Six to Nine Months
Developmental Milestones
How your six to nine month old plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves offers important clues about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age.
What’s unique to your six month old? What is typical of a nine month old?
Developmental Milestones by 9 months
Social and Emotional Milestones
At six months:
- Likes to play with others, especially parents
- Responds to other people’s emotions and often seems happy
- video iconLikes to look at self in a mirror
By nine months:
- May be afraid of strangers
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- May be clingy with familiar adults
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- Has favorite toys
Communication Milestones
Language/Communication
At six months:
- Responds to sounds by making sounds
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- Strings vowels together when babbling (“ah,” “eh,” “oh”) and likes taking turns with parent while making sounds
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- Responds to own name
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- Makes sounds to show joy and displeasure
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- Begins to say consonant sounds (jabbering with “m,” “b”)
By nine months:
- Understands “no”
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- Makes a lot of different sounds like “mamamama” and “bababababa”
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- Copies sounds and gestures of others
- Uses fingers to point at things
Physical Milestones
Gross motor/Fine motor
At six months:
- Rolls over in both directions (front to back, back to front)
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- Begins to sit without support
- When standing, supports weight on legs and might bounce
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- Rocks back and forth, sometimes crawling backward before moving forward
By nine months:
- Stands, holding on
- Can get into sitting position
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- Sits without support
- Pulls to stand
- Crawls
Cognitive Milestones
Learning, thinking, problem-solving
At six months:
- Looks around at things nearby
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- Brings things to mouth
- Shows curiosity about things and tries to get things that are out of reach
- Begins to pass things from one hand to the other
By nine months:
- Watches the path of something as it falls
- Looks for things she sees you hide
- Plays peek-a-boo
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- Puts things in his mouth
- Moves things smoothly from one hand to the other
- Picks up things like cereal o’s between thumb and index finger
Questions about your child’s development? Milford Thrives is happy to provide resources on child development, age-appropriate games and activities and developmental screening. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
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