Help your baby work on CRAWLING!
Ooooh crawling! Such a fun and exciting skill that opens up a literal world of opportunities for learning and exploration for baby. It helps them move around their environment, build coordination and strength, learn about spatial and body awareness, and develop visual skills. Any form of mobility is beneficial for baby, whether belly crawling, cruising on hands and knees, or rolling and grooving.
The goals are independence and mobility, and there are lots of ways to get there!
Belly crawling
This is frequently the first way babies learn to crawl. They push with their feet, pull with their arms, and wiggle their hips and trunk to move around. Here are some ways we can help support baby learning this form of mobility
Pushing up on extended arms
This is an important part of crawling—building arm strength. Starting tummy time early is the best way to work on this. Roll up a towel and place it under baby’s chest to encourage more weight bearing through arms. Work on a “wheelbarrow” position over your thigh as an exercise to help with this as well.
Pivoting on the belly
Before crawling forward, babies often will pivot side to side first. This is an important building block to more mobility. Place toys slightly out of reach to either side to encourage baby to wiggle their way to get it. You can help tickle the side of their core muscles to engage the right muscles to move sideways as well.
Crawling forward with assist
Give baby a boost by letting them push off of your hands to scoot forward while on their belly. You can start with just both feet at the same time to get the concept down, and advance towards working on one foot at a time. HOT TIP: work on hard floors to reduce friction while learning. Also, if baby wears a long sleeve and pants onesie with hands and feet free, this helps them slide along the floor easily while allowing the hands and feet to grip better. Whoopieee!
Give baby a stable base to push off of to get that extra “ummmph”!
Hands and knees crawling
This level of crawling takes an extra ounce of strength and stability compared to belly crawling. to help build this skill, it often starts with rocking and reaching while on hands and knees. Baby might need support at first, and then gain independence slowly. It can also be helpful to support their core a bit while they figure out the coordination needed from their hands and feet. A dish towel or swaddle blanket is a great tool to help with that!
Try these tips to work on crawling on hands and knees!
Rollin’ and groovin’!
If crawling and creeping are not right for your baby's needs, there are many other ways to move! Log rolling around to get to where they want to go is a perfectly good way to explore the environment! I have also adapted skateboards to help baby’s gain more speed and independence to move forward on their belly. Remember, the goals are mobility and independence, and there are many ways to meet those goals. Talk to your PT to learn ways to help your baby move!
TL;DR
Crawling is a big milestone—one that helps work on strength, coordination, body and spatial awareness, visual skills, and exploration.
There are many ways to explore, including belly crawling, hands and knees creeping, rolling and wheeling.
Tips are provided for working on each type of mobility.
Talk to your PT for more ways to meet your baby’s mobility needs and goals!