Promoting symmetry: The key to the second year of child’s physical development

The peak of physical development happens in childhood and it is therefore a crucial time for neurological brain development and body coordination to encourage specific activities such as grasping, writing, crawling, and walking.

Infants and toddlers use play to work with all of their muscles, which means that play helps them develop gross motor skills (controlling their large muscles) and fine motor skills (controlling the smaller muscles of their hands and feet) as well as general coordination and balance.

Most children fall into a broad time line of normal milestone development; however each child experiences his own unique pattern of physical development. Although clues and patterns can be picked up in the first year, your toddler is much more interactive and active in the second year and therefore playing and doing activities with your toddler in the second year can really highlight possible delays in physical development and thereby assist as an indicator of both their physical and overall neurological states.

Try to make sure in daily life that you encourage symmetry wherever possible - especially as their bigger muscles start to develop more. What this means is that you should alternate (between left and right) all activities in order to allow both sides of the body to develop equally. This will avoid compensation patterns from arising further down their body.

Within the second year of life this includes:

  • Alternating the side that you are on when playing with your toddler
  • Changing the position they sit in while bathing
  • Moving the car seat to different sides of the car
  • Paying special attention to not leaving your child to do passive exercises like watching tv, swinging or sitting in a car seat for too long. Rather allow them to explore, create, imagine and grow.