As a parent, there are lots of questions that you will regularly have about your child, their life, their development, and pretty much everything else under the sun to do with your child. Which is natural, of course, you are their parent and you want to know as much as possible!
As a result, you might spend a lot of your precious time Googling all sorts of questions about your kids, “When do kids start talking? Walking? Learning? When do they stop napping, believing in Santa, talking back?” There are mountains of questions that you might have, these options just scratch the surface.
To save you at least a little bit of time today, we are going to take this blog and use it as one single space to answer 5 of the most common questions Googled online by parents. This means you can learn a little about each question you might have without having to spend precious time and resources searching around the Internet.
We all want to know more about our kids, so why not learn all together, all at once. Am I right?
If so, keep reading to find out some of our answers to these popular questions, and leave us a comment in the comment section below if you can think of more questions you would like us to answer in a next blog. Why do your own research when you can cut out the extra time and have us do it for you!
Don’t forget to give us a follow on social media too and keep coming back to find new blogs, every week.
Happy reading!
When do kids start talking?
When do kids start talking? Easy answer: generally round 1 year and 1.5 years old. Long answer: it’s complicated, depending on their individual development, physical health, and lifestyle factors, children might take a range of different times to learn to talk, and all of this is completely normal.
An interesting and important thing to remember is that even before your child is able to talk for themselves, they are able to understand much more than we might think. An article in The Conversation writes,
“Parents should be aware that from the earliest stages of language development, children understand more than they can communicate themselves. Indeed, it is through children’s understanding of the language surrounding them – in other words, what parents, siblings and caregivers are saying – that they build their own language skills.”
Source
This means that it is important we model normal speech around our children from an early age, i.e. talk to them without baby speech or baby voices.
If you are worried that your child is talking “too long” to learn to speak, the statistics say not to do so. They state that about 70-80% of children with “expressive delays” catch up with their words by age 4.
If you are really worried, try checking out local speech therapists in your area, but try and trust your child’s invidiual journey as much as you can.
When do kids start losing teeth?
Kids will start to grow teeth at around 6 months until and this growth will continue until they are about 3, with some exceptions and differentiations of course.
They will start to lose their teeth from around the age of 6 and this can continue until they are 10-12 years old.
The general rule is that they will lose the teeth first that erupted first. So if they got their front teeth first, goodbye front teeth!
Every child will be different and sometimes little accidents will push things along earlier than expected. But as a parent you can generally expect to need some extra tooth fairy money for your kids lying about from around the 6 year mark…. Always good to be prepared!
When do kids stop napping?
Napping is a wonderful part of childhood, both for children and parents alike. But when does it stop?
There is a little bit of a bigger window for this stage of development as children seem to vary more in terms of their sleep and napping patterns, just as, I suppose, adults do too.
According to the sleep foundation, these are the main statistics:
- At age 3, almost all children still nap
- At age 4, 60% of children are still napping
- By age 5, less than 30% of children nap
- Less than 10% of children nap past age 6
- Nearly all children stop napping by age 7
So, the exact time of when your kid or kids will stop napping is something we can’t answer for you, but this is the rough guideline. It will depend on their lifestyle, activity levels, school routine, and even genetic make up. If you are worried your child is sleeping too much, it can always be worth taking them along to your local doctor to see if they need some extra support.
How many hours of sleep do kids need?
Sleep.org give a very clear and helpful outline of how many hours of sleep kids generally need, and it is as follows:
- Newborns: 14-17 hours per day
- Up to 12 months: 12-15 hours per day
- 1-2 years: 11-14 hours per day
- 3-5 years: 10-13 hours per day
- 6-12 years: 9-12 hours per day
- 13-17 years: 8-10 hours per day
If your child is prone to sleeping a lot, I wouldn’t worry too much. These statistics show that kids need quite a lot of sleep right up until they are nearly adults.
Are you jealous? I am, a little bit.
When do kids stop believing in Santa?
Santa can be a big part of a child’s life. He can represent so much more than just presents and Christmas, he can represent a time of childhood innocence and imagination, and it can, understandably, be very sad for parents when this time draws to a close.
According to research, the average age for kids stopping their belief in Santa is 8.4 years old. This seems to vary on child to child, depending on their family, school life, friendship group, and different factors. But it seems consistent that questioning and challenging of the belief takes shape in most kids around the age of 7-10.
It’s up to you as a parent how you want to deal with this, but it is important to remember it is a natural stage of life and while it might be sad, it is an important transition.
Any more questions about your kids? Remember to leave that comment below!
