Milestone Moments: 6-9 Months
- Reaches for objects while on stomach
- Pulls self forward on stomach
- Sits alone briefly
- Stands with support
- Transfers toys between hands
- Claps hands
- Uses pinch to pick up small objects
- Opens mouth to wait for a spoon to enter
- Understands "no"
- Babbles multiple syllables
- May say "dada" or "mama"
- Shouts to attract attention
Tips from a Physical Therapist
- Floor Play
- Give your child plenty of time to play on the floor throughout the day. They are learning to explore at this age. Place toys just outside of their reach in sitting (prone) position to encourage them to find unique ways to retrieve the toys.
- Tummy time is still important, even if your baby can roll off their tummy at this time, make sure you still place them on their tummies. This will help when they are motivated to begin crawling!
- Give them space to learn
- Kids will practice an activity repeatedly and they will fail many times before they learn a successful way to crawl, sit, get in and out of sitting, etc. Allow them the time, space, and grace to fail!
- It is fine to occasionally help your child solve a task, but let them explore and attempt to solve the problem by themselves!
- No need for equipment
- Keep your kids out of Bumpos, walkers, and other baby equipment! Of course, there are times that you need to occupy them while you get a few things done in a safe environment. A great option for this is a pack n' play with toys in it! The more kids are in baby equipment, the more they learn inappropriate postures and movement patterns, and the less opportunity they have to explore and try out different ways of moving and reaching! If you need to put them in baby equipment, try to limit their time to less than 15 minutes.
- Another great idea for helping your child work on sitting, balance, and protective reactions is to place pillows around their hips to give them a little stability and to protect them when they lose their balance. It’s ok for them to fall and lose their balance in a safe environment. This is how they learn that they moved too far one way and need to correct on their next attempt.
- Some parents will also place their child in a laundry basket with a few pillows or pool noodles and toys to give them the ability to sit and practice balance reactions within safe limits, while the parent finishes their own activities (in sight of baby).
- An item I would recommend is a baby activity table. This is a place for your baby to pull to stand. However, be careful that they do not pull it over on themselves. Or you can take the legs off of the activity table and place it flat on the ground. This is a great motivation for crawling, reaching on their belly, or for getting out of sitting and back onto the ground.
- Be a motivator
- Frequently, at this age, children can sit once they are placed, but are unable to get in and out of sitting themselves. You can help your child through this transition by placing a toy out of reach. This gives them the time and space to attempt to get out of sitting or into sitting to reach the toy.
- The best thing you can do for your child is to give them an exciting environment that they want to explore! This can be through well-placed toys: on the couch, if enticing them to start pulling to stand; 5 feet in front of them, if enticing them to move forward on the ground; or just out of reach in sitting to encourage and work on the transition out of sitting into a quadruped position.
Tips from a Speech Therapist
Here are some speech therapist tips for speech development at this age.
- Monitor Hearing
- Babies learn speech and language by hearing. Monitor your baby’s ability to hear and keep a record of recurring bouts of ear infections. The presence of fluid makes it more difficult for the child to hear, resulting in fluctuating conductive hearing loss. Children should keep all well-child appointments and be monitored by their pediatrician to ensure healthy middle ear functioning and good hearing for learning to understand and use speech and language.
- Play Games
- Play peek-a-boo, tickling games; sing songs with hand motions and movements (Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Row-Row-Row Your Boat). Encourage pat-a-cake, blowing kisses, and waving. Respond positively when your child imitates or initiates the movements that correspond to these activities.
- Make Eye Contact
- Encourage and reinforce eye contact and imitation of facial expressions. You can teach this by using “look” or your baby’s name to get them to make eye contact with you. Remember to be consistent with the name that you are asking them to respond to. Avoid confusing your baby by sometimes calling them by a nickname and sometimes by their real name. If your baby doesn’t make eye contact with you, encourage by gently tapping their nose and then your nose. Respond positively when your baby looks at you while doing this. Move to mirror play and imitation of facial expressions. Smile and giggle with your baby when he/she imitates facial expressions.
- Direct their Attention
- Encourage your baby to look toward or at people and familiar items that you name and/or point to. If your baby is not doing this you can help by gently turning their head to look at familiar people and items that you name. Play with bubbles or other toys that require joint attention (blocks, shape sorters, stacking toys), and say “look” to encourage your child to look at the bubbles or toys and back to you for more. Respond positively when your child looks at people and items that you call attention to.
- Vocal Play
- Engage in repetitive vocal play with your child. Give eye contact and respond with pleasure when your child vocalizes. Imitate your child’s spontaneous vocalizations and take turns with your baby. Act as if your baby’s cooing, vowel sounds, or babbling is speech. Imitating your baby’s vocalizations will encourage more vocalizations. Try using rhythmic repetitive words or sounds during toy play to help encourage your baby to babble during play. If your baby is banging a toy, bang another toy as you say “bang, bang, bang” and your baby may try to say “bababa.”
- Word Play
- Emphasize fun, double consonant combinations as well as environmental sounds within your natural conversations and play during the day (e.g. “uh-oh,” “mama,” “dada,” "wuh-wuh,” “bye-bye,” “boo-boo,” “moo-moo,” “beep-beep”). Play with farm animal and vehicle toys to encourage imitation of these reduplicated syllables. Respond with pleasure when your child attempts these combinations even if they are not perfect.
- When your baby is babbling, name the object that he/she may be playing with or looking at (e.g., if he/she says “baba” while playing with bubbles, you can say, “Yes! bubbles.”).
- Read
- If your baby is beginning to show interest in books, provide board books with durable, easy-to-turn pages. Look for ones that have a single photograph per page. Enjoy looking at the books with your child and encourage them to pat the items that you name and look at together. Respond positively if your baby vocalizes while engaged in shared reading (e.g. if he/she says “ba” while patting the ball picture, you can say “Yes ball”).
- Minimize Distractions
- Talk to your child throughout daily routines. Minimize distractions (TV, your music, social media, etc.). When your baby vocalizes, give him/her your full attention; make eye contact, and give positive reinforcement. Remember that your baby will need to understand words before he/she can say them, so be sure to continue to talk in meaningful ways to your baby throughout the day. Tell him/her the names of things he/she is looking at, playing with, touching, tasting. Describe the actions of things he/she is directly involved in.
Tips from an Occupational Therapist
- More of that wonderful tummy time!
- It really is key that little ones spend so much of their time exploring and playing on their tummies.
- At this age, you really start to see more mobility, and having your child start on their bellies encourages more muscle strengthening and transitioning skills between positions that are seen in the beginning stages of crawling!
- Toys get smaller.
- Babies at this age become more curious about objects and attempt more manipulation.
- Keep close supervision of items within reach, but some of the best toys are just everyday objects.
- You should see and encourage transferring of toys between hands such as blocks or the car keys.
- Remove items such as pegs or simple puzzle shapes from a board, a sippy cup from a cup holder, or rings from a ring stand.
- Encourage your child to clap for themself in play.
- Clapping is more than just a social skill; it is a fine motor skill that is built upon bringing toys to midline (middle of the body). It helps with eye-hand coordination as well as emotional development.
- Clap during songs or when reading books together.
- Use pinch to pick up small objects.
- Small objects need to be kept out of reach of little hands due to choking hazards, but this is the natural age when pinching skills start to develop. A great time to work on this is at mealtimes.
- Promote your child to pick up small food items like puffs and feed themself.
- You should see raking (using all fingers to bring into their palm) and pinching with 2-3 fingers to pick up just one item.
- Cause and effect toys.
- This is a great time to introduce "cause and effect" toys such as latch toys or switch toys where something surprising and exciting happens after they push a button or flip a switch.
- It is great for play skills development in learning relationships between objects.
- This also gives children an understanding that they have control over their environment and that it's fun to play in exploring what's around them.
- New foods!
- Mealtimes provide numerous opportunities to explore their sensory environment as well as develop fine motor and self-care skills.
- At 6-9 months, foods progress from thin to thick purees followed by soft mashed table foods (8-9 months) including soft cookies and lumpy foods.
- Place a spoon on baby's table surface, and let them play and explore with it–banging on the table, moving through foods, and exploring orally by placing it in and around the mouth. This gets your child used to the utensil and ready for the day (much later) that they can start feeding themself with it.
- At 8-9 months, it is also important to introduce hard munchables. This includes hard food items that they are not to consume yet, but to explore within their mouth only (e.g., raw carrot and celery sticks, hard dried fruit sticks, frozen waffles, etc.). It is a vital piece in the steps of feeding for "waking up" oral structures in their mouth, and it prepares them for more complex textures down the road.
- This is also the time to introduce drinking from a straw and begin practicing drinking from a cup (9 months).
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