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Another paper found that 15-month-olds moved just as much in rooms with toys as in rooms without them. The paper also cites eye-tracking work suggesting that toddlers look at a destination before walking in only about 16% of walking bouts. A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology notes that infants’ curiosity drives them to interact with objects and people on their own initiative, and it found that they showed more gross motor activity once they began walking.
In another review , “Learning to Move,” Karen Adolph argues that infants are “learning to learn” as they master locomotion. Another related Join conversation Share your thoughts in the comments Be respectful · TOI community guidelines paper suggests that moving may be a goal in itself, and that many walking bouts are only one to three steps long. Sometimes, the movement is the point. Adolph and colleagues also argue that exploration is what connects perception with motor control.
Running is an expected milestone
5 Oct 2026 | 12:06 Many parents quietly carry that concern in their minds, and we tend to associate it with misbehaviour, especially when it happens in public. The paper also says that toddlers take about 2,400 steps, travel about 700 metres and fall about 17 times in an hour of play. Your heart races, you call out even louder, and you think the child has become naughtier, and why won’t they just walk beside me?
Locomotion gives infants new chances to explore places, surfaces, objects, and people, and exploration is a main reason they move, according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine. Their 2-year checklist “runs” is one of the milestones that most children, around 75% or more, can do by that age, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anyone who has chased a toddler across a park knows the feeling. One second they are holding your hand, and the next they are a small blur, running as fast as they can, heading for the gate, the pond, or the busiest corner. But toddlers are not tiny adults who have decided to test the rules; they are little furballs of energy who have recently discovered what their legs can do, in a world where everything is new. Psychologists offer different answers with a whole new perspective and might surprise you as to why children run away, and it is not about misbehaviour. That is a lot of practice, and none of it is aimed at annoying anyone. A toddler who runs is hitting a marker, not breaking a rule. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test Get the latest Lifestyle News and more. Download the TOI app.