MOTOR MILESTONE: BABY CRAWLING
Zizu learns to scoot!
The two most familiar motor milestones for infants are crawling and walking. Every parent seems eager to see their baby crawl, and they ask, “When do babies crawl?.” What I explain to the parents is that a “stellar caterpillar” goes through every stage of motor development, spending enough time in each phase to strengthen and lengthen muscles and develop the neuron pathways in the brain. Babies learn to crawl when they have developed the skills that precede crawling. Ideally, a baby will learn kicking, rolling, and lifting the head before crawling. These motor skills strengthen the muscles of the legs, back, and arms, which are essential to crawling. The earliest version of crawling is called “combat crawling,” or “belly crawling,” or “creeping.” This refers to the motor skill of the infant lying on the ground with her tummy touching the floor while moving forward in space. This is an important motor milestone teaching baby to move forward by pushing against the ground with her feet, one at a time. It also teaches the same coordination that is used in hands-and-knees crawling as well as in walking. We will examine this coordination more in-depth in a later post. For now, let’s examine how Zizu learned to push off of the floor and scoot forward. This scoot is the preparation for belly crawling.
While Zizu was laying on her stomach entranced with the bell inside a rattle, I put my hands on her pelvis at the hip joint (where the thigh meets the hip socket). Very slowly and gently I lifted the right hip joint away from the floor (in the direction of the ceiling) and then the left hip joint away from the floor. I continued this for a couple of minutes, alternating right hip-left hip-right hip-left hip, etc. My hands help develop her proprioception, her ability to feel this part of her body moving. Developing proprioception is the first step toward learning to move a part of the body on her own. Lifting the hip joint also shifts the weight. As you lift her right hip up, her weight shifts to the left a little bit and vice versa.
As I lift her right hip joint up, and her weight shifts to the left, her right leg becomes less heavy against the floor. Then I can bend it up toward her right shoulder. Take a look at the middle photo above. After bending the knee, I gently press her right foot and ankle into the floor and hold it there so she can feel the increased contact with the floor. After a few moments a reflex is triggered causing her to push her foot even more into the floor. Oops! What happened? She scooted forward! What a surprise! This is repeated on the left side, and then we continue to alternate right, left, right, left. After many days of working with this skill, the scoot begins to happen more quickly, which leads to the development of belly crawling. Think of belly crawling as a faster, rhythmic version of the scoot. So, the answer to “When do babies learn to crawl?” is “After they learn to scoot!”