Ateah – milestones and safety

I find as a nurse working with parents that it’s very important that we give them information on expected milestones of children. It’s really related to safety I think in preventing of accidents and injuries that children can, you know, unfortunately cause of their own development in learning, happen in to. We know that children, for example, at about age four months start to roll. Well if a parent isn’t aware of this or isn’t expecting it, we have infants fall off of change table for example, in that one day they’re laying perfectly still -the next minute is the first time they roll over. And unfortunately if it’s on a high surface, they can have a severe injury from falling.
We know that babies put everything in their mouths. We want to make sure there’s nothing close by that they can put in their mouths that could cause harm. When infants start to walk at about a year, that’s when the home needs complete baby-proofing. Infants will, as soon as they start to walk, if there’s a pool or a body of water they just seem to make a beeline towards it. That’s why I think it’s important that this information is included in prenatal education in particular because a new mom, new parents are so busy that isn’t the time they’re going to start reading about milestones in the first year or two. They need to know it before it occurs. They need to be prepared in order to keep the environment safe and know what to watch for; know if their child is developing as expected so we want to ensure there’s no developmental delays and also use that information to make their environment as safe as possible.