Baby at 6 Months Old

A 6 months baby weight will have roughly doubled or slightly more than doubled from birth weight. An average baby's weight at this age is around 15.5 to 16lbs. At six months old, your baby is learning a lot of new things. Your baby is learning about the spoken language, about communicating, about different emotions such as happiness and sadness, and about other things such as what they like and what they dislike.

Please see here for a summary of a 6 months old baby's development milestones. Here we will list some of the physical growth you might notice in your child, and provide some helpful hints and tips on how you can help along with your baby's Physical and Social development.

• Your baby should be able to sit fairly well with some support, and some babies may be able to sit without any support.

• Able to roll around from back to belly, and is also able to lift chest and shoulders off the floor.
  What you can do to help: Continue with supervised tummy play time each day.

• A baby at 6 month may have some teeth showing by this time, and will like to chew and bite on fingers and other small objects.
  What you can do to help: Keep small objects that may be a choking hazard out of reach, and give your baby toys such as teethers that are designed for chewing.

• Your baby can partially support some of their body weight when held up in a standing position.
  What you can do to help: hold and support your baby standing on your lap, and he or she will try to stand up and "bounce" on your lap.

• Likes to knock objects down or over, and starts to transfer objects from one hand to the other hand.
  As your child is holding one object, pass another to his hand already holding an object, so that your baby will try to pass the object to the empty hand, and take the new object from you.

• Likes to grab on the objects, but will have difficulty grabbing on to moving things.
  Have a lot of fun and interesting toys around such as larger balls (no choking hazard), toys on wheels, and stacking toys.

Social and Emotional

• Your baby by this time is forming a special attachment to his or her primary caregiver, and may resist being separated from them.

• Your baby will know how to ask to be picked up by reaching out their arms.

• Fear of strangers is a common thing, and your baby can now recognize a stranger as being different from regular family members that they are familiar with.
  If your baby is frightened of strangers, do not force your child to be held by the new visitor, and give your baby time to get used to the person who he or she has not seen before, or have not seen in a long time.

• A baby at six months old is slowly developing a sense of humor and may laugh at things that are funny and interesting to him or her.
  Playing peek-a-boo games is a great way to have fun and to get your baby laughing.

These listed above are some of the milestones that you may or may not notice with your six months old baby. Don't worry if you don't notice some of them, and don't worry about comparing your child to other children. Some children will develop faster than others. Every infant is unique, and they will develop and grow at their own pace. The important thing is to pay attention and respond to your child's unique needs, and let your child know that you understand them and that they are very loved and cared for. This helps develop a trusting relationship between you and your baby, and it is through this trust that other learnings and developments are built upon.

Six Months Baby Language Development >>