6 stages describing the features of the socio-emotional development of a child from 0 to 42 months:
1) First stage: self-regulation and interest in the world (0-3 months).
2) The second stage: the establishment of relationships (the stage of contact and communication, 3-6 months).
3) Third stage: intentionality and two-way communication (6-9 months): purposeful and interactive use of emotions.
4) Fourth stage: solving social problems, mood regulation and self-awareness (10-18 months): the child uses a series of interactive emotional signals/gestures to communicate (he learns to manage his feelings through emotional signs and negotiations with adults) and a little later to solve certain tasks (to achieve the desired result, he begins to use combinations of three to four steps, which will further lead to the connection of words in a sentence and to the development of logical thinking).
5) Fifth stage: formation of symbols and the use of words and concepts (19-30 months). The use of symbols and concepts to express intentions/feelings and a little later for other, not just basic needs. Thinking in symbols leads to the development of speech and contributes to mental development.
6) Sixth stage: emotional thinking, logic and sense of reality (from 31 months). The child creates logical connections between emotions and concepts, learns to logically connect symbols, and classifies subjective and objective experience. Logical thinking contributes to the development of skills such as solving mathematical problems, argumentation. At this stage, the child can already invent, for example, come up with the rules of the game.
This stage formed the basis of the concept of DIR (see DIR/Floortime in Chapter 2.1 Key Psychological Concepts in Clinical Psychology).