I know that babies should be encouraged to crawl in a cross pattern, but at what point should walking be encouraged. I’ve read the physically superb book but maybe I missed this part. Do you wait until they are walking entirely on their own & then just encourage more walking, or can it be encouraged at some point before.
thanks
I would encourage crawling for as long as possible. Then encourage both crawling and walking once the child begins walking on his/her own. But that’s just my opinion from my research. I haven’t read the Doman books.
I think it depends not so much on absolute age, but on how long has your child crawled. For Felicity, it was about 4 months’ worth of cross-pattern crawling before she learnt to walk, and I felt that was OK.
Laurana crawled at 6 months and was crawling well by 6.5 months. She took her first steps at 10.5 months and walked well by 11.5 months when the crawling pretty much stopped altogether so she had about 5 months of crawling and I think that was more than enough.
I do know of children who never crawled and whose parents went back and taught them to crawl at a later stage. I think you can quite happily encourage both crawling and walking as children are usually going to develop at their own pace regardless and the stimulation is good for them. If they have crawled for a few months then there will be no harm in encouraging walking.
My daughter does the cross-pattern crawling well, but her whole body is on the floor - my husband calls it the “spider-man” or the commando style. Is it better to crawl with knees? One website says anything other than the normal crawling style (i.e. hands and knees) indicates developmental delays. My daughter started crawling early, I thought that is why she didn’t move on the normal style because she just perfecting what she knows. My son did the same style until he started walking. Even now (he’s 3), when he crawls with his sister, he’s still doing the commando style. Like 2 little soldiers. lol I thought it’s fine but that website got me worrying a little. What do you think?
Everything is considered crawling as long as they’re able to move themselves around on the floor. However, cross pattern crawling is the only type of crawl that is supposed to help with brain development.
Thanks for your replies everyone.
Now you’ve got me wondering again! Dd does a cosistant cross pattern creep, but only did a mono lateral crawl. Is that a bad thing? My understanding is that it is OK as long as they at least creep in a cross pattern not neccesarily creep & crawl. I think it would be a lot harder to get your child to go back & crawl when they are older than to get them to creep later on.
I don’t think it is terribly difficult to get kids to crawl later in life - you have to wait til they are walking really well and can follow instructions though as the walking is such an easier way to get around - I think bascially you would teach them to crawl under things that they cannot walk under and use play tunnels to make it fun.
I don’t know much about the cross pattern crawl/creep issue - the idea is that both sides of the brain work together which I would imagine happens whether they are on their knees or not if the legs and arms move properly, but I am not sure.