Tips and guidelines for realistic portayals of babies and toddlers

[TerribleTwo]

When I write diaper fiction, I tend to err on the 'actual babies and toddlers' side of things. I, however, am not a parent or a daycare supervisor, and reading pediatrician articles and mommy advice columns only goes so far.

So I figure a thread asking for assistance on how to write babies and toddlers who are at least somewhat realistic wouldn't go awry. I do have specific questions, but for now I think starting out general works best.

[WBDaddy]

The CDC "development milestone" guidelines are helpful here for figuring out what kids are capable of doing at any given age.  It's important to remember that kids younger than 4 can probably string a few words together like "I go pee-pee!", kids younger than 3 can maybe put a noun and a verb together, kids younger than 2 can vocalize simple, single words usually, and kids younger than 18 months are still finding words, but most of their sounds are "Da!" and pointing. 

It's good to contemplate stuff like this, because their thought patterns are pretty similar, and there's nothing worse than writers ascribing complex thoughts that involve social cues and much more mature feelings to pre-K kids. 

[Elbs]

I agree that milestone guidelines can be helpful. Also, there's a lot of parents who post cute videos of their kids on YouTube, so you can try to see if you can find videos that state how old the kid is and look at what kinds of things they're doing/saying. (Although personally it'd kinda weird me out to be searching up stuff like that while I'm actively writing a fetish story, but that's my own issues.)