19 May 😬Have you noticed that your little one is “bunny hopping” 🐰to get around instead of crawling with alternate hands and knees🤔Wondering if it’s a problem that your baby “bunny hops” to crawl

Crawling is an important stage of gross motor skills development for a baby because it is the stage of movement development where baby will learn to strengthen their shoulders and hips while moving opposite arms to knees to crawl. 👶🏻Some babies crawl by pulling both knees forward instead of alternating each knee to the opposite arm to crawl. This form of crawling is often called “Bunny Hopping” because it resembles how bunnies hop.

Although it’s not uncommon to see babies “bunny hop” to crawl, it isn’t an ideal movement pattern and is really an adaptive movement pattern. Here at My Favourite Physio, our Expert Paediatric Physiotherapists 🤓recommend that babies learn to crawl on their hands and knees in a reciprocal pattern for the 3 reasons below:

🐰1. Bunny Hopping limits baby from learning to move their both legs alternately which is important for learning pull to stand on furniture and walking. Walking requires moving each leg is a reciprocal manner with one leg forward at a time, rather than both feet forward together.

🐰2. Bunny Hopping tends to place baby’s feet pointing downwards and some babies bunny hop with their calves and feet pointed backwards and off the ground. As such when baby learns to stand and walk, they tend to stand and walk on tip toes.

🐰3. Bunny Hopping tends to lead to W-sitting when babies stop to play. W-sitting is bad for baby’s hip development as it tends to place baby’s hip into internal rotation and adduction, which means that baby’s hip is not sitting correctly in the hip socket.

To prevent delays in Baby’s gross motor skills development, prevent hip problems and tip toe walking, it is best to help your baby learn to crawl on their hands and knees alternately.

If you are concerned about your baby’s crawling, reach out to My Favourite Physio on 📱(02) 9790 4233 or DM us @myfavouritephysio, let us help your baby achieve their best potential today!

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