All babies have their own timetable, but you can watch for certain developments in your 5-month-old. Celebrate with your baby as he reaches or nears these milestones.
Cognitive
- Distinguishes a fuller range of colors, including subtle shades
- Interested in more complex patterns
- Focuses on small objects
- Tracks faster moving objects with eyes
- Reaches for objects with greater accuracy
- Grows bored looking at the same thing
- Shows increased interest in new toys and his own feet and legs
- Has increased attention span
- Experiments with cause and effect
- Begins to discover object permanence (an object is still there even when he can’t see it)
- Begins to understand sequencing (setting up a high chair means it’s time to eat)
Motor
- Holds head steady without support when sitting
- Learning to turn head from side to side when sitting
- When on stomach, pushes up to elbows and arches his back
- Rocks on stomach, waving arms and legs
- Rolls from stomach to back—and maybe even back again
- Coordinates hands and eyes (seeing an object, then reaching for it)
- Brings objects to mouth with good accuracy
- Uses hands to explore body
- May grab feet when lying on back
- Grasps a rattle held against fingers
- May pick up an object by pressing it with his palms and closing his fingers around it
- Sits with support or when propped up
- May sit in frog- or tripod-like position without support
- Likes to stand on your lap or a firm surface and bounce
Communication
- Uses different cries to express hunger, pain, sleepiness, or boredom
- Listens carefully to your language patterns and copies sounds
- May repeat one simple syllable again and again
- May make more complex, two-syllable babbles that combine vowels and consonants (“ah-goo,” “bah-bah”)
- Babbling begins to sound like the intonation of real language
- Squeals, giggles, and laughs to draw attention
Social
- Begins to decipher emotions from your tone of voice and expressions
- Begins to use voice and facial expressions to indicate emotions
- Watches faces closely; makes and maintains eye contact
- Mimics some facial expressions and movements (frowning)
- Expresses happiness when he sees you
- May be soothed by your presence and voice when upset
- Personality becomes more apparent