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Crawling Is Essential for Development:
Crawling is an extremely important development milestones; unfortunately, most of our babies either skip this milestone or only stay in it for a short time. Crawling is an essential piece to development because it grounds the body by strengthening the hands, arms, trunk and legs. This strengthening becomes the foundation for all movement in the future; especially foundation for the hand skills. When your baby weight bears on their hands in a crawl position, this strengthens the both proximally (where their shoulder meets their trunk,) but it also develops the arches in the hand that are needed down the road for hand writing and fine motor activities. If you suspect that your child has weak hands because they never really crawled, it's not too late to begin strengthening.
Some fun ways to promote weight bearing through the hands:
1) Bear walking: start in "downward dog" and move arms and legs reciprocally
2) Crab Walking: start in "table" - with stomach facing ceiling, and move legs reciprocally
3) Place your comforter on the floor and encourage your child to crab, bear or crawl on the uneven surface
4) Climbing on/off couch with direct supervision; make sure that the palm of hands is on the surface, not the back of the hand.
Key Tip: When your child is placing their hands on the floor, make sure that their fingers are straight-out and not in a claw position. This will ensure good positioning of the small muscles of the hand to ensure proper strengthening.