The Cognitive Development Of Your 6 To 12 Month Old Baby

One of the great joys of parenting is to see our child develop new skills and break through another baby milestone as they develop!  Whether its your child's fine motor skills or problem solving skills, knowing that our child is growing is such a wonderful thing.

Today, we'll be focusing on the cognitive development of your child from 6 to 12 months to give you a taste of what you can expect to notice as your baby grows.  Please note, that this is only a general guideline and every child has their own wonderful developmental pathway that you can be proud of!

That said, between 6 and 12 months, babies generally love to explore the world around them. They love playing their favourite past time game of peek-a-boo and they use their gross motor skills to reach for a toy and put it in their mouths. This helps in the development of "object permanence" where it helps them discover that objects still exist even if they are out of sight.

At 6 Months

Your six-month-old is in full on explorer mode, and the discoveries just keep coming. She knows she can move things around to make them suit her needs. She’s also started to develop the earliest problem solving skill – identifying a problem!

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At 7 Months

Your baby may be starting to understand the beginnings of geometry and spatial relationships between objects. At this stage, the concepts are extremely basic, but it’s a foundation she can build on!

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At 8 Months

Your eight-month-old is thinking more about what she does. There’s a lot more purpose behind her actions than ever before. Her understanding of the world is increasing daily and she’s developing new behaviours rapidly to keep up.

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At 9 Months

Nine months brings some major advancement in the complexity of your baby’s mind. From an increase in word recognition to purposeful tool use and problem solving, your little one is starting to exert more control on the world around her.

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At 10 Months

At 10 months, your soon-to-be toddler is getting to be a pro at pattern recognition. You may notice her using her talent to memorize the patterns of songs and stories she hears often and to pick out the sounds that make up certain familiar words.

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At 11 Months

11-month-olds really start to flourish in the brains department. Your little thinker may have a good handle of some basic geometry and know to go looking for an object that’s gone missing. He’s also experimenting with different approaches to problems he faces and may be starting to develop a small vocabulary of simple words.

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At 12 Months

Your little one-year-old is delighted with her ability to exert some control on the world and she does so every chance she gets (sometimes to your frustration). She’s also learning a lot! If she’s started to talk (and don’t worry if this hasn’t quite happened yet – it will!), plenty of new words are popping up in her vocabulary. And she’s starting to retain some basic factual knowledge.

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