When will my child walk?

Whew! I get this question literally every day in my practice. It is a HUGE concern from parents with a child with developmental delay as well as most parents in general.

Well, let me say that there is absolutely no way that anyone can predict this, however, there are stages and general developmental skills that usually have to be in place.

Not every child has to crawl in order to walk, but I highly recommend that you seek help from a therapist if your child tries to skip this phase or if they only crawl for a few days. Once your child begins to crawl, encourage this and notice that he/she will quickly be pulling to stand.

Once in standing, your child has to develop balance and strength as well as confidence to take a first step.

NEVER back up as your child walks to you. They will be less likely to trust you again if they feel scared during those first trials. 

Look through the Gross Motor pages on my site for ideas on how to accomplish the steps to attain walking. Here is the general order:

Side-lying

Tummy Time

Rolling

Sitting

Crawling

Standing

Walking

There are MANY things in between (like the transition skills), but the general idea is that your child needs to accomplish each skill in order when possible. Trust your therapist to guide you and teach you ways to play to encourage each skill. We generally work on several skills in tandem, so don’t be surprised if we are working on rolling while we address standing. When we see a weak area, we will go back down the skill list to a skill we need to use to build the muscles for upper skill development.

For ideas on ways to interact with your child, see available books HERE

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