The stages of development that happen for a child between the seventh and ninth months of life are astronomical. In terms of their social development, many things happen that make them more aware of the world around them. They start to gain wariness of strangers, which means that they will not let just any person pick them up, which contributes to the child developing their personality. They start to become more attached to their parents or whoever is taking care of them and they will not feel safe unless those people are around them. The babies also start to develop social referencing which is when the child uses someone else’s insight of a particular circumstance to develop their own understanding of that circumstance. One more important thing that the babies develop socially is called secondary intersubjectivity which is said to be the sharing between infants and their caregivers of understanding and emotions that refer beyond themselves to objects and other people.
In terms of the new behaviors that are developed in this stage, there are plenty of them. One of the most prevalent is that during this time, the baby starts to crawl, and thus can now move around on their own. They also develop a fear of heights which makes them more cautious when they are using their newly developed way of moving. Another thing that they gain is that they start to get better at reaching and grasping things, before it would take the baby many tries to grab something and they would grab it with their whole hand. Now they can grab it usually on the first try and they can coordinate their fingers to simply hold the item with them. Action sequences that are coordinated to achieve goals is another mechanism that babies learn during this period. This means that they now have some reason for doing what they are doing because they want to accomplish something. Communication also starts to get better because they start to be able to babble which is a form of vocalizing by babies that includes the consonant and vowel sounds like those in speech. This is the first step towards the baby learning the language used around them. Memory also starts to develop during this period meaning that they will remember things like how to play with different items and how much fun they had when they were doing it. They also start to remember people who are around them a lot of the time.
These developments of the social and behavioral domains would not be possible without the advancements that are made in the biological domain during this period of growth. The growth of muscles and hardening of bones, which happens during this period, make the crawling possible because those things make it so that the baby is able to support themselves steadily. They also gain the myelination of motor neurons to the lower trunk, legs, and hands this also helps them in crawling and their newly developed movements. Another thing that develops in the biological domain is the myelination of the cerebellum, the hippocampus, and the frontal lobes of the brain. This helps the child’s brain start to develop so they learn things like the wariness of strangers, social referencing, and to love the person who takes care of them. One last thing that happens in the biological domain is the new forms of EEG activity in the cortex. This development of the outer layer of an internal organ or body structure further helps them to develop their body structure and reflexes so that they can one day grow to be a normal person. Without the happenings of the behavioral domain during this time period, the other two domains would not have been able to fully develop as they do.
All facts and figures from this article were found in a book by Murray Enkin, Marc Keirse, James Neilson, and Caroline Crowther called A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childhood published in 2000 on the Oxford University Press.
