Magical Milestones for Healthy Baby Development

Dr Melodie de Jager and Cozette Laubser |

Motor milestones are beacons of progress. They show parents whether their baby’s senses and muscles are developing in sequence. If the senses and muscles are wired well and integrated to form a detailed and functional map of the baby’s body, the baby will very likely reach each and every milestone in sequence and on time.

An overview of baby milestones

Conception, pregnancy, birth and development all go hand in hand. Once the baby has been born it us up to the parents and caregivers to provide the baby with enough interaction, and freedom to move, to enable the baby to meet every milestone with great enthusiasm!

There are many important developmental milestones, including emotional-, social- and cognitive milestones, but this article will highlight the most fundamental movement milestones in the first year of life. All other milestones are equally important, but the developmental priority from conception to 14 months is physical development, and movement milestones fall within this wonderful window of opportunity.

To move appropriately is a sign of development – Mollie Davies

Milestone tips:

• Milestones serve as beacons of progress.
• The order in which milestones are reached is significant.
• Reaching milestones earlier is not always better.
• From birth to fourteen months, physical development is the brain’s greatest priority.

The brain grows at a rapid rate from conception to 2 years, therefore brain and body development should be prioritised during this sensitive period.

Suckling for nourishment

Feeding is seldom viewed as a motor milestone, but it actually is the baby’s very first milestone once born.

• Suckling is for nourishment.
• Sucking is for comfort and nurturance.

Sucking for nourishment is called suckling. Sucking with an ‘l’ is harder than sucking for comfort because the baby needs to grasp the breast firmly with the lips, the tongue cups around the nipple and the mouth muscles need to be strong enough to latch and create suction to get the milk flowing from the breast. This needs to happen in a coordinated manner so that the baby suckles, swallows and breathes rhythmically. Can you believe that this is possible within only one hour of being born?!

A sucking baby is content and the rhythmic pressure of the tongue against the high palette soothes the baby and helps the baby to relax, bond and dissolve stress hormones.

Developing a strong neck

A baby that suckles with ease is a happy and growing baby, but growth alone is not enough. The baby also needs to develop. Body development happens from top to bottom, also called cephalo-caudal. The top refers to the baby’s neck and the bottom refers to the core muscles, including back and tummy muscles.

The baby’s large muscles start to strengthen when the baby holds their head upright for longer periods,  turns the head from side to side, and when the baby starts to notice the world around them. Once the head is stable, the tummy and back muscles strengthen to enable the baby to move and become mobile.

Tummy time is a must. Every time the baby works to move against the pull of gravity to raise the heavy head, the neck and core muscles strengthen. Soon the baby will not be content being passive – the baby becomes restless and wants to do more! Now the baby starts to use the shoulders, arms and hands to push up while all the time engaging the core. This is a fundamental piece of the developmental puzzle that enables the baby to later roll over, sit, self-feed, crawl-on-all-fours and walk independently.

A stable head leads all physical development – Dr Melodie de Jager

Rolling over to develop the left and the right brain

Rolling over happens effortlessly when a baby spends the biggest part of their day playing on the floor and exploring their range of movement.

BabyGym collectively refers to back- and tummy time as “floor time”.

The baby’s left brain controls the right side of the body and the baby’s right brain controls the left side of the body. Stimulating the baby’s left brain is important because it develops the mechanics needed for language development, logical reasoning, planning and organisational skills, attention to detail and the ability to memorise information in an orderly manner. Stimulating the baby’s right brain is important because it wires the baby to be more flexible and a creative problem solver. A stimulated right brain also means the baby will grow up to think laterally, be able to efficiently orientate themselves in space and have the ability to see the bigger picture.

Rolling over in both directions is important because it develops both the left and the right hemispheres of the brain.

Rolling over prepares the baby for crawling-on-all-fours and later to read and write with ease. It is worth the effort to encourage the baby to roll to both the left and the right sides.

Pack away the jumper, supporting chairs and walking ring. It is time to clear up the floor space for floor time!

Unsupported sitting develops muscle tone

When a baby starts to roll it is time to celebrate because the rolling milestone communicates, “My neck and core muscles are strong and stable. I am now ready for an upright posture!”. Tummy time develops the muscles and skills required for the unsupported sitting posture.

The sitting milestone communicates, “I have defied the pull of gravity. Look, my back is strong and my posture is  perfect!”

• Balance develops when the baby can sense where ‘up’ is and moves their head in that direction.
• Muscle tone develops when the baby can fight the pull of gravity and lift their body weight off the floor.

There are two kinds of balance:

• Static balance refers to holding a posture while being still, like when a baby sits or stands.
• Dynamic balance refers to maintaining balance while moving, like when a baby crawls or walks.

The baby learns to stand many months later when the neck is stable and the trunk can rotate. Trunk rotation involves the ability to twist the shoulders separately from the hips. This enables the baby to roll over.

Once the baby has mastered static balance the baby learns to maintain their balance while walking. This makes it possible for the baby to move around and explore!

Grasping hands

Sitting is an important motor milestone because it is from the upright sitting position that a baby observes their world in a whole new way. The baby’s viewpoint now includes more dimensions and invites the baby to move and explore. It is the baby’s growing sense of curiosity that sparks the need to reach out, grasp, and develop eye-hand coordination. Eye-hand coordination starts when the eyes spot an object worth exploring, and the hand reaches out to touch it.

Grasping starts with swatting. During the first few months the baby will learn to swat at a swinging toy, and then one day, almost by chance, the baby manages to grab hold of the toy. Practice makes perfect and soon the baby will purposefully reach for the toy and bring it to the mouth.

The baby’s movements have now become deliberate rather than reflexive.

Continued reaching out and grasping will develop smooth shoulder-, arm-, hand- and finger movements, enabling the baby to move with more control and accuracy.

Sitting with an upright posture enables the baby to engage socially and to develop eye-hand coordination that is necessary for self-feeding, fine motor play and later, drawing, reading and writing.

Crawling on-all-fours

Crawling is an advanced baby milestone. It collects sensory-motor information from all the previous milestones and integrates them. Floor time offers endless developmental opportunities and when a milestone like crawling is reached, advanced skills like postural control, balance, locomotion and manipulation follow.

Reaching the crawling milestone is not the same as mastering it.

Mastering the crawling milestone means the baby has had ample opportunity to crawl and has been crawling for six to eight weeks. Crawling for only a week or two is not sufficient repetition to myelinate the pathways. Research indicates that it takes more or less 50 000 repetitions of a specific movement to complete the necessary brain and body wiring.

Locomotion means to become mobile and move from place to place. Crawling offers the baby their very first experience of moving forward. The baby has been rolling from side to side, but has not yet moved forwards and backwards. Crawling enables the baby to move from location to location.

When crawling, the baby develops both the left and the right sides of the body and crosses the midline between the two sides. Crawling on all-fours crosses both the midline of the body and the brain! This happens spontaneously when the eyes move across the midline to follow the hands as the baby crawls.

Older children who battle to cross the midline tend to draw or write on one side of the page and then pass the pencil over to the other hand to continue on the other side of the page. The same barrier to crossing the midline can be observed in various ways and forms:

• The child can read, but stops mid sentence when they reach the midline.
• The child can write, but starts to reverse letters and numbers as soon as they cross the midline.
• The child turns the book sideways to when they write to avoid crossing the midline.

Crawling also develops directional awareness like ‘in and out’, and ‘over and under’. When a baby experiences direction with the whole body by crawling over the carpet and under the table and out of the passage and into the kitchen, it prepares the brain for symbols like letters and numbers that are all used in a specific direction.

For example, mathematics requires directional awareness like above, below, before, and after, and reading letters requires directional awareness like, “the letter b faces right” and “the letter d faces left”.

Crawling not only helps children to cross the midline, but it also activates both hemispheres of the brain in a balanced manner – Carla Hannaford

When a baby is ready to become mobile, the baby starts to moan, push and shove – a very good sign because it communicates the baby wants to do more. This sparks brain changes! The necessary brain wiring takes a while to develop, which means that the baby will continue to moan, push and shove until the necessary muscle strength, coordination and control has developed to push the baby up into the all-fours position.

Babies get frustrated and MOAN! Know that it is their hard work, on the floor, that sparks the brain wiring needed to develop the next set of movement skills.

Standing, cruising, walking and talking

While the baby is still quite passive the baby is totally dependant on their parents, but all of this changes as soon as the baby becomes mobile. The moment the baby can pull themselves upright and stand, the baby becomes considerably more independent.

Standing, cruising and walking marks a monumental shift from ‘me’ to ‘we’. Up to this point the baby mostly learnt about their body and what it can sense and do, but once the baby can stand, cruise and walk, the focus shifts from discovering ‘me’, to discovering ‘we’.

We refers to the environment, objects and people.

Baby can now move, reach out, and enlarge their territory to discover a wide, and very stimulating, new world.

New discoveries mean new words and the baby’s vocabulary now grows with leaps and bounds.

Bare feet are best! The feet can bend, straighten and arch. The toes can ‘grasp’, and the skin remains uncovered – free to explore textures – Dr Melodie de Jager

Parents, your response to your baby’s efforts determine a great deal. The more you warn and restrict, the more the baby hears you say: “I don’t think you can do it”. The more you encourage the baby to move and explore, the more the baby hears you say: “I believe in you. I know you can do it!”

The baby now also follows your every move and starts to imitate your sounds and words. At the end of the baby’s first year the baby has built a rich repertoire of ways to communicate. It is from their secure and warm nest that the baby now ventures onwards and starts to initiate contact with friends of the same age.

Practical guidance to reach baby milestones

If you are concerned about your baby’s physical development, reach out to a qualified BabyGym Instructor for guidance and practical pointers.

Raising your little one is teamwork. You do not need to know everything, but you need to know whom to ask!

Find a BabyGym Instructor near you.

 

Bibliography

Jager, M. 2008. BabyGym – brain and body gym for babies. Cape Town: Metz Press Publishing.

De Jager, M. 2011. Brain development milestones and learning. Johannesburg: Mind Moves Institute.

De Jager, M. 2017. Play Learn Grow – Birth to three. Johannesburg: Mind Moves Institute.