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> Most human babies take 9-18 months to walk, and this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains Have you ever seen a new-born
by chrisseaton 5y ago
> Most human babies take 9-18 months to walk, and this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains
Have you ever seen a new-born baby's legs?
They aren't even remotely strong enough to walk, no matter what the brain tells them. It takes those months to develop leg muscles. New-borns don't have them.
It's absolutely not restricted by the brain size.
- outworlder 5y agoTrue. But the movements on all limbs are quite uncoordinated at first. It's also not restricted to muscle strength.
- emmelaich 5y agoWell, the legs may be less developed since they're not useful because ... the brain size is not big enough? Anyway, hard to conclude, just think your logic is missing a little.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y agoExcept that children can walk with assistance (and crawl) before they're strong enough to walk on their own.
- underwater 5y agoInterestingly they can also effectively communicate well before they can vocalise words. A baby can sign reliably at 7-9 months but typically won't be able to speak until 12 months.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adamauckland 5y ago'Walking by one, talking by two'
- gavinmckenzie 5y agoYes! Signing (albeit with a small vocabulary) was surprisingly successful with my infant daughter, over 20 years ago. I was initially skeptical, but it worked really well. Not sure if it reduced my infant daughter's communication frustrations, but it certainly helped her parents feel less frustrated.
- chrisseaton 5y agoBut if you hold a child up before their legs are strong enough they will walk.
- freemint 5y agoOr maybe it's not the brain is to small, but that the brain is still growing and therefore subject to enough noise to make actions now impossible for the sake of the future.
- narag 5y agoIt's absolutely not restricted by the brain size. The brain size needs a huge head, so in a sense it is. All the factors are interwined. The growth of the brain seems to have been a very fast evolution, The pelvis had no time to adapt, so giving birth early was the final solution. With that in mind, I don't find fair to shame the pelvis, or the brain. The weakest link is the legs, but it's not their fault either since they had no time to mature. Give one of those cocky foals a head of proportional weight and allow them to use only two limbs and see who's stumbling now! Edit: newborns can't even balance their heads on their necks, they're extremely fragile.
- danielheath 5y agoI’ve seen a 2mo with the leg strength required. If you balanced them they would hold themselves up, no problem. The balance comes much later than the strength.
- jacobolus 5y agoThe 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.
- mortehu 5y agoBased 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.
- jacobolus 5y agoBased 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.
- GreeningRun 5y agoIf I follow your reasoning on the leg muscles, how to deal with the grasping reflex? That's all the weight on just some arm muscles...