The moment your kids start crawling, they are exercising. To them, movement is fun and organic... It is adults who have turned daily activity into a mandatory chore.
David Kirsch
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Dear moms & dads,
Crawling is not just a fun stage babies go through. It is super important to assure they go through it and in the “right” way. I unfortunately learned that through my own experience as a mom.
This is is the reason I decided to write about how we can encourage baby crawling.
Lots of parents do not know this and trust all kinds of advice on the internet. I will share with you my knowledge on this, both based on experience as a mom but also from knowledge I learned based on NDFA approach.
Child development is like a building, where each stage is built on the previous one and each affects the next one. It is important for us to be aware during the main stages and understand them. The exact age they arrive is less crucial within the normal range of course. You can read a lot on the internet on when baby should crawl and the normal range for it.
On the other side, if he crawls in a different way, this will impact on lots of aspects later.
Baby crawling with my 1st and 2nd child:
I already wrote about my 2 biological daughters. With the first one, I was more available for her, got excited on everything she did and looked for interaction with her all the time. For whatever reason, as soon as she could sit, I was placing her in a sitting position with a pillow behind her back. I guess i could then play, look at her and give her a way to interact with me too.
Only later I understood I did wrong! Babies need to get to sitting situation by themselves and not place them there. Crawling for her was mainly backwards and not “perfect”, meaning exact crossing (when right hand moves simultaneously with left leg and left hand moves together with right leg) did not occur. I showed the movement in one of my short movies on my Youtube channel.You can check this specific movie at the end of it. You can check it out.
With my 2nd daughter, 4 years later, I got smarter, as we all do, I believe! I took a professional lady, expert in child development, who came weekly to our house and helped me exercise with her step by step making sure every stage is going through right…I learned what to do and how.
During that same time, I was studying the NDFA approach that explained the importance of right crossing in crawling stage that helps the next stage of gross motor skills, integration of both brain hemispheres that affects coordination which comes in many ways in life as useful like dancing or learning a musical instrument.
I found an article that explains this. Check it out!
My older daughter was for years clumsier for example and had a harder time with gross motor skills…When she was younger, she was running into chairs and table for example.
So now that I told you my personal experience and the importance of right crawling, I wish to list 10 toys and gifts that will encourage baby crawling.
Please avoid doing the job for them, even when it is hard and especially when it is hard! Yes you can help by providing baby with an interesting object upfront or placing your hands on the back of both legs so they can push and get the feeling of that movement.
7- Explore & More Follow-me Bee 3-Stage Developmental Learning Crawl Toy
8- Musical Press and Go Inchworm Toy with Light up Face Caterpillar Crawling 
9-VTech Explore and Crawl Learning Cub
10-SoftZone Climb and Crawl Activity Play Set
Did you know?
- Babies crawl an average of 200m a day.
- During birth to age 3, brain development sees the fastest rate in the entire human life span.
- Movement gets the brain going
- Criss-cross crawling stimulates the corpus callosum to develop in a balanced way, facilitating the hemispheres of the brain to communicate.
- Crawling also serves as physiological steppingstone to walking. The crawling muscle actions start to reshape the hips, pulling them inward and forward. As the baby gets stronger, she becomes better positioned to lift her body and balance for walking.
- In criss-cross crawling, a baby can also move a limb to the opposite side of the body, such as touching the right hand to the left shoulder. This type of movement is key for developing vision, hearing, learning, and integration of reflexes.
Source: https://www.neurolifecenter.com/
I hope you found this article interesting, and that it will help you for your next purchase!
I invite you to check also the article about “My selected Melissa and Doug 2-year-old toys” as well as “Best Gifts for Babies under 1”.
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“Pull-Back Vehicles Baby and Toddler Toy” – these toys were my favorite when my son was little. Thanks for the new ideas that I can use as a gift for my nephew.