Encouraging Crawling in Babies
There is nothing as heart warming as watching your child crawl across the room to try to pull your grandparents wedding china onto the floor.
Crawling is an important form of movement for infants. It helps to build a stronger core and begins to introduce weight through the bones of the upper leg to increase bone density. Crawling is singular in its ability to promote strength and stability of the shoulder and the surrounding muscles (which become important postural muscles once the child is standing) using the child’s own weight. From a visual standpoint, they begin to hone their ability to maintain a smooth visual field while the head is in motion as well as work on their objects per minutes. Reciprocal crawling also develops the ability to coordinate their right and left sides (bilateral integration).
It is typical for babies to progress from scooting backwards on their belly, “swimming ” (where arms and legs are both moving up off the floor), belly crawling (“army/military crawling”), and then reciprocally crawling on hands and knees. This sequence cannot begin if they are never on their tummies to play, so the foundation is tons and tons and tons of tummy time.
Attempting to change the movement habits that you little one has, or challenging them to build new habits is not easy. Yeah, very not easy. I would encourage you to understand their frustration, empathize with them, but stay the course. Remind yourself of your own tears every time you try to give up coffee. Remember how tough it was to begin something you wanted to challenge yourself with, but how rewarding it was when you accomplished your goal. So there may be some tears (some from the baby), but there should also be plenty of cheers and hugs and kisses.
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