Alternative ways to boost baby's health

ENCOURAGE CRAWLING

Crawling is an important gross motor milestone because it improves shoulder girdle muscle strength, abdominal muscle strength, and pelvic muscle strength. It also mimics the reciprocal movement of walking. Crawling not only ensures that your child develops well-aligned legs and knees for walking and running, but it also helps strengthen his shoulders for better control when it comes to tasks using the hands and arms, such as hand writing and even throwing a winning pitch.

GO FOR A SWIM

Every child is born with swimming reflex, wherein he automatically 'paddles' both arms and legs for propulsion when placed tummy down in the water. This disappears approximately after three months of age. However, playing in the water helps your child feel different sensations such as buoyancy and hydrostatic pressure, which in turn, facilitates movement as well as balance reactions. As you r child learns how to blow bubbles in the water or hold his breath when his head goes down, oral-motor control and respiratory function improve as well. Splashing, washing with his hands, or kicking his legs against water result in increased body awareness. Water can met either to assist movement or to resist movement. So playing in the water doesn't necessarily mean your child needs to learn how to swim. This form of recreation helps his body become aware of a whole new environment. It also teaches him how to react to water, and to keep his head up and out of the water to breathe. This helps your child's improve strength, motor planning and coordination.

ALLOW HIM TO EXPLORE WITH BARE HANDS AND FEET

Hygiene is very important, especially with so many new strains of viruses and bacteria around. However, allowing your child to explore different textures, to hold and touch different shapes and consistencies, feeds the brain. It helps him learn different grasp patterns, which prepares him to use different tools and implements in the future. Walking on different surfaces (smooth versus rough, hard versus soft, level versus inclines or declines), whether it be with assistance or independently, strengthens the ankles and knees. The brain learns different things from walking with shoes on and walking, it would be good to use shoes with built-in arch support and good rubber soles (function over form)"

LET HIM PLAY

It is never too early to expose your child to functional applications of gross motor skills: sports, arts, and music, whether it be regular visits to various playground setups or early involvement in music or rhythm and movement classes. Moving to the beat or rhythm, or through various balance challenges and allowing him to fall and get up on his own help the brain and the feed-back feed-forward mechanisms develop faster. Play is the work of the child.

EXPOSE YOUR BABY TO ALL KINDS OF FOODS

Especially those that are grown organically, a lot of fruits and vegetables, and nothing that was injected or sprayed with artificial things. Sometimes, we are at fault for always giving the same thing because that's what they want.