Your 35-Month-Old: Retelling, Multi-Step Tasks, and Playing Together
By the Growbaby team · Published Aug 4, 2026
Written against AAP, CDC and WHO guidance. How we write these guides
At a glance
- A known story is retold with beginning, middle and end intact.
- Three-part tasks get completed without step-by-step prompting.
- Play with other children runs longer without adult refereeing.
- Sentences carry several clauses and rarely lose the thread.
- Invented stories arrive with a proper ending rather than just stopping.
Getting out of the house is a fair test of where your child has got to. Shoes on, coat on, bag by the door: three steps, held in order, without being walked through each one.
Stories come back complete, sentences carry several clauses, and play with other children holds together for longer stretches with no adult inside it.
What is new this month
Multi-step tasks are working memory made visible. Holding three instructions, keeping them in order, and tracking which one is already done is the same set of skills that later organises mornings and homework. Fixed routines are the easiest place to build it, because the order stops having to be remembered from scratch each time.
Retelling a story completely is more than recall. It has to be shaped for a listener, with enough said that it makes sense to someone who was not there, and that adjustment for another person's mind is the genuinely new part. Complex sentences make it possible, since a story needs because and then and but to hold its joints together.
Social play now carries rules negotiated among the children rather than handed down by an adult. Roles get assigned, disputes get settled, and the game often carries on without anyone propping it up from outside. How much of that a group manages alone differs a great deal, and stepping back further than feels natural is usually the right call, because the negotiating is the point of the exercise.
Week by week, in the app
Our paediatric specialist wrote one thing to notice and one thing to try for every week of the first three years. Here is what this month covers. The app works out which week your child is in from their birth date and brings each one to you on the day.
- Week 148Retelling the Story
- Week 149Performing Multi-Step Tasks
- Week 150Participating in Social Play
- Week 151Forming Complex Sentences
- Week 152Creating Their Own Story
This week, for your baby
Growbaby works out which week your baby is in from their birth date and brings that week's activity to you on the day, so you are not looking up where you are. Plus adaptive soothing for the nights and Growy for the questions in between.
This guide is for general informational purposes only. Growbaby is not a medical device and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Every baby develops at their own pace; for any question or concern about your baby's health or development, always consult your pediatrician or another qualified healthcare provider.