Developmental Milestones of Your Elon Musk
By Cora Frazier, February 3, 2025
The way your Elon Musk plays, moves, and communicates offers important data about his development. Although every child is different, recognizing where your Elon Musk is on the curve can help you identify potential problems early and allow for intervention, under the guidance of your pediatrician and the federal regulatory agency.
Social/Emotional Milestones
By this age, your Elon Musk should be able to wave hello and goodbye and point to Cabinet employees he plans to fire. He should be able to hug stuffed toys, recognize the people who care for him, clap when a judge dismisses an insider-trading lawsuit, and blow kisses. If, at this age, your Elon Musk can show affection only through the social-media platform he owns, consult a pediatrician about whether he may be suffering from an underlying issue that could have broader emotional or geopolitical implications.
Language/Communication Milestones
Your Elon Musk should be able to say at least three words besides “Mama,” “Dada,” “Earth,” “wow,” and “billion.” If not, speech therapy may be recommended, or else otolaryngological testing, to determine whether your Elon Musk has a hearing impairment that is impeding his ability to form diplomatically appropriate speech. By now, Elon Musk should be able to point to objects when they are identified by others, including the more than ten billion dollars his companies have been given by NASA, and any household pets.
Cognitive/Reasoning Milestones
Ideally, by this age, your Elon Musk can stack two or more blocks in a model of the tunnel that his construction company built beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. He can play with toys—for instance, pushing a recalled Tesla Cybertruck across the floor or mimicking adults as they drink from cups, brush their hair, or use their phones to post deepfakes.
Physical/Movement Milestones
Your Elon Musk should be able to walk at a domestic political rally in his company-branded shoes without holding on to anything. He should be able to feed himself with his hands and drink from a cup without a lid, although he may spill sometimes. Elon Musk should at least try to listen to shareholders and use a spoon.
When to See a Doctor
As you assess your Elon Musk’s development, consider it holistically. What are some non-downsizing activities that your Elon Musk enjoys? What are some activities that you enjoy doing with your Elon Musk? Ideally, he will have clear likes and dislikes that lie outside his early-school activities and his investment portfolio. Your goal is to raise a happy, healthy, socially conscious Elon Musk who will engage with family and peers. If, instead, your Elon Musk is showing signs of aggressive behavior, such as biting, hitting, spitting, or creating the largest platform for disinformation in the world, this could be a cause for concern. Consult with your day-care provider about whether time-outs involving quiet moon-sand play would encourage more regulated decision-making. Reinforce prosocial behaviors, such as shrinking his carbon footprint, and ignore his attempts to make fascist hand gestures in his stroller. If time-outs prove ineffective, and your Elon Musk in fact looks poised to take a prominent role in the most powerful anti-democratic regime in the world, you may want to consider a more active intervention, with the help of a licensed professional, such as occupational therapy, in which your Elon Musk can play with tubes and practice sharing balls of varying sizes. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that you can only do so much. Elon Musk is his own person with his own will. All you can do is hope that, one day, he will understand that throwing trucks at peers can lead to loneliness, as can rending the social fabric that has held our nation together since the New Deal. If not, you can always try sleep training. ♦Published in the print edition of the February 10, 2025, issue, with the headline “Developmental Milestones of Your Elon Musk.”
