Babies between the ages of 6 and 8 months usually grow and change rapidly. Some parents may compare their development to others as they are too anxious about that. However, babies are individuals and their growth are often affected by individual differences and the environment, making it difficult to establish a uniform standard.
Here are some developmental milestones that most babies achieve by 6 – 8 months for your reference, so that you can understand the growth and development of your baby better.
Developmental Milestones: Physical Development
The physical development of 6 – 8-month-old babies is more noticeable. They have more significant improvements in both gross and fine motor skills, and are often reflected in these actions:
- Crawl in all directions
- Can sit or stand alone for at least 10 minutes, and move around with hips or limbs
- Can stand with an adult holding them
- Eat their feet when lying on the back
- Grasp small objects with fingertips
- Can pick up two objects at the same time, such as a baby bottle and a toy.
- Can hold their hands
- Begin to eat with hands and can grab a cup or a spoon
During this stage, you may use some toys to help them to work on all aspects of their skills! For instance, some babies may have trouble sitting and standing. They cannot and are unwilling to sit when they feel bored, restless, and powerless. This is when Fisher-Price’s PLAY & LEARN ACTIVITY CUBE can help.
You can encourage your baby to sit and stand for a longer period of time with it. Start by teaching them the fun activities that they can do with the toy! You can show them how to put the building blocks of different shapes into the corresponding cutouts, and to role-play a telephone conversation using the toy phone. Then, just let them explore by themselves! Babies may grasp and throw the blocks, try to match them with the cutouts, or stack them. These will help them to improve their grasping and coordination skills, and also strengthen their upper body. After some time, they will be able to sit upright steadily.
Cognitive development:
6 – 8-month-old babies become more intelligent, as shown by:
- Become very interested in the cause and effect relationship
- Understand that external objects are three-dimensional
- Look for the objects in where it first appears
- Understand the concept of “in" and “out"
- Understand the concept of “one" and “many"
- Can recall things from the past, and have expectations of the familiar things that will happen next
- Can imitate the actions of others
- Can solve simple problems, like pulling toys around with a string
- Understand simple instructions
- Babble and make all kinds of sounds
- Make syllables to express a concrete meaning, such as “ma" and “da."
Their intellectual growth is extremely rapid at this stage. They can infer some patterns by observing parents’ daily routines, perceive space and quantity through daily games, and even solve some “problems"! Try to let your baby play with Fisher- Price’s PLAY & LEARN ACTIVITY CUBE, it may even help to boost their growth!
They may grasp the triangular blocks and try to fit them in a round or square hole until they find the correct shape hole, press the piano keys from memory to play the
song they like, and be surprised to find that the blocks he put into the box always ended up spilling from the hippo’s mouth, which makes them want to repeat the process over and over again. Even when you leave the box in the blanket far away from them, they can be creative and get the toy by pulling the blanket around. When playing with it, they will get stimulated to think and develop problem-solving skills.
Babies start to babble during this period. No matter what they say or whether they speak clearly or not, don’t stop or correct them as this will sap their motivation. You can speak more to your baby during playtime, and your verbal input will be very helpful for their language development.
Social & Emotional Development:
Between 6 – 8 months, you will start to notice babies’ social and emotional development by the following behaviour:
- Begin to develop separation anxiety and fear of strangers
- Can recognize their family members and familiar person, but they will decide whether to hug the person or not
- Attract parents’ attention by crying when they are not around
- Can respond to a person’s voice even if they’re not in-sight
- Play toys alone
- Like mirrors
Babies have already developed emotional intelligence by this age, and they will keep showing sweet expressions to their mother. They are becoming more independent and are able to play alone for a certain time (Mothers should still watch them aside). Parents can encourage them to keep going by giving them interesting sound-making
toys to attract their attention, and guide them into the “self" state.
At around 8 months, they will start crawling. It will be best to teach them how to crawl by giving sound-making toys. Fisher-Price’s PRESS ‘N GO MONSTER TRUCK can play fun music and sounds to attract babies crawling to them and give responses, which is very helpful for their development of social and emotional skills.
During the period of 6 – 8 months, babies tend to have more noticeable growth and changes in all aspects, such as physical, cognitive, language, and social and emotional development. The above developmental milestones are just for reference, some babies may achieve them at a later time. As long as it’s not due to any diseases or other reasons, there’s no need to rush. The most important task for you is to take good care of your baby and make sure he is happy, healthy and safe.
The parenting advice here is given as suggestions only. We recommend consulting your healthcare provider to know more.
This article was contributed by Fisher-Price and republished on theAsianparent with permission.