Education

How Much Do 2-Year-Olds Develop in Their Second Year?

Watch for yourself.

This video is part of a series on 2-year-olds produced by the Hechinger Report and the Teacher Project, nonprofit news organizations focused on education coverage, in partnership with Slate magazine.

In our series “The Trouble With 2,” we’ve examined a crucial year for children and the unique challenges it presents. It’s year of rapid development: As Lillian Mongeau explained earlier in the series, “In their 12 months of being 2 years old, most kids graduate from using a few disconnected words to speaking in nearly complete sentences. They also learn to jump, to understand that they may know things others don’t, and to use a toilet.”

What does that change look like? In the video above, we collected a handful of kids to demonstrate this transformation, assigning a range of basic tasks to younger, middle, and older 2-year-olds to show their development. As you’ll see, the differences can be striking.

Correction, Dec. 1, 2017: This video and post originally referred to 2-year-olds as living “their second year.” They’re living their third year.