Now Your Baby'S Crawling!

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Article Summary

Learning to crawl is a significant milestone for your little one but it can bring problems too. Now your baby is mobile and 'into everything', you will face territorial battles as they try to get their hands on big sibling's possessions. Peaceful co-existence is the long-term goal but we have a few strategies for limiting the tantrums in the short-term. WATCH OUT, I’M ON THE MOVE!

Continue enjoying your two delightful children to the full, but beware! A huge change is likely to be occurring in your house: your little baby is on the move. From rocking to and fro on all fours, she has probably recently discovered that she can start to crawl.

Only a few babies go directly from sitting to standing to walking. Most little ones find some way - and there are some very funny crawling styles - of moving from A to B rather speedily and efficiently. Scientists don’t know why some babies crawl on all fours, others bottom shuffle and yet others drag themselves on their tummy commando-style, using their arms to pull their bodies along. It’s quite likely that your two children ended up with different crawling styles.

But whatever the style, once a baby is on the move, everything in the household has to be radically changed. Even with one child, you will most likely have found yourself having to move breakables onto higher shelves, to unplug electric plugs and place protectors over the sockets, to fit door-locks to cupboard doors, to tie back telephone wires, and generally to check your house for dangers that the newly crawling baby might get into. But with two children, another serious problem rears its head: territorial rights!

Your older child is probably getting increasingly outraged that this tiny being can suddenly reach his toys anytime that he has his back turned. Anything graspable is highly attractive to those insatiably curious little hands. Nothing will now stop our newly intrepid little explorer when she sets her mind to reaching something, and that something is usually one of her brother’s favourite belongings. How to deal with this change in events?

On the one hand, you’ll clearly need to take the necessary measures so that the little one gradually learns to respect her older brother’s space: his bedroom, his toy cupboard and his toys. On the other hand, you of course want to encourage sharing between your two children and for them to discover the joy of playing together. But at the height of a tantrum from the baby and a screamingly indignant reaction from your older child, such good intentions about teaching them to share may seem illusory! But do persevere.

Gradually, you will find ways to calm each of them as they fight for possessions and lay down spatial rights around the house. One possible strategy is to provide each of them with a special blanket on the floor for their toys onto which the other is not allowed, together with a third blanket where they play together. Children often react quite well to such rules because it puts them in control as it is they who decide when or not to move to the joint blanket. After all, they are now both bidding for independence. But sometimes you will simply need to remove the baby by picking her up from where she is heading and putting her into another area away from her brother.

Obviously, you are in for several months (maybe years!) of sibling rivalry and the least you intervene the better, although of course it is naturally very hard not to do so. Read more about baby milestones

http://pampers.ph/en_PH/content.do?type=101&contentId=6641

Category Tags:

Safety

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Sibling

,

Development

Article Tags:

crawling

,

milestones

,

motor skills