When my granddaughter was only a couple months old she learned to master the “army crawl.” I can describe this only as a moving forward in a wriggling sort-of motion. With the help of her knees and elbows, she would “wriggle’ her way little by little towards he goal destination. She was quite excited and so were we because now she could get to her favorite toys on her own.
The cats were less enthused.
Don’t worry how your baby chooses to move around, as long as it happens. Any type of crawling is just a “transitional skill” with the ultimate goal being able to walk. Some babies even crawl backwards before they can go the other way, and while this may seem and look a little humourous and odd, there is no need for concern.
Different babies do different things at different times, and your baby will not be like any other baby. (This I guarantee is true to all you moms out there, right?) So do not compare your first child walking at 9 months to your second child still crawling at 13 months.
Every baby has his own unique style of crawling-each finding his own solution to getting to that cat or toy. And they will go after the cat.
There are a number of things though that a parent can do to encourage movement:
*give the baby a long opportunity to be on his or her belly
*avoid restricting the child with layers of clothing or blankets
*let your baby know that movement is great and cheer him or her on
*get down on the floor with your baby to encourage her to experiment
*make these sessions short because for a baby this can be not only frustrating but tiring.
One very positive perk plus to this “tummy time,” is that babies who exercise often sleep well at night. Woo hoo! Floor work is really work, not only physically but mentally too. It takes a host of developmental stages for a baby to learn to get across the room. Some of these skills are spatial skills but also later they have to detect safe versus risky ground and sensitivity to the locations of things.
Depth perception, navigational skills and decision-making all go into a good “army crawl” workout. No wonder my granddaughter sleeps well.
Recent Comments