Milestones from birth to 3 years of age across five areas of development. You can tick them off, log the date each was reached, and download an A4 keepsake. Milestones come from the CDC's Learn the Signs. Act Early. checklists, with movement ranges from the WHO and guidance aligned to the NHS. Every baby is different, so this is a friendly guide, not a test, and not a diagnostic tool.
Click the ★ next to a milestone to add it to your baby's printable journey keepsake infographic, you can add a maximum of 3 per age stage. The main keepsake list already includes everything you tick.
Always consult your health visitor or GP. This is not a diagnosis. The checks shown are picked automatically according to the date of birth you have entered.
These are the early signs the UK's Ei SMART framework. Do not worry if you tick one of these boxes, just bring it up with your health visitor or GP.
These are the early movement signs the UK's cerebral palsy guideline (NG62) lists. Do not worry if you tick one of these boxes, just bring it up with your health visitor or GP.
Healthy babies reach movement milestones across a wide range of ages. The bands below show the window in which most children (the middle 98%) reach each gross-motor milestone, from the WHO Motor Development Study (part of the World Health Organization's international growth research). The pink line marks the age your baby achieved this milestone. If it sits inside a band, they're in the typical range.
Free: the whole milestone checklist for every stage (0-3 years), adding your own milestones, date logging, the when to seek advice checks (Ei SMART and hearing & vision), the WHO movement windows, and tracking more than one child.
Paid one-off extras: the Skills-by-area star chart and the printable A4 keepsake PDF.
Milestones are grouped into five areas: social & emotional (how your baby relates to you and others), language & communication (sounds, words, understanding and gestures), analytical (learning, thinking and problem-solving), gross motor (big movements like rolling, sitting and walking) and fine motor (grasping, scribbling and feeding). Babies often don't always develop these all equally at the same time.
No. The CDC's checklists show what at least 75% of children can do by each age - so most babies will already be doing them. Not ticking something doesn't mean anything is wrong; it may simply be next on the list.
If your baby was born more than 3 weeks early, tick "Born more than 3 weeks early" and enter how many weeks early they arrived. The tool then uses corrected age - your baby's age counted from the original due date - for everything, just as the NHS does until age 2. A baby born at 32 weeks is 8 weeks early, so at 6 months old their corrected age is about 4 months.
In England, a health visitor reviews your baby's development at 9 to 12 months and again at 2 to 2½ years. Before each review you're usually sent an Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) to fill in. You don't need to wait for a review, if anything worries you at any point, you can contact your health visitor or GP.
A child losing a skill they used to have is worth acting on promptly. It's very often nothing serious, but please contact your GP or health visitor and explain what has changed. Sometimes babies and toddlers go through phases, and when learning something new they repeat it non-stop. But a large regression is worth monitoring.
No - and culture matters more than people realise. Studies show babies in some countries sit or walk months earlier than Western averages (in parts of East and West Africa and the Caribbean, for example), largely because of everyday differences like how much floor time, carrying or practice they get - and around a third of babies in some cultures skip crawling altogether. Reaching something later than the "typical" age very often just reflects your baby's experiences. Source
At development reviews a health visitor uses a validated screening questionnaire called the Ages & Stages Questionnaires, Third Edition (ASQ-3™).
ASQ was created by Professors Jane Squires and Diane Bricker at the University of Oregon in the United States. The first edition appeared in 1995, a second edition in 1999, and the current third edition (ASQ-3™) in 2009, published by Brookes Publishing in Baltimore. It was standardised on more than 15,000 US children and has since been used in many countries and translated into numerous languages.
There are 22 ASQ-3™ questionnaires covering children from 1 month to 66 months (5½ years). Each is a set of short, parent-answered questions across five areas: Communication, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Problem Solving and Personal-Social. Parents answer "yes", "sometimes" or "not yet", and the scores are compared with statistical cut-offs. Choosing the right questionnaire for the child's exact age matters: for a 21-24 month review, the 20, 22, 24, 27 and 30-month questionnaires are the ones most likely to be used, and picking the correct one is vital for an accurate result.
In England the NHS Healthy Child Programme includes health-visitor development reviews at around 9-12 months and again at 2-2½ years, and ASQ-3™ is used around these two review points (it's often sent to you to complete beforehand). It's also used within the child-health programmes in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.
ASQ-3™ is copyrighted (Brookes Publishing), so we can't reprint its questions. Your health visitor will give you the real questionnaire. Our milestones instead come from the CDC's freely available checklists, which cover similar milestones.
💚 A lovely checklist to notice and celebrate what your little one can do.
🌱 Emerging skills count. Mark the skills that are just starting, even if they haven't nailed it yet.
🇬🇧 Written for UK families.
👐 Signs and actions count. A signed word counts as a word, and showing they understand by pointing or doing counts too.
🌍 Fair for bilingual families. We count the words your baby uses across all their languages.
📅 Up to date. Milestones follow the CDC's 2022 "Learn the Signs" checklists, with movement ranges from the WHO. The ASQ questionnaire the NHS uses was published back in 2009 and was normed on American children.
🌏 Culture-aware. A friendly reminder that babies reach milestones at very different times across cultures and everyday experiences and that's perfectly normal.
🧸 Everyday and easy. Just tick what you've already seen in daily life. It isn't a test, you don't need to get anything for it, and you don't need your child to perform.
🎯 We show the checklist for your baby's (corrected) age, adjusting for prematurity.
🤝 Add your own milestones, pin your favourites for the keepsake, log the dates, and track more than one child. Your information isn't sent anywhere.
📄 Turn it into a printable A4 milestone journey to keep or share.
Currently in English only - if English isn't your first language, your health visitor can arrange an interpreter for your baby's review. We'd love to add more languages in future.
NHS
NHS - Baby's development
NHS - Your baby's health and development reviews
NHS - Helping your baby learn to talk
NHS - Signs of autism in children
NHS 111 for non-urgent worries, or contact your GP.
Frameworks & evidence
Ei SMART - UK early-identification framework for infant development.
CDC - Learn the Signs. Act Early. (and the free Milestone Tracker app).
WHO - Motor Development Study.
UK charities
Speech and Language UK - talking and understanding.
Bliss - premature and sick babies.
Scope and Contact - families of disabled children.
Baby weight tracker - plot weight and length on the WHO growth charts.
Baby checklist & first-year cost calculator - plan what you need, by budget.
Birth plan builder - set out your preferences for the big day.
First words & signs tracker - coming soon.
Milestone checklists: CDC "Learn the Signs. Act Early." Developmental Milestones (2022 revision, 75th-percentile milestones).
Movement windows: WHO Motor Development Milestones (WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study).
Reviews, corrected age & when to get help: NHS - Your baby's health and development reviews and NHS - Signs of autism in children.
Early-identification frameworks: Ei SMART (referenced in NHS England's cerebral palsy commissioning framework) and NICE NG62 (cerebral palsy in under 25s) for early developmental red flags.
The NHS screening questionnaire: ASQ-3™ (Squires & Bricker, University of Oregon; Brookes Publishing, 2009) - copyrighted, so not reproduced here.
Milestone wording has been adapted into British English and made gender-neutral; it is not the verbatim CDC text.
Please read: This tool is general information to help you follow your baby's development. It is not a medical or developmental assessment and cannot diagnose anything, and the "estimated stage" is a rough reflection of what you've ticked, not a real developmental age. Children develop at their own pace and reach milestones at very different times. Specific "get help by" ages combine CDC and WHO evidence with NHS and Ei SMART guidance and are prompts for a conversation, not diagnoses. You know your baby best - if you have any concern, or if your baby has lost skills they once had, speak to your health visitor or GP. In an emergency, call 999 or NHS 111.