Published by Omega Functional Health | Wheat Ridge, Colorado
If your child skipped crawling or moved through it quickly on their way to walking, you may have been told this was a sign of advanced development. A pediatrician may have reassured you that crawling is not a required milestone. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics quietly removed crawling from their official developmental milestone checklist altogether.
Dr. Robert Melillo, whose research forms the clinical foundation at Omega Functional Health, considers this decision one of the most consequential and problematic changes in pediatric developmental guidance in recent memory. The neurological importance of crawling is not a matter of tradition. It is a matter of how the brain builds itself.
And the consequences of skipping it show up not just in coordination, but in reading, attention, emotional regulation, and social development, sometimes years later.
Why Crawling Is a Neurological Event, Not Just a Motor Milestone
Crawling is not simply a precursor to walking. It is one of the most neurologically complex and developmentally important activities a human being performs in the first year of life.
When a baby crawls, they are engaging the left and right sides of the body in a coordinated, alternating pattern. The right arm moves with the left leg. The left arm moves with the right leg. This cross-pattern movement is one of the most powerful stimuli for developing communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It builds the corpus callosum, the structure that bridges the two hemispheres and allows them to share information. It activates and integrates the cerebellum, the brainstem, and the proprioceptive system simultaneously. It establishes the foundational sensory-motor pathways that reading, writing, attention, and emotional regulation will later depend on.
Dr. Melillo describes this as a foundational example of the brain’s bottom-up development sequence. The motor experiences of crawling create the neural architecture that the higher cortical systems, including those responsible for language and executive function, will build upon. When crawling is skipped or abbreviated, that architecture is incomplete. The higher systems are asked to operate on a foundation that has not been fully constructed.
Melillo R. Disconnected Kids. 3rd ed. TarcherPerigee; 2024.
The Connection to Reading and Language
The link between motor development and language may not be immediately intuitive, but it is well-supported in the developmental neuroscience literature. The cerebellum, which is engaged extensively during crawling and early cross-pattern movement, is not a purely motor structure. It contributes to the timing and sequencing of language processing, phonological awareness, and reading fluency.
Research has documented that children with dyslexia and reading disorders show measurable differences in cerebellar function compared to typically developing readers. Studies using brain imaging have demonstrated that the white matter pathways connecting the cerebellum to language processing regions are less developed in children with reading difficulties, and that targeted intervention to strengthen those connections produces improvements in reading accuracy and phonological processing.
Stoodley CJ, Schmahmann JD. Evidence for topographic organization in the cerebellum of motor control versus cognitive and affective processing. Cortex. 2010;46(7):831-844.
When a child skips the crawling stage, they miss a critical window of cerebellar stimulation. The coordination, timing, and cross-hemispheric integration that crawling builds are the same capacities that fluent reading requires. This is not a metaphor. It is a direct neurological relationship.
The Connection to Attention
Attention is not a function of willpower. It is a product of the nervous system’s ability to filter, prioritize, and sustain focus on relevant input while suppressing irrelevant input. That capacity depends on the integrated function of the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, the vestibular system, and the proprioceptive system working together.
When the lower brain systems that crawling develops are not fully established, the prefrontal cortex does not receive the stable, integrated sensory input it needs to sustain attention efficiently. The child’s nervous system is not dysregulated because they are choosing to be. It is dysregulated because the foundational systems that regulate it have not been adequately built.
Dr. Melillo’s research and clinical work have consistently documented that children with ADHD presentations show patterns of hemispheric imbalance, retained primitive reflexes, and cerebellar timing disruptions that are directly connected to the bottom-up developmental gaps that occur when foundational motor milestones are not fully completed.
Melillo R, Leisman G. Neurobehavioral Disorders of Childhood: An Evolutionary Perspective. Springer; 2009.
The Connection to Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation in young children is not a cognitive skill. It is a nervous system function. The capacity to tolerate frustration, transition between activities, manage sensory input, and recover from emotional activation depends on the regulatory tone of the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system’s connection to the prefrontal cortex, and the proprioceptive system’s ability to keep the nervous system grounded.
All of these systems are developed and integrated through the physical experiences of early childhood, including crawling. When those experiences are skipped, the proprioceptive and vestibular foundations of self-regulation are weaker, and the child is more easily overwhelmed, more difficult to calm, and more reactive to sensory input. From the outside, this looks like a behavioral or emotional problem. Neurologically, it reflects an incomplete developmental foundation.
What This Means for Children with Developmental Concerns in Colorado
Many families who contact Omega Functional Health have children who either skipped crawling, crawled briefly or asymmetrically, or had an unusual pattern of early motor development that was not flagged as concerning at the time. In retrospect, when combined with current presentations involving attention, reading, coordination, or emotional regulation, that early history is often neurologically significant.
The evaluation at Omega Functional Health includes a detailed developmental history that specifically examines early motor milestones, including crawling, alongside a direct neurological assessment of current cerebellar function, primitive reflex integration, vestibular processing, and hemispheric balance.
When developmental gaps are identified, the care program addresses them directly through targeted sensory-motor exercises that build the neural pathways that were not fully established during the critical developmental windows of infancy. The nervous system remains plastic throughout childhood. The gaps can be addressed. But they need to be identified first.
Families in Colorado who have a child with a history of skipped crawling, early motor differences, or current challenges with reading, attention, or emotional regulation are welcome to contact Omega Functional Health to schedule a complimentary virtual consultation.