Developmental Milestones: Crawling

CRAWLING IS VERY IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE!

Proper crawling involves a cross-crawl pattern with the arms and legs that plays a HUGE role in brain development.

The cross-crawl motion begins the cascade of the communication between the right and left sides of the brain. Right and left brain communication is the foundation of talking, walking, and higher human intelligence.

If your child has difficulty crawling, crawls in an alternative manner, or is not crawling by 10 months of age, they are experiencing a developmental delay that can lead to a cascade of sensory and motor difficulties down the road. Developmental milestones occur in stages that build upon each other.

Each stage is crucial to ensure the healthy and proper growth of your child. The AAP has listed crawling as a primary motor developmental milestone between the ages of 7 and 9 months for DECADES and is the result of years of evidence-based studies.

Some parents praise their children when they skip the crawling stage and go right to walking and now these “new guidelines” from the CDC encourage this misunderstanding by the drastic change of deleting crawling entirely as a developmental milestone. We urge you to not settle for these lowered standards for your children, because early intervention is key!

We highly encourage all parents to allow their child to crawl and to find the root cause if their child is unable to properly crawl. A slight developmental delay indicates that your child’s nervous system is not developing in the proper sequence. Crawling on time and reaching other developmental milestones on time is ESSENTIAL to the proper development of your child’s brain. Your child’s developmental delay is a neurological delay and the only way to correct it is to improve the function of your child’s brain and nervous system.

At Pure Light Family Chiropractic, our doctors provide a thorough chiropractic evaluation to assess the integrity of your infant or child’s central nervous system and provide safe, specific, gentle adjustments to the tiniest of newborns through every stage of development.