Important Milestones: By the End of Seven Months
Babies develop at their own pace, so it's impossible to tell exactly when your child will learn a given skill. The developmental milestones listed below will give you a general idea of the changes you can expect, but don't be alarmed if your own baby's development takes a slightly different course.
Social and Emotional
- Enjoys social play
- Interested in mirror images
- Responds to other people's expressions of emotion and appears joyful often
Cognitive
- Finds partially hidden object
- Explores with hands and mouth
- Struggles to get objects that are out of reach
Language
- Responds to own name
- Begins to respond to "no"
- Can tell emotions by tone of voice
- Responds to sound by making sounds
- Uses voice to express joy and displeasure
- Babbles chains of sounds
Movement
- Rolls both ways (front to back, back to front)
- Sits with, and then without, support on hands
- Supports whole weight on legs
- Reaches with one hand
- Transfers object from hand to hand
- Uses hand to rake objects
Vision
- Develops full color vision
- Distance vision matures
- Ability to track moving objects improves
If You’re Concerned – Act Early
If you are concerned that your child is not reaching developmental milestones at the same time as other children the same age, visit our web page to find out what you can do to help.
From CARING FOR YOUR BABY AND YOUNG CHILD: BIRTH TO AGE 5 by Steven Shelov, Robert E. Hannermann, © 1991, 1993, 1998, 2004 by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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