After all the interest in my blog “Neglect at their Core“, I thought I’d write a blog specifically on Tummy Time – because not just any “lying on their tummy” time will do. The technique is important, so here is some specific advice to help you and your child develop their core neck and shoulder strength.

Make It Fun, Make It Often

1. Build It In. If you can, create a regular routine to Tummy Time. We use TV time during the bedtime routine so it becomes just a natural part of what they do. Two months in and I still need to remind them, but they grab and cushion and lie down without a fuss.
2. Make It Fun – start with something they already enjoy like TV time or tablet time or playing games. It helps to distract them from the fact that the position can feel quite unusual or uncomfortable at first.
   You could pretend to be sharks as you read a story, do it while they are colouring, or when playing board games (we love collaborative games).
3. Praise Them – My children are quite competitive, so it helped when I timed them and showed them improving. I also gave them a tonne of praise (whooping, cheering, high fives) however long they managed.
4. Start Small and Build. Bubbles could do less than five minutes at first, but we kept doing it daily and now she can do thirty minutes, sometimes an hour at a time.

Technique Counts

Here are some key elements to Tummy Time:

1. Their body should like in a straight line from head to feet. If they struggle to hold that line, you can sandwich them between bodies (lie next to them) or pillows or a sofa or something to keep the line straight.
2. Both their hips need to be on the floor. That means no tilting, no favouring one side, no wriggling. To make this fun, you can sit a teddy or their favourite toy on their bottom or lower back and reward them if the toy doesn’t fall off.
3. You can use a cushion under their chest or arms to help make it more comfortable. We also found a rug or blanket under their body helped in the early days to soften the impact of the floor.
4. The child should prop themselves up on their elbows – either to see something or play the game.

Sarah Lloyd shares a wealth of other ideas to build skills in your children in her book “Improving Sensory Processing in Traumatised Children” including work with blowing, crisps, touch and more.

Why Does This Matter?

Sarah Lloyd was kind enough to share with me, in her own words, the reasons why Tummy Time matters so much:

“Typically developing babies get control from the head down, from all the lovely floor time play we’re wanting babies to be doing with their parents or carers. This allows control to develop very naturally, starting with the head, then the shoulders and core get stronger.

You can see this really clearly if you watch babies learning to roll. When they start they can usually manage to go from their side onto their tummies, and then from their tummies to their backs and finally, from their back over onto their tummy.  From here, they can prop themselves up on their hands / outstretched arms and are almost ready for the off. All of these are such important stages in the child learning where their body is from the inside out, and building stability and strength.

Children who have spent those early months in frightening or neglectful situations tend to miss out on all of these movements that happen within that loving relationship, and this means that their bodies don’t get that fabulous foundation of core strength and stability before they start to move around and walk.”

“But it’s never too late – doing things like Tummy Time is the most effective way to go back and begin to fill in some of those gaps around core stability.”

Sarah Lloyd – author of “Improving Sensory Processing in Traumatized Children”