Adults cannot hurry along children's gross motor development, says Penny Tassoni, but we can provide an environment that will encourage them when they are ready
It is easy to look at a young baby and consider how helpless he or she is. The young baby cannot walk, sit or control its limbs. But the reality is that babies are not as helpless as they seem. They are, after all, pre-programmed to learn how to survive, and this means quickly learning how to control their bodies and learning how to move.
Development sequence
So how do babies go from being relatively helpless to being able to run, turn, hop and skip? There are three widely accepted principles of physical development that were originally proposed by the American paediatrician Gessell (see box).
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