Milestones: Your Baby at Four Months

How your child plays, learns, speaks, and acts offers important clues about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age.

 

What most babies do at this age:

 

Social and Emotional

• Smiles spontaneously, especially at people
• Likes to play with people and might cry when playing stops
• Copies some movements and facial expressions, like smiling or frowning

 

Language/Communication

• Begins to babble
• Babbles with expression and copies sounds he hears
• Cries in different ways to show hunger, pain, or being tired

 

Cognitive (learning, thinking, problem-solving)

• Lets you know if she is happy or sad
• Responds to affection
• Reaches for toy with one hand
• Uses hands and eyes together, such as seeing a toy and reaching for it
• Follows moving things with eyes from side to side
• Watches faces closely
• Recognizes familiar people and things at a distance

 

Movement/Physical Development

• Holds head steady, unsupported
• Pushes down on legs when feet are on a hard surface
• May be able to roll over from tummy to back
• Can hold a toy and shake it and swing at dangling toys
• Brings hands to mouth
• When lying on stomach, pushes up to elbows