From what age do babies benefit/need to hang out with other babies?

[fountainpen]

Have a lovely sociable 5.5 month old DS, who is looked after by my parents or mil 4 times a week for up to 5 hours at a time. As I'm writing up my phd I haven't quite gotten around to going to mum + baby classes. None of my close friends are mums yet either. DS has lots of interaction with adults but I have a niggling worry he should be meeting other babies ( also hv has mentioned this a couple of times).
Any thoughts on age/other developmental cues telling me that it's time to get him out there?

TIA.

Honestly? about 18 months. Even at 18 months they don't necessarily play with each other (DC2 does, DC1 didn't give a monkeys about other kids until he was about 2.5).

Don't fork out for Mum & Baby classes unless you want to go. If you are lonely, find a local free surestart / church mum & toddler group and hang out there. Sometimes its nice for babies to play with different toys in a different place, but honestly most of them don't give a flying shoite about socialising.

Nah! Don't worry about it.

Some babies are more sociable than others and enjoy interacting but generally they aren't bothered until about 18 months. You can actually get away with not bothering until even later than this without doing any harm- nearer 3 I think the research says! Lots of interaction with adults is fab for under 3s.

The Mum and baby things are great if you are a bored mum and want to meet other mums but the babies don't really care. Maybe come 18 months you can get your parents to investigate local playgroups- they might enjoy meeting other parents/grandparents too .

imo it matters not to them at that age. The hv is probably more concerned that you should be socialising with other parents as they seem to be keen on this.

Ds is now 15m and has enjoyed interacting with other lo's for a couple of months. It coincided with him walking and wanting to explore more. As a wondering toddler makes it hard to do what you would normally (which is basically what i did when he was more portable) i started going to more baby orientated things at this point any way.

Apparently it is ages till they can really learn sociability...that's about three years or so irrc, till then they play "in parallel" rather than playing "together" as they have not yet developed an understanding that the other person has a pov. I may be inaccurate on this so maybe someone can put me right.

I would say 2 to 3 years for actually benefiting / needing to interact with other children
I think babies and younger toddlers often enjoy having other children around, so if it suits he might enjoy it from 1 or so, but I don't think it's important, whatever suits you

I'd say around 3 years - some will enjoy interaction with other children before then (or just watching other children!) but they don't really need/benefit from it til about 3.

x post...tgger has "put me right" before i even posted

What tgger said - my 16 m.o. DS is only just starting to notice that other children exist.

I never took my first to any babygroups until they were about 14months. No problems at all...

I went to lots of groups when DS was that age, because I was lonely and wanted the interaction. He would have been happy wherever I/other close people in his life were.

DS is now at school and I have a 2.5 yr old DD at home. We only go to one toddler group a week (because I help to run it) and she does look forward to it, but still a lot of 'parallel' play as already described. Other days we meet with friends, do household stuff, pick up shopping, go to the library etc.

Putting the plastic recycling in the plastic bin is the highlight of our week .