Walking before crawling?!

[Normando91]

Has anyone ever experienced their child walking before they even crawl?
My 7 month old shows absolutely no interest in crawling, I put him down for tummy time and he just rolls about or flaps his limbs like crazy. I get down on the floor with him daily and crawl about saying “look, one hand, one foot…” you get the picture

I’m not saying he’s about to start walking either before anyone comes for me. But he has started pulling himself up on the edge of the couch and can stand up himself holding onto it. I couldn’t actually believe it when he did and sat behind him expecting him to fall but he was absolutely rigid. He’s always had really strong legs.

So has anyones little one ever walked before they crawled, or missed out the crawling stage completely?

My DS was cruising the furniture before he could crawl. He did crawl before he walked independently in the end, but only by about 2 weeks.

Many babies don't crawl at all, they go straight to walking.

Some definitely do, it's not common but it equally doesn't mean there's anything wrong either. Mine was an early walker and to be honest - absolute nightmare. I would much rather she had sat on her bottom for a bit longer.

Apparently I didn't crawl, I shuffled around on my bottom and didn't walk until fifteen months old. I was quite a chubby baby. My son crawled from six months and walked at ten, he was slender. It really doesn't matter, they get there in the end.

My little one pulled to stand and cruised about a month before crawling. And my niece bum shuffled and never really crawled. Nothing to worry about

Mine still hasn’t crawled to my knowledge at 20 months. Pulled up at 10 months, then cruised none stop until plucking up the courage to walk at 15 months. Learnt to get up off the floor on all fours at 18 months. Wasn’t even remotely close to crawling before 10 months. A lot of American PT websites will tell you that crawling is absolutely vital and to miss it is very grave…UK websites including the NHS says it doesn’t matter if they crawl or not and it has no bearing on general development 🤷🏻‍♀️

We in the UK are far more sensible about such things, Alice.

We recently paid for private physio for my little girl. She wasn't crawling at 11 months. She pulled to stand and cruised but no hands and knees crawling just army crawled to things she wanted to pull up on.

Interesting the uk physio did say (as mentioned above) that crawling is an important skill as it strengthens muscles in back and shoulders meaning skills like handwriting and sitting still in a school chair for long periods of time can be difficult with those muscles not being strengthened. It has been linked to more disruptive behaviour at school and lack of concentration because of being uncomfortable.

When I was first told I was t a little dubious as I expect in x years time kids will use computers at school anyway so the handwriting thing didn't really phase me. Regardless the physio said that even if they are close to walking parents should still take time to set up and encourage sn environment for hands and knees crawling to develop. This would involve trying to split the babies desire to stand 50% with practicing crawling skills.

We were given exercises abd within 4 weeks had a hands and knees crawler

Mine didn't crawl properly, he used knees and arms to shuffle around on his tummy. He began crawling a little but at that point could already pull up to standing on his own. He realised that he was able to do his shuffle faster than he could crawl so preferred that as he likes being chased. First steps weren't walking. They were running. And he hasn't stopped since.