On the topic of COVID babies, two of these adorable babies are exhibiting neuro-developmental issues. The second little girl scooting on her bottom, while adorable, is showing classic signs that the nervous system has a disconnect. Her eyes are looking down towards the floor. Clearly she is not interpreting what is in front of her well. Both arms are up and forward to maintain her balance. 

The next little one is doing a sort of army crawl. While this is usually a precursor step to crawling, both the right arm and right leg are in motion at the same time. When the neurology is correct, the opposite arm and leg should be in motion at the same time. 

Correct crawling would be a cross crawl, meaning one arm and the opposite leg are moving at the same time, eyes and head are up and there are no signs of hesitation. We are seeing more and more children with altered movements due to several factors. One, not being around their peers diminishes their natural desire to do what others are doing. Being around adults and older siblings usually demonstrates walking so babies naturally want to do that first. Second, with more parents working from home babies are getting more one on one attention. And thanks to technology, their progress gets posted all over social media. This presents a problem as more moms (and dads too) are comparing children and their milestones to others. There is an invisible push to desire kids to match what Oliver next door is doing at 6 months instead of at 9 months under more normal circumstances. 

But there are ways to reverse this! Physical and occupational therapy can address a lot of the physical problems while pediatric chiropractic reorganizes the neurology. Together we see faster results than is just left alone, as sadly children never "grow out" of neurological issues. We will touch more on what it really means to "grow out" of something in a later post.