Four Pillars of Support

Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life -Baby Step #3

In the previous two posts on “Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life”, we talked about building functions by keeping her horizontal until she’s ready to go vertical and the importance of tummy time.

After she’s spent time on her tummy, she’ll be up on all fours crawling before you know it! This is yet another really important aspect to building those functions that we’ve touched on already.

Crawling is one of the first stages of development and it continues the process of building strong muscles around the hips and pelvis – not to mention the shoulders and spine – that will be able to support her properly when she comes to stand.

Skip this important stage and the foundations to the rest of her life will be shaky to say the least.

Think of it this way, depending on how active she turns out to be, she can expect to be taking in the region of between 5,000 and 10,000 steps every day… If she lives to the UK life expectancy of 78, she will have taken between 142,350,000 and 284,700,000 in her lifetime…

Put into easier to read words, that’s somewhere between ‘one hundred and forty-two million, three hundred and fifty thousand’ and ‘two hundred and eighty-four million, seven hundred thousand’ steps in an average lifetime!!

It kind of illustrates the importance of properly functioning muscles around the hips, does it not?!

And proper functioning hip musculature all starts with the importance of crawling… And wiggling, shimmying, shaking, reaching up, reaching out, rolling, pouncing, bouncing and any other type of movement you can think of!

As we talked about yesterday, creeping, or dragging along on the belly, usually starts first and can start anytime after about the age of six months. This is a great way to activate musculoskeletal system functions.

To give a helping hand to those functions developing, try scattering her favourite toys around the room, so that they are just beyond her reach. This will encourage creeping, which in turn will build those strong and healthy functions.

And we know that strong and healthy functions mean a far greater chance of living life without chronic back, hip, shoulder or any other type of joint, pain.

Remember, keep those toys just out of reach; toys that are too close wipe out the need to explore and will leave her rooted firmly to the spot.

In tomorrow’s tip, we’ll look at some of the dangers of going vertical before time with devices such as the backpack baby carrier.

Talk to you then.

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Tummy Time!

Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life - Baby Step #2

In the first of the “Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life”, we talked about building functions by keeping her horizontal until she’s ready to go vertical.

A really important aspect to building those functions is by allowing your child time on her tummy as much as possible.

From about the age of two months is when a baby is usually ready to roll over on her own. If it hasn’t happened by then, don’t force it… She’ll do it when she’s ready – the important thing to remember here is that a child’s rate of development is as individual as the child itself.

There is no ‘right’ time to be crawling, or ‘right’ time to start walking or any other ‘right’ time… Everything will happen in the child’s own good time.

When your child does initially go on to her tummy, as she tries to pull herself forward, she’s unlikely to get very far and will probably become a little frustrated. It’s at this point that well-meaning parents often feel sorry for their little one and turn her onto her back again…

That frustration is very good for her and will cause her to ‘dig her heels in’, which is going to build strong and healthy muscles. We’ll talk more about the importance of this in tomorrow’s post.

Play gyms and other such devices, while great for keeping the little one occupied while Mum and Dad tend to other necessities, aren’t very conducive to ‘Tummy Time’. By their very nature, they tend to require babies to be on their back, which is great some of the time… Just so long as there’s enough tummy time to balance things out.

One important aspect of tummy time is that it helps to create a healthy spine with curves in all the right places. Given what many people’s spines look like nowadays, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are designed to be shaped like a ‘C’ or an inverted ‘J’…

However, your spine, my spine and everybody’s spines are designed to be a beautiful elongated ‘S’. They are designed so that there is an arch in the lower back, an outward curve for the upper back and a sweeping curve in for the neck.

Remember, strong and healthy muscles built today mean a far greater chance of a life without back, hip and other joint pain tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, that’s when we’ll be back with the next instalment. We’ll be talking about the importance of building strong and healthy muscles.

Talk to you then.

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