Kiddipedia

Kiddipedia

Crawling is a hugely important milestone in a baby’s life as it indicates that your baby is developing well and that both sides of the brain are working and communicating together properly.

Research shows that is it imperative that babies spend more time crawling, before being encouraged to walk.

Crawling helps develop the language centres of the brain including comprehension, concentration and memory, all of which are highly valued skills that will be used and tested on a daily basis during early childhood, in schooling years and later in adult life.

Crawling also allows your baby practice time for the left and right sides of the body to communicate and work together. In order to master the movement of crawling, your little ones needs to be able to co-ordinate and four arms and legs together at the same time. This means using both sides of the brain and the body at the same time – a skill called bilateral coordination.

Bilateral coordination is important to practice from an early age in order to develop the following skills later in life: These task all require you to use both hands in front of you.

  • Ruling up a page
  • Getting dressed
  • Eating dinner
  • Typing
  • Sports

My boy, diagnosed with Autism at three and a half years old, spent very little time crawling. He finally got the hang of it at 13 months old and by 15 months old he was walking and 2 weeks later he was running.

It was only when we started sound therapy that he started crawling again at almost five years old (much to my shock!). I still clearly remember going back to the OT (occupational therapy) demanding to know what they had done to my boy and why he kept crawling all around the shops! All the OTs got so excited and explained that he was finally learning to use both sides of his brain and body at the same time.

Encouraging your bub to crawl for longer will not only help their language development and coordination, but it will also help them develop their gross and fine motor skills; the building blocks necessary to interact with their world as they grow into a busy toddler.

Fine Motor Skills: the use of small muscle groups to perform a precise task. eg: using the ‘pincer grip’, that is thumb and fore finger to pick up an object.

Gross Motor Skills: the use of big muscle groups to perform a task. eg: using your whole arm and body to throw a ball accurately at a target.

You might also like to read:

Development of our Children’s Fine & Gross Motor Skills: We’re falling short

Top Parenting Hacks from Bree, B Minor Music

5 Engaging Learning Experiences for Home.

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