I like to move it move it!

We all love to brag about our babies and how developmentally advanced they are for their age. Every new, cute thing our baby does is a developmental milestone for a reason. Like crawling. When babies crawl they do what is called ‘crossing the midline’ which really just means that one hand crosses over to the other side of the body. Nothing to it right? Wrong! It’s a HUGE developmental milestone! When babies cross the midline it builds pathways in the brain and it will actually help your child read and write, it also improves coordination, vision and hearing. I actually do midline-crossing activities in my pre-k class because it helps the kids re-focus and helps them concentrate on the next activity. I didn’t know that that’s why crawling is so important! Midline exercises are actually used for speech therapy and autism therapy.

So what if your baby is crawling and didn’t miss this developmental milestone? Great! Keep doing midline exercises, it won’t hurt and might even help them start reading a little earlier. What if they were is such a hurry to explore the world that they skipped crawling and went straight to walking? Don’t Panic! It happens and you didn’t do anything wrong! Just spend some extra time doing midline exercises to help your child build those oh so important brain pathways! And keep doing them no matter how old they are, or how old you are. I’m a sleep-deprived mom, I could definitely use some help from some extra brain pathways!

Here’s a great article about how important it is to cross the midline and it has some great exercises to try: http://admin.babygym.co.za/articles/articles_uploaded/Crossing.pdf

Or go on youtube and search for crossing the midline activities and you’ll find plenty of ideas. Just don’t go overboard, there will plenty of other things for you to brag about!