Your one year old is about to enter the toddler zone. Whether they’re crawling, bottom shuffling or walking from A to B, they’re on their way to independence. Me: They’ll want to do it themselves, whether it’s eating their lunch (getting it over their face, clothes, highchair in the process of course) or climbing that steep staircase. So expect frustration and lots of ‘no!’ if it’s not safe or practical for them to do whatever it is on their own: for some tots, the so-called terrible twos start about now. Mine: They’ll love playing on their own or side by side with their playgroup friends, but at this age, they can only see things from their own perspective so aren’t ready to share their toys or play together yet. Moving: They may be walking independently by around 14 months (though for many this comes earlier or later) and will be more and more curious about exploring the world around them now that there’s so much more if it that they can get to. Be prepared to have eyes at the back of your head as they start toddling about on their own. Mouthy: Their language development starts to take off. From 12 to around 18 months they’ll absorb everything they hear and they’ll understand about 10 times as many words as they can say. But from around 18 to 24 months, they’ll start talking more, combining words (‘get cup’, ‘walk doggy’) and have a vocabulary of 50 to 100 words by the time they’re two. Mimic: They’ll start being able to copy things you do (they’ll love playing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ when you show them how to do the actions!), remember things that happened recently, and pretend (‘feeding’ their teddy for example).