When should my baby be able to follow my point?

[dflowers]

My four-year-old son has autism, and now I am paranoid about my nine-month-old daughter. When I point, she only looks at my hand.  Does anyone know the range for when a baby develops this skill? I know they should point themselves at a year, but I don't know when they should be able to follow another person's point.

[greenmulberry]

Well my 8 month old cannot follow a point yet.

[neonalee]

I think it was after 1 year for us. In fact maybe very recently. DS is almost 15 months.

sent from my phone using tapatalk, please excuse typos.

[indigosky]

My memory was that DD began to do this at 11 months.

[BabySmurf]

my DS will be one in two weeks, he still mostly just looks at my hand. 

[ASusan]

Prior to following a point (usually) is "joint attention," where the infant will look at something, then look at you (to see if you see what s/he sees), then look back at the something. OR, where you look at something, look to your infant, and then can (re-)direct her attention toward the object, "Look, isn't this interesting?"

You can direct your infant to play with an object with you - say, roll a ball back and forth, or ask if she can put a toy in a container, then ask "where did it go?" As long as there is back-and-forth between you, the infant, and another object, it's joint attention. Following a point might add another step in there.

In my son's case, he came into the living room and saw the vacuum. A look of alarm crossed his face (he was a bit scared of the vacuum), and he looked to me, then back to the vacuum, and then back to me. He clearly was trying to communicate, "Hey! Did you notice this thing in here? Are you aware that it's here? Because it's darn scary!"

He was younger than 13 months, but maybe closer to 10-11 months when this happened.

Joint attention should occur before or around 12 months.

[WifeofAnt]

My son (almost 11 months) will *sometimes* look but he doesn't seem to quite get it yet.  He knows what my intent is but following my line of vision stops him from pointing being any bit useful to something not relatively close to my hand.