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As every loving parent knows, babies don’t just wake up one day and start walking. This monumental achievement is a gradual process that involves the development of several skills including balance, coordination, strength, and curiosity. Developing balance is the fundamental first step in this journey. Here are five innovative ways to help improve your baby’s balance.

Via Pexels

1. Tummy Time

Why It Helps: Tummy time is a popular activity that experts recommend for infants. It’s crucial for developing neck, shoulder, and core strength, all of which are essential for maintaining balance.

How To Do It: Start by placing your baby on their tummy for a few minutes at a time, increasing the duration as they get comfortable. You can keep them engaged by providing colorful toys or making funny faces. As their strength increases, they will gradually lift their head, push up on their arms, and start rolling over, all the while improving their balance.

2. Assistive Walking

Why It Helps: Assisted walking provides your baby with a real sense of what walking feels like, allowing them to develop the balance needed to eventually walk independently.

How To Do It: Stand your baby up on your lap or on the floor while you firmly hold their hands. Slowly walk them around, letting them feel their weight shift from one foot to the other. Remember to keep the session fun and stress-free, and stop when your baby shows signs of fatigue.

3. Balance Toys

Why It Helps: Balance toys, such as rocking horses, ride-ons, and balance boards, are specifically designed to engage your child’s core and improve their balance.

How To Do It: Introduce your baby to balance toys once they can sit independently. Encourage them to play with these toys, helping them initially if necessary. One thing to bear in mind is toy safety; double-check that the toys are age appropriate and that you keep an eye on them when using the toys. 

4. Try To Stimulate Their Vestibular System

Why It Helps: Equipment such as swings and bouncers for babies such as swings and bouncers are great ways to engage the vestibular system and promote balance and coordination among movements. Thus comes into play a comparison between Baby Swing vs Bouncer; both provide different movements and sensations to improve balance and help create better coordination among movements.

How To Do It: Start placing your baby in a swing or bouncer for short periods each day to provide them with different movements and sensations that help them learn how to adjust their body to maintain balance. Make sure the equipment you purchase is safe, sturdy, and has an easily secured harness system.

5. Help Them To Start Crawling

Why It Helps: Crawling is more than just a form of transport for your baby – it is also an essential milestone in their physical development, helping develop muscular strength, coordination, and ultimately balance.

How To Do It: Encourage crawling by placing toys or objects of interest at arm’s length from your baby. Make sure the environment is safe for exploration with barriers around potential risks like stairs. Even if your baby skips crawling altogether and moves directly to walking, providing opportunities for crawling is still vital to ensure their balance develops properly.

Balance is a core element of your baby’s development, and activities like tummy time, assisted walking, play with balance toys, baby swing/bouncer time, encouraging crawling and encouraging sitting are great ways to strengthen this skill. Remember each baby develops at their own pace so don’t be discouraged by slow development; celebrate any accomplishment along the journey and cherish every precious moment with your little one! Safety must always come first so ensure all activities and toys are appropriate and that you always supervise and supervise them during play!

Heather Brummett

I am Heather Brummett . I'm just a real mom, sharing my real life experiences with the world. Thank you for being a part of my world. Here you will find recipes, crafts, fun ideas for the kids, how to work at home, encouragement, inspiration, and the latest news in and around Houston. To be featured or for information on freelance work contact me at [email protected].

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