Baby Milestones by Age: Australian Checklist, 0–24 Months

Baby milestones by age are the motor, social and language skills most babies gain between birth and 24 months, each within a wide normal range. Australian guidance from the Raising Children Network(opens in a new window) and Pregnancy, Birth and Baby(opens in a new window) agrees that healthy babies reach the same skills in different orders and at different speeds.

This checklist covers birth to 24 months across three areas: motor, social and language. It ends with the red flags that warrant a chat with your GP or child health nurse. A baby who walks 'late' is almost always just a baby who walks late.

How to use this checklist

Treat each age band as a window. Premature babies are usually tracked at their corrected age, which counts from the due date. A baby pouring energy into one skill, such as crawling, often pauses on another, such as babbling, for a few weeks.

healthdirect · Developmental milestones

Some children may walk or talk earlier or later than others — that's normal.

The overall pattern matters more than any single date: is your baby steadily gaining new skills over time? Your child health nurse asks that question at every scheduled check, and the baby health checks in Australia guide lists those visits by state and what happens at each. Notes made at the time make it far easier to answer than months reconstructed from memory in the waiting room.

A milestone is a guide. Babies get there in their own order, at their own pace.

Milestones in the first year

Three notes on the first year. The head control in the 0–3 month row is built on the floor, in short sessions that grow with your baby: see tummy time: when to start and how much. Around the middle of the year, most babies also show the readiness signs for starting solids around six months: good head control and genuine interest in your food. The 7–12 month window has the widest variation. Some babies crawl at seven months, and some skip crawling entirely and go straight to cruising. Both are normal.

Milestones from 12 to 24 months

The Raising Children Network's toddler trackers(opens in a new window) break this stage into finer bands if you want more detail. Language in particular can look wildly different between two perfectly healthy toddlers at 18 months.

Milestones by age, in detail

The tables above compress each stage into a row. For one age at a time, with the check that lands at that age and the questions the nurse asks, read the age pages in order:

• Newborn development week by week, birth to 8 weeks
• 1 month milestones, weeks 3 and 4
• 6 week milestones, weeks 5 to 7
• 2 month milestones
• 3 month milestones
• 4 month milestones
• 6 month milestones
• 8 month milestones
• 12 month milestones
• 14 month milestones

What "developmental milestones" covers

Developmental milestones are the skills most children pick up in a rough order, grouped into a few broad areas, and the ages attached to them are averages with wide normal ranges. No age on the list is a deadline. healthdirect(opens in a new window) groups the skills like this:

• Motor: rolling, sitting, crawling and walking, plus the fine-motor half: reaching, the pincer grip, scribbling.
• Language and communication: babbling, first words, following a simple instruction.
• Social and emotional: smiling back, wariness of strangers, playing alongside other children.
• Cognitive: object permanence, cause and effect, simple problem solving.

The areas develop at their own pace and often take turns. A baby pouring everything into crawling can look paused on babbling for a few weeks. Read each table across the whole row for that reason.

Red flags: when to see your GP

Variation is normal. A persistent absence of skills is what health professionals want to hear about. Based on healthdirect's guidance(opens in a new window), talk to your GP or child health nurse if your baby:

• By 6 months: isn't making babbling sounds, doesn't reach for toys, has poor head control, or doesn't smile at people
• By 9 months: can't pass a toy from one hand to the other, or doesn't respond to familiar words or their name
• By 12 months: can't sit unsupported, doesn't copy sounds or gestures, or won't bear weight on their legs
• By 18 months: isn't walking independently, has no simple words, or doesn't follow simple instructions

Also see your GP at any age if your baby loses a skill they previously had. That always warrants a review.

How this checklist lines up with the ACECQA developmental milestones

The ACECQA developmental milestones are a reference for early childhood educators, published as Developmental milestones and the Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standards(opens in a new window). It lists what children typically do from birth to 5 years. This checklist covers the same skills for the first two years, in slightly different age bands.

The document was funded by the Australian Government and is hosted by ACECQA, the national authority for early childhood education and care. It groups milestones into physical, social, emotional, cognitive and language areas, links each one to an EYLF learning outcome and an NQS quality area, and ends every age band with a short "seek advice if" list. Its own introduction asks educators to treat it as a source of information rather than a prescriptive checklist, which is the same spirit as the tables above.

The areas differ too: three columns here (motor, social, language) against five in the ACECQA document, so a skill listed under social here may sit under emotional or cognitive there. The ages themselves agree, because both draw on the same wide normal ranges. If an educator asks how bub is going at home, a BabyLog checkup report on Pro can be framed for childcare around daily routines, with feeding and sleep patterns and a milestone checklist, and shared as a private link or PDF.

For what else to tell educators when your baby starts care, see our baby routine for childcare guide.

Keeping track without the paperwork

The hard part of milestone tracking is remembering, three months later, exactly when the first roll or first word happened. Nobody sits down at the end of a newborn day to write developmental diary entries.

BabyLog's milestone tracking records an observation in one tap when you notice something new, with no typing a note one-handed while holding a wriggling baby. The moment is stamped with the date and your baby's exact age, and it sits alongside your growth measurements and daily logs. The record is shared with every caregiver, so the milestone your partner or grandma spots on their day lands on the same timeline.

When the child health nurse asks 'and when did she start sitting on her own?', you can look back and answer in seconds, and spot the patterns across months that no single busy day reveals.

Watch the milestones arrive in their own time, and track your baby's development with BabyLog.

Common questions