Is it true that crawling=better brain development i.e. those that don't crawl (just bum shuffle) are already doomed on the IQ front...?!

[madmarriedNika]

[paranoid mum alert emoticon] A friend told me yesterday that crawling has been shown to be good for brain development, much better than bum shuffling and going straight to cruising without crawling properly.

Is this true ? Where is the scientific research to back this up?
And what can you do if you have a bum shuffler who's beginning to cruise and not looking likely to crawl at all?!

Thanks x

My Neice was a "bum shuffler" is now 14 years old and is Grammar School.

She is very bright,the only one to get to Grammar School,as she is one girl with 3 brothers,but her eldest brother is a Uni and her youngest brother has just finished his GCSE's and is expected to do very well.

They all crawled she was the only "bum shuffler".

I bumshuffled.
Wasn't breastfed.
IQ 140 so nothing wrong with my brian.

Some of the cleverest people I know are total cnuts. I don't know if they crawled or were breastfed though.

madmarriednika - you don't DO anything and you stop worrying.

There is a small body of research that shows that some children with dyspraxia would not have crawled. This is because crawling involves information crossing the midline of the body and apparently this is quite complex and one of the areas that dyspraxics battle. BUT the overwhelming majority of bumshufflers have no problems whatsoever at all.

You wont make a bum shuffler crawl, they find their own way. My HV said to me that they often walk late because they arrive at their destination in the sitting position so don;t have to get up, unlike crawlers.

So, my daughter bum shuffled, walked late had speech delay - connection? My opinion, big fat zero. Why? My DP bum shuffled, walked late and is academically not brilliant but absolutely amazingly clever with his hands, astounding spatial awareness and able to make most anything with a bit of wood and a chisel. I bum shuffled, walked at 9 months, have no common sense, completely cac handed, can't tell left from right and have a PhD in genetics.

If you can draw any conclusion from that you are a better scientist than me (not difficult ).

So, don't do anything apart from be glad that he/she wont be wearing the knees out of her babygro's

I actually think the real question of the thread is why anyone would be friends with someone who pointed out a negative regarding their childs development.
In what universe does one person say to another "your child isn't doing x and if they don't do x they will be thick".
In fact other than a developmental paediatrician who would ever construct a sentence with that information in it?

So friend is either saying it pointedly and therefore not a friend
Or was saying it by way of general converstaion and therefore deeply tedious.

ROLF at x-posting
or is Lyucyellensmum and just generally lovely and helpful

oh pagwatch, you say the nicest things

Iamnothere, Who's attacking your "Brian"??

Thought we were talking about Bumshuffling.

Dd couldn't even get the hang of bum shuffling but had to roll to get around, didn't walk until 19 months, IQ has not been tested but she is getting top marks at school despite being absent over 1/3 of the time.

If your friend's theory was true then all children who were born physically disabled, like the thalidomide children, would be less bright.

Is it possible that your friend spent too much time on her crawling to develop her reasoning powers?

two very good posts PW. Your friend doesn't sound like much of a friend, given she seems to be happy to point out your baby's supposed IQ shortcomings.

What you should do is stop listening to competitive mummy friends who (no doubt) have crawlers and are desparate for any signs, spurious or not, that their infant is crawling straight to the G&T enclosure!

Agree with Blu

Message withdrawn

Whoever said bumshufflers are not as intellegent as crawlers should be shot! Both my DSs bumshuffled and they seem fine to me, as did my DH and he has 9 GCSE A grades, 5 A level A grades and a law degree and he is the brainiest person I know (I crawled and I'm lacking in a few braincells!).

Oh sheesh!
More old wives tales which serve only to make new mothers worried.
A load of old bollocks.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.

So many families have wooded floors now that more babies bum shuffle, is my theory - less hard on the knees, and can get up a fair bit of speed.

At least my floors are kept polished by dd!

Pagwatch of course is absolutely right in her posts:

if your child does turn out to be less bright you are going to love them just as much and be just as proud of them

but a friend who tries to score points with scaremongering is not being very helpful

If that was the case my dd1 why is she so bright. She didn't crawl or Bum shuffle just decided at 9mths wo get up and walk .

Agree, the bottom shuffling=learning disabilities thing is a pile of absolute bllcks. I bottom shuffled, but was always good at sport, very co-ordinated and top of my class academically.

There is, however, evidence to suggest that children with co-ordination difficulties are more likely either to bottom shuffle or go straight to walking than the rest of the population. In this case, the not crawling does NOT result in co-ordination difficulties, the co-ordination difficulties cause the bottom shuffling. Teaching an un-co-ordinated child to crawl will help with that aspect of their co-ordination (ie they will now be able to crawl), but it won't cure them of dyspraxia or dyslexia.

This is interesting. I was going to post that ds didn't crawl, because I remember him doing comando crawling very early, but not crawling. And he is very bright, but dyslexic, so that association interested me. But dh has just told me that ds crawled all over the place! Just goes to show how completely faulty my memory is!

It's bollocks (as someone eloquently said earlier). DD didn't do much crawling and is perfectly bright....

It's tosh.

God, what else can they think of to make parents worry or feel anxious about?

There do seem to be more bumshufflers about though - my mum claims never to have seen one (in about 70 years!) until she met a couple of my friends with bumshufflers. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that babies tend to be put to sleep on their backs? In the past they would sleep on their tummies more often than not and from there to pushing up and pushing off crawling seems an obvious progression.

bolleaux, dd was a bumshuffler and has just won a prize for general excellence.

The evidence on here would suggest that reverse is true: crawlers are obviously not as bright

Um, I would say that any myth that an infant is 'doomed' in any way at all whatsoever is utter bullshit.

FWIW, IQ is many times no indication of how happy a life a person will have or how successful he/she will be.