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Crawlers and Walkers

Crawlers and Walkers Example 1

Alex is sixteen months old. One of her objectives is to communicate her wants and needs through sign or vocalization.
In the first example, Alex's mother uses access to create a teaching opportunity for Alex to sign or say 'more'.
She blocks access to the bubbles that Alex is interested in and waits for her to ask for more.
She also uses several forms of help.
She moves from full physical help to full modeled help combined with direct verbal help and eventually to a nonverbal help.

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Crawlers and Walkers Example 2

In the next example, Alex's mother uses incidental teaching to help Alex with her objective communicate her wants and needs through sign or vocalization.
Alex initiates an interaction with her mother by reaching for the fish bowl.
Alex's mother elaborates by modeling the sign for fish.
Alex responds by repeating the sign and her mother provides partial physical help and full modeled help.
Alex signs fish correctly.
Alex receives praise and is able to feed the fish.

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Crawlers and Walkers Example 3

Maria is twelve months old and one of her objectives is to take supported steps.
Maria's mother uses access to create a teaching opportunity for Maria to practice walking.
She places the desired object out of Maria's reach, which requires that she move toward the object in order to get it.
While Maria is moving toward the object, her mother uses partial physical help to partially support her body.

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Time to Stop and Think

Can you identify the characteristics of crawlers and walkers?

Can you identify and describe the intervention strategies that were used in the examples.

If you would like to increase your understanding of help strategies for crawlers and walkers, you can review the following activities.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

Write down one or two ways that you could use intervention strategies discussed in the first three sections with your child in the crawling and walking stage.

Each example below describes a child and objective. Can you identify which intervention strategies could be used with the crawlers and walkers in these situations?

1. Brad is 13 months and has little control of his large muscles. His family and the staff of his childcare center use his wheel chair to move him and to seat him at activities with other children. They want to be sure that he lets them know what he wants, especially by using his voice. His objective is to communicate with sounds.

2. Julie is 17 months old. She likes toys such as nesting toys and other objects that she can manipulate. She has had little contact with other adults and children and stays very close to her mother in group situations. Her mother needs to return to the work place. She and the early intervention team have decided that one of Julie's objectives should be that Julie will be separated from her mother for short periods with only a little crying and fussing.

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