From the moment our babies are born, we look forward to some key milestones – their first smile, their first words, their first step.
This week, I’m responding to a request from a new listener to talk about the mastery of walking and it’s connection with other areas of development
So in this podcast I am answering the following questions:
- When is a child officially a late walker?
- What are the early signs that a child might be a bit slower to walk on their own?
- What are the consequences of late walking?
- What can we do about it?
If you’re concerned about your child’s rate of progress with walking or other gross motor skills, it’s never too early to seek a physiotherapy assessment. Your paediatric physiotherapist will be able to quickly advise you of how your child is progressing and give you some great ideas about how to help them advance.
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References:
Liddle, T.L. & Yorke, L. Why Motor Skills Matter, McGraw-Hill, New York 2004
Bellman M, Byrne O, Sege R; Developmental assessment of children. BMJ. 2013 Jan 15;346:e8687. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e8687.
Hi Julia,
I have been an EC teacher, then FDC educator, now caring for just my own grand kids. My 13 mth grandson moved by commando crawling from about 8mths but only briefly crawled with cross lateral movement. As soon as he attained that at about 11 mths, he wanted to be upright walking around furniture and pushing walkers (anything he can find to push!) When you caution against using walkers are you referring to push toys? He does this all day long (haven’t seen a little one so into this for so long before!) … balance to walk independently not quite there. Should we encourage him to crawl? I know we used to believe the crawling stage was developmentally very important especially for reading later on.
Love your podcasts thanks, very helpful.
Jan
Hi Jan – Thanks for the great question. It can be confusing when we talk about walkers. What I mean by walkers are the ones that children sit in while they move – so you’re fine.
I love that “pushing-everything” stage – it’s great so let him at it! If his balance isn’t great, you can weight down carts and boxes with a big bag(s) of rice which will reduce the number of falls he has and has the added benefit of increasing the feedback throughout his body about what he is doing to help with gross motor learning.
It seems like he has a great urge to get moving, we don’t want to interfere with that. However it would be great if he could get some more 4 point reciprocal crawling in, as reciprocal or cross-crawling is great for overall brain development.
Tunnels are a great way to achieve this, either commercial ones or boxes connected together, or chairs lined up with a sheet or blanket over the chairs for cover – put a light up toy or something else interesting in there and encourage him to retrieve it, or connect to a “tent” that he’s motivated to crawl into and out of repeatedly.
Another way is to set up a large soft space with lots of cushions on the floor, at his stage of walking, crawling is the easiest way to get around on that kind of surface.
Thanks so much for the lovely feedback, I’m glad that you’re finding it helpful!