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By the time your baby is six months old, he or she should be able to do a variety of new things such as rolling over and recognize faces.
Jade Elliott spoke with Carrie Martinez, Utah Department of Health, to discuss the important milestones your child should reach by six months old and tools to help parents on this episode of the Baby Your Baby Podcast.
Social and emotional
- Knows familiar faces and begins to know if someone is a stranger
- Likes to play with others, especially parents
- Responds to other people’s emotions and often seems happy
- Likes to look at self in a mirror
Language and communication
- Responds to sounds by making sounds
- Strings vowels together when babbling (“ah,” “eh,” “oh”) and likes taking turns with parent while making sounds
- Responds to own name
- Makes sounds to show joy and displeasure
- Begins to say consonant sounds (jabbering with “m,” “b”)
Cognitive (learning, thinking, problem-solving)
- Looks around at things nearby
- 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
Movement and physical development
- Rolls over in both directions (front to back, back to front)
- Begins to sit without support
- When standing, supports weight on legs and might bounce
- Rocks back and forth, sometimes crawling backward before moving forward
What do you do if your baby is not meeting these milestones?
- Early Childhood Utah: https://earlychildhoodutah.utah.gov/
- BabyWatch Early Intervention: https://health.utah.gov/cshcn/programs/babywatch.html
- Office of Home Visiting: https://homevisiting.utah.gov/
- Parents as Teachers program: https://pcautah.org/programs/parents-as-teachers.php
- Help me Grow Utah https://helpmegrowutah.org/
- Ages and Stages free resources page: https://agesandstages.com/free-resources/
- CDC milestone tracker has many videos for all ages of development available here: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/photolibrary/6months.html
Listed below are 6 month milestone videos:
- https://youtu.be/_ewfCVshil0
- https://youtu.be/TkFgYc303f0
- https://youtu.be/H5yukc5becc
- https://youtu.be/1MFgx-pr8hs
- https://youtu.be/gnwtliGFY5s
Can parents get their baby on back on track on their own, or is this something they need a professional for?
Most of the time, children get the developmental skills they need when they are given opportunities to practice. Parents play a huge role in their child’s development, and often can help their child right away. For example, if your child’s screening showed a delay in language, you help your child right away, just by practicing this area of development.
However, sometimes your child may need professional intervention. In these situations, it’s best to work with your healthcare or childcare provider to get resources or referrals to professional agencies who are trained to help your child reach their developmental milestone needs.
The Baby Your Baby program provides many resources for all pregnant women and new moms in Utah. There is also expert advice from the Utah Department of Health and Intermountain Healthcare that air each week on KUTV 2News.