Six Month Visit
Milestones Matter
How your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, and moves offers important clues about his or her development. Check the milestones your child has reached by 6 months.
What Most Children Do By This Age
Socal / 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 / 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 / Physical Developement
- 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
Feeding & Elimination
- Continue nursing or feeding with an iron fortified formula. If you have already started solid foods, you will notice that your baby may be taking less milk. This is expected and each infant will proceed at their own pace with solid foods.
- Some infants at this age are eating solids 2 to 3 times per day. Follow your baby’s cues on comfort with increasing textures of foods. You may be making your own baby food and be able to control the texture of feeds more easily.
- Introduce one new food no more often than every 3-4 days. You may now offer your baby whole milk yogurt, eggs, fish, and foods containing peanut butter. Continue to be aware of choking hazards.
- Offering meats is now a good time. As always if you do not feel your baby is ready to move on the additional foods you should wait another month or two.
- Continue to avoid honey or corn syrup until twelve months of age.
- If baby is still exclusively breast fed or receives greater than 50% of intake from breast milk, you will continue to give Tri-Vi-Sol 1 cc ad day. If baby in not getting any fluorinated water and is breast fed as above, the vitamin will be changed to Tri-Vi-Flor.
- Formula fed infants normally do not require vitamin supplementation unless they do not have a fluoride source in their diet.
- There is a normal variability in stool frequency ranging from one to three times a day for some and once every few days for others. Let us know if your baby consistently has hard stools.
Your Child Knows Best
Act Early
If you have concerns about the way your child plays, learns, speaks, acts, or moves, or if your child:
- Does not try to get things that are in reach
- Shows no affection for caregivers
- Does not respond to sounds around him
- Has difficulty getting things to mouth
- Does not make vowel sounds (“ah”, “eh”, “oh”)
- Does not roll over in either direction
- Does not laugh or make squealing sounds
- Seems very stiff, with tight muscles
- Seems very floppy, like a rag doll
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children be screened for general development using standardized, validated tools at 9, 18, and 30 months and for autism at 18 months or whenever a parent or provider has a concern. Ask your Provider about your child’s developmental screening.