Getting Baby To Move From Sitting

I’m Kirsty Brocklehurst and I’m a Children’s Physiotherapist and I’m Sally Hills Davis and I’m a Children’s Occupational Therapist and we are the Practical Child and we’re going to be sharing some common issues around child development and our top tips for how you can help.

One of the really common things that parents often come to me and ask if how they can move their child on some setting, quite often, children are placed in a sitting position and are quite happy to play there. They don’t progress and they can’t move out of that sitting position. If this expert described to your child, my top tip to better think about where you put their toys.

Firstly, how many toys do you have out? If there’s lots of toys for them to choose from your child is always going to pick the easiest closest to hand toys to play with and not be motivated to me out of the sitting position. Also, if the toys are handed to them or placed right in front of them, again, there is no motivation to move out of this certain position.

So my tip is reduce your toys down, just have one or two of their favorite toys out. And instead of putting that toy right in front of them, place the toy to the side, start with the toy quite close so that they can still reach it and get the immediate reward of grabbing that toy and being able to play with it, but then gradually move the toys slightly further away so that they’re having to reach out to the side for the toy and then even further still so they’re actually having to twist their whole body down to get to the toy and even possibly coming right able to both hands and up towards the cooling position. So they’re actually having to twist their whole body down to get to the toy and even possibly coming right able to both times and up towards the cooling position.

This will teach your child how to move in and out of setting so that they are much happier. They know how to get there and how to get out of this position and can then move onwards to cooling getting on and off the floor by themselves.