Freely moving babies - we need your help!

Dear All,

This will be a slightly unusual post, as I have a favour to ask of you. ANd hopefully, you will agree, you will e-mail me, you will forward this to whoever else you think can participate in this, and we will all learn and share the knowledge we gain from this. So this is what it's all about:

A few days ago a friend of mine expressed her concern about her daughter's motor development. She said she was a bit worried that her little girl didn't sit up on her own until she was almost 10 months old. I thought about this, and realised that our son sat up about the same time. Only, we were not too worried.

There is very little information about the age, or rather age range, for when babies who are allowed to move freely achieve certain milestones - rolling, crawling, sitting up, standing, walking. The study done by Emmi Pikler, who observed 722 babies over time, shows that overall the age in which 'Pikler babies' achieved these milestones, was not much different from the other babies.

Still, we worry. That's what we do, we are parents, after all ;)

So, I thought about gathering information that would let us see what the age range is (after all, what are the chances of all babies reaching the milestones at exactly the same age?). And here is where I am asking for your help:

If you are raising your child allowing them to move freely, and if your child reached each of these milestones on their own (that is, without sitting them up, teaching them to walk etc.), please share with us. If you have any date recorded for the age when your child reached any of the milestones, please e-mail us and tell us about it.

If you are willing to participate in this, please send us and e-mail to: movingbaby@gmail.com with the following information:

1. What week of pregnancy was your baby born in?
2. What age did s/he learn to do the following for the first time:
(i) roll to the side
(ii) roll to their tummy
(iii) crawl
(iv) sit up
(v) stand up unsupported
(vi) take first step unsupported

We hope to get as many parents involved as we can. If you know anyone who can help, please forward it to them. We will be grateful for any information you can share with us, even if you remember only one or two of these (we actually have absolutely no idea how old our son was when he started crawling. We know it was around Christmas :)

After we get a reasonable number of responses, we will share our results. We will have your e-mail addresses, so all of you will get an e-mail from us, telling you what we have found out.

And, of course, if you have any questions, please e-mail us as well!

Looking forward to hear from You,

Ania, Pawel & Antek @ Every Moment Is Right

You just sit back and watch...

Some time ago I went to a yoga workshop with a teacher who started the class by saying something like this: 'So, I could make you do all of these really difficult poses. I could put you all into headstands. Or I could just stand there and repeat: harder, harder, harder, more, more, more...and you would all do it. But then at the end of the class would you understand any of what's just happened to your body?'

I also once went to a dance class where the teacher was making us do a whole lot of really cool stuff. Really showy, difficult stuff. Right from the start. I never went back. Sure, it was kind of fun. But I really like understanding what's going on with my body. That's just me.

People interested in movement (at least people I talk to) spend a lot of time trying to unlearn things they have acquired throughout their lives. I'm trying really hard to unlearn a number of habits that my body developed over the years. I'm working on sitting, standing and walking comfortably and with awareness (some thought on 'undoing' from a wonderful Alexander teacher here). And I remember that a lot of times wen I was talking to people about movement, the advice you often hear is: look at the children. So I do.

I look at my son how he is learning to feel comfortable in his body. I look how he is developing all the amazing skills, necessary for him to roll over, crawl, sit up, pull himself up... I wait (im)patientkly for the first step he will take (when, oh when?!). I watch all this, but I bite my nails and almost never interfere.

I remember the learning to crawl phase - it was long. It lasted and lasted and lasted, and we really could not wait for him to finally get it (yes, we know all about the being here and now and enjoying the moment, but...). He would get on all fours, move his pelvis back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... look at the toy in front of him he was trying to get to, then fall down and complain. Back up. Back to all fours. And the pelvis... oh dear.

When he finally got it, he was the happiest person on the planet, and so were we.

We could have helped out. We could have followed the advice we hear all too often: come on, help him out. If you show him he'll get there faster. Look, he's struggling...

Yes, he's struggling. But if you think struggling is all bad, have a look at this great post from Janet Lansbury!

So here is how I see it: imagine you're doing a crossword (sudoku, solving a problem - whatever it is that you do). Imagine you have gone through all those moves, words, you have looked them up. You've tried all combinations. In fact, this is a hard one, you've been working on it for days. You KNOW success is near. Sure, you are frustrated, but you KNOW it will feel so good when you finally do it. You're almost there. There is just one word missing. It's on the tip of your tongue, you almost have it...when a helpful friend creeps behind you and whispers the word you have been trying to figure out.

How does this make you feel?

Our needs, their wants...

Everyone who knows me knows I am passionate about movement, in a lot of different ways. So this one will be about movement (yes, again ;), about freedom (again...), but maybe less about the joints and muscles, and more about this mind-reading game we are trying to play with our children...

I recently had a conversation that got me thinking (again) about movement, and how much of it can really be free. Free from the things that surround us, free from our own needs and wants, but also free from the expectations of those that surround us. We were sitting among the lovely autumn leaves one Sunday morning (yes, it's autumn here on the southern hemisphere...), and our son was happily crawling around, checking everything within reach. There was a lady sitting next to us with a little boy, about Antek's age. She kept looking at Antek doing his usual Antek dance, and finally commented: 'He's one acrobat that boy!'. This was not the first time someone made a similar comment, so we smiled and kept looking at Antek falling, crawling, turning and testing the legth of his arms and legs. The lady looked at him again and said: 'My grandson doesn't want to crawl. He only wants to walk. It's probably because he sees all these people around him walking all the time.' I looked at the boy  and honestly he looked like the last thing on his mind was walking. He also, to be entirely honest, looked like the last thing on his mind was sitting. He was trying to reach for things around him, but couldn't. He had that look on his face that I have often seen on children who are sat up and have no idea what to do next. Finally, when he stretched his arms again to reach for something the lady looked at me and said: 'See? Here we go again, now I have to walk him.' And so she did. Neither of them looked particularly comfortable.

Before I go further with all of these thoughts that were dancing in my mind at that point, I just want to say that we also tend to walk a lot around Antek. Sure, we crawl with him sometimes, but more often than not I walk to and from places. Is our son different? Does he not 'want' to walk?

I have already posted a bit about free gross motor development, and about letting our children develop at their own pace, on their own terms, in their own time. But this situation seemed a bit different. I realized that what that lady was doing is what we often do as well, although we try hard not to. We also sometimes measure our son's needs and wants by our own needs and wants, simply because that is all we know. We know what we want. We think we know what we need. So we take what we have and put it over our children's actions. It takes a lot of observation, patience and letting go to understand that our children are really separate people. Separate from the rest of the world, but also (maybe sometimes more importantly) separate from us.

In interfering with our children's motor development when there is no medical need for it, we are showing our children that we know better than they do what they should be doing with their bodies. That may be a dangerous thing. In the long run, they are the ones who will have to live with their bodies, accept themselves as they are, learn what they can and cannot do. I want my son to be happy the way he is, accept the way he looks, walks and moves. But for him to get there, I need to remember that my body is mine, and his body is his. And that he is the only one who knows (or is learning) how it works.

Letting go of our needs and wants (to have our child already sitting, walking, standing) is important on a number of different levels. To me it's a first step in realizing Antek's independence, but also realizing how wonderfully capable he is. Letting the children discover gross motor development freely is important to them, and not only on a physical level. It's a first step in connecting emotions with the physical. It's a step in understanding what we can and cannot do. In estimating our limits and realizing our potential. If we paste our needs and wants over those of the child, we effectively exercise our potential and not let them exercise theirs. As Magda Gerber put it children should be able to experience the world 'on their own, with our help'. 

Our bodies are an important part of who we are and how we are in the world. Being comfortable in our own bodies and with our own bodies seems to be a gift. We can make sure that our children get this gift very early on. How? By doing very very little. By not reading their mind and guessing what they 'want' to do, just because we do it. By observing. By not interfering if we don't have to. By not sitting them up, walking them, and 'helping' them in a number of different ways. Their lives will be so much easier, if so early on they get to figure out on their own (with our help) how their bodies work. For some people it takes a lifetime. Here, we can give them a head start.

A great post by Janet Lansbury about why we should not walk our kids can be found here.

Baby dancing... one day

One of the great things about being snowed under and cut off from the world is that your mail gets delivered in piles. Once a week, true, but so many goods at the same time. Diana Suskind's wonderful book 'Baby dancing' arrived on the same day as The Pikler Bulletin, so all of us had something to read that day.

Letting our babies develop naturally, on their own terms and in their own pace requires tremendous patience, and a whole lot of letting go. Letting go of our expectations might be the hardest of it all, it is, after all, impossible not to have expectations when it comes to just about anything in life. But this kind of letting go has taught me to enjoy every moment much more, as I am not busy waiting for the next step.

It's intersting how we often want things right now, and loose everything that happens on the way - the whole amazing journey. We noticed recently the same applies to babies, and so many of the conversations about them involve the 'what my baby can already do' element. I don't know how many times in the past two weeks I've had to answer the question: 'Can he sit up yet?'. Well, no, but you know look - he can roll, bend his legs like this, laugh when he hides under the blanket... 'Oh, that's ok, he should be able to sit up soon, don't worry'. You know, I'm not at all worried. He'll probably (although hopefully not) spend too much time sitting in his whole adult life, I'm kind of glad he's not doing it now...

My husband has an interesting theory about why that is - he says motor development is the only area where we can have control over our babies' milestones. You can't force the baby to say his first word, but you can sit him up. And with so little information out there, that you can do things otherwise, I'm not surprised people do. We did. With all the reading about motor development somehow I ended up thinking that once our son is six months old he will sit up. Just like that, as if by magic, on the day he turns six months we will wake up and there he will be in his bed, sitting (I'm not even going to admit to all the bouncer and high-chair beliefs we had).

Here is what Emmi Pikler says about motor development: 'Let us not force the infant. Let us provide well for her, but let us not disturb the slow, steady process that has its own rhythm and course with every child. Every healthy child will get from the lying position on the back to walking freely. The period of time may vary, but it will alway happen in correlation with that child's physical and mental constitution, that child's limbs and use of moveability as far as possible.'

When my husband and I were travelling in Asia for a few months, we visited so many breathtaking places it's hard to count. But my clearest memories are not those places we ended up in, but the journey there. How we got lost, how we couldn't get a ride fo hours in the rain, how we had to sit on the back of a truck full of piglets... and I know my son will one day sit, stand up, walk, run and dance, whether I help him or not. But I want his body to have a chance to go through the entire journey. I want him to enjoy every moment of the ride, because once he gets there he's there, this part of the journey is over. And I want him to be ready to be there.

The art of falling down

Some time ago our son rolled off his blanket and hit his head on the wooden floor. Not hard enough to make him cry, but hard enough to make him look around a bit shocked. I was on the way to pick him up and put him back on the softer surface, when he rolled again and hit his head again. When he rolled for the third time he kept his head up and lowered it down very very slowly. Only then I understood that he was learning the art of falling down...

When I started learning how to ski and then snowboard I remember being taught how to fall down. I don't remember anymore if I enjoyed it or not, but I remember being told over and over again, that we had to know how to fall down, because whether we liked it or not we will, sooner or later, fall. And when we do, it's best if we know how.

I would love for my son always to be safe, never to worry that something is going to happen to him, but I know already that's impossible. I will worry. I already do. But I know that I will worry less if I know that he knows how to take care of himself. And one of the ways in which he can learn to take care of himself is learning how to fall.

There is a lot of exploring newborn people have ahead of them, and a lot of it in the beginning is focussed around their bodies and their closest environment. Our son has a safe place where he spends most of his time, constantly discovering. The space is big enough so he can roll around. But even in the safest of places there is a piece of wooden floor, a plastic toy, bars. And then there is all the movement to be discovered, movement that can potentially lead to falling down. But that's okay, because that is what the world out there looks like. There will always be unknown situations, unfamiliar street corners, new surroundings, and the best way to learn how to manoeuvre out there is to start from the beginning.

 Dr Emmi Pikler says this about falling: 'It is important that the infant becomes careful herself. When, out of fear that she might hurt herself, we protect her from every bump, and pad everything around her, we really are not helping her. We should let an infant try things out for himself. If he has bumped himself two or three times, he will instinctively learn to protect himself.'

With new movements comes new 'body memory'. So far our son has learnt that he can roll over without hitting his head. If we put pillows all around him, he would not know that. We would be putting him in danger of hurting himself more when, at some point, we would not be around to put pillows or catch him. And with new body memory, comes more secure movement. Less restricted movement. Because now he knows, that he will fall. And he knows how to do it.