1. Home
  2. Health
  3. Pediatrics

A Baby Sitting Up
Developmental Milestones

By Vincent Iannelli, M.D., About.com Guide

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

A photo of a baby sitting up, a developmental milestone that most babies reach by the time that they are five and a half to seven months old.
A Baby Sitting Up

A Baby Sitting Up

Photo (c) Jordan Chesbrough
Sitting up is another of the major motor milestones that parents look forward to.

Spending less time prone or on their stomach, since the release of the Back to Sleep recommendations to reduce the risk of SIDS, has caused some delays for infants in picking up some milestones. These milestones including sitting up, rolling over, and crawling. Fortunately, by the time they were toddlers, these delays all seem to disappear no matter how your baby sleeps, so it's likely more appropriate to describe these kids as having a 'lag' in their development and not a true delay. If you want to avoid this 'lag,' you might try some tummy time during the day.

Still, most infants sit up without support when they are between five and a half to seven months old.



Sources:

Functional developmental evaluation. Prerequisite to habilitation. Capute AJ - Pediatr Clin North Am - 01-FEB-1973; 20(1): 3-26

Linguistic and auditory milestones during the first two years of life: a language inventory for the practitioner. Capute AJ - Clin Pediatr (Phila) - 01-NOV-1978; 17(11): 847-53

Clinical linguistic and auditory milestone scale: prediction of cognition in infancy. Capute AJ - Dev Med Child Neurol - 01-DEC-1986; 28(6): 762-71

The Denver Developmental Assessment (Denver II)

Association between sleep position and early motor development. Majnemer A - J Pediatr - 01-NOV-2006; 149(5): 623-629

We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
  1. Home
  2. Health
  3. Pediatrics
  4. Parenting Advice
  5. Growth and Development
  6. A Baby Sitting Up>

©2009 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.