The balance can also be trained relatively quickly, but newborns typically get very little practice.
If you start occasionally holding your baby up by the thighs when they are 4–5 months old (their back/abdomen muscles at that point are typically plenty strong), after about a month they will have the balance to hold their torso upright when sitting on an adult’s shoulders, for at least a while. By age 8–9 months they will be very stable and good at balancing for long stretches of time. (I recommend any new parent try this, not only for the baby’s sake but because carrying a baby on shoulders is dramatically less tiring for an adult than carrying a baby in arms, and less hassle than a stroller or baby carrier.)
People generally hold their babies from the top (e.g. with hands in armpits), in a way that they are passively stable. If you want to train someone’s balance, you want to force them to actively stabilize themselves from a default-unstable position at least a bit every day. Babies have very short torsos and small heads compared to older kids, with the effect that their torsos have a much smaller moment of inertia about the waist: it takes several times more muscle strength for a 3-year-old to lift their torso up.
Based on my experience with our first child, these might be placebo exercises, and the babies might have met those goals on their own. Assuming you haven't done a randomized trial.
Based on which experience? My experience with now 2 young kids and their playground buddies is that whichever skills they regularly practice improve very dramatically compared to skills they don’t practice. The differences are not at all subtle.
If you get a few 3-year-olds and e.g. get one to practice kicking a ball for 10 minutes per day, another to practice riding a 2-wheeled scooter, another to practice hanging from monkey bars, and another to practice swimming, after a few months there will be a wide gulf between their abilities at those skills.
> If you start occasionally holding your baby up by the thighs when they are 4–5 months...
Do you mean baby sits on my shoulder with his legs around my neck, I am holding on to his thighs, and he can hold on to my head with arms? We both face forward in same direction.
No, I mean you hold your baby by the thighs, facing you, and let him balance his torso upright by flexing his abdominal/back muscles. At first, the baby will not have the coordination to stay upright very well, but actively stabilizing himself will train that balance. Because you are holding the thighs, the baby only has to stabilize one joint (the waist).
Then after a month or two of practice (a few minutes per day, nothing too serious here) you put your baby on your shoulders, holding his ankles, and he will be able to hold his torso up with his abdominal muscles for at least a few minutes at a time. Practice this for a few more weeks and you will be able to walk around town with the baby on your shoulders.
Oh I get that. Kind of what my parents did that always pick up baby from waist(if he is sitting down) & holding him only at thighs/waist. I see some people pick up by from their underarms.
I have a 10 week old baby right now, he can absolutely stand on his legs if you hold him steady - but yeah, he has absolutely zero clue what to do from there :P Also he's got a kick that you really need to watch out for, strong little dude.
The balance comes much later than the strength.
reply