‘It doesn’t matter if your baby doesn’t crawl. In fact, crawling isn’t even considered to be a developmental milestone anymore in the States.’ I overheard this snippet of advice being given to a fellow parent at a local health visitor drop in session.
As a developmental practitioner, I find this kind of advice concerning. Many studies and experts in the past have advocated crawling as one of the most important milestones for a child’s motor and cognitive development. In our field of work, it is impossible to ignore the correlation between those children who have skipped the crawling stage and gone on to have learning difficulties.
Benefits of crawling
There are obvious physical benefits of crawling, but what you maybe don't know is how crawling facilitates a child’s ability to access their education later on in life.
Crawling develops both gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye-coordination and overall strength. The development and refinement of these skills will assist your child later in life with activities such as running, jumping, fastening clothes, and handwriting. The core strength that they build also helps develop posture, making it easier for them to sit still and concentrate once they start school.
Crawling facilitates the integration of sensory information as vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive and visual symptoms all start to operate together for the first time. Their visual system is learning how to process and interpret their environment, training the eyes to track horizontally, crossing the midline, a skill critical for reading. They are also learning to look from their hands up to the object that holds their attention and then back down to their hands again as they move. This is an exercise in binocular vision, strengthening the skills needed later on to catch a ball, drive a car, or in school when looking from their paper up to the board and back to their paper when copying.
The bilateral movements involved in crawling (opposite hand to leg) strengthens the communication between the left and right hemisphere of the brain. When there is poor communication, the two hemispheres of the brain have difficulty sharing information, and information does not get processed or stored properly. Various studies have linked disrupted or inefficient neural communication between the hemispheres, to learning, behavioural and mental health difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, ADHD, and sensory processing disorder.
How can we help our children master crawling!?
TOP TIPS
Avoid time spent in containers (car seats, Bumbos, swings, slings, jumpers, etc.) as this is time taken away from floor play
Allow your baby to discover sitting and standing completely on their own. This way they will build strength and coordination necessary for crawling on hands and knees.
Dont feel pressured to compare your baby to other children. You may be tempted to hold your babies hands, and practice walking and standing, but it is important that this does not happen until they are developmentally ready.
Dont focus on the time frame, it is better to reach each milestone in their own time as opposed to skipping a milestone altogether.
Babies and toddlers
Completing tummy time daily from the day the infant is born.
Top tips for successful tummy time:
Chose a time when your infant is happy and awake
Once your infant gains head control, you can begin placing toys, lights, mirrors, high-contrast colored books, another parent, a pet, or a sibling near them to look at while in tummy time
As your infant begins reaching for these objects, place them close enough for success.
As your infant begins pushing themselves up on their arms and hands, move those objects a bit farther away to encourage him/her to attempt to move forward.
Baby hates tummy time? Try the following positions:
Try a superman hold - rest baby along your forearm on their tummy
Lie baby over a gym ball and get down on the floor so they are looking at you
Lie baby on your chest so that they are looking up at you
As your infant begins to push up into the pre-crawling position (on hands and knees), make sure they are rocking back and forth. You can help facilitate this by providing support at their hips and gently rocking them. Do not force the movement.
Once your child has begun crawling and even after they have started walking, encourage them to continue crawling by setting up tunnels, obstacle courses (including up and down inclines). Try crawling on different surfaces - grass, dirt, carpet, hard floor, etc. Tunnels and inclines are great for the those children who want to bottom shuffle as it is easier to crawl then bottom shuffle.
What if my child skipped crawling as a baby?
Some children skip crawling all together or adapt an alternative method such as rolling, bum-shuffling, army/commando crawling, or bear-crawling. Dont worry if this is the case, you can still repattern the body and brain, through cross-crawl patterning – no matter how old you are.
Try the following:
Obstacle courses which include crawling
Crawling challenges balancing teddys on backs
Rock climbing helps develop bilateral coordination.
Yoga is a great way to develop bilateral coordination and motor planning skills. Try a children’s yoga video, like Cosmic Kids on YouTube.
Play Twister! This is great to develop bilateral coordination skills as well as strength to maintain a weight bearing position!
As a parent, you worry about everything and the only resolve is knowing that there are professionals out there, who know more then you, about what's best for your child’s development. It is therefore our job to ensure parents are given the tools and knowledge to help their child achieve this milestone.
We are not arguing that every child who skips crawling will go on to have learning difficulties, for many we know do go onto thrive in the academic environment. However for a select few, crawling could be key to ensuring they reach their full potential.
