Relevance of intervention in children with motor development delays or impairment: Research Project

Nowadays, the new parenting habits, the changes in the society and the numerous devices existing around the childcare business are leading to difficulties in regards to the natural development for some babies. Those children are not able to develop as they should do “naturally” and parents are sent to physiotherapist consults to help them. This lead to the question: do those children need intervention to help get them back to the track of a natural, physiological motor development? Said differently, are children with motor delay or impairment at risk of presenting later consequences?As physiotherapists, we focus on getting the kids to explore all their possibilities. We are trying to have a respectful approach of each child in regards to their motor development, keeping in mind that they all have their own timing. Their “road” to the independent walking is paved with steps, that can not (and should not) be skipped if we refer to the physiological development. So is the hand and knees position, which will lead to independent sitting, standing and locomotion. It is true that all children are not crawling, but it seems hard to affirm that this is not a consequence of adult intervention (being seated, being made walking as more frequent examples).The aim of this research is to assess the children development from the first movement in life until the independent walking, with a special focus on the motor explosion phase. This phase starts when the baby discovers the belly position on his own, and starts to glimpse the ventral possibilities. Then we will track those babies to see how they will evolve years after years. It is known that crawling on hand and knees is related to several skills, among spatial orientation (Clearfield, 2004 ;Murray, Jones, Kuh, and Richards, 2007), balance and inter-limbs coordination (Adolph, Berger and Andrew, 2001), self-esteem and self-confidence. But is it the fact of crawling or the factors that are leading the baby not to crawl who matters?Lots of questions are still waiting for answers in that field that seems simple but shows in the end a lot of different interpretations on what is physiological and what is specific to every child developing their own strategy, and this is why we need further researches.