Babies and children 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 child's development takes a slightly different course.

Important Milestones: By the End of Seven Months


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

Developmental Health Watch

• Seems very stiff, with tight muscles
• Seems very floppy, like a rag doll
• Head still flops back when body is pulled to a sitting position
• Reaches with one hand only
• Refuses to cuddle
• Shows no affection for the person who cares for him or her
• Doesn't seem to enjoy being around people
• One or both eyes consistently turn in or out

Content source: Division of Birth Defects, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention