Do All Babies Crawl Before They Walk?

We began with a question that does all baby have to crawl? Well, the answer is 'no'. These days many babies do not crawl at all. You must have heard of babies walking even before they got down to crawling. If the motor development process of the baby skips the stage of crawling, then the baby may walk straight away. According to a study there has been an increase in the number of babies who did not crawl in the last decade or so. Some parents wait for their baby to crawl when they cross 6 months. And before they know it, the baby starts walking!

However, it is not a very good thing for a baby not to crawl. There might be future problems for a baby who skip the stage of crawling and directly start walking.

Problems Of Babies Who Do Not Crawl:

Weak Joints: Crawling helps your child strengthen the joints like wrists, elbows and knees. So a baby who did not crawl will be comparatively a weak child. He or she might find it difficult to play at a jungle jim or spring up from the floor once they have fallen. It can also make them prone to joint fractures because they have skipped an important developmental stage being a baby and that is crawling.

Supporting Weight: When a baby crawls, he or she learns to support his or her weight for the first time. So if a baby never crawls, he or she remains lacking in this area of lifting ones' weight. They find it difficult to pull themselves out of the swimming pool or a ditch they might have fallen into.

Gripping Problems: Babies who walk directly without going through the step of crawling, have a shaky grip. Crawling strengthens the arche of the palms and stretches the ligaments to make them more flexible. Even the most primary step of gripping a pencil in the beginning might be difficult for a non-crawler. It affects your grip in the long run too when it comes to holding cutlery and eating confidently. This does not happen to every non-crawler but to a majority of children who do not crawl.

Hand and Leg Co-ordination: When a baby crawls, he or she does one very basic thing. That is, building coordination between the hands and legs. If the hands and legs do not move in tandem, the baby cannot crawl. Thus, motor senses of the child is developed from here. Later on in life, the coordination of the limbs for non-crawlers is poor. They do not essentially learn to move their hands and legs together.

Exploring The World: The development of a baby happens at the right pace when he or she explores the world at an eye level. When a baby starts walking without crawling, he or she is missing out on the joy of dragging oneself on the floor and watching things like the legs of sofas, wheels of a trolley and so on at an eye level. This might have a negative impact on the mental development of the child as well.

Parenting kids is not an easy job and a non-crawling baby will only add to your worries as a parent. However, it is not something in your hands; all you can do is encourage your baby and give him or her a safe environment to crawl. We started off by asking if is necessary for your child to crawl, we can finish off by saying that it is always better for your baby to crawl.