These are the Pikler drawings that completely changed my perception on babies’ development and opened my eyes to how many of our modern conveniences are affecting our children’s physical growth and form.
For my first child, I presumed she wanted to see the world. I would prop her up on pillows all the time and, as soon as she was big enough, introduced the ‘bumbo’ (Yikes!). I would attempt to slide her into high chairs, bolster her in, and hold her in the standing position for good practice. All with the best of intentions and best will. I thought I was helping her. It turns out I wasn’t.
She never learned to crawl; started walking (holding on to our hands) at 9 months; she took a long time to be able to really climb and jumping and bouncing on her feet seemed a little awkward. At the time, I didn’t consider it much and I followed the line that each child is different and everyone develops their strengths on their own unique schedule.
When I was pregnant with my second child I was introduced to these Pikler drawings. The theory here is that each child develops physically along the same lines, one step after the next. A child that is put solely on its back (no tummy time and preferably on relatively hard surfaces – the floor without padding it with cushions) will follow this pattern.
So I tried it with my second child, if he wasn’t in the sling then he had time on his back. Very short moments in the early days, he wasn’t keen on being away from my heart for long at all. But one day, just as the drawings show he began to roll. He was totally faithful to the theory, he crawled before he could sit up and I didn’t put him in any chairs or restrictions (bar his car seat) until he had reached the point of sitting up on his own, so his body was telling me those muscles were ready.
He took all those physical developments steps at Pikler suggests and, alongside that, his climbing, bouncing, running and jumping skills were smoother and more natural than his sister’s. This has only been my small experiment, and one could easily put it down to pure coincidence, but as with all of my natural parenting choices so far, they have made sense to me, they hit a deeply logical core in my being and ring great bells of truth in my soul.