Of course yes. The crawling phase is essential. It occurs around 8 months. There are girls and boys who never get past the crawling phase. Today we will talk about the importance of crawling, what is it for and why we should not force the child to stand up, but let him adapt himself.
To start crawling requires coordination of arms and legs, and that is fundamental for the brain of our little one, beyond that it will make him dare and discover the world for himself. Therefore crawling has motor, intellectual and emotional consequences.
Advantages of crawling
Let a baby crawl promotes muscle development, your arms and legs gain more strength, which will be the basis for getting up later.
As well promotes coordination between what the eye sees and what the hand and foot do. In other words, it will help your coordination. Although this may seem trivial it is not. Recent studies have discovered that the crawling process is later related to fine psychomoticity, a fundamental aspect of learning to read and write. In this process of reading and writing, hand and eye must be coordinated and this is achieved from crawling.
More advantages: as the head and the body are in different planes and the child has to learn not to go sideways or forward. So it has to be stable. Its balance is essential.
Psychologically it is a fundamental stage, since he "conquers and reaches" where he proposes, calculates the distances and begins to separate from his mother and father. It is your first act of independence. The baby will discover for himself his environment, his textures, colors, smells, his brain connections are at full capacity.
How parents can favor this stage
When you start to notice that your child begins to demand more space, Find a place for her where she can move around easily. Do not force him to stand up, he will when his time comes and he feels confident.
I recommend close the doors of the rooms, put plugs in the sockets, line the corners of the furniture. Also think about the clothes you put on your baby, he is starting to crawl and needs to feel comfortable. You better not wear shoes.
At first the child may crawl "weirdly" with one leg raised and the other not, making the croquette and then getting up, leave it alone, he is learning. You can help him by holding him on all fours and supporting his hands forward, or if he sees you crawl. Also keep in mind that his muscles get tired and need to be strengthened, so do not pressure him with a 5 meter corridor, he will go through it, that and more. We can assure you.
Games and activities to stimulate crawling
There is some exercises prior to crawling that you can do with your baby. For example, when you change him or in the bathroom, you can stretch and flex his legs as if he were doing the bicycle. This is how it gains strength for crawling.
This game is for develop abdominal muscles and it will help you develop your attention. Place your baby on a blanket in front of you and put an eye-catching toy right within reach, in front of you. Then when he has that one, you are putting other equally striking ones and you put them a little further away from his hand, until there comes a time that with leaning forward does not arrive. You may be so eager to pick it up that it ends up upside down, or on all fours. The important thing is that it is balanced to strengthen its muscles.
All the noisy balls or cylindrical toys are good at this stage, because they force the child to chase them. Another thing that babies love is that they crawl next to them, you also walk around the house on all fours as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
I hope all these tips have helped you, if you want to read more about the types of crawling you can do it here.