We can sometimes unintentionally thwart babies’ natural gross motor development. This can be avoided with the Pikler approach, explains Dorothy Marlen…
There is a story of how Emmi Pikler, early in her career, spent a year with her husband at Triest, Italy. At the beach she would watch parents with their children.
She observed carers putting infants and young children in positions that they were not naturally ready to find themselves. This included being sat up or being held upright and ‘walked’.
Pikler saw this near-universal practice as a deep mistrust of the natural capabilities of children to find these abilities themselves.
She believed that all children have an innate body wisdom that naturally directs the unfolding of motor capacities.
When their daughter was born, Pikler and her husband took the unprecedented step of not interfering with their daughter’s motor development in any way.
For example, there was no ‘tummy time’, no propping or sitting her up. There was no putting her in a walker and no holding her upright.
They laid her carefully on her back on the floor at certain times of each day. They let her move and play freely without interference or interruption for as long as she wanted.
What happened was that their child went through a progression of positions that included rolling, crawling, sitting, standing and walking without any help whatsoever.
Pikler saw that her daughter did not need ‘help’ with anything. She naturally and gracefully came into walking entirely through her own efforts.
This experience informed Pikler in her practice as a family paediatrician in Budapest. She recommended to her parents that they not interfere with their children’s natural motor development, and it worked.
The children in her care also came up into walking unaided, and were noticeably more balanced and agile.
When Pikler opened her orphanage after WWII, staff adhered to this principle. They allowed infants the freedom to engage in their own self-initiated movement and play.
This was an essential part of the care regime, along with respectful care during times of bodily care.
In fact, it was the secure attachment to a key carer and the high-quality and respectful care given, especially in times of bodily care, that provided the conditions for children to feel secure and therefore content to engage in joyful self-directed movement, activity and play.
The orphanage was in existence for over 60 years. During this time, staff made detailed observations, videos and photographs of the children in the institute in all stages of development.
They discovered sequences of movements and positions, including important transitional positions, that no one had described before in early childhood development research.
Perhaps no one had discovered them because children generally do not have the freedom to fully experience all the natural stages of motor development.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery made at the Pikler Insitute was that if allowed full movement freedom, infants will, almost without exception, creep and/or crawl before they come naturally into the sitting position.
In one study of 591 infants, on average (with a wide deviation) the children crawled at 44 weeks. They sat and stood up at 49 weeks and took first steps at 15 months. They walked with ease at 17 months.
Early years training literature in the UK lists the normal sequence as sitting before crawling. Where did this ‘fact’ come from?
Is it based on our cultural habit of sitting infants up before they find the sitting position themselves? From there they have to try to find the crawling sequence – sometimes giving up and bum shuffling instead.
In my experience of running parent and infant groups informed by the Pikler Approach, with over 100 families passing through, infants will self-discover the creeping and/or crawling sequences after rolling.
From there they find a variety of sitting positions that they can get into and out of themselves. None of them have bum shuffled.
There is a wonderful side-lying position that infants find and seem to gain much pleasure in spending time in.
This position is one of several that children will only find if they are free to go through all the movement progressions naturally and are not sat up by adults.
Unfortunately, checklists on important developmental milestones completely miss this position – perhaps because we so rarely see it.
Mastering transitional positions such as this, which require subtle weight shifts, is essential for developing balance. It’s a good indication that motor development is on track.
Research at the Pikler Institute shows that there is a large variation in time when individual infants master a particular position or sequence.
This is later than we expect in the UK, and obviously later than when well-meaning adults put them into the position.
Without the Pikler reassurance based on years of detailed observation, there is the danger that, out of an anxiety that children may fall behind officially set developmental milestones, we ‘help’ them into positions before they are ready.
If this happens, children may not self-discover important movements and positions, let alone master them. Rather than helping children, we may be hindering the unfolding of their natural capacities and their trust in their own bodies.
We need to allow children to go at their own pace. Faster is not better!
In the Western world, we don’t give the vast majority of infants the opportunity to negotiate the full gross motor development progressions from crawling to sitting, standing and walking.
Sally Goddard Blythe has pointed out in her books and articles that if a child does not go through the full motor sequences there is a danger that primitive reflexes which should naturally fade by 6–12 months do not do so.
This can cause difficulties in gross and fine motor coordination, sensory perception behaviour and other obstacles to learning later on.
At the Pikler Institute, primitive reflex retention was unknown. The development of balance gained through all the sequences and transitional positions, such as the side-lying position, goes hand in hand with the integration of primitive reflexes.
We can’t teach children balance or reflex integration – they master everything through their own efforts. Allowing infants time to unfold their motor capacities could prevent many learning difficulties we see in primary schools.
Create an optimal environment for movement and play appropriate to each gross motor development stage. This includes:
A respectful relationship with a key carer is also essential. It ensures trust and security which is the foundation for all free and joyful self-initiated activity.
Dorothy Marlen is a freelance early childhood workshop leader, trainer and consultant with a specialisation in the Pikler Approach, and is the author of The Parent and Child Group Handbook – A Steiner/Waldorf Approach (Hawthorn Press). Read more from Dorothy about the Pikler Approach to nappy changing.
