Your 48-Week-Old Baby

Milestone: Object Manipulation

Your baby’s hand-eye coordination continues to improve, and practically any activity is an opportunity to master those fine-motor skills.

Whether your tot is using a pincer grasp to self-feed or moving toys from one bin to another, there’s a lot of learning going on under the radar. Little ones at this age love to manipulate objects and are delighted by cause-and-effect. You may also notice that your baby can hold an object in one hand and do a task with the other hand.

Beyond the act of reaching and grabbing an object, your baby will start exploring what else they can do! They may hold a ball, throw it and swat it to see it roll. Now that they are gaining an understanding of how things work, they’ll be busy spinning wheels, pressing buttons, shaking rattles to make noise, lifting flaps and dropping things to the floor.

Want to really blow their mind? Give your baby a crayon and a big sheet of paper to try scribbling. Show your baby how to do things like talk on a pretend phone and feed their stuffed animals play food. Soon enough, your child will be imitating you and having a blast with imaginative, pretend play.

Making Small Talk Have a Big Impact

Ask your baby lots of questions and chat throughout the day. “Do you want to eat this avocado?” “Should we go outside and play?” “What does the doggy say?” (Yep, we have a hunch you’re already a pro at a wide range of animal sounds.) Even if they can’t respond with words yet, there are lots of non-verbal gestures that help them effectively communicate, including making eye contact, pointing, reaching, waving, clapping and shaking their head.

Keep the conversation going by responding with excitement and interest. “Really? Cool, let’s try that!” It may feel a little silly, but engaging in a real dialogue with your kiddo (even if it’s a lot of babble on their side!) really helps foster language development.

Stack It Up

Babies also love to see how smaller items fit into larger items. Stacking and nesting toys are a great way to allow your baby to sort, sift, organize and balance things. Your resident explorer will be fascinated as they build, topple and repeat (at least a zillion times).

You may see (and hear!) a lot of banging as your child figures this process out. But stacking is a skill that your kiddo will continue to perfect as they grow. (PS: some stacking toys do double duty as fun bathtime cups!)