A Smiling Baby

Developmental Milestones

There are actually two types of smiles for babies:

• the spontaneous or almost reflexive smile that can occur early in the newborn period, and
• the social smile that occurs in response to something, like when you talk or sing to your baby

The social smile is a developmental milestone that most infants reach when they are one to two months old. Not having a social smile by six months of age is commonly considered to be an early sign of autism.

The spontaneous smile can occur as early as your baby's first few days of life and should be present by the time he is ten weeks 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)