Dear guests!

Our website is intended for a wide audience that is somehow connected with young children. These are doctors of different specialties (pediatricians, neonatologists, neurologists, physical therapy doctors, etc.), special teachers, and defectologists. But first of all, these are parents who want to develop their children harmoniously in the first year of life, and parents whose children suffer from motor disorders.

We do not encourage you to immediately believe in the high effectiveness of at first glance simple exercises and recommendations. You will have faith in our method and your own strength when you achieve the first results.

Three factors of development

The development of the child's motor sphere is determined by three main factors: heredity, presence of nervous system damaging factors during pregnancy and perinatal period as well as the effect of the environment created around the child after birth.

With healthy heredity and an intact сentral nervous system (CNS), there are different variants of movement development in children. Someone cannot army crawl, someone cannot crawl on all fours, bypassing these stages. The start time of walking varies greatly, and sometimes it is mastered first, and crawling is mastered later. There are children who are «lazy» and active, «tame» and independent. However, in a year - a year and two months, children begin to walk and become surprisingly similar to each other.

The similarity of the final results is provided by a special, genetically transmitted program for the development of child's movements, which is implemented in the absence of significant damage to the Central nervous system in social conditions. Differences indicate the significance of the third factor: the environmental influence on the child.

What is the environment and what are its components?

• special (therapeutic and developmental procedures);
• everyday routine.

Therapeutic and developmental activities for a healthy child, as practice shows, are used infrequently.
Conclusion: the main role in the variability of development is played by everyday routine.

Let's list the everyday routine components.

• independent activity;
• being held by an adult;
• sitting: on the floor, on a chair, in a stroller, on an adult's lap, on a potty;
• position for feeding;
• position for bathing.

If healthy children develop so variously in the first year of life, being under the influence of routine factors, then children with CNS damage, who have significantly less resistance to pathological influences, are even more susceptible to them!

Let's turn to the official medical data on the child’s motor development in the first year of life.

Evolution of the child at the first year

Key elements of table 1:

• turn from back to belly at 5-6 months;
• turn from belly to back at 6-7 months;
• sitting without support at 7-8 months;
• army crawling at 7-8 months;
• standing up on all fours at 7-8 months;
• crawling on all fours at 9-10 months;
• start walking at 10-12 months.

Key elements of table 2:

• up to 3 months only the abdominal position progresses;
• at 3 months, the child must be able to stand at support (!);
• at 4 months, the child should be able to sit at support (!);
• in 5-5, 5 months, the child learns how to turn from back to front and steps over (in fact, walks!) with the support;
• at 6 months, the mastering of army crawling («child moves by moving hands»);
• at 7 months – standing up on all fours;
• at 8 months – crawling on all fours;
• at 1 year old – walking.

Table 3 (source: the website of CRI)

Key components of table 3:

• army crawling does not appear as one of the important skills;
• up to 9 months old, the child can only turn over, stand on all fours and sit down, but can not shift;
• only from the age of 9 months does the skill of shifting on all fours appear, and only from a year to a year and four months does walking develop.

What do these tables have in common?

• The child should not be able to move independently before 6-8 months.
• In 7 months, the child has to stand on all fours.
• In 8-9 months, the child has to crawl on all fours.

Questions that the tables do not provide a single answer to:

• Is it possible or necessary to make children sit, stand, and lead them at 3-6 months? In reality, this question is more often answered positively.
• Is there any consistency in learning skills, or can they be stimulated all at once? In reality, everything is stimulated simultaneously: from holding the head to walking.
• How to interpret the movements and positions that do not fit into the table frame? For example: moving by rolling from back to front and from front to back; sitting only in a W-shaped position; standing at support on legs, etc.? There is no answer to these questions.

Conclusions:

• Most of the so-called «motor skills» in the tables are static positions, so these «motor skills» are not considered as skills, let alone motor skills.
• Key motor skills, such as turning from the back to belly, are put on the same level of importance as inarticulate: sitting with support by the hand. Actions of incomparable importance are equalized.
• A large number of children army crawl already at 4.5-5 months, learning this skill before the turns from front to belly and before the ability to sit. The idea of the natural sequence of skills development is violated.
• Linking skills to age form a tabular matching policy when they are stimulated, without focusing on the sequence of occurrence.
• There is no common understanding of child's normal development (of key skills and the sequence of their occurrence). In the table headers, it is very prudent not to use words about exemplary, reference, or ideal development. In fact, only its (development) variants are offered.
• The saddest thing is that a significant number of children who were diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 1 year old, corresponded to the proposed table standards up to 6-8 months, and their parents were unaware of the impending problems.

What are the outcomes?

The life of a child is not considered as a factor affecting the development of the child at all.
Vague and incomplete is the idea of the healthy child’s development (not to say about premature babies, children with perinatal CNS damage?!). Developing methods help some people, do not help others, they can not be called effective and universal, because any method of developing motor activity should be based on knowledge of natural development algorithms. And it turns out there is no knowledge?

Many will say: this can't be! Children are treated and cured?!

In fact, children in modern conditions can only count on one assistant, powerful and reliable, but still not omnipotent – neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to self-repair after lesions). It cures in most situations. But it needs an ideal working environment, which consists of stimulating skills based on a natural algorithm of development in the appropriate living conditions.

The ideal development algorithm (IDA)

The ideal development algorithm (IDA) is a chain of key motor skills, that is, certain movements worked out until automatism. Each of them is a consequence of the development of the previous one.

Is there an algorithm for the ideal development of the child's movements? How can I contribute to its implementation? How can I help a healthy child develop harmoniously instead of interfering with them?

Can this algorithm be used in evaluating the motor development of children with CNS lesions?

Is it possible to use this algorithm in the treatment of a child with CNS damage? How to provide an algorithm for the ideal motor development of a premature child and a child with CNS damage?

Now I will answer the above-mentioned questions:

• the ideal development algorithm (IDA) exists.
• Calamus can and should be used in assessing the development of ANY child. Moreover, it is a guiding thread in the correction and treatment of children with CNS lesions, including cerebral palsy.
• A child's life is the main component of habilitation (skill development).
• living conditions can be so harmful that they will be the main factors in the formation of cerebral palsy.
• living conditions can be so useful that they will not allow the formation of cerebral palsy in a child with a primary severe CNS lesion (it is important to know that cerebral palsy is not congenital, it is formed in the first 6-8 months of life).
• effective tools exist to correct any deviation from the IDA.

The proposed method has been developed for 20 years. Nihilism in the profession and a deliberate departure from the influence of official medicine allowed us to develop, ignoring dogmas and axioms. Practical achievements were formed into scientific conclusions and theories, and not vice versa, as often happens. Now you have a way to help your child independently and effectively.