12 Month Milestones
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- I get more developmental questions and phone calls at 12 months of age and during the 12 month checkup, I think, than at any other transition point, because it is is so large. The best of kids at age one are becoming real people. They have opinions, they have attitudes, they can't be jollied. The elegant emotional simplicity of an eight or nine month old is gone, happy, angry, and sad. Angry eight month old, you just go do-to-do-to-do, and they smile. Around 12 to 15 months of age, when a child decides to have an opinion about something, it's very hard to move them. The problem with age one and with the one-year-old checkup is that it so very strongly resembles what people think of in two-year-olds, that the discussion's a little bit hard. They should be very powerful people. They talk a little bit. Again, they don't have a lot of words in English. They understand a lot more. They're starting to move. The average one-year-old walks, but that doesn't mean that every one-year-old walks. The danger level rises, because they can get at things. You need to childproof completely differently up here and down there because of their little hands. They've developed a good nine month old pincer that's much, much better at 12 months of age. It's a gigantic checkup, and it looks a lot like what people think of at age two.
Pediatrician Jay Gordon reviews the huge transition point that occurs at your baby’s one year mark.
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Jay Gordon, MDPediatrician
Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, IBCLC - In the middle of his residency training, pediatrician Jay Gordon took an unusual step. Deciding that he needed greater knowledge about nutrition, vitamins, and alternative medicine in order to practice medicine the way he wanted to, Dr. Gordon took a Senior Fellowship in Pediatric Nutrition at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City. After his residency at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Gordon joined the teaching attending faculty at UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Intensely interested in infant nutrition and breastfeeding, Dr. Gordon is the first male physician to sit for and pass the International Board of Lactation Certification Exam and has served on the Professional Advisory Board of La Leche League for 24 years.
In addition to treating patients, he participates in the training of medical students and residents, lectures all over the world, writes books, and writes a monthly column for “Fit Pregnancy” magazine. He has contributed to “New York Parent,” “Parenting” magazine and has been quoted in the L.A. Times, New York Times, and The London Times.
Dr. Gordon’s first book, the well-received Good Food Today, Great Kids Tomorrow, offers a life-changing plan for families who want to make dramatic changes in health and fitness through nutrition. Brighter Baby examines the positive effect that attachment parenting, combined with infant massage, has on children’s health and intelligence. Other releases include: Good Night! The Parents’ Guide to the Family Bed and Hug Your Baby, a Gentle Guide through the First Year, which was released summer, 2002. He also authored Listening To Your Baby: A New Approach to Parenting Your Newborn, which still gets great reviews from parents. His most recent book is The ADD and ADHD Cure, the Natural Way to Treat Hyperactivity and Refocus Your Child.
When the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Television and the Media named Dr. Gordon “the most influential doctor in America,” they were referring, tongue-in-cheek, to Dr. Gordon’s role, as the medical script consultant, in eliminating lollipops from the office of “Doctor Weston,” lead character on the sitcom “Empty Nest.”
After two years of consulting on television scripts, sets, and ideas, Dr. Gordon was named CBS TV’s Medical Consultant for Children’s programming. He also worked for five years on ABC Television as the on-air medical correspondent for the “Home Show,” and continues to consult regularly for television and movies. He’s appeared on Fox 11 News, ABC’s 20/20 and most recently on Larry King Live.
Dr. Gordon contributed and wrote the forward to Smart Medicine for a Healthy Child and The Encyclopedia of Vitamins and Supplements (both published in 1999), is pediatric consultant for “Fit Pregnancy” magazine and a frequent contributor to “Parents,” “Parenting,” and other media outlets. Busy as he is, Dr. Gordon finds that his most challenging job is “being a good husband and the best possible parent to my 22 year-old daughter.”
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