Welcome to One Thing Thursday, where we share one thing you can do to boost your child’s development.

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Looking for a suggestion to help your baby learn to roll?

Try this one thing:

Set down and pick up baby while shifting his weight to the side in a rolling motion. You can start this one as soon as baby is born and — guess what? — it’s super easy to incorporate into your daily routine. You can do this with every diaper change and sleep session which means, for a newborn, it can add up to 20 or more times a day. That’s a lot of practice!

Here’s how you do it: Sit baby on his bottom and roll him over to the side while setting him down. Be sure to support his head so it doesn’t flop back, but check out how he automatically tries to keep his head from falling sideways so it stays in line with his body (a reflex with which babies are born). Cool, huh? This strengthens the muscles on the sides of his neck. This move also allows him to practice pushing against the floor with his arm on the way down. Simply reverse this motion when it’s time to pick baby up, and baby will get practice pushing up from the floor as well. Be sure to practice rolling baby to both left and right sides throughout the day…we don’t want a baby who only moves to one side! Check out the photos below and watch a short video demonstrating this maneuver by clicking here.

Looking for more ideas to help baby learn to roll? Check out this post with 10 tips for helping babies learn to roll.

Hope you enjoyed MamaOT’s first edition of One Thing Thursday. Come back next Thursday for another quick tip to boost your child’s development. And be sure to subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss out!

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