Learning to crawl. I love this. L’il I flips over onto her front just as soon as she hits the ground. She lifts her head up high and reaches out toward a toy or some piece of junk that Young C’s hauled out of who-knows-where and left on the ground. She reaches and squirms and wriggles herself just a little bit closer. She starts screeching with frustration before long, I know, but her stamina is improving.
Young C never did this. He rarely rolled over and hardly played on his front at all. I do remember him sliding backward quite a distance over ceramic tiles once or twice, but he never did get the hang of moving forward on all fours. He was always focused on lifting his head up while on his back and trying to do little baby sit-ups. (Until he finally succeeded in rolling from his first sit-up into a somersault off the bed. But that’s another story.) He would insist on being pulled into a sitting position and did eventually develop a half-crawl, half-walk scoot move that would propel him a couple of feet toward a stray toy.
The upshot is that Young C was cruising along furniture by nine months, had his first unassisted steps at ten months, and was walking clear across a room by eleven months. Why do some kids skip important milestones like crawling? How common is it? And when should we be worried?
According to the prominent internet experts (you know, Dr. Green, Dr. Sears, babycenter), there really is nothing to worry about. As long as baby is continuing to develop generally and is interested in exploring it doesn’t particularly matter how they go about it. Most babies will develop some method of locomoting from here to there between six and ten months of age, it doesn’t have to be the typical “cross crawl” we usually see. If your baby really isn’t interested in getting anywhere by any means or seems to be delayed in other areas, then that is worth a mention at the doctors.
There is some sketchy sounding noise bouncing around the internet (as always) about crawling being an important milestone in brain development and how skipping it might be an early indication of dyslexia and ADHD. I don’t know . . . how do you disprove this sort of quackery anyway? Given that the leading mainstream advice says nothing of the sort, I will just dismiss it. It’s not clear, anyway, if those theories include all forms of scooting under the crawling umbrella. (If they do, then yes, we admit that no desire to get around could be a sign of developmental problems.) Even if (big if) there is some truth to the link between missed crawling and learning disabilities, there is no reason to think it is a causal link. Likely, a child does not become dyslexic, for example, because he skipped crawling. Rather, it is plausible (though I am skeptical) that skipping crawling is just a symptom of a predisposition to dyslexia. To which I say, so what? Cross that bridge when you come to it. We do not need to be burdening our babies and toddlers with all kinds of labels before they are even old enough to talk.
There does seem to be some anecdotal evidence of missed crawling becoming more common in recent years. It is, however, hard to know whether that is just because we are so much more aware of every deviation from the norm in this information age. I have read speculation that the “back to sleep” campaign means less tummy time for babes, and could lead to more variations on crawling. Also, the recent trend toward more frequent baby wearing might mean less time for baby to maneuver on the floor. My second baby is certainly spending way more time on the floor, in the playpen, and in her crib than my first did. In any case, it’s just so much fun to watch them develop into their own person.
(Image courtesy of timomcd at Flickr.)