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Home › Articles › Guiding Baby's Development › Rolling

Rolling

A Key Stage in Motor Development

By Jacqueline Bodnar

Pages:  1  2  3  

Helping Them Along
"Kids roll over sooner in life if they spend more time on their stomach," says Dr. Dave Olson, pediatrician at Grand Traverse Children's Clinic in Traverse City, Mich. "They have a wider group of muscles they can use and develop while in this prone position. On the back, in the supine position, they are a bit like turtles on their backs and can't really exercise the arms and legs against the force of the surface they are on."

When can a parent expect their baby to start rolling over? It depends on a number of factors:

  • Maturity: Babies born prematurely tend to be slightly behind their peers during the first year of their life. If the average baby begins to roll at 7 or 8 months, a baby born prematurely may not begin rolling until some time after that.
  • Personality: According to Dr. Sears, babies with mellow personalities tend to be slightly slower in motor development than their more active counterparts.
  • Body size: Bigger babies start to roll, on average, later than leaner (or smaller) ones.

Because so many factors contribute to the onset of rolling, Dr. Olson says that parents don't need to be overly consumed with specific timetables. He also explains that the new and important "on the back" sleep guidelines have lead to later rolling over. However, it has also saved thousands of lives, and rolling over later is not a serious enough reason to not put a baby to sleep on its back.

"Infants used to roll over from front to back at about 4 months," Dr. Olson says. "It currently seems more common to see this at 6 months There are no apparent consequences to this slight delay." If babies aren't rolling over by 12 months, he sas this should prompt some additional attention from the pediatrician.


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