For a baby, this is a pretty significant age. His first tooth begins to grow, he learns other foods besides breast milk or a mixture, a lot of what else happens to him at exactly 6 months. But how to understand that everything is going as it should and a child of 6 months has development, weight and height within the normal range? And what if he is even a little behind these standards?
Height
Relative to the fifth month, the baby will grow by about 2.5 cm. The lower limit of growth according to the norms for a boy is 63 cm and 61 cm for a girl at 6 months. The development of the child in terms of growth parameters is also predetermined by the initial data, but nevertheless, by that age those who were born below begin to catch up with their peers. On average, the growth of six-month-old babies with normal development is 66.5 cm. The upper bound for growth with normal development of the child at 6 months is 72 cm for boys and 70 cm for girls.
You need to understand that each baby develops at its own pace and these indicators are the arithmetic average of all children with normal development. Deviations from these norms alone are not an indication that something is wrong with the child.
Weight
With respect to the fifth month, the baby will add about 500–700 g. At 6 months, the weight of the baby is doubled relative to its birth weight, and it gains from 3 to 6 kg by this period. For boys and girls, with the normal development of the child at 6 months, the weight is slightly different. The lower limit of weight according to the norms for a boy is considered to be 6.4 kg, and for girls - 5.7 kg. The upper limit of weight for boys is 9.8 kg, and for girls - 9.3 kg.
If the baby does not fit into these standards, but at the same time receives proper nutrition and development for the child at 6 months old, on time, all his tests are normal, then this is not a cause for concern. This is an occasion only for closer attention. All people are individual, including children, they may well be just not very large.
The introduction of complementary foods
The intestines of the crumbs are also undergoing changes. At 6 months, the baby is already capable of digesting mashed food in addition to milk, but not meat yet. Lure is introduced at this time, but it does not replace breast milk. It still constitutes the main diet.
It was possible to introduce complementary foods at 5 months. 6 months is the deadline to start eating other foods. It directly depends on what kind of food a child will receive at 6 months, development, weight and even health. Milk is no longer enough to make up for the lack of necessary micronutrients, which is fraught with anemia and rickets. Some parents administer it even at 4 months, but this is not approved by pediatricians and is considered too early. Up to 4 months, it can also be dangerous to enter. Signs that the baby is ready for feeding is an interest in adult food and the first tooth. It is best to introduce complementary foods with the following products:
- rice, buckwheat or corn dairy-free porridge;
- broccoli puree;
- cauliflower puree;
- zucchini puree;
- mashed apples.
Such types of mashed potatoes as pumpkin, carrot, prune and berry are not the first to be introduced due to the increased allergenicity factor. You should not start with them because they are sweeter and the child will then refuse to eat fresh food. You can either cook the porridge yourself from the usual grind groats in a coffee grinder or buy ready-made cereals that you only need to dilute with boiling water.
At 6 months, one meal should be gradually replaced, but only with one of these foods. All other meals are still breast milk. The baby needs about 2 weeks to adapt to each new product. When a new product has taken root and there is probably no allergy to it, you can enter the following. Etc.
If for some reason the baby cannot eat breast milk, then all of the above also applies to the milk mixture. The mixture must be selected once and not changed, so that the digestive system does not experience unnecessary stress, adjusting to the new composition. It must be matched by age, and if required, it can have a therapeutic effect.
Physical development
The child’s body acquires harmony in proportions and is more like the body of a child, rather than an infant. The baby’s torso becomes larger, legs are longer, and against their background the head does not seem so huge as just born.
Somewhere from 3 to 6 months, the baby should have already learned to independently turn over from back to stomach. And now he is actively trying to sit down and most often he already succeeds. It is not entirely true that early sitting down harms only the development of a girl; a child of 6 months should not be seated, even if he is a boy. This is harmful to everyone. The baby (regardless of his gender) should sit up only by himself. No pillows under the back and sitting blocks in the stroller before. Indeed, if he cannot sit down on his own, this means that his spine is not ready yet, and not that he does not understand how to do it.
Kids sit down not from a supine position, like adults, but from a booty position up. A harbinger of the fact that the child will soon sit down is that from the situation on the tummy he is trying to raise his ass up and so fall to one side.
If the child can sit on his own, he often becomes calmer. After all, from a sitting position, more games and activities become available to him. And it’s even more convenient to start complementary foods, because you can already safely put them in a highchair.
Mental development
Timely mental development of the child at 6 months of life suggests that he should be able to:
- He cannot yet begin to distinguish colors, of course, to voice and point to them, but by some signs it may be noticeable that things have become different colors for him. The first to distinguish red, before that children can only distinguish between black and white.
- Look in the direction from which his name is heard, understand that we are talking about him.
- Express brightly and emotionally your joy or sadness.
- To begin to alarm at the sight of strangers, before that, kids can reach out to everyone who smiles at them.
- He begins to study toys, examine them, feeling and licking, since the mouth and tongue for the baby are full-fledged sense organs.
- He begins to listen to sounds in search of a source of noise, feels that it has become louder or quieter.
- He begins to babble actively, unconsciously repeating the syllables "ma-ma-ma", "ta-ta-ta", "dya-dya-dya" and so on.
Due to some features of the child’s brain at 6 months, the development of the boy may be a little slower and delay about a month.
At this age, it is important to give the child a lot of new sensations. Such as smells, surfaces, the contrast of long and short distances, fast-moving objects in the sky, sea and lake. Do not think that the child will not notice all this and he does not care. On a walk, you must always pull it out of the stroller and let it touch leaves, twigs or snow. The more information he draws from the outside world, the faster it will develop.
Daily regime
For children, he plays a special role, he gives them a point of psychological support. The child understands that everything in this world is stable and always at the same time he will receive food, walk or bathe with dad. For full development, the 6-month-old baby regimen looks like this:
7:00 - rise.
7:15 - hygiene procedures.
7:30 - the first feeding.
8:30 - games with mom.
9:30 - second feeding.
10:00 - the first walk.
12:00 - lunch is complementary.
12:30 - the first dream.
14:30 - educational games.
15:00 - third feeding.
16:00 - a dream in the air.
18:00 - the fourth feeding.
18:15 - free time, games.
20:00 - evening bath in the bathroom.
21:00 - fifth feeding.
21:30 - hang up.
Naturally, the hours can vary depending on the rhythm of the family’s life and the personal preferences of the child himself, but in general the number of hours allocated to certain actions should be approximately the same. Equally important is the fact that everything happens at the same time.
During night sleep, usually at this age there are still night feeds on demand. At this age, the child needs 15-16 hours of sleep. About 10 of them will fall into a night's sleep, and the rest will fall into daytime sleep, which is usually crushed by 2-3 times. During a night's sleep, the baby can still wake up 1-2 times to eat. You need to walk for at least 2 hours a day, and divide this time into two times: one in the morning and one in the evening.
What should be able
It is considered the norm of development of a child at 6 months, which he should be able to:
- able to shift a small object from one hand to another;
- reach for the object or person of interest;
- can eat from a spoon, but keeps it still bad;
- turn your head in the direction of interest to him;
- extracts sounds from the subject, begins to realize that from different actions the sounds will be different;
- try to stand up from a sitting position;
- try to crawl, crawl in a plastubsky way;
- grimace;
- imitate primitive sounds;
- be interested in reflection in the mirror.
Lying on his stomach, he should be able to lean on his pelvis and fully open palms, not his fists. And turn his head from this position in any direction, reach for the subject that interests him. At this age, he spends most of his time (if he still cannot sit firmly). Most children are already sitting by this age, but still very unsteadily, periodically falling to one side.
The baby begins to actively study its limbs; it can pull a foot into its mouth. And this indicates a high level of coordination. These are no longer chaotic movements of the limbs, the child is aware of everything that he does with them. His legs are still bent, but are already starting to straighten.
What toys should be
For the normal development of the child at 6 months, he needs the following toys and games with them:
- a pyramid of rings, preferably large and stable;
- typewriter;
- designer with large parts;
- a baby doll with natural proportions, on which parents show the baby body parts, calling them;
- an inflatable ball, you need to teach a child to roll him from himself and to catch when they roll him;
- multi-colored cubes, they should already be available for the child to try to build towers and learn colors;
- soft toys for the development of fine motor skills, with small balls and cherry pits inside;
- books with cardboard sheets and bright contrasting pictures, with the simplest storylines or without them at all;
- floating toys for taking a bath with them;
- cups that stack one into another or are built into a pyramid;
- scores;
- sorter;
- a basket for storing toys, in which parents should always clean them before going to bed, so over time the baby himself will get used to cleaning up toys.
With some toys, he will play awkwardly, but this does not mean that they are useless. A jump in development always happens abruptly and you will never guess what tomorrow a child will be able to. Therefore, all toys important for development should be at hand. So that the toys do not bother, it is recommended to divide them into 2 or 3 parts, depending on the total number. And get each part in turn.
Teeth
The peculiarity of the development of children of 6 months is that it is during this period that their teeth begin to grow. In most cases, this is one of the two upper incisors, followed immediately by the second. But it happens that the first tooth grows elsewhere and you should not be scared. This is not dangerous and is only an individual feature of this baby. In rare cases, the eruption of the first tooth is delayed up to 10 and even up to 12 months. This is usually not scary, but may be due to a lack of vitamins and nutrients, so it is best to consult a pediatrician on this topic.
This is quite painful and, due to a decrease in immunity, may even be accompanied by a slight increase in temperature. The first sign that teething has begun is increased salivation, which will not leave the baby until all the teeth have erupted. To understand that a child’s anxiety is related to teeth, and not to diseases, you need to thoroughly wash your hands and feel the jaw of the crumbs. If the tooth is ready to erupt, then it will be felt through the gum. The previous generation even says that if you tap on the gum, a ringing will be heard in this place. Over time, a slight swelling will become visible there. Teething in children can lead to sleepless nights and hectic days. And sometimes it is advisable to use special analgesic ointments that are applied to the gums crumb. The annotation to them indicates what maximum amount can be applied to the gums per day. Exceeding this amount is strictly prohibited, otherwise it may harm the child.
What to do if the child is “behind” the norm
The main thing here is not to hit any of the extremes. Do not hang labels on a child who is slightly behind peers and not let everything go by its own accord. Both that, and another can do much harm. A slight lag on some of the points within 2-3 months is not cause for concern. But if there are a lot of points and the lag is more than 2 months, then you should definitely tell the neurologist about it, since at 6 months the child should have a scheduled examination. If something is wrong with the child, then the neurologist will definitely find out during the scheduled examination. In addition to how much the baby complies with the standards, neurologists also look at reflexes that a person who is far from medicine cannot always be evaluated.
Pay special attention to the following:
- the child develops asymmetrically, tilts his head to one side;
- does not turn on the stomach;
- makes no sounds other than crying;
- cannot hold even the smallest rattle;
- does not express vivid emotions;
- prefers to turn only on one side.
If, nevertheless, the neurologist has any suspicions, then you should not worry too much. A course of good massage, Vojta therapy, drug treatment and other methods will help to quickly and effectively eliminate the possible cause of the delay, and the child will quickly catch up with peers. It is much more dangerous to do nothing, because with each month and year the gap between peers will be more and more obvious. So, without starting to do one thing in a timely manner, the child does not prepare himself in time for the next "skill".