Baby's List of Gross Motor Skills

This "ultimate" list of gross motor skills can help you identify the earliest signs of a developmental disability in your infant. If you had to choose just one of all the infant milestones to track, this is the one.

Motor skills are the proverbial postcards sent between the brain, skeleton, joints, and nervous system.

Those postcards direct an intricate dance. My brain thinks of a word, sends the postcard to my arm at the keyboard, finally instructing my fingers to wiggle. Perhaps surprisingly, my fingers obey the message and...Viola! Motor skills and a typed website.

Infants don't come out typing websites. They have to start somewhere, and that start is in gross motor skills.

Gross motor skills start the ball rolling. They help an infant to lift her head, roll over, sit up, balance, crawl and eventually walk.

Tracking Motor Skills

The Infant Milestone Marker has a list of gross motor skills for you to use during your baby's first 12 months of life. This is a free resource to visiting friends!

Gross vs. Fine Motor Skills

Once those larger muscles have started training, the brain starts working on the smaller ones. Fine motor skills involve manipulating tiny objects, transferring objects from hand to hand, and other various hand-eye coordination tasks.

{Lauren uses her gross motor skills}

Using the pincer grasp (thumb and forefinger) to pick up small objects, cutting, coloring, and writing are all fine motor skills that will develop in the first few years of a child's life.

It is always helpful to apply common sense when looking at the list of gross motor skills.

If your baby's weight, length, or head circumference is in the 95th percentile, well then is it really a big surprise he hasn't walked by the 11th month? He has a lot of weight to carry around!

He has to be strong enough to support his frame. It may be a bit longer before he is ready to run laps around the kitchen table. (And is that necessarily a bad thing?)

Stimulate Gross and Fine Motor Skills

Every month The Merry Mother sends you age-appropriate activities you can do to stimulate development. The activities are organized for 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and 12-18 month old babies.

Subscribe today and get them delivered straight to your Inbox.

One of the greatest joys of motherhood is watching your little one move from being a wobble-head to a clapping, crawling, running, and dancing little toddler.

Make sure you don't miss a minute of it! Follow the list of gross motor skills provided in The Milestone Marker.

In a month you'll look back and be so impressed with what she has accomplished!