hi and welcome back to amazing milestones today's episode is all about action on the floor that is you guessed it we're talking about crawling that really important milestone when gross motor skills kick in and growing babies become mobile i'm personally really excited to find out when do babies start to crawl how it ties into their overall development and what we can do as parents to make sure our babies reach this important milestone so let's go meet our expert dr regine melemeth hi dr melamed hi welcome to the show thank you so i'm curious to know at what age my baby should start to crawl well if you go according to the normal developmental stages of the baby nine months is about the age where they should start learning to crawl oh okay i thought you were going to say earlier but nine months okay and with regards to milestones what does beginning to crawl mean to my baby's development so what it means to the baby's development is that the baby has attained enough strength in their core muscle group so in the abdominals and the hips and the legs in order to crawl and ambulate and often once those strengths have been achieved then the next steps will come naturally so which would be pulling to stand and then walking okay and what can i do as a mom to encourage this newfound mobility and support my baby's development so you know one thing it's funny but one thing you could do as a mom is not do that much so once the baby starts uh crawling getting up on all fours you want to let him move from one position to the other let's say from sitting to crawling from lying to sitting to crawling so you want really the baby to get to start ambulating on their own right um i would definitely be the kind of mom that's just like no here i'll do it for you i'll do it for you so okay let the baby be and discover things and when the baby's either sitting or in an area where they're playing you want to make sure that the toys as often as you can you push them further away from the baby so that the baby actually has to move around to get to those toys it's good for me to remember that and and what age is it considered late for crawling and what should i do if my baby hasn't started to crawl at that age so according to the developmental milestones late would be around 11 months of age now of course if your baby has only been sitting on the mat and not doing anything that would be a time where you should definitely consult your doctor or the baby's pediatrician or family doctor for it but of course if the baby is either rolling leaning using their bum and their legs to move forward then there isn't that much that we need to worry about okay so it doesn't have to be the traditional crawling on all fours okay and are there any tips that you can give us in regards to baby proofing our home to protect these new curious crawlers yeah so a great tip that i got from a physiotherapist colleague is to actually go down on all fours in the rooms where the baby will play and you can be at eye level to see all what's in danger for the baby the most common are the table corners for the coffee tables so those corners you want to be padded and covered the sockets for the plugs those also want to be covered the electrical wiring that's in the house you want to hide them put them out of reach for the baby as well there's the cabinets so whether the kitchen or bathroom or et cetera cabinets in the house you want to keep them locked and if you can't lock them you want to make sure that all the objects that are sharp or toxic to potentially toxic for the baby you want to move them out of the cabinets and put them out of reach okay and last but not least would be the staircases so you want to make sure that there's a gate and it's locked and whether the stairs are going up or down you want to make sure that that's taken care of when the baby's in the house great well my baby's not at that stage yet but i'll be ready when she gets there so thank you very very much i appreciate it you're welcome so what you need to remember in today's episode is every baby develops at his or her own pace and no matter how they move on all fours sliding on their bottom dragging a leg behind them they're still developing their gross motor skills and that's really what counts so everything comes in its own good time and before you know it you'll have a walking toddler on your hands now that's all for today i'll see you next time on amazing milestones take care