Why Crawling Is an (Important) Milestone
Today, Lindsay, a childcare professional and 1000 Days Baby Coach at Kideo Childcare, shares her valuable insights on an essential milestone in your baby's development: crawling. At Kideo, our childcare center, we see children develop step by step every day. From first movements to important milestones—it's a wonderful process of growth and discovery.
One of those milestones is crawling – a movement that is not only physically important, but also deeply intertwined with a child's cognitive and emotional development.
"By crawling, the body makes a cross-left movement. By making this movement, the cerebral cortex activated."
In my work as a childcare professional in a baby group, I get to witness a baby's development up close and personal. I get to see them grow every day, and that continues to excite me! They've already gone through a lot of motor development before their first birthday.
At first, your baby could only lie on their back, but soon they'll be rolling, sitting, and hopefully crawling a lot too. Yet, I often see children in the group whose motor development is "different" for whatever reason. Sometimes, important milestones are even skipped altogether.
Crawling is such an important milestone. I'd love to tell you more about this movement pattern and why it's so important that your baby doesn't miss this milestone.
When your baby is born, it comes into the world with a whole set of reflexes. These allow your baby to perform various movement patterns. Crawling is also a reflex. This usually occurs soon after birth and is called the "breast crawl." Your baby can crawl independently from your belly to your breast to feed. Crawling is a reflex and is present in every body. This means that every baby should be able to crawl.
However, your baby can also tell you something else with their body language. Signs that indicate your baby might be skipping crawling.
Crawling has an important function for the baby brain
It's often thought that crawling is necessary for walking later. Eventually, even children who don't crawl will walk, so why is crawling so important?
Crawling causes the body to make a cross-left movement. This movement activates the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a key area in our brain where nerve pathways cross, connecting the left and right hemispheres of our brain. In our daily lives, we constantly switch between our left hemisphere (the part responsible for logical thinking) and our right hemisphere (the part focused on emotional experience). To properly understand and respond to the world, it's important that our brains work well together.
Crawling plays an important role in your baby's cognitive development and stress sensitivity. The more crawling sessions your little one gets, the better!
There are often early signs that your baby may skip crawling:
- Your baby doesn't like lying on his or her stomach
- Your child has difficulty rolling over on both sides
- Your child cannot sit up independently
- Your baby prefers to stand instead of crawling
Do you recognize these signs in your baby, or are you unsure about their movement development? I'd be happy to discuss them with you.
Love,
Lindsay
1000 Days Baby Coach
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