Baby Development Milestones: 6 to 12 Months

The 6–12 month stretch covers some of the most visible developmental change of your baby's first year — sitting, moving, first words, first foods. Every milestone below has a wide normal range; the numbers are guides, not deadlines.

Physical movement

• Sitting unsupported: typically 6–8 months
• Crawling: typically 7–10 months, though some babies bottom-shuffle instead of crawling, or skip crawling entirely — both are within normal variation
• Pulling to stand: typically 8–10 months
• Cruising (walking holding furniture): typically 9–12 months
• First independent steps: typically 9–15 months — walking before their first birthday and walking at 15 months are both entirely normal

Fine motor and hand skills

• Pincer grip (thumb and finger, for picking up small food pieces): typically 8–10 months
• Transferring objects hand to hand: typically 6–7 months
• Deliberately dropping/throwing objects (often mistaken for naughtiness — it's cause-and-effect learning): from around 9 months

Communication and social

• Babbling with consonant sounds ("baba", "dada"): typically 6–9 months
• Responding to their own name: typically 7–9 months
• First recognisable words: typically 10–14 months
• Waving, pointing, simple gestures: typically 9–12 months
• Separation anxiety, often peaking around 8–10 months, is a sign of healthy attachment, not a problem to fix

When to mention something to your health visitor

Every milestone above has a wide normal range, and one late milestone in isolation rarely means anything on its own. It's worth raising with your health visitor if: your baby isn't sitting with support by 9 months, shows no interest in reaching or grasping objects by 6 months, isn't babbling at all by 9 months, or you notice a loss of a skill they'd previously had (regression is a more meaningful flag than lateness). Your 9-month and 2-year reviews are built-in checkpoints for exactly this — use them rather than waiting for a specific worry.