Tips re: crawling?

rapaulson

My LO turned 9 months old over the weekend and he's still not crawling. I'm not concerned because he's strong, rolls well, bears weight, sits well ... but I can tell he really would like to move himself forward and it's starting to make him very grumpy. 

So he has this routine where he constantly goes onto his belly on his own and then gets really frustrated and starts crying within a couple of minutes.  He slides himself backwards on his stomach, occasionally gets on all fours, but cannot get anywhere near going forwards.  I try to leave him on his belly as long as I can bear his frustrated whining because otherwise he'll never learn.  But I hate to see him all upset. Is there anything I can do to help get the ball rolling?  Encouraging words and being on the floor with him don't stop the tears.  Any ideas? Thanks!

[Deleted User]

no tips here but i hear ya!  my LO is the same way.  we do have a lil dog that walks and barks that my sister got her, but she'd rather slam the thing off the floor then follow it...  otherwise no crawling yet... dr said nbd this weekend as well.

i'm just banking on her walking soon as she LOVES to stand and gets a big ol' grin when she's doing it on her own! 

good luck! 

dlemon

I am going through the exact same thing with my lo. I have no idea what to do sorry I just wish she would crawl already so that she can stop getting so frustrated.

stoneycakes

My guy does the same thing.  He can scoot on his back with by kicking his legs and he tries to do the same thing on his belly with his arms flung back.  He puts all of his energy into it and then gets super frustrated when it doesn't work!

jennyelf

michyme123:

It's one of those things where they really will start when ready. Some things that may help would be have toys just out of reach so that your LO needs to crawl a bit to grab it. One thing I found was that he was having a lot more trouble on hardwood when learning since it's slippery. Only one room in our house has carpet so he did it a lot better there and the hardwood came a little later. But ya, in the end LO will do it when ready!

We did a lot of this. In fact the first thing that LO crawled towards was a tower of cups that he wanted to knock down. 

We also did a lot of tummy time with LO. If he was just whining, we'd try to interact with him and distract him and get him to try to reach for things. If he went to full out crying, then we'd get him off his tummy. 

rapaulson

Thanks ladies. Always nice to know there are others in the same boat! Putting a toy in front of him that he can't reach seems to just make him more frustrated.  But I suppose he'll figure it out one of these days!

RMama2012

I don't know if this helped at all but I used to put some toys (or my cell phone ha!) out of lo's reach  and put the palms of my hands behind his feet to encourage him to push with his feet.  It definately stopped the whining because he saw he was going somewhere.

ashk7

May get flamed for this, but when dd was at that point we used her favorite food!! She wouldn't go for toys. She's like her daddy and loves food! So I would use Cheerios or puffs. Also a ball or anything that rolls, so that she could move it on her own and go after it. We have sensory bottles what worked great! Just fill old water bottles with whatever you want, colorful beads, glitter and water, Pom poms...etc and run hot glue around the neck of the bottle before putting the lid on, so that they can't open it. She loves to shake them and roll them around the room!

rapaulson

ashk7:

May get flamed for this, but when dd was at that point we used her favorite food!! She wouldn't go for toys. She's like her daddy and loves food! So I would use Cheerios or puffs. Also a ball or anything that rolls, so that she could move it on her own and go after it. We have sensory bottles what worked great! Just fill old water bottles with whatever you want, colorful beads, glitter and water, Pom poms...etc and run hot glue around the neck of the bottle before putting the lid on, so that they can't open it. She loves to shake them and roll them around the room!

Haha good idea. My LO is also very food motivated! Maybe a banana will do the trick.  We tried a cell phone a while back and that did capture LOs attention too.

littleredfish

rapaulson:

ashk7:

May get flamed for this, but when dd was at that point we used her favorite food!! She wouldn't go for toys. She's like her daddy and loves food! So I would use Cheerios or puffs. Also a ball or anything that rolls, so that she could move it on her own and go after it. We have sensory bottles what worked great! Just fill old water bottles with whatever you want, colorful beads, glitter and water, Pom poms...etc and run hot glue around the neck of the bottle before putting the lid on, so that they can't open it. She loves to shake them and roll them around the room!

Haha good idea. My LO is also very food motivated! Maybe a banana will do the trick.  We tried a cell phone a while back and that did capture LOs attention too.

Seriously, we did this with DD. We used Mums crackers because she loves them. I have a video of the first time she crawled forward and DH is luring her with a cracker. Seems like something you would do to train your dog, but it worked! We made little trails of crackers and she hasn't gone backwards since. It was like she needed that little "AHA!" moment to understand the benefits of going forward and she hasn't stopped since.