A 6 to 9 month old baby is just beginning to open up a world of movement, language, communication, and emotion, making for a busy developmental stage. Underlined within the discussion below are a range of emergent behaviors that babies will begin and then hopefully master by the end of this stage. If you find your baby is not doing these things, reach out to Kids BRAIN for more information on developmental screening and consultation to help them get there, and then to thrive!
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Little explorers. Babies love to explore the world. That is how they learn. When your little one is between 6-9 months old, they have the motor skills to engage with the world more purposefully. They can crawl on hands and knees to get to that shiny object. They turn and look at you when you say: “Jason, where are you going?”. When they reach and grab that fun toy, they look at it, inspect it, turn it around, shake it, drop it. It is like their own little science experiment. They discover that it makes a cool sound when you shake it and then repeat the action again and again to get the same effect. They transfer it from one hand to the other. While doing this they are sometimes babbling with inflection and rhythm; it seems that they are actually talking to the toy. Don’t spend a lot of money on toys; the spoon, bowl, box, empty bottle, leaf; any or all of those are incredibly interesting to them.
They also know they are not alone in this and look back and forth between the toy and you. “It is time to go”, you say as you pick them up from the floor. They start fussing. A couple of months ago they would cry mostly because of physical discomfort, but now they can express distinct emotions, such as anger, sadness, fear and excitement. They are also starting to understand ‘no’ which is a word you will probably use a lot in the next several years. For now, just get on the floor, bang empty bottles with them, say: “Wow! Bottle. I like the bottle! It makes noise.” Bang. Bang. Join your little explorer in discovering the magic of all the ordinary things that surround us and the joy of doing it with someone else.
