My poor babies head!

[Flossam]

DS has been crawling for about a month now, he's nearly 7 and a half months, and has banged his head countless times. He doesn't seem to realise that it comes before his body IYSWIM. Now though he has started pulling himself up on the furniture and just banged his head on the coffee table. Feeling like a very bad mum, but feel he is too young to be doing this as doesn't have the bodily awareness IYSWIM. Has anyone got any good ideas to stop my poor little boy knocking all his brain cells out before the age of one?!

You're not a bad mum.

All children go thru this. I remember dd having some real bruisers on her head which everyone in the supermarket chose to comment on.

He won't learn the bodily awareness until he's had a chance to experiment and work out what works and what doesn't .

A few more bumps and he'll get the message.

they all do this, i think. i always made sure i had all the safety stuff around to prevent the worst (fireguard, corner protectors...)

Flossam, you are NOT a bad mum!

IME with all my children and my friends' babies, this seems to be an occupational hazard of early movers/crawlers/walkers. They just don't have the spatial awareness yet to work out that if they do 'this' they will hurt themselves.
Both my two were late developers in terms of movement and I have noticed that DD (who only bumshuffled at 10.5 months, crawled at 12 months, rolled over at 13 months, pulled herself up just after that and then walked at 14.5 months) that she has always been much more aware of her limitations and is much more cautious about things. For example she never attempted stairs and climbing until she could do the other stuff by which time she knew that if she fell it would hurt.
My friend's little boy who crawled at 6 months and walked at 10 months is nicknamed 'Danger Baby' as he is into anything and everything and hasn't yet worked out the painful consequences ... as a result he always has a bump somewhere!!!

I remember taking one of my DSs (can't remember which one!) to the HV once and beginning with explaining all the bumps he had on his head - I was mortified. She very gently explained that if I had done them on purpose, I wuldn't be beinging him along to the HV and also wouldn't have made marks on his head for all to see!
It's just a phase they go through.
At the moment my DSs' legs are covered in bumps and bruises and scratches - looks like I've taken a cricket bat to them!

move the coffee table

if it helps my 4.3 year old ran into a brick wall yesterday .. he has a huge lump the size of an egg and a note from school (pre-school)

I asked him how and he said someone was chasing him (game) and he wasn't looking

thanks everyone. Twiglett, its a case of if we move the coffee table what will we do with the bookcase, tv unit and toy box! The only bruise he has atm is from when he headbutted the door frame on his travels crawling!

Flossam, my ds2 has only just stopped doing this constantly (he's 13mths) Now his favourite trick is bashing his legs and knees... Seems happy enough though - perhaps all the sense has been knocked out of him now

GeorginaA

Oh, I swear he's going to lose all circulation in his fingers by the age of two, too. He'll aim for drawers (particularly filing cabinets as nice and slidy), toy boxes, cabinet doors... you name it. Gets them open, puts his fingers in the way then leans his body weight forward, closing the drawer or whatever right on his poor trapped fingers. Then howls and looks at you as if it was your fault!

Doesn't bode well for his spatial intelligence, does it? But then, maybe that was knocked out of him when he kept bashing his head on the underside of tables .

Oh, and did I tell you that he gets stuck inside cupboards and toyboxes by climbing in but not being able to get himself back out again?

Bless him. He's such a happy chappy though. Still at that adorable age where they think you're laughing with them rather than at them