When do babies discover their hands?

[Mullinator]

I’ve tried searching for some kind of average age when a baby discovers hands but everything I have seen talks about it in terms of manipulating objects. I’m more curious about the age when they recognize that their hands are something to look at and explore, not to be used as tools to hold rattles or blocks.

[Antigen]

@Mullinator

I’ve tried searching for some kind of average age when a baby discovers hands but everything I have seen talks about it in terms of manipulating objects. I’m more curious about the age when they recognize that their hands are something to look at and explore, not to be used as tools to hold rattles or blocks.

I can only give you anecdotal stuff, since I’ve never studied developmental psychology, but my friend’s baby became fascinated by her hands at about 4 months. She’d wave her arms all over the place, and now and then when her hand could come near her face she’d stop and just stare at it with huge eyes and move it up and down. Then she kept flapping.

I’ll flip through my psych textbook and see if I find anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s like what you found, more about manipulation than recognition of hands as parts of themselves.

[Mullinator]

That’s definitely the kind of hand discovering action I was refering to, so thanks for that. I look forward to reading what you find.

[biddee]

My AAP guide to Your Baby’s First Year has a Developmental Health watch that says that a warning sign of developmental delay is if baby hasn’t noticed her hands by two months. Saying that, my daughter never really noticed her hands per se (ie staring at them in fascination while she opens and closes her hands etc), and she’s developing very normally.

[WhyNot]

Somewhere between two and four months seems to be the norm. According to Touchpoints (my favorite parenting book, because it’s calm and rational and doesn’t make you certain your baby will die every three pages),

At six to eight weeks, most babies have begun to control their reflexes to a limited extent. Instead of startles, which have interfered earlier with attempts to move, a baby can now control her legs and arms. She can lie in bed on her back, cycling her arms and legs. In you touch her hand with an object she’s interested in, the touched hand may jerk out toward the object.

And at four months:

Reaching, transferring objects, and mouthing them to explore them will continue as vital parts of learning. The baby will play with one hand by fingering it with the other.

In between these two, of course, is when the hand is a fabulous trip-toy, but not really used for manipulation. In my own experiences with perhaps a dozen babies (I’m an infant nanny) I generally see this happen anywhere between two and four months. Early on, they don’t seem to be really aware that their hand is theirs, even when they’re looking right at it. The large motor control means they can move their arm, but the hand sort of follows along. I can get the same dazed stare reaction by holding my own hand in front of them. Closer to four months, though, they begin to wiggle their fingers as they want to, and even to start practicing the pincer grasp, though they don’t really get good at it for a while.

On preview, I see I was beaten to both estimates. Ah well, I’ll post anyway!