How do you encourage babies to stand/walk earlier

[BTBVEN]

Hi All

My daughter (7 months) has been crawling for a few weeks now and recently she's begun holding onto things and standing up (not for long and not very often but certainly every now and then). How do I get her interested in wanting to try it more often and also get her interested in walking?

Many thx
BT

[PokerDad]

PokerCub really enjoyed standing for its own reward, but would do it for long periods of time when he was 2-4 months old while using his stand up toy. If you want your daughter to stand up a lot, then get something similar. I think you have the right idea, more time spent = faster acquisition. For reference, Cub now pulls himself up to stand at his standup toy and can cruise from one stand up toy to the next. He started crawling backwards (so not really crawling) when he was late 3 months to early 4 months, and got the whole criss cross pattern crawling going forward about a month ago. He's 6.5 months now.

[BTBVEN]

That's amazing that your son could stand up by holding onto something at 2 months. My daughter only started standing up on her own just before turning 7 months earlier in the week. She's been crawling since 6.5 months as well. I'll look for some toys to encourage standing up on her own.

Thx
BT

[Korrale4kq]

Just give her lots of opportunity! When you put your daughter down on the floor always stand her up, even id it is against a couch. Play with her standing up. Sit on the couch and have her stand between your knees.  Or sit on the floor and let her have the support your shoulders. Encourage sitting also. Sitting strengthens the trunk.


 My son also stood up at a few months old. He was able to lean against a wall or hang onton the dog's crate.  Ever since he was a few weeks old I always sat on the bed cross legged with James in my lap. I do believe this helped strengthen his trunk. If he was not sitting in my lap he was always put down on his belly or he was in a Moby wrap.
I never had James in any kind of contraption except a car seat when we were in the car only, or for 15 minutes in a bouncer when he started eating solids.
By six months James was able to walk well behind a push walker. I recommend getting one of those. You can stabilize it yourself by holding it, or putting it up against a wall. Ride on toys are good options for pre walkers. They also strengthen then trunk. 

I highly recommend a walker like this.


http://www.amazon.com/Step-Start-Walk-Ride-Colors/dp/B00004T2WP/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1357860694&sr=8-9&keywords=Ride+on+walker

Or this.

http://www.amazon.com/Pewi-Ybike-Ride-Walking-Buddy/dp/B004EIS6EQ/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header

[Mandabplus3]

Move the furniture closer together. If the space to cover isn't daunting they will more likely attempt to cover it.
Put a mirror up on the wall just above sitting height. Babies love looking at themselves.
Yes put them down in a standing position every time.
Toys that encourage standing are a good investment. As is the bike/ push toy.
Bounce your standing baby on a trampoline. They usually love this and its great for balance and strength.
Put some toys on the couch to encourage them to climb up to get them
Practice , practice, practice

[Frukc]

In my area it is believed that crawling is a very brain developing activity and it is good to crawl early but walk late. Walking is not as brain developing as crawling. Our doctors become crazy if they see any attempt to help to encourage walking earlier. They say that it can cause back problems later. They recommend to avoid too many vertical elements in the vicinity of children If the child can not walk alone, by himself, it is forbidden to give him a hand and walk with him! If you will try to do it in my country (Latvia), excited moms will run to you with warnings

My first child started to crawl at 8 months, walk at 14 months. The second one performed even better (in eyes of our doctors) - he started to crawl at 7 months, walk at 15  

Currently I am reading a bit pseudo scientific literature, "Energy medicine" by Donna Eden. Quote (no references from author):

The Cross Crawl is based on the fact that the left hemisphere of your
brain needs to send information to the right side of your body, and the right
hemisphere needs to send information to the left side. If energy from the left
or right hemisphere is not adequately crossing over to the opposite side of
your body, you cannot access and utilize your brain's full capacity or your
body's full intelligence.

When energy is unable to cross over, it slows down dramatically. It begins
to move in what is referred to as a homolateral pattern-straight up and
down the body-and the body's ability to heal is severely diminished. A homolateral
pattern is natural in newborn babies. Their energy does not yet
cross over: the right hemisphere governs the right side of the body; the left
hemisphere the left side. Crawling establishes the patterning that allows the
energies to cross over from each hemisphere to the opposite side of the body.
This is one of the reasons an infant's learning curve increases exponentially
with the ability to crawl, and children who do not crawl often develop learning
disabilities. Modeled after observations of the importance of crawling for
infants, the Cross Crawl helps your whole system function more effectively,
and it also promotes the healing process. ...

[tlyoung]

I agree that crawing is very very important to future development. Not that early walking should not be done just crawing should be first. I base this on what happened when my neice had to have most of her left brain removed. The operation was planned and the recovery plan was very specific. The physical part of her recuperation put extreme emphasis on crawling first. The neurologist and physical therapists said that her right brain and the remaining portions of her left brain needed her to crawl inorder to rewire their lost communication paths. This just makes me think (my opinion) that crawing for infants is just as important.

[Frukc]

I did not find respectable references about the correlation between non-crawling and learning difficulties. This might be an urban legend. It is easy to get such statistics if you include kids with serious delays of development; than it is another subject.

There should something more about the necessity of crawling. This is a short survey.

==============

http://www.ehow.com/about_6694635_brain-development-babies-longer-walk.html

Mobility and Brain Growth

    Brain development and physical development go hand in hand. Physical activity promotes development of the brain and development of the brain prepares the body for more advanced movements. It’s important to allow the brain and physical abilities to progress at a comfortable pace for the child. Pushing early walking can actually be detrimental. In most situations, late walking is not cause for concern.

Implications of Late Walking

    As far as long-term brain development goes, the crawling phase is actually more important than the age at which a child learns to walk. In fact, infants who spend more time in the crawling phase statistically have better test scores as preschoolers than children who walk early, according to a study published in “Perceptual and Motor Skills.”

Providing Opportunities

    Provide chances for your infant to crawl, to pull up into a standing position and to cruise along the edges of couches or chairs. According to Doman, the more your child is allowed to move on her own--even if she isn’t yet taking her first steps--the more her brain will develop. Trying to force her to walk will be counterproductive. Instead, give her the opportunity to explore and move in a variety of ways. Minimal clothing will also increase her freedom of movement; just be sure she stays warm.

[BTBVEN]

Thx :-) My daughter's been crawling for a month now..and last week we started taking her to a class called 'Tumbletots' (in the UK) which gives babies more opportunities to crawl through an obstacle course e.g. through a pop-up tunnel, vertical crawl etc and learn to do it safely. She seemed to really enjoy it so we are going to take her there on a weekly basis. At home, we opened up a large cardboad box to get her to crawl through it and similarly underneath our dining table (without any fear of hitting her head anywhere etc.)

Regards
BT

[prathibha manoj]

Hi friends                My daughter is going to 10 months and she just crawls backward, please can anybody help me. How can I encourage her to crawl more. We bought lot of crawling toys for her and always put her down and play with her, but couldn't get her crawl. Please suggest

[kmum]

CRAWLING IS IMPORTANT!  Sorry, I don't tell often but it really, really is important. We actually strategically placed our furniture to discourage crawling!

Cross pattern movement is extremely important for brain organization. There are many other benefits as well such as eye covergence & even fine motor from having their hands on the floor.

From a neurodevelopmental standpoint it is probably the most important activity you can do.

This is an early learning community so naturally the focus is more on learning but there used to be a community called Child Brain which focused on early learning like math & reading but also on a broader neurodevelopmental approach. The belief there was that while all areas are important if you have only time to work on certain areas you should focus on the physical because that will help with the brain development which will allow the book type learning to happen more easily.  Look into Glenn Doman's methods/books if you are interested.


Frukc - what a wonderful attitude your country has!

[PokerDad]

I guess I'll have to be the lone dissenting opinion here. I don't mean to be polemic, but I've looked at this crawling issue for some time and have yet to find legitimate research that suggest "pathways" are enhanced by crawling (as opposed to enhanced by walking or any other physical activity). If there's a pathway that's enhanced, it should show up in the corpus callosum, but I've found nothing online to indicate this is true; I do know that walking is highly correlated with the pre-frontal cortex - but correlation isn't necessarily causation; I'm not familiar with the true relation between some of these activities and brain development.

It does appear to be common knowledge that crawling is a pivotal skill that has loads of benefits and is necessary to proper development. My problem is that no one is citing any actual evidence to suggest this. I'm saying this with all due respect to Kmum because I look up to her and I know she's done a lot of research in the area of physical development/therapy - in principle, I'm inclined to agree with her. Perhaps someone can point me in the direction of some research or a book that discusses the topic more in depth.

Without something besides what appears to be wives tales, there's no way I'd hinder my child's physical development like suggested in this thread (though it was the pervasive mentality of a country that suggests it, NOT the person posting that suggested it)

I took a little video of Cub this morning while he was still in his pajamas. I'd say his physical development is moving right along. He's 31 weeks old, to be 32 weeks on Saturday if I'm counting correctly, and is 7 months and 1 week old today at the time of this video:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/FyP_Kuokirs&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/FyP_Kuokirs&rel=1</a>

[AraBoo]

Wow PokerDad, that video is fab! Your little one is too cute. How did you encourage this?! My DD is 23 weeks and is barely supporting her own weight when I try to stand her.... Kirsty

[Mandabplus3]

Pokdad I agree with you. I couldn't find any real evidence either. I did find a lot of mums with babies who didn't crawl properly being told by their GPs to have them crawl around after they learnt to walk to fill in their learning gaps.  anyway based on personal experience    my kiddies were walking around just like poker cub at that age. My first took was walking at 9 months ( to the day!) the second at 8 months and 2 weeks and the third at 10 months. I put his late start down to both laziness, apathy ( he is a boy!  ) and the fact that he spent less overall time on the floor for his own protection from his rather dare devilish  sisters! Even after he could walk he chose not to do it much until he was 11 months3 weeks. At that age both the girls had a cross pattern run going!
 Back to my point. My kids arnt stupid! So the little time they spend crawling didn't stop them from getting dux trophies, or from learning to read at lighting speed, working above grade level in math, or topping their spelling tests or winning every single race the school has ever held!
There is just no basis in this rumour. Or if their is I have yet to see it! If you are still wanting to cover both basis then teach your kids to walk early and then buy them a tunnel to crawl through. Or install a doggy door for them 

[nee1]

Thanks everyone for your comments.

PokerDad, you're doing great. Cub is so advanced physically I didn't know what to say. Great job! Are you still doing Fowler's language exercises? Are you finding them effectual? Share updates, please. I'm very keen.

Manda, thanks for those insights.

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