Crawl … Then Walk

Missing out on a major developmental milestone could lead to setbacks down the road

By Dawn Klingensmith
CTW Features

Babies who are unable to crawl at nine months are more likely to have behavioral problems and lag behind in school at age five, a London study reveals.

Though some health professionals agree that crawling is a critical developmental phase, the consensus holds that kids who don’t crawl will not pay later provided they develop gross and fine motor skills, and reach other milestones such as sitting and walking.

“There are plenty of kids who skip crawling and they seem to do just fine. I look more at when they start walking. If at 18 months a child isn’t walking, that’s a concern,” says developmental pediatrician Dr. Deborah Mishek, San Diego.

London’s Millennium Cohort Study, made public in February, likely will stoke the controversy, not lay it to rest. London University’s Institute of Education analyzed the progress of nearly 15,000 children, born in 2000 and 2001, from birth to five, and found that tots who were slow to develop motor skills such as crawling by nine months of age were significantly more likely to be behind in their cognitive development, and also more likely to have behavioral problems.

In addition to building muscle strength and improving coordination, crawling likely plays a role in cognitive development, and it teaches babies where their bodies are in space and in relation to other objects, says Dr. Brent Jensen, a pediatrician at Sacred Heart Hospital, Eau Claire, Wis. But babies who don’t crawl typically learn these things by some other means, he adds.

Others argue that the act of crawling provides for unique, and necessary, learning opportunities. Crawling requires oppositional arm and leg movements. Since movement on one side of the body is initiated by the opposite side of the brain, crawling therefore requires the use of both the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and children who skip it and go straight to walking are not more advanced but rather at risk for a host of setbacks down the line, including learning disabilities, poor coordination and vision problems, says developmental psychologist Patricia Lemer, Developmental Delay Resources, Pittsburgh, Pa.

“Some parents think their kids are geniuses because they’re walking at nine months, but they’ll have problems down the line because they didn’t spend time on the floor with their eyes and hands working together as a team,” she says.

Doctors tend to agree that fewer babies learn to crawl these days, in part because the American Academy of Pediatrics in the mid 1990s started advising parents to put their babies to sleep on their backs to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). With so much less time spent on their bellies, babies literally are not in a position to learn to crawl or develop the necessary upper body strength. Babies learn to locomote in others ways like rolling or scooting to explore their environment, and if these movements lead to walking and there are no corresponding delays in other areas, most doctors say not to worry. However, “Compensatory movements limit how children scan their environments,” which can cause reading difficulties and other problems later on, says Dr. Deborah Zelinsky, a neuro-developmental optometrist who practices in Northbrook, Ill.

Whether or not crawling is important, doctors recommend giving babies supervised “tummy time” each day to develop back and neck muscles. Parents can then encourage crawling by holding an enticing object just out of reach. Kids generally start crawling between 6 and 9 months. If they don’t, “Watch the child’s development over time. If the development of gross motor skills occurs in a decent progression, that’s much more important than the actual act of crawling,” Jensen says. “If the kid is pulling up to stand, if all the rest is happening quite well, then if the baby’s not crawling, that’s OK.”

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