It is such a delight seeing your baby crawl and walk and grow so fast. During playtime, you find that having a baby activity table is important. It keeps your baby busy by providing him/her with different stimuli. We have discovered different ways on how to use the table to help your baby while he/she starts cruising until he/she learns how to walk.
What is cruising? Cruising occurs when your baby has enough strength to stand but still cannot walk on his/her own. To compensate for this the baby now grabs hold of the furniture around him/her while walking towards where he/she wants to go.
Manufacturers build modern baby play tables to save space and to have multiple functions.
The following are 7 different ways to use it:
1. Remove all the legs and place it on the floor
This will help your baby sit down and look down on the tabletop on the floor. He can also lay flat on the ground while playing with the table. You can also help your baby while he/she is in this position. This will help develop some back muscles.
2. Tilt table at 45 degrees by removing only 2 legs
This will encourage your baby to shift from laying on his/her front to pushing up to all-fours. This will slowly encourage your baby to stand up, step by step. This will help your baby build strength not only on his back but also on his neck and arms too.
3. Place flat on a cushion or a floor pillow (remove all legs) in the middle of a room
This will help your baby not only push up using his/her arms but also slowly crawl to the readjusted play table. Slowly building him/her up to stand on his/her legs. It also uses less upper body strength and more of legs in this pre-crawling position.
4. Place flat on two cushions of two-floor pillows (remove all legs) in the middle of the room
This encourages your baby to reach up and pull him/herself into a kneeling position. The pillows still give the baby something to lean on while playing. This position helps him build more leg strength.
5. Put the baby play table on a corner propped on all 4 legs
This encourages standing with a little bit of support and your baby has a lot of stuff to reach out to, just in case he/she loses his/her balance. At this stage, you can support him/her a bit when you see him/her wobble but later on, just leave your baby as he/she will build strength fast.
6. Place table (propped on all 4 legs) in the middle of the room
Make sure your baby can go around and use the table of all four sides. This encourages a bit of cruising while he/she goes around the table.
7. Put the table near another surface so he/she can practice “walking” towards it
This is the last step and it is important as this will be the final step before your baby can finally walk unassisted. You can now see your baby confidently (but still a bit wobbly) walk from the surface to surface.