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Home > My Child > Ages and Stages > 6 to 12 Months > Intellectual Development


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Intellectual Development - Language: 6 to 12 months

Intellectual Development means being able to communicate, to think both creatively and abstractly, to pay attention, solve problems, and develop keen judgment and a lifelong readiness to learn.

Emerging Skills
  • Communicate through expressions and actions
  • Communicate using sounds and words
  • Understand common words when used with gestures
  • Have conversations
  • Love to imitate sounds (for example, coughs, clicks)
  • Try to get something by making sounds
  • Find out more about What to Expect from your baby, 6 to 12 months.


    Comfort

    Through the comfort and responsiveness of an adult, babies will learn how to handle their emotions and how to seek help when needed.

    Parents Can:
  • Name and acknowledge feelings and help their baby calm down when he is upset
  • Child Will:
  • Respond to the soothing effect of your voice


  • Parents Can:
  • Use encouraging words such as "good for you" to provide security and help develop confidence and independence
  • Child Will:
  • Develop feelings of self-confidence, power and satisfaction


  • Parents Can:
  • Encourage and support new experiences and respond to their baby's excitement
  • Child Will:
  • Begin to recognize what activities, objects or experiences are of interest


  • Play

    Through opportunities for play, babies will experience joyful, free, spontaneous moments of fun while learning about themselves and others.

    Parents Can:
  • Play action songs, finger plays and games naming body parts (for example, songs such as "Head and Shoulders")
  • Child Will:
  • Begin to match words with objects
  • Try to mimic many of the sounds she has heard
  • Begin to understand motions you have named and used frequently


  • Parents Can:
  • Offer and describe different textures that their baby can touch, taste and smell
  • Child Will:
  • Expand his experiential knowledge base and the language that goes along with it


  • Teach

    Through routines and emotionally and physically safe and secure environments, babies can learn how to think, solve problems and communicate.

    Parents Can:
  • Respond to their baby's babbling sounds and make similar noises
  • Child Will:
  • Know that you are listening and interested in what she says
  • Feel encouraged to babble on


  • Parents Can:
  • Imitate their baby's sounds and expand on them with new words and sounds
  • Child Will:
  • Understand more about what is happening in her surroundings


  • Parents Can:
  • Look at picture books containing common objects that can be labelled
  • Child Will:
  • Imitate the sounds she has heard and expand her repertoire of sounds
  • Learn the names of objects both in books and around her


  • Social Development: 6 to 12 months
    Emotional Development: 6 to 12 months
    Intellectual Development: 6 to 12 months

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