Marion Wilm

As a child approaches ages 10-12 months, parents start to anticipate that huge leap in their child's development when they start to walk independently.   As an occupational therapist, I often hear new parents proudly state that their child is showing signs of early walking at ages 8-10 months.  In this world we seem to make everything a competition so it must be good that your child is "advanced" and starts to walk early.  WRONG!  Crawling is a very complex skill in which all of the  neuromotor systems, our vision, and our sensory processing must all come together. 

In NORMAL development, a typical child learns to crawl on their hands and knees around 9-11 months of age.  They have now learned to shift their weight forward and sideways at the same time, alternate arm and leg movements, and turn their head in all directions to explore their environment.  Many children start to walk early because they lack the skills needed to crawl successfully.  Even if they walk early, I strongly recommend that parents provide many fun opportunities for the child to practice crawling.  Pop up tunnels work really well for this. 

Many children are referred to occupational therapy at age 4 or 5 years because they are struggling to write their letters.  One of the first questions that I ask the parent is "Did they crawl before they walked?"  Many times the answer is "No".  Crawling is the only time in our lives that we continuously push through our hands, arms and shoulders to build the muscles in all of the joints.  We must strengthen the shoulder muscles to move our hand across the page when writing.  The elbow, forearm, and wrist muscles help to orient the hand and fingers in the right position to hold the pencil.  The finger muscles start to develop when a child crawls with a toy in their hand.  If any of these muscle groups has not fully developed then writing with a pencil is difficult. 

Crawling has one more benefit.  The pressure in the hand and through the arm provides sensory information to the muscle and joint receptors so that we can learn where our arm is located in relation to the rest of the body.  Also, crawling over different surfaces teaches us to discriminate how things feel.  So, please celebrate that your child is crawling knowing that it will provide a foundation for many more skills later in life.  It is still within the normal range of development, if a child doesn't start to walk until 13-16 months of age.