Enjoying Your Mobile Baby 

At any time between six months and one year your baby will
probably learn to crawl (or roll about or drag himself along
using the bottom shuffle technique!). You have been looking
forward to this milestone and what a joy it is to behold.

Unfortunately this newly-found mobility doesn't bring with
it any extra commonsense. You now have to watch your baby
every minute that he is awake. If you take your eyes off
him for even a second he may hurt himself or break
something. It's up to you to prevent any accidents from
occurring.

This is probably the most difficult of all stages in your
baby's development. He's too immature to understand the
dangers all around him and he's far too curious to stay in
one place for any length of time. Anything you can do to
make daily life easier for both you and your baby is
definitely worth the time and effort needed to achieve it.

The first thing you need to do is reorganise the room you
both spend the most time in. Remove any breakable or
valuable objects and any items of light furniture that he
may knock over.

You must arrange basic safety precautions such as putting a
safety gate on the staircase, making sure there are no
cables or wires dangling so that he can pull them, keeping
doors closed so that he can't escape, etc.

Be positive with your baby. If he's not allowed to open a
particular cupboard to empty the contents onto the floor
offer him another cupboard that has unbreakable plastic
containers or other safe objects that he can amuse himself
with. If you don't let him have a cupboard or drawer that
he can occupy himself with safely, the minute your back is
turned he may discover where your best china is stored and
have a smashing time! He sees you opening and closing drawers
and cupboards so it's only natural that he wants to do the same.

Thankfully babies in this age range are easily distracted so
use this to your advantage. If he insists on playing with
the waste paper basket, remove it and give him something
else instead. He will have forgotten all about it in two
minutes. If you can't remove the object, remove the baby.

Don't be tempted to tidy up every five minutes - you'll
never keep up. It's best to wait until your baby has gone
to bed for the night before you tackle any serious
housework. You had better get used to having an untidy
house, or at least an untidy room in the house. Babies make
a lot of mess!


Chrisoulla Nicolaou
Copyright © 2001 all rights reserved.

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