The crawling

This article is also available in Italian.

During the first two years of life, the child grows and develops in surprising ways. During this period, before reaching the upright posture, passes through the craw, the first real phase of locomotion.

Able to move independently without depending on others for the child represents an important step, because now he can explore the environment by promoting the same time, developing perceptual, cognitive and social.

Every child has a story, someone crawls soon, who prefers to crawl after learning to walk and who does not crawl.

The movements preceding the crawl.

Before crawling there are other forms of movement that facilitate the crawl.

At first, there is rolling, ie the ability to turn from supine to prone position and vice versa.

Later, some children already at 5 months, they start creeping. They are pushing forward and pushing on their arms, while the belly and legs are still placed on the ground. Indeed, for the position to take the child, this movement is also called belly crawling. This movement is often done by children used to stay in the prone position.

The real crawling occurs between the 8 and 10 months: the child moves his hands and knees on floor, while the belly is raised. For this reason it is common to say “hands and knees crawling”.

May often happen that, at the beginning, the child in this position can not walk, but only to swing back and forth, this is called rocking.

Slowly and with practice, your child will refine the coordination of movements, and will find his favorite form of crawling.

Among the many variations on the theme we can find:

• Bear crawl.

  The child walks into his hands and feet on the ground, as in the classic position of crawling but with the limbs stretched.

• One knee resting on the ground and the other leg forward, resting his foot.
• Move by sitting.

  The child wheel remaining in a seated position. Sometimes they keep one leg bent and stretched, and use the arms and hands just to take the objects of their interest.

What drives a child to crawl depends on many variables. It is not only the maturation of the central nervous system, but is the result of cooperation of components physical anatomical, neurological, environmental, motivational, etc..

In practice there are some who still does not have enough strength in his arms, who does not have enough space to move, who is clumsy in his movements because of thick clothing.

He will be little incentive if he is often held in his arms. For this reason it is recommended to accustom the child, since young, to stay for much free time on the floor, obviously when not sleeping.

The task of the mother is to leave the child free to explore, freeing herself from the fears and anxieties that arise at this time.

This will serve to promote the development of autonomous functions of self and identity.

Surely the crawl benefits the child because it helps him to organize the movement, will be for him to help when he can make the first steps in the upright posture, and will assist him in developing the balance. This does not mean that those who skipped the stage of crawling, can not reach an optimal cognitive and motor development.

Fonte:

• “Developmental science: an advanced textbook” di Marc H. Bornstein,Michael E. Lamb, Edizione: 5 – 2005