Infant Aerobics

Can Exercise Make Your
Baby Smarter?

By Teri Brown

"All we need to do to speed the process is to provide visual, auditory and tactile stimulation with increased frequency, intensity and duration and provide appropriate and ample mobility, language and manual opportunity in recognition of the orderly way in which the brain grows," Doman says.

But Doman isn't really talking about "exercise" in the traditional sense of the word. She is talking about opportunity to move.

"Babies do not need exercise; they need the opportunity to discover how to move and thus to gain the ability to move," Doman says. "Exercise is a result of this ability to move, of course. In order to gain the ability to move, the baby needs an ideal environment in which to move. He needs to be on a warm, smooth surface on his belly with as little restrictive clothing as possible. He needs many brief opportunities throughout the day to make the many experiments he needs to make to discover how to move."

In today's society we have countless contraptions to keep babies from moving. Playpens, baby seats, swings and walkers all restrain infants from that all important belly time. If movement does further a child's brain development, then we are definitely stifling that.

Doman says that crawling on the belly makes the baby physically stronger, but what is much more important is that it makes the baby breathe more deeply.

Want to see more?

• Tummy Time: On the Back to Sleep, on the Stomach for Play
• Baby's Gotta Move! How Movement Affects Baby's Brain Development
• Let's Get Physical: The Importance of Getting Your Toddler up and Active
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