Independent Mobility
The Importance of Crawling
When we say crawling, we mean crawling on your tummy. In the future, we will go over the importance of creeping on your hands and knees.
Here is a child beginning to crawl in a cross pattern. Notice the right arm and left legs are forward and the right neg is straight and the left arm is down. The child is perfectly clothed with bare hands, elbows, knees, and feet. This is a smooth masonite surface.
This little girl is in the Quad Position and beginning to creep. Notice her hands are flat and her elbows are straight and locked.
We would not consider crawling for a child with special needs until the child had graduated from the Inclined Floor. We previously discussed the importance of a child consistently crawling off the Inclined floor. Once the child crawls for a total of 22.5 meters (70 feet) on a flat floor surface, then we can begin to gradually eliminate the Inclined Floor. For example, if a child is crawling down the Inclined Floor thirty times a day, we would decrease it to twenty-nine times a day. We would add 1-2 sessions of 3 minutes each of crawling on the flat floor. When that is going well, we would decrease the Inclined Floor to twenty times a day and ten sessions on the flat floor. In this way, over a one to two month period, we would gradually eliminate the Inclined Floor and have thirty 3-minute sessions of crawling on a flat surface.
Like the Inclined Floor, the flat floor needs to be smooth, hard, and flat. This means a masonite surface like the Inclined Floor or a linoleum surface, provided it is smooth and does not have a pattern that is three dimensional that would slow the child. A hardwood floor is fine, provided it is smooth and not rough. Marble or ceramic can be good, provided it is not too cold. Remember - the reason that the surface is smooth is to reduce friction, which makes it much easier for the child to move forward.
Like the Inclined Floor, the child also must have bare hands, elbows, knees, and feet. This is important so that he can have traction when he pushes his arms and legs into the floor to move himself forward.
Once the child graduates from the Inclined Floor, the vital objective is for the child to crawl for transportation. This means providing the child with extraordinary opportunity to be on the floor all day long. Being self determined and independently mobile is one of the most essential steps for any human being. It means that a person can get around the house at will and do anything she or he wishes. Once this all-important goal is achieved, the human being will have this ability throughout their lives. Of course, our huge objective is getting the child walking independently. With our experience with thousands of brain-injured children and adults with profound mobility problems, they need to be totally independent in their mobility as a prerequisite to learning how to walk.
It is essential the child continues to be patterned to provide the sensory information the brain needs in order to know how it feels to crawl in a cross pattern. It is essential the crawling sessions are easy, fast, and successful. That is why we limit the time to 2 to 3 minutes per session.
Parents need to become experts in motivating the child to crawl. The same kind of enthusiasm and winning spirit that parents adopted for the Inclined Floor need to be maintained for crawling on the flat floor. For example, mom sits on the floor 1 foot away from the child. Mom says, “I have a new book for you today. It is about dogs.” Mom waits and encourages the child and the child crawls one foot to mom. Mother then picks the child up, hugs and kisses him, and tells him how great he is. Then, with great enthusiasm she reads the book to him for 1 or 2 minutes. Then she goes on to another part of the program.
The initial part of our cognitive program involves teaching the child how to read, do math, and increase general knowledge. The children love these programs. It is an excellent way to motivate the child to crawl throughout the day. The child is learning as the child is becoming more mobile. If you have not done so, read immediately, How To Teach Your Baby To Read. This book will get you started on the reading program. When your child loves the reading program, you can go on to the math and general knowledge programs, How to Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence.
For example, let's say Grandmother gives the child a big red ball. Your child loves to crawl a foot and then push the red ball many more feet. Then the child goes forward to the red ball again. Or the child has an action figure. He loves it when dad puts it at the top of the stairs. Then the child crawls a foot to the action figure and knocks it down the stairs. He loves to see the action figure careening off the steps and bouncing on to the floor below. Make a list for all the things for which your child likes to crawl and rotate these things throughout the day. Do not use the same item over and over again because then your child will become bored and will never want to see the red ball ever.
It is our experience with thousands of children with brain-injury when they can crawl consistently day in and day out at least one hundred meters a day (330 feet) they are crawling for transportation. It is essential that it is self determined. This means the child crawls to the action figure because he wants to. In the beginning, the child may need lots of encouragement. However, when the child is crawling every day one hundred meters or more, it gets easier and easier. Of course it is essential that the distances be short, fast, and easy. True crawling for transportation means that the child eventually crawls to the kitchen because mom calls him for lunch. Or he crawls to the living room to see his older sister. Or he crawls to the telephone because mom is calling dad and he wants to hear from dad.
When the child is crawling for transportation consistently she will remain independently mobile for the rest of her life. This has huge and positive consequences for the future.
Function determines structure. This means greater distances of crawling daily improves the child's function and his and her, physical structure becomes stronger. As the child pulls with their arms and pushes with their legs the muscles in their arms and legs and core will grow. This strength moves them towards the next step in mobility, which is creeping on their hands and knees.
As part of the child’s physical training program we will add crawling sprints. This is introduced as a new game. A sprint is a very short distance crawled as quickly as possible. It can be three feet, five feet, or ten feet long in the beginning. As a game the child crawls perhaps racing against mom who is crawling beside him, to some reading words. The purpose of any sprint is to move as quickly as possible. As a result, deeper and faster breathing is created. This happens naturally for well children and needs to be built into brain-injured children’s mobility programs.
In addition, we add endurance crawling. This means we will have the child crawl for longer distances non stop several times throughout the day. If the child can crawl ten feet (3 meters) non stop now we would establish a goal of gradually building up to twenty feet (6 meters) of non stop crawling. Again we make it a game. Mom and child are snakes crawling through the jungle for eleven feet to get to the homemade book about baby snakes. Gradually over many days or weeks, the child builds up to twenty feet consistently and easily. Then we make a new goal of thirty-five feet. In this way we develop the physical endurance of mobility. We also develop the physical endurance of respiration.
For example, if you decide you want to become a jogger, chances are it will not be a lack of muscle that stops you from running. It will be that your respiration will become too fast and too deep and that forces you to stop or slow down. We want to gradually increase the rate and depth of the child's breathing for longer and longer periods of non stop crawling.
Crawling on carpet
When all of the above is going very, very well we will introduce crawling on a short pile carpet. This carpet will provide more friction and make crawling a little more difficult and slow. As always, we begin with very short easy distances so that the child is successful, two or three minutes or two or three feet of crawling on the carpet. This increase in friction will help develop strength and structure and prepare the child to push up onto his hands and knees. Gradually, we will increase the percentage of carpet crawling throughout the day. At first a tiny percent like 2%, then 5%, 10%, 20%, and 40%. The objective is to eventually get the great majority of crawling done on the carpet.
Creeping on carpet
The all-important final goal of crawling is to gradually over the weeks and months build up to 400 meters (1300 feet). When this goal is achieved, the child is an expert crawler, is quick and can crawl long distances non stop.The vital importance of this goal is that that child will have the strength to push up on to his or her hands and knees. We call this the quad position. Two hands and two knees provide stability. This is the beginning of creeping on hands and knees.
At first you may need to put the child into the position. They may only hold it for two seconds. That’s fabulous. We do this with high frequency spread throughout the day. In time, the child builds up to twenty sessions of ten seconds each in the quad. Some children will independently get into this position. This is even better. Again we cheer them many times throughout the day. Gradually their time builds to twenty seconds, forty seconds, or a minute holding the quad position. At this point the child is well on his or her way to graduating from crawling and becoming a full fledged creeper.