GMA: SIDS Awareness Has Delayed Crawling

May 1, 2001 -- It is taking children longer to learn how to crawl, and experts believe it because of the way they sleep.

Since 1994, when the American Academy of Pediatrics began telling parents to put infants to sleep on their backs, the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has fallen by more than 40 percent.

But the unexpected side effect is that these infants are crawling later than 6 to 8 months, the standard age at which many baby books say infants should begin crawling.

Dr. Beth Ellen Davis, a developmental pediatrician at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., told Good Morning America that the delay is not a problem, because children are not taking any longer to learn how to walk. Instead, some children just skip a step and go directly to walking.

While working for the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Davis and her colleagues published a study in 1998 that followed about 400 babies until they started walking, keeping careful track of the position they slept in.

Back-Sleepers Slower to Crawl

The results: babies who slept on their backs took longer to reach a lot of the usual milestones: crawling, tripod sitting (propping themselves up on their arms) and pulling themselves up to a stand.

For babies who slept on their bellies, the average age of crawling was about seven and a half months, Davis said. For infants who slept on their back, it was eight and a half or nine months.

But the children didn't take any longer to walk. Both the infants who slept on their backs, and those who slept on their stomachs, walked, on average, within a day or two of their first birthday, Davis said.

Worried Parents Prompt Study

Davis was prompted to do the study because back in the mid-'90s, she was seeing a lot of concerned parents, wondering why their children weren't crawling, since the baby books they read said they should be at that age.

The children looked normal, but parents seemed to want proof that there was nothing wrong. So Davis and three colleagues who are also mothers launched the study.

Parents who are concerned about their children's crawling status can help prod them along by making sure that they spend a lot of time on their bellies during the day, Davis said. That position will prompt them to learn how to crawl.

But crawling is not an important milestone, Davis said. Cognitive developments like language are much more important signposts, than physical ones like walking or crawling.

Unless a doctor says there is a problem, parents should not worry. And parents should still have their children sleep on their backs.