Influence of the Crawling Experience on Motor Development and Abilities in School Children

The purpose of this study was to clarify the effects of crawling experiences during infancy on the motor abilities of school-aged children.

This study included 626 children from all elementary school grades. Background factors, such as age, height, and weight were measured. To assess motor ability, eight activities from the new physical fitness test were used: grip strength, sit-ups, sit-and-reach, sidestep, 20-m shuttle run, 50-m sprint, standing long jump, and softball throw. These values were normalized to the median values for each grade. The new physical fitness test was conducted in elementary schools across Japan. A development questionnaire was used to measure crawling duration.The exclusion criteria were preterm birth, intellectual disabilities, motor function deviations, and missing data. Children who crawled for less than two months were defined as the inexperienced group, whereas those who crawled for more than two months were defined as the experienced group. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare background factors and motor abilities between the two groups. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between the crawling duration and physical fitness test items.This study was approved and conducted by the Research Ethics Review Committee.

This study included 39 boys and 20 girls. The boys were divided into experienced (n = 23; median age, 9 y) and inexperienced (n = 16; median age, 7 y) groups. Similarly, the girls were divided into experienced (n = 14; median age, 9 y) and inexperienced (n = 6; median age 10.5 y) groups. No significant differences in the background factors were observed.In terms of motor skills, the experienced group of boys had significantly better softball throw performance than those in the inexperienced group (P = 0.017). A significant positive correlation was found between the duration of crawling, upper body raising, and softball throw (r = 0.322, P = 0.049 and r = 0.463, P = 0.003). Among girls, the inexperienced group demonstrated significantly better repetitive sidestep performance than those in the experienced group (P = 0.026).

In this study, we found that boys in the experienced crawling group had better softball throw performance than those in the inexperienced group. The duration of crawling was positively correlated with upper-body strength and ball-throwing ability, suggesting that crawling may contribute to the development of trunk strength and coordinated movements in school-aged children. Interestingly, girls in the inexperienced group performed better in repetitive side-stepping, possibly because of their early focus on standing and lower limb muscle development.

These findings emphasize the importance of crawling in early childhood motor development, particularly for trunk muscle strength and coordination. Further studies with larger sample sizes are required to validate our results.