When your baby is born, their brain is still developing, and it will continue to quickly develop throughout the first six years.
Your baby needs exposure to different experiences so that these brain pathways can be built. The brain will eventually eliminate pathways it doesn't use. That's why the experiences your baby has in the first six years are so important.
Physical Development and Your Baby's Brain
When your baby performs a new action with their body the brain pathways that spur physical development are built. This is why parents need to make sure their babies are able to move freely.
Moving around is how your baby figures out how to do new things. Learning how to move their body and what it can do helps to organize neurons in their central nervous system, which controls brain processes such as understanding and memory. When your child repeats physical actions, they get better at them, and develop further.
The body is designed to move, so babies naturally want to explore and move around.
Crawling
For the majority of children, crawling is a natural stage of physical development that comes before walking.
Crawling is important for your child's development. It establishes your baby's hand-eye co-ordination, and the co-ordinated movement of the body stimulates and organizes neurons in the central nervous system.
When a baby crawls, both sides of the brain work together, developing the corpus callosum, which transmits messages from one side of the brain to the other. This is important in learning to co-ordinate the use of both eyes, both ears, both hands, and both feet.
Baby On The Move
Children just learning to crawl and walk don't know what's dangerous; make sure your home is safe for your child as she explores. Look around your rooms and remove items that could be hazards in your child's path. PC
Published in March 2007
