Crawling is an important stage in child development and a way for parents and doctors to observe whether a child will be able to multitask later in life, doctors said in Taipei yesterday.
Of the 5 million students in Taiwan, about 250,000 to 400,000 have trouble concentrating, leading to frustration, lack of interest and poor grades, said Hsu Cheng-dien (??, president of the Dun Nan Attention Facilitation Center and chief of psychiatry at Taiwan Adventist Hospital.
Most symptoms of attention deficit start before the age of seven, but most afflicted children do not receive help until they get older. When they reach adulthood, 40 percent to 60 percent of this group still have trouble concentrating and are prone to act impulsively or may even develop attention deficit disorder.
Child psychiatrists and physicians at the center urged parents to be active participants in their offspring's developmental years, stressing the importance of visual and tactile stimulants for children.
“Many parents stop their children from crawling around on the ground because they think it's dirty ... but actually, when children crawl, they are using their limbs to 'get a feel' for their surroundings,” said Huang Chien-hsuan (黃謙瑄), an attending physician on pediatric rehabilitation at the center.
Nerve endings in the hands and legs are stimulated during actions such as crawling, she said.
“When children crawl, they are using the right and left sides of their brain alternately ... This is important in performing multiple tasks at the same time,” she said.
“Children who have trouble multitasking may experience frustration during learning, such as when doing mathematical computations,” she said.
Doctors at the center recommended conducting regular mental check-ups.
Observing whether children can use their own language to express themselves or whether they are able to follow rules during games designed for their age are good ways to see if their mental development is normal for their age, Hsu said.
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