The Mentor Mom: Crawling and why it is so important.

I'm off on vacation this week, so I thought I'd re-post my most popular posts. Enjoy and I'll be back next week!

I talked yesterday about the importance of tummy time. Today I want to share some information on crawling. There have been some studies that indicate that late walkers score better later in life on academic achievement tests. It is hypothesized that because of the use of alternating sides of the body (e.g., right arm and left leg, then vica versa), there is increase communication between the two sides of the brain thus enhancing learning.

There also is an interesting theory out there about a link between crawling and ADD/ADHD. Before talking about this possible link, however, you need a little background on the basis of this theory.

It all has to do with an innate reflex called the symmetric tonic neck reflex. This reflex tells the neck and arms to work in opposition to our legs. If the arms bend, the legs want to be straight and if the arms are straight, the legs want to bend. So in a nutshell, they are learning to operate the upper and lower body independent of each other.

This reflex emerges between six and nine months and should be inhibited between nine and twelve months. This reflex dissipates as the child learns to stand and walk.

In addition, crawling requires that our little ones learn to lift the body off the floor while on all fours. This helps align the spinal cord for standing and walking later on.

Another important piece of development that occurs during the crawling stage is binocular vision. This involves training the eyes to look off into the distance and then back at the hands while creeping. This helps integrate the vestibular, proprioceptive and visual senses (if you don't know what these are, see my post "Our Seven Senses") for the first time. The integration of these senses helps the sense of balance as well as space and depth perception.

It appears that for some kids where this reflex does not dissipate. The cause could be genetics, little time spent crawling or extended periods of time spent in walkers or exersaucer. Whatever the cause, there are some hypothesized negative outcomes for some kids when this reflex does not subside:

Sitting at a desk becomes uncomfortable
Poor eye-hand coordination
Difficulty copying from a blackboard while at a desk
Slowness at copying
Difficulty with vertical tracking (needed for math equations!)
Difficulty with activities where the upper and lower parts of the body have to work independently, e.g., swimming, etc.
Poor attention

Can you see the correlation between crawling and the above mentioned activities? Sitting at a desk requires the upper and lower parts of our body to be working independently. Kids where this reflex is still prevalent may slump at their desk or display poor posture. In addition, copying from a blackboard requires binocular vision (look down at the paper and then looking up at the far away blackboard).

As with the discussion about walkers exersaucers, I share this information with you as something to consider. There is no definitive research out there to say that absolutely without a doubt if you child doesn't crawl he is destined to have ADHD. There may be plenty of children out there that skip crawling without any negative effects later on. Again, this is just some information for you to tuck in your parenting tool box.

So how do you encourage crawling in a little one who has already taken to walking? Get a tunnel for them to crawl through. Play pretend games like being a dog or a horse and chase them around while they are on all fours.

For more information on the theory between the symmetric tonic reflex and ADHD, you can check out the book Stopping ADHD by Nancy O'Dell and Patricia Cook.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this as it is a somewhat controversial topic. Post any questions or comments you might have!

Comments

Jill, thank you so much for re-running this post! Since you're on vacation and not actually writing this week, you couldn't have known how timely this topic would be! Just yesterday -- August 8th -- there was a news story about a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, which determined that, among babies ages 8 to 16 months, every hour spent daily watching programs such as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein" translated into six to eight fewer words in their vocabularies as compared with other children their age.

What does this have to do with crawling? Well, somewhere along the line parents became convinced that they'd be failing their children if they didn't immerse them in "educational" materials, particularly DVDs and computer software. Madison Avenue worked its magic, and people forgot that Mother Nature already had a plan for a child's development. And it's a pretty good one!

As you pointed out, the senses are vital to optimal development. As a baby moves from lying down to sitting to creeping and, finally, to standing, her perspective changes, as do her perceptions of the world and its possibilities. The more mobile she becomes, the more she increases her knowledge about herself and the people and things around her, acquiring information through her tactile (touch), kinesthetic (muscular), proprioceptive (body awareness), and vestibular (motion awareness, or balance) senses. With each new experience, new neural connections are made.

As you know, I'm a children's physical activity specialist. What you probably don't know is that I've been singing the praises of tummy time and cross-lateral movement for years! Thanks for joining the chorus!

Posted by: Rae Pica | August 09, 2007 at 04:11 PM

Thank you so much for the input, Rae! I really feel that it is important to share information on topics that may impact a child's development and growth for parents to consider :)

Posted by: Jill Urbane, The Mentor Mom | August 16, 2007 at 11:30 AM