At what age do most children have a secure sense of object permanence?

The development of object permanence is a significant milestone in early childhood cognitive development, typically observed around the age of 18 months. Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible. This cognitive skill reflects a child's ability to form mental representations of the world around them.

Children start to show signs of understanding object permanence between 4 to 7 months, such as looking for a toy that has been hidden. However, it is around 18 months that most children exhibit a more secure grasp on this concept. They can actively search for objects that are out of sight, indicating that they not only recognize the object's existence but also expect it to be in a specific location.

In contrast, 12 months may be an early stage where some signs of object permanence appear, but it's not fully developed. By 24 months, children have a stronger and more sophisticated understanding of object permanence and can apply that knowledge in more complex ways, but the secure sense is typically established earlier around 18 months. At 30 months, this understanding is quite advanced, but by this age, most children are well beyond the crucial milestone of developing a secure sense of object permanence. Thus, 18 months is recognized as the age when a secure sense