Is Crawling Really Important?

Crawling is a critical and important milestone. There are many great developmental benefits of crawling. Crawling helps enhance gross motor skills, fine motor skills, cognitive skills, vision, sense of touch, proprioception and balance. Crawling is the sequel to tummy time.

The typical age window for babies to begin to crawl is around 7 or 8 months of age and is a directly linked to how much time baby spends freely exploring and playing on the floor, especially on their belly. Babies should be attempting to crawl by 12 months of age.

Crawling strengthens the shoulders and hips and increases trunk stability. Having a stable trunk (abdomen) allows your child to have better arm and leg stability later on, which is important for walking, running, playing sports and more. All gross motor activities such as skipping, hopping, throwing a ball and shooting a puck all start with the movements learned while crawling. Also, having a strong torso is key to having good fine motor skills.

With every step moved in crawling, your baby is strengthening all the tiny muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones in his wrists, hands and fingers. Strengthening these parts of his body are preparing him for more intricate fine motor skills later on such as zipping zippers, buttoning buttons, tying shoelaces, printing and and even playing musical instruments!

The alternating movements of the arms and legs in crawling stimulates both sides of brain and therefore builds a better brain. These kinds of movements help the brain connect to other parts of the brain to make a new path for information to travel more easily and faster. These pathways (synapses) help wire and prepare the brain for reading, writing and other cognitive (thinking) skills later on in life.

Crawling also helps develop and strengthen your baby's vision. They are seeing things in different angles and proximities now that they are able to move on their own. This makes their eyes focus and re-focus as they move around and explore. 

As your baby moves around on the floor crawling on their hands, forearms, bellies and knees, they are using their sense of touch to process all of the different textures and densities of the flooring (carpet, stone, wood, laminate). This helps them learn even more about the world around them. They are learning that fuzzy looking things are soft and squishy (carpet), shiny things are slippery (laminate) and matte looking things are very hard (stone). For an added challenge, place some pillows under a blanket and encourage baby to crawl over the "hills".

Crawling over various surfaces such as carpet, laminate, hardwood and stone also helps build their sense of proprioception (a system of receptor nerves located in the muscles, joints, and ligaments that tell your brain where your limbs are). Crawling over carpet relays different information to the brain about how much pressure to give through the arms and hands than when crawling over stone does. 

Lastly, crawling helps develop the sense of balance and the vestibular system. The vestibular system is the non-hearing part of your inner ear that controls your balance and tells your brain where your head is in space (upside down, lying on your side, etc). The movement of your baby's head while he crawls and looks from side to side, up and around, activates the vestibular system. Triggering the vestibular system helps support learning in all areas of development.

So many great reasons to encourage your baby to crawl. Spending many months in the crawling phase is superb for overall development and laying a strong foundation for later development. There is no need to rush into walking, they will master that skill when their body and brain is ready.

What to do if you have an early or late walker.

If your baby was an early walker (walking on their own before 10 months old) keep encouraging them to do some crawling. To do this, get down in crawling position with them and play "chase" or "I'm gonna get you". You can also pretend to be different animals like cats, dogs, lions, tigers and bears... oh my! (sorry.. lol... I couldn't help myself) 

If your child is not walking on their own, by 18 months of age, schedule a visit with your primary healthcare provider so that you can review your baby's overall development to see if there is an underlying reason. 

References:

Allen, K. E., Marotz, L. R. (2009). Developmental profiles: Pre-birth through twelve. Wadsworth Publishing Company

Butcher, K., Dodds, T., VandenBerg, A. (2013) Why crawl? . Michigan State University. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/why_crawl

Integrated Learning Strategies. (2015) The learning risks when babies skip the crawling phase. https://ilslearningcorner.com/why-babies-should-never-skip-the-crawling-phase/

Looksee Checklist by ndds. (n.d). https://www.lookseechecklist.com

Nationwide Children’s (2016). Why Crawling is important for your baby. https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-education/700childrens/2016/11/why-crawling-is-important-for-your-baby

Oledzka, M. (2016). Why it’s important for infants to crawl. https://www.hss.edu/playbook/why-its-important-for-infants-to-crawl/