How do you teach a child to walk?

That wonderful moment when you find out you are going to have a baby is so exciting and inspiring. But it only takes a little while, and your baby is already trying to move, crawl and… may not be able to take his first steps. So, how to teach a child to walk?

Baby's first steps

A child can try to take his first steps starting from 9-11 months of his exciting and colorful life. Before you know it, he will start checking the shelves with such interesting documents, business cards, jars, medicines, etc. During this period of life, you need to especially watch the baby and hide all sharp, cutting, traumatic objects, medicines and things that are important to you, which are too early for the child to study.

Before attempting to walk independently, the child diligently prepares for this event. At first, the baby tries to sit, stand up, hold onto something while standing, pushing off with all four limbs, and is very happy if something comes out, and tries hard. Children aged 9-11 months move, holding onto the bed, chairs and everything that comes their way, and also try to walk, pushing a stroller or something that is convenient to reach.

Mom and Dad invite

At the age of 11-12 months, children can already freely migrate around their room, but only for a short distance. At this time, you need to try to entice the baby from mom to dad so that his leg and back muscles develop, and the child's coordination becomes better. Your child will happily go to mom or dad in turn, laughing loudly. If you interest your baby in this and support his morale, the spirit of a warrior, he will quickly learn to walk.

Starting from the age of 14 months, children can independently and quite confidently stand up from a lying position and move around the room like an icebreaker, overcoming obstacles encountered along the way, climbing onto low chairs or a sofa, while being incredibly happy with their ability.

Some rules for parents

Dear parents, you can help your child master this difficult but very entertaining craft – walking. To do this, you just need to master a few very simple but useful rules.

Physiology of the baby

Of course, you want your baby to walk as early as possible, you try in every way to interest him in this and help, but it is not that simple. Do not force your baby to start walking faster. The musculoskeletal system develops rather slowly in small children, so too much stress for the child will not be useful.

First, the child needs to prepare for what awaits him in the future. Your child first needs to crawl a lot before mastering walking. While the baby crawls, all the main muscles develop in order to prepare for confident walking. By crawling, your baby improves his musculoskeletal system. Another important factor when teaching a child to walk. Walking takes a lot of energy from the baby, the baby gets exhausted and tired from heavy loads, so it is undesirable to force the baby to walk when he has not yet learned to crawl properly.

The driving force is interest

A very important moment in the process of teaching a baby something is his interest in learning. If, for example, your baby crawls on all fours, then you have a wonderful opportunity at this time to show the child something very interesting, and this object should be nearby, but slightly above eye level. After the child rises to his feet, take the object somewhere a little further and put it down so that the baby is interested in reaching for it and grabbing it.

You can help your baby learn to walk in a wonderful way - make a special path with handrails for him so that the baby can move around the room he is in without outside help. Then your child will hold on to the support with his hands and go where he wants. At the same time, you will have much more free time.

Path for baby

You can make a similar path for your child from what you have in your home, for example, by lining up chairs in a row for the child to walk and hold on to. Armchairs or a sofa are great. Over time, the baby will be able to walk more confidently, then you will have to slightly increase the distance between the objects he holds on to so that the baby's steps are wider and the stride is confident.

When your child is trying to take his first steps, support him and avoid the possibility of falls and injuries. Small children fall very often, and then cry for a long time. Why do you need this? It also happens that children after frequent falls no longer want to walk, because crawling was very comfortable for them, and not painful. Avoiding falls, or at least reducing them to a minimum, is essential.

Praise your baby more often for learning to walk. Your baby will be happy and will try to learn to walk faster so that he will be praised further. You yourself will not notice how your child will already walk independently and without problems.

Imitation

Children love to imitate their peers and adults. In order for your child to learn to walk quickly, go with him as often as possible to public places where children and adults walk. Such places can be parks, playgrounds, children's "play worlds", and just the street. When a child watches children running and jumping, adults walking quickly, then he will want to learn to walk as soon as possible. An excellent way to imitate can be an example when you say something like: "look how the girl is running", "the dog is running", "the cat is running", the boy ran so fast, let's follow him."

Your baby's independence

Parents are not recommended to use baby walkers to help your child learn to walk. If the child becomes too attached to the walker, he will simply refuse to walk independently. It is not very difficult for children to master the walker, but it is very difficult to walk independently, which is why the child does not want to move independently.

It is also not recommended to hold a child under the arms for too long or too often so that he walks in this way. Due to this type of walking training, children may suffer from incorrect posture, foot deformation or, which is also very important, a shift in the center of gravity.

The best option for supporting a child is nothing more than reins. The child will simply roll them slowly in front of him, and you can hold him at this time, carefully, by the hood. The main thing is that the child walks more or less independently, does not bend forward too much and does not hang down to the sides while you hold him.

Stroller

Try to make sure that the baby spends a minimum amount of time in the stroller. As soon as you get to your destination, immediately let the baby out to play on his own. So that he can develop, run and jump. In this case, your baby will learn to walk quickly.