Nine Month Milestones

By the time your baby reaches nine-months old, there are certain milestones that they are going to have met in their physical development, but also in their mental and emotional development. The biggest changes that you are going to see in your nine-month old are their physical development, although their mental and emotional development is there as well.

One of the things that your baby will be able to do by the time they are nine-months is travel across the room and possibly through your house. How your baby is going to move from one room to the next or through the house is going to depend on your baby; they might scoot or crawl through the house, and some of them might even use furniture to walk around the house with. How your baby is moving around the house is not as important, what is important is that they are making progress towards moving. Some babies will skip the crawling stage; they will simply go from scooting around on their bellies to walking on their own.

At nine-months old, your baby is going to know how to respond to his own name, but might only look or respond when it is a familiar person calling his name. At nine months, your baby is going to be going through some kind of separation anxiety, so be prepared for him to be wary of strangers, including grandparents who are not around all of the time.

Something else to look forward to at nine months is that your baby is going to begin understanding the spoken language. In the beginning they are only going to be able to understand a few simple words, such as bye and no, but over time, this will progress. Your baby will also be able to say a few simple words, although they might not be specific to anything. Most babies who are saying words at this stage are simply babbling. They have not learned that words go together with objects. What you can do to enhance that understanding is to sit and talk to your baby and give names to everything that you are playing with. For example, if you are talking on the phone, hand your baby a toy phone and tell them what it is called.

Once your baby reaches nine months of age their balance is going to be better than what it was. By now they will be able to sit up on their own unsupported for a long period. Some babies will also be able to go from a crawling position into a sitting position and back again, but some won’t develop that skill until later. At this age, your baby will also be interested in playing interactive games such as peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. They are also going to be interested in making noise by banging toys together.

The one thing that you are always going to need to keep in mind about your baby is that you cannot compare your baby to other babies. This is important because it is so easy for us as parents to think that because our baby hasn’t started doing the same thing as another baby that there must be something wrong with your baby; the opposite is also easy to think as well. All babies are going to reach milestones at different times; the ages given for the milestones is just an average age that babies will achieve these milestones. Some babies may meet certain milestones sooner than other babies and some will meet milestones later than other babies; in either case that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your child. If you are concerned about your baby’s development the best thing that you can do is to talk to your baby’s doctor.