- Well before your baby learns to walk,
they need to be able to get themselves
from the floor, either in sitting or in crawling,
up into standing.
And they do this by pulling themselves up into standing.
Now, once your baby has learnt this vital skill,
they're going to start to play in standing,
then move on to cruising along furniture, and then walking.
Now, there are three simple activities
that you can do with your little one at home,
which is going to help them develop the strength
and coordination needed to get themselves up off the floor.
So in this video,
I'm going to cover what those activities are,
so that your baby learns the skill
to pull themselves up into standing
and get one step closer to walking.
But before we cover those,
make sure you click on the free PDF document
in the description box below,
which covers the developmental milestones
you can be expecting for your little one
in their first year of life.
This will give you invaluable peace of mind
as you'll know when to be expecting skills
and when to be concerned.
So how you can encourage your little one to move
from the floor into standing is firstly encouraging them
to crawl over and kneel at low objects.
So you want to place your cushions from the couch
on the floor or some toy boxes that are quite low,
and encourage your little one to crawl over to them
by placing some enticing toys on top,
and then they will crawl over to them and place their hands
on the cushion or the box
and take some weight through their legs.
Now, you do want to encourage your little one to crawl over
and go into that kneeling position on furniture or cushions
rather than you.
And that is simply because when they crawl over to us
as parents and they put their hands on our legs,
we tend to help them through the movement.
So we might help them get into that high kneeling position,
or we might pull them completely up into standing.
And what that does is essentially stops your little one
from having to switch on the muscles required
to complete that movement,
and they're a bit passive in the movement range.
As your child gets stronger in this position,
what you want to do is increase the height of the item
that they're encouraged to crawl up to and kneel on.
And that means that they're taking more weight
through their legs.
So if your lounges are simply too high,
so your child won't even put their arms up on the lounge
and go into kneeling,
you might want to place two cushions on the ground
on top of each other,
and just ensure that they don't move around,
and then place that enticing toy onto the cushions
so that your little one will crawl over to them,
place their hands on those cushions
and bring themselves up into higher kneeling.
While you little one is continuing to get stronger
in that high kneeling position,
what you want to do is start to help your little one
pull up into standing from your lap.
So when you're sitting on the floor with your little one,
you wanto sit directly in front
of either a low coffee table or a lounge,
and you might need to remove those cushions,
so it's at a better height for your little one.
And you've placed a toy onto that surface.
Now your little one is sitting on your lap
so that their knees and hips are bent,
but their feet are flat on the ground,
and they're positioned behind their knees.
Now, as your little one reaches out to grab that toy
or to hold on to that piece of furniture,
what you wanto do is place your hands
on either side of their hip
and you want to move their hip forward and up
as they straighten their legs and come into standing.
And you can keep your hands there
to provide them with additional support in standing.
You will soon see your little one crawling over
to coffee tables and couches and placing their hands
up onto them, trying to pull themselves up into standing.
Now, you can help your little one
learn this movement by giving them some additional support.
So how you would do that is when your little one crawls over
to those surfaces, or if they're not yet crawling,
you just place them beside those surfaces,
so that they're up in kneeling,
and you place their hands onto the couch
if it isn't already there.
Once their hands are onto the couch or the coffee table,
what you wanto do is place one of your hands
around your child's lower leg.
So their calf muscle, and what you wanto do with that hand
is gently guide them to move that leg forward
so that they come into half kneeling.
Now, when they're in this position,
you want to apply downward pressure with that hand
that is holding that leg.
And then with your other hand, you want to gently push
underneath their bottom,
so you push in an upwards direction.
And that will assist your little one to go
from that half kneeling position up into standing.
And you're giving them that additional support
to get through that movement.
Your baby, once they learn this movement pattern,
will soon be able to develop further strength in this
and then do this movement,
pulling themselves up into standing all by themselves.
Now, try not to be alarmed.
Once your little one has learned to pull themselves up
into standing, they are going to fall down
from that position quite a lot,
because learning the skill to go smoothly
from standing to the floor is actually something
that they develop in the coming months.
So, they will be falling down quite a lot,
but it doesn't tend to hurt them at all.
Just make sure the environment is relatively safe,
that when they do fall,
they're not going to hurt themselves.
So those are the really simple things that you can do
with your little one to teach them the skill
to pull themselves up into standing
and get them one step closer to walking.
If you want more advice on the stages of walking,
then check out this video.
And if you want more information
on how to teach your little one to walk,
then check out this video.
And I'll see you next week
where I'll share more parenting tips and tricks.
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