As many of you probably know, these days they say that babies should sleep on their backs at night to reduce the risk of SIDS. Because they are on their backs more, many babies are completely skipping the crawling stage and going straight to walking. Crawling is a very impoortant stage in life that increases wrist muscles and coordination. To help out with this, doctors recommend tummy time every day for babies so they get that exposure to lifting their own body weight up.
My daughter absolutely HATES tummy time. Ninety percent of the time she screams the entire time she's on her tummy. I get down on the floor with her, I try to entice her with toys, I try to comfort her by patting her on the back. I hope it will get better when she's a little older - right now she is about 11 weeks old and still not really interested in toys. Maybe once toys become more interesting tummy time will also.
In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it better?
How did your child like tummy time?
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Comments: 25
But on to the topic at hand. I do have a grandson and he indeed is on his back all the time and is having a hard time holding his head up. Although I can only tell my oldest what he should be doing, he will do what he wants. He won't let him cry, he will regret this one day but he doesn't crawl at all, and they are both surprised because he hasn't tried, now I can add to the list of things he needs to do to help the baby.
Thanks for the info and good luck.
Jean - What a scary situation! I'm glad he ended up being okay. How old is your grandson? My daughter is a little under 3 months and can hold her head up w/o any problem, but she could hold her head up a little right when she was born! Of course, all babies reach milestones at different times.
Arlene - All babies are different, that's for sure! I think our daughter may be an early walker, she already stands up if you hold her enough to balance her.
My 2 kids are both under 2 1/2 so we have just recently gone through this! Both of mine hated tummy time to start off with too. We started with very short increments...like 2 minutes! We just kept adding time as they got older. The 2 things that DID help...those black and white baby board books and the Baby Face boardbooks. I would put the babies on a boppy and prop the book in front of them and they would just stare and stare. Once they got to like tummy time a little better, we ditched the boppy and just put them right on their tummies. I hope this helps!
We only put her down for a few minutes each day since she usually screams the entire time. If she isn't screaming, we leave her on her tummy until she starts getting antsy.
I have a total of 10 children, 3 of which I deliverred myself without help.
all slept on their stomachs.
I still have all of them alive;
My nephew hated tummy time too and has never liked it! He is 15 months old now and is crawling but not walking.. He was in the hospital for a month with rsv when he was 6 months old. He is as big as my son who is 20 months old which is a good size baby.. 25 lbs.. He is trying to walk but just hasnt got it down.. maybe its a good thing he is not walking so he can build his muscles in his wrists and all then since he skipped it all when he was younger!
I have an article about sids also if you would like to check it out.. Its like 6 one on my page.. you may find it interesting.. I did!