>  In cultures where babies are held in arms or tied on backs, or
> carried in slings on mom's hips, or in net bags on mom's front/side/back --
> in other words, where babies are never or almost never put down on the
> ground or floor on their stomachs, that they do not crawl.  They go from
> sitting on someone's lap or sitting on the ground/floor to walking.
> Crawling does not seem to be a necessary stage of human development.  In
> Mali, babies do not crawl.  Yet they learn to walk just fine at the same
> time as US babies (average age of 13 months) or even earlier.


Katherine,

I understood that crawling was an important part of development and that
babies who do not crawl, skip an important development that later
effects their reading ability. Anyone else heard this?
These cultures that you talk about, is reading a part of their culture?

Assunta Osterholt, IBCLC