Significance

• The first few years of life are some of the most influential. A child will learn to walk, develop communication skills, start working on social skills and attachment and experience mental states such as joy, surprise and anxiety. How a parent handles these stages of mental development has a great impact on how the child develops over the next several years of life.
  
  

Time Frame

• During the first few months of life, mental development is indicated through physical activity, since the child cannot really communicate yet. Sucking, focusing on faces, the startle response and reactions to different types of stimulation are all gauges of development. By the end of the first year of life, emotions are more obvious through facial expressions and attachment to the parents. For example, a child may show fear by clinging to his mother around strangers. By the end of the third year, language should be much more developed, with the child able to create sentences of four or five words to express what he is thinking or feeling. Other milestones for this year include understanding mechanics and spatial relationships, imitation of others, lack of separation anxiety and engaging in pretend play.
  
  

Types

• Mental development of a child is divided into several categories. These include gross motor skills (walking, climbing), fine motor skills (manipulating small objects), language (sentence structure, pronunciation), cognition (pretend play, puzzles), social (interactions with parents, strangers and peers) and emotional (displays of anger, affection, etc.).
  
  

Potential

• If a child is not showing signs of normal mental development in the first three years of life, the parent should consult with the child's pediatrician and get help immediately. Each child is different, so milestones can vary by a few weeks or months, but if a significant delay is noticed, help should be sought right away. Development compounds and builds upon things that have been learned previously, and if there is a delay in one step, this puts off the next stage, getting the child farther and farther behind.
  
  

Benefits

• Paying attention to an infant's development over the first three years will allow a parent to pinpoint any difficulties or delays and aid the child in progressing forward. Children who develop at an average speed can be taught more aggressively and advance even further. This can lead to higher intelligence, physical aptitude and creativity, all of which may help them down the road in school, work and social life.