I’ve learned a lot since Yirmiyahu was born five months ago about infant development.

When I first began researching, I saw repeated references to the importance of tummy time.  And I had no idea what was so important about tummy time!  Though my first nine children spent plenty of time on the floor and slept on their stomachs, I couldn’t have told you why it was important developmentally or imagined the long term benefits in a variety of areas.

I shared about the crawling track that we built for Yirmiyahu when he was ten weeks old, and very briefly summarized why time on the stomach is very important to a baby’s development.  Crawling is a critically important stage that babies should go through that has short and long term benefits on their physical and cognitive development.  I planned to post with more details about how crawling benefits a baby, but then found the following two articles.  It took me some time to piece together the benefits from various references here and there, but these two articles put it together in one place.

The importance of crawling on the stomach

Baby crawling – how important it really is

Don’t think these are relevant only to those who have babies with delays.   As a parent of a child who is expected to have a different developmental curve, I want to understand about what is healthy for development and why, but this is good information for typically developing infants as well!

Avivah