Crawl, Baby, Crawl

Children today lead sedentary lives compared to children in the past. They often move from high chair to car seat to a swing. Busy parents want to keep them safe so they are often confined. Therefore, many children may not crawl for long periods of time. Crawling is the first and most important step in building the corpus callosum, which is a large C shaped nerve fiber bundle found beneath the cerebral cortex. It stretches across the midline of the brain, connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres. It contains the largest collection of white matter tissue found in the brain. Crawling, which involves crossing midline, develops this critical area of the brain. I call it the “super highway” of the brain.

It is important to note that it must be bilateral crawling (left foot, right hand, right foot, left hand) to be effective. This is crossing midline and promotes the growth of the corpus callosum. This allows the child to reach both hemispheres. The left hemisphere (logic) is the organized, logical hemisphere which is essential for school success. The right (gestalt) hemisphere is the emotional, visual and intuitive hemisphere. However, we need to transverse both hemispheres depending on the situation. This is called full-brained. About 60% of humans tend to be full-brained. About 20% are left-brained and about 20% are right-brained.

Therefore, crawling is critical for hemispheric transcension. Parents are proud when their child takes their first steps and begin to walk. However, crawling should continue after the child begins to walk. Some estimates show that as many as 80% of dyslexics never crawled bilaterally or for a long period of time. IT IS CRITICAL in building the corpus callosum. If your child has missed this critical step, you can improve crossing midline at any age. Go to the Internet and look for activities that involve crossing midline. My first graders did many activities by crossing hands and feet across the center of the body. We even crawled to music the first semester to improve their corpus callosum.

By the age of five or six, most children should be able to skip smoothly. This is another activity to cross midline. Skipping to music enhances the ability to cross midline and access both hemispheres of the brain. In fact, music, rhythm and rapping access both hemispheres of the brain and lead to long-term memory. That is why as adults we remember our songs from childhood. SING IT, AND THEY WILL LEARN IT!!!!! How many lectures do you remember??

So no matter the age of your child crawl, skip and sing. They will be happy and at the same time building that superhighway, the CORPUS CALLOSUM..

If you want to see my first graders crossing midline, go to YOU TUBE and type in MY PEARL PROGRAM. YOU CAN EMAIL ME AT owenssusan26@yahoo.com

Look forward to hearing from you.