The 6 Areas A Baby Needs To Master To Learn To Crawl and Exercises To Help
There are 6 things babies need to be able to do in order to learn how to crawl. If a baby is struggling with crawling, it is essential to focus on these six areas to ensure that kiddos who are struggling with crawling have the essential building blocks that children need to master in order to progress toward crawling.
If a child struggles in any or multiple areas, they may not crawl and instead move in less ideal ways such as booty scooting, hitch crawling, or army crawling for longer than one month.
The six areas a baby needs to master are:
1. Upper Trunk Strength
2. Upper Trunk Mobility
3. Lower Trunk Strength
4. Lower Trunk Mobility
5. Core Strength
6. Crawling Specific Motions
If you’re curious about why each of these areas is important, make sure to watch all of the videos linked down below where I explain exactly how each of these exercises can help a child progress to hands and knees crawling.
For Exercises, it's best to focus on at least one exercise per section for the week. I tell the families I work with to focus on 3 exercises or 20 minutes per day with some extra exercises on the weekends or on days when parents find that they have more time.
Each exercise is either 2-5 minutes or about 10 reps, however, it is okay to tailor it to a baby’s specific tolerance and then increase by 2-3 repetitions or 15-30 seconds each day or week as available/tolerated.
*exercise listed in more than one section
Mobility of the Upper Trunk
Mobility of the Lower Trunk
Strengthening of Upper Trunk
Baby Planks (goal 15-30 sec at a time)
Baby Wheelbarrow (goal 3-5 feet without collapsing)
Weight Bearing Through Arms on Elevated Play Surfaces (coming soon)
Strengthening of Lower Trunk
Tall Kneeling / Tall Kneeling on Incline Toy (coming soon)
Pull to Stand at Activity Table / Pull to Stand at Couch or Small Table
Core Strengthening
Supine to Sidelying to Sit (side core muscles)
Supine to Sit (if #1 is too difficult)
Crawling Training
Crawling on hands and knees is a significantly important milestone, maybe even the most important milestone for all around holistic long term development.
Without hands and knees crawling babies miss out on:
Strengthening the hand muscles which can impact hand writing legibility, formation of letters, and control of a pencil
Decreased postural control strengthening of the upper trunk which can impact handwriting
Decreased core strengthening which can impact gross motor skills such as running, jumping, throwing/catching
Decreased Eye movement and coordination which can impact reading / writting / catching a ball
Decreased isolation of head movements from the body, which can impact coordination
Decreased hip strengthening opportunities which can impact progress toward walking independently (especially if mobility is with booty scooting or army crawling ie neither of those result in neutral hip position weight bearing).
If your child is past 11 months and is not yet crawling on hands / knees, schedule a parent consultation or evaluation here.
Crawling Exercises For Your Baby | Reaching On All Fours To Build Baby Arm Strength
Before you can crawl, you need to be able to reach for toys in all fours. In this video, you'll learn ways to help your baby learn to crawl and a few crawling exercises for your baby to build arm strength and progress to crawling.
This post contains affiliate links, please see my disclaimer for more information.
Lauren is the owner of Dr. Lauren Baker In Home Pediatric Physical Therapy and provides paid 60-minute online parent consultations for individuals with additional questions internationally. For scheduling please click here.
This video will teach you:
How to support your baby in all fours
How to help them reach for a toy to progress toward crawling
What toys work well for this exercise
find what you’re looking for
0:28 what exercise we’re going to learn today
0:40 why reaching on all fours is important to learn before crawling
1:24 exercise #1: quadruped reaching with wooden activity cube toy
1:50 breakdown of what I am doing during the quadruped reaching exercise
3:45 what to do when a kiddo is struggling in all fours
4:10 exercise #2 reaching with small toys on all fours
6:27 how to work with dr. Lauren Baker, PT, DPT, ATC, MTC
transcription coming soon
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links and additional information
LINKS IN VIDEO
Wooden Activity Center toy: https://amzn.to/3I5q1bc
🍼 Best Toys for Babies - https://kit.co/drlaurenbaker/best-toy...
Get a gorgeous NC landscape print like the one behind me - https://rachelcarterimages.com/buy-pr...
Macramé feather hanging - https://botanicalknotsstudio.com/
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