Should Your Child Crawl Before Walking?

When you become a parent, there are certain things you notice about your baby. If you are a new parent you will notice every little thing about your little one. Each step of their growing up is exciting and noteworthy.

What if your child skips a step? First of all, every child is different. We have to remember that. We are all our own person and sometimes there will things that one child does when another does something different. There is one step in your baby's life that is very important though. That is the stage of crawling.

Crawling may seem like a very small and minute thing in your childs' life. However, crawling is a lot more important than you think! If a child does not crawl before they begin to walk, they have missed a significant step in their growth and development. Crawling has physical development in it as well as mental. Let us look at both sides of crawling.

The physical portion of your baby's development is obvious when it comes to crawling. One day your baby is rolling around on the floor, the next they sit up on their arms and then they are suddenly crawling! After the crawl will come the attempts to walk and then the walking begins. All of that seems simple and cut and dry, right? Think again. If your child skips all the important steps of crawling, they cannot develop the arm strength. Arm strength is very important. Without arm strength or the proper development of it, your child will not be able to preform the gross motor skills, such as running and throwing, or the fine motor skills. Fine motor skills mean the ability to cut, hold a pencil, even grab! That is why it is very important for your child to develop that arm strength. So you see that even though skipping a step of development as "small" as crawling may not seem so bad, it can harm your childs' development later on.

Another reason crawling is so important for your child is that they skip a step of their mental development. Even though it does not seem as if crawling has anything to do with your childs' mental growth, it does. This is because the mind of your child will develop along with your childs' physical attributes. Growing up your mind is organized and grows step by step. This means that your childs' body and your childs' mind grow up together to make a happy and healthy little one.

What can you do to encourage your child to crawl? Here are some things. When they are at the stage of rolling around on the floor, you can encourage them to crawl. How can you do this? Lie on the floor with your child, coax them to reach or come toward you with a toy. Your child will try to get the toy, but they will also be on their way to crawling.