Crawling: The Missed Milestone

Podcast Introduction and Brain Basics 0:00

Everything is connected and I'm here to tell you how. I am Dr. Laura Hanson with Connect My Brain. This podcast is for moms who are concerned about their child's development. The brain impacts our mind, body, and overall health. I explain how your brain is wired, what happens when it's out of balance, and how early childhood development not only impacts your child, but can affect you as an adult years later. Want to know how to improve your life? Join me and learn about your amazing brain and what it can do for you.

Hi everybody. Okay, we are back with Connect My Child's Brain. And today we're going to focus on crawling. I think crawling is truly one of the missed milestones. What we were understanding from the changes through the CDC is crawling is no longer even on the list for when should your child do what. And I think that's a big mistake.

Why Crawling Matters for Development 1:22

This may even surprise you a little bit, or it could even worry you, a bit. Wonder if your child didn't crawl. What does that really mean? So today we're going to take a dive into crawling. And what does it mean for the brain? What is it for your children's development? And does it really matter if your child skipped crawling on their hands and knees? Now, you may have been told that some kids go directly from hanging out on the floor to standing, and that it's no big deal. It's fine. But wonder if that's not really true, because in the short term, they might be.

But everything a child does is a step-by-step process in building the brain. And we've talked about this before, that you come into the world and you are fully formed, but you're not fully functioning. You have to go back through the developmental milestones and look at the sequence of events. We've talked about this as it relates to language. You start off with vowel sounds and you build. Crawling is no different. And even the steps before crawling are just as important. So we're never trying to take one movement and make it more than any other movement because that's really not the way it works.

It's a step-by-step process. Crawling actually really builds the brain.

Brain Integration and Missed Milestones 3:08

Hands and knees, crawling actually creates this cross-body movement that will then connect the left and the right side of the literally wiring the brain for higher brain function. And now, today, many people are so concerned about, as your child gets older, they're demonstrating executive function issues. Well, you don't just pop into executive functions. You don' just hop into higher-brain function, You have to build what's going on. This is a foundational piece of connecting both sides of the brain.

So you're literally going to create the foundation of coordination, focus, learning, and emotional regulation because each of those are represented on both side of brain For example, the right side of your brain is your emotional quotient. The left side your your intellectual quotients. You start off with more right brain dominant and then that information gets transferred to the left, which is why we call it the intellectual question. But you can have one side that isn't functioning up to par and a child may look super intelligent.

But that child, when I ask them maybe to take off their shoes and let me see the position of their little ankles, the inside part of the ankle is almost touching the floor. That's gravitational insecurity. And over time, it becomes a battle between the higher brain and the lower brain, and it creates struggle for the child. Maybe the right brain is more pronounced and they can socialize and get along with others, but their memory is terrible and can't put two thoughts together.

What to Do If Crawling Was Missed 5:23

You can have an extreme of either one of those equations, but the bottom line is if it was missed, if crawling on the hands and knees was miss, it actually leaves again. When a child doesn't crawl, they may miss a part of brain integration that shows up later as challenges with attention, coordination, reading, or just emotional regulation. So what can we do about it? Because it's never too late. Depending upon the age of the child, if there's still little, we're going to help them get into those crawling postures.

If they're older, wow, there are all kinds of developmental gains that we can do here at Connect My Child's Brain that really help rebuild the connection between both sides of brain. Now we are having an event on May 7th. 2026, depending upon when you listen to this, we're opening up our East Cobb office and we invite you to come and learn more. It's a free event and it's parent educational event.

Event Announcement and Closing Resources 6:34

And we want to introduce ourselves to you and let you know what you can do to get your child moving forward. Also, were heading into the summertime. Summer intensives are a great way of getting your children ready for the school year in the fall. Okay, so thanks for tuning in. I hope you have a fabulous day and be blessed. Thanks for listening. I hope today's lesson will help you or someone you love. Do you have a question or just really want to talk to somebody about brains? Connect with me over on Facebook or Instagram at Connect My Brain.

Looking to understand and optimize your particular brain? Check out connectmybrain.com for course information and resources. See you next class. you