Your Child’s Development Birth – 8 Months

Physical Development

Milestones: By eight months, most babies can:

  • Sit up on their own.
  • Move things from one hand to the other.
  • Use fingers to move food towards themselves.
  • Sit without support.

Babies will naturally learn new skills and likely move from one skill to the next without being “taught” how to do the next thing.

Body Awareness and Control:

  • Babies will begin developing predictable sleeping, eating, and toileting patterns.
  • Babies need plenty of time to move freely on their back, in a safe space. This gives your baby a chance to practice moving hands, arms, feet, and legs.

Muscle Development and Coordination:

  • Babies will develop head and body stability. Babies will start lying on their backs and playing with their feet, and then they will begin to roll from their back to their front.
  • Babies will begin to use both hands to hold something in front of them while lying on their backs. When your baby starts reaching for things, you can place a few simple toys within their reach. It will take a while for them to get good at grasping things, but practice will build their skills. You can put toys slightly beyond their reach so that they can work towards getting to them.
  • Babies will start getting up on hands and knees and rocking back and forth.
  • Babies will then move from hands and knees into a sitting position.

Nutrition

  • Your baby will suck and swallow liquids and associate breast or bottle with being fed.

Safety: 

  • Your baby will cry to indicate stress and to seek help.
  • When your baby starts to crawl, creating an even larger, safe space for him to explore is important.
  • Be careful not to leave a baby out of arm’s reach on a high surface like a bed or table.

Language & Literacy Development

Milestones: By eight months, most babies can:

  • Take turns making sounds with you.
  • Blow “raspberries” (stick out tongue and blow).
  • Make noises other than crying, such as squealing and cooing.

Communication: Your baby is communicating from the day they are born. Infants use crying, sounds, and gestures to communicate their feelings, needs, and ideas.

Expressive Communication/ Expressive Language:

  • Even young babies and their family members have “conversations,” where the baby coos or babbles and waits, and the adult talks back to the baby. Starting with these conversations, infants begin to learn how conversations go, enjoy the experience of being “listened to,” and eagerly take in the words their families are saying to them.
  • When they start saying words, sometimes they say a part of the word, like the beginning or the end, or they might make sounds that sound like the rhythm of the word. Their sounds will start to have meaning. Your baby may say “m-m-m-m-m” when asking for mama.
  • Babies will use gestures to communicate. Gestures include waving for “bye-bye,” arms up for “pick me up,” and shaking head from side to side to resist eating a certain food.

Receptive Communication/Receptive Language:

  • Speak to your baby as you would speak to another adult without using “baby talk” or simplifying your words.
  • Listening to the language of their families, children soon start to distinguish familiar sounds and to build a vocabulary of words they understand, even before they can. Babies at this age understand more words than they can speak
  • Babies begin to understand the meaning of tone as well as words. For instance, they can notice when your tone is excited, loving, frustrated, or scared and will eventually learn how to use tone in their own conversations.

Emergent Reading

  • Children use books as any other object by exploring with hands and mouth. This looks like your baby grabbing a board book or fabric book and putting the book in their mouth to chew on it.
  • Read books to your baby. This is your baby’s first experience of “reading” and the beginning step to understanding that books hold stories, words, and information for your baby.

Social-Emotional Development

Milestones: By eight months, most babies can:

  • Show several facial expressions, like happy, sad, angry, and surprised.
  • Look when you call their name.
  • React when you leave.
  • Smile or laugh when you play peek-a-boo.

Self-Concept and Social Identity:

  • Babies typically come into the world ready to relate to people, to make eye contact, and, soon, to smile.
  • When family members smile, talk, listen, respond to their cries, and nurture them, your baby feels that they are lovable and important.
  • Your baby may smile or laugh when imitating an adult.
  • Babies are very interested in the people around them and learn about themselves by interacting with those who care for them.
  • Smile at your baby and talk to them regularly. Listen and respond to their cooing and other sounds.
  • Engage your baby playfully in routines like diapering and dressing.
  • Games like peek-a-boo are delightful for your baby and help remind them that you go away but always come back.

Attachment:

  • Babies show interest in familiar adults and develop strong attachments to primary caregivers, such as recognizing and smiling at them.
  • Babies are able to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar adults.
  • Your child chooses to be with familiar people and seeks them out in new or uncertain situations.
  • Take time in new situations to help your baby adjust to new people. Some babies like to look at people for a while before they are held by them.

Learning about others:

  • Your baby is demonstrating increasing awareness of other children.
  • Your baby will do what is called “parallel play,” where they lay next to other babies but do not directly interact.
  • Your baby will start interacting with other babies by moving towards them or taking toys from them.
  • Your baby carefully watches people’s expressions for messages to see if they are smiling, tense, or sad.

Regulation and Expression (Behavioral and Emotional):

  • Your baby will communicate with you through crying.
  • Respond promptly when your baby is hungry, sleepy, needs a diaper change, or wants your attention.
  • Talk to your child to give them words for what they are feeling or doing.

Cognitive Development & Learning

Milestones: By 8 months, most children:

  • Start to show interest in faces, track moving objects with their eyes,
  • Recognize familiar people and objects, and explore their environment using their senses.
  • They will also begin coordinating their visual and auditory senses, reaching for objects, and showing curiosity in bright colors and patterns.

Inquiry and Exploration:

  • Children show awareness of occurrences in their surroundings and use their senses to explore people and objects. For example, a child may turn in the direction of a sound
  • A child shows an understanding that their actions can have an effect on people and objects in their environment and repeats actions to duplicate effects. For example, a caregiver gently bounces a child on her lap; when she stops, the child moves his body up and down until the caregiver resumes bouncing

Reasoning and Problem Solving:

  • Children seek to make sense of what happens in their environment. For example, an 8-month-old baby may start to anticipate daily routines, such as bedtime and mealtime

Play:

  • Children show pleasure in simple sensory games. For example, a child’s mother tugs at the blanket in his hands, and he tugs it back toward himself. They do this several times as the baby laughs

Executive Function:

  • A child can act intentionally to achieve a goal. For example, an 8-month-old rolls across the floor to reach a toy
  • Children persist in pursuing objects of interest. For example, a 9-month-old crawls after her family’s cat

Symbolic Representation:

  • Children may calm in the presence of their primary caregiver. For example, a child clings to her teacher when a stranger enters the room.

Tips for support cognitive learning:

  • Narrate your day, describe what you’re doing, and respond to your baby’s sounds
  • Singing to your baby not only soothes them but also enhances their auditory skills and memory
  • Use colorful board books and read to your baby daily. Point to pictures and describe them. This captures their attention and introduces them to new words.
  • Offer toys with different textures, shapes, and sounds. Soft rattles, colorful blocks, and textured balls stimulate their senses and curiosity.
  • Simple games like peek-a-boo or imitating facial expressions help develop their social skills and sense of humor.
  • Place toys just out of reach to motivate your baby to reach and grasp. This enhances their motor skills and problem-solving abilities.
  • Mimic your baby’s actions and sounds. This encourages them to repeat and learn through imitation.
  • Point out and name objects around the house or during walks. This helps them make connections between words and objects as they explore their world.
  • Spend time observing and interacting with your baby. Notice what interests them and engage in activities that capture their attention. Watching older siblings play nearby is another way to engage your baby.
  • Allow your baby to explore their environment safely. This encourages inquiry and helps them understand cause and effect. These everyday interactions and playful moments are essential for your baby’s cognitive and emotional growth, setting the stage for lifelong learning.

Number Sense Development

Milestones: At 8 months, most children:

  • Start to grasp early concepts of numbers.

Tips for strengthening Number Sense skills:

  • When playing with toys, you can start to introduce the concept of size by sorting them into big and small piles. For example, “This is a big block, and this is a small block.”
  • Use shape sorters or soft toys to introduce different shapes. Describe the shapes as your baby touches them, like “This is a circle, and this is a square.”
  • Create simple patterns with toys or objects, such as alternating colors or shapes, and show them to your baby. Even though they might not fully understand, it helps to expose them to patterns early on.
  • Lay your baby on a play mat with different colored sections or shapes. Encourage them to reach for different parts, saying things like, “the red square feels soft.”
  • Show your baby two objects and talk about their differences. For example, “This one is heavy, and this one is light,” or “This ball is soft, and this block is hard.”
  • During bath time, use cups of different sizes to pour water and talk about concepts like full and empty. Say, “This cup is full of water, and this one is empty.”
  • Place different shaped toys around your baby during tummy time and encourage them to reach out and touch them. Describe the shapes they are reaching for.
  • Rhythm and Beat: Clap your hands or use a rattle to create simple rhythms. This helps your baby start to recognize patterns in sounds.

Diving Deeper: Why are these skills important for my baby to learn?

Engaging with early math skills like sorting and recognizing shapes stimulates a child’s brain, enhancing their ability to think critically and solve problems. These activities help build connections in the brain that are essential for higher-order thinking skills. For example, when a child sorts objects by size, they are practicing categorization, which is a fundamental cognitive process.

Early math activities such as pattern recognition and sorting objects by attributes like color or size help children develop logical reasoning skills. These skills are essential for making sense of the world and for problem-solving in everyday situations. For example, recognizing that a sequence of red and blue blocks follows a pattern helps children predict what comes next, fostering their ability to think logically.

Understanding spatial relationships is crucial for navigating the world. Activities that involve recognizing and manipulating shapes help children develop an awareness of how objects relate to each other in space. This skill is vital for tasks like reading, where children need to understand the spatial arrangement of letters and words on a page.

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Explore these additional resources to observe how your child grows and changes over time and whether your child meets the typical developmental milestones. Families, grandparents, early childhood providers, and other caregivers can participate in developmental monitoring.