Part of one of my wishes for the world is that babies have a safe and loving environment in which to grow and thrive. I recently tripped over a video of a niece’s 13 month old baby crawling… or doing his darn best.
It wasn’t going so well. Really cute, and he’s so sweet, but….
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen this before, and it is relatively easy to remedy this situation. We don’t want to skip this step in the foundational primal movements. Crawling puts hip flexors into your body’s available muscles to move with, and if you skip it, we have to pattern it in as adults!
Watch his sweet little self below do his best, and then see what I am having his mom try with him to fix it. I’ve seen it resolve (meaning army crawl to ‘normal’ crawling) in as few as four days! I hope to have a follow up video so we can watch his progress, too.
Funnily enough, the star demonstrator of the show, Miss Sasha Barry, was having identical crawling problems about 2.5 years ago. The recommendations for her little body included orthotics and physical therapy. Turned out with such narrow hips, her parents had unwittingly turned her into a little bow legged cowgirl by carrying her around (like all parents do!) on their hip. All parents want and need to have one hand free, but in this case, it was messing with the balance of muscles in her hips.
I am also concerned when I see small people carried around in carriers like the one I snapped a photo of below:
Same issue- the kiddo’s legs are split really far apart, and although it is handy for the parents, I am concerned about the constant big stretch those femurs are subjected to. That’s a little cowgirl in the making, just like Sasha.
The trick is to have fun and sing a song while you are moving the femurs in the two main directions hip flexors are responsible for…up and down, and rotation. I chose “Wheels on the Bus” to sing with Sasha as we were doing her “exercises”. It takes 5 minutes and it will make a world of difference in how the baby or toddler moves.
Let me know in the comments below if you have other successful interventions for the unusual crawling you have seen in your family!
Same issue- the kiddo’s legs are split really far apart, and although it is handy for the parents, I am concerned about the constant big stretch those femurs are subjected to. That’s a little cowgirl in the making, just like Sasha.
The trick is to have fun and sing a song while you are moving the femurs in the two main directions hip flexors are responsible for…up and down, and rotation. I chose “Wheels on the Bus” to sing with Sasha as we were doing her “exercises”. It takes 5 minutes and it will make a world of difference in how the baby or toddler moves.
Let me know in the comments below if you have other successful interventions for the unusual crawling you have seen in your family!
