatrician.
Mental Development
- Mental reasoning improves; will argue and link cause and effect. "I won’t talk to Ted because he hit me"
- Can remember address and phone number
- Can draw pictures to show person (with legs, hands, eyes, nose, hair and smile), animals (dog with four legs and a tail)
- If taught, can write all alphabets and some numbers
- Cannot tell time but knows difference between "yesterday", "today" and "tomorrow"
- Can easily express his feelings or can clearly make himself understood to strangers
- Becomes more creative, can make up stories with a "beginning" and an "end"; can tell jokes and riddles
- Will read a book from left to right and top to bottom
- Can make comparisons in size (tall, taller, tallest) or weight (fat, fatter, fattest)
- Can identify basic colors like red, yellow, blue, green and orange
- Can count 10 objects or more
- Concentration improves along with attention span
- Can draw familiar shapes
Physical/Motor Development
- Body coordination improves – can skip, jump rope, hop on one foot, run on tiptoe; can also learn more complex things like swimming, skating, and riding a bicycle
- Makes creative movements like dancing or somersaults
- Can play with a ball skillfully (can easily throw with an aim, grip on ball becomes steady)
- Can climb up and down stairs without using handrail
- Feeds himself with minimum spilling. Becomes more dexterous with spoon, fork and knife
- Can groom (bathe, wear clothes) without assistance. Can tie shoelaces. Can take care of his toilet needs
Social and Emotional Development
- Play becomes more innovative and organized. Will invent simple games, make teams, and assign roles.
- Can take turns and share but may act bossy
- Becomes more sensitive to feelings of people around her. For example, he may obey you if you say, "Please don’t make any noise, dad is tired."
- Becomes fonder of some playmates. May have "best friends".
- May want to make own decisions
- May follow rules and seek adult permission
- May outgrow many anxieties like fear of dark or monsters
- Understands relations like parents, uncle, aunt, etc.
- Feelings like shame or embarrassment will surface if she does anything that is not approved by adults or peers
Language Development
- Vocabulary grows to accommodate about 13, 000 words
- Can carry on conversations.
- Sentence structure becomes more complex. May use 6-8 words in a sentence.
- May make only a few grammatical errors
- Will make up stories and enjoys telling them
Development Alarms
Make an appointment with your child’s doctor if she:
- Is disinterested in making friends
- Cannot feed or groom himself
- Cannot take care of his toilet needs
- Cannot make himself understood (difficulty in speech)
- Shows extreme mood swings or a lot of violent behavior
- Cannot identify colors, letters, numbers, or shapes despite being taught
- Has difficulty in skipping, hopping, jumping, running, etc.