The Pikler approach to free movement: Letting children lead their development

From birth, children use their senses and their growing mobility, agility and dexterity to learn. As babies and young children practise and refine the actions of leg-kicking, arm-waving, rolling and reaching, crawling and grasping, walking and manipulating, they are not only gaining control of their bodies, they are also affirming their sense of self, furthering their understanding of the world and experiencing great enjoyment.

Emmi Pikler believed that children’s motor development unfolded naturally and autonomously. She said, ‘The process of motor development does not entail going from helplessness to independence… During each phase of their development [children] are capable of initiating and mastering new postures and movements without the immediate help of an adult.’

CONTAINERISATION

However, babies and young children often spend a lot of time in ‘containing’ equipment such as buggies, lie-back chairs and baby-jumpers. Pikler observed that children who had such limited movement opportunities incurred more accidents than children who had more freedom to move (Pikler 1972). This chimes with current research that the extensive use of containing equipment results in muscle weakness and co-ordination difficulties – or ‘container baby syndrome’ (Manners 2019, Manning-Morton 2023). As a result, the New Zealand Ministry of Health (2017) prohibits the use of such equipment in early years settings.

As well as the impact on children’s physical development, we need to consider the effect on their sensory, cognitive and personal development. For example, baby-walkers and ‘jumpers’ also inhibit proprioceptive development as the baby cannot make connections between where their feet are and their position and movements.

Slings should also be used with care. While they do support the torso and leave some room to use postural muscles, placing babies facing outwards comes with an intense bombardment of movement, sights and sounds from which they cannot escape. This over-stimulation can lead to babies either becoming upset or falling asleep, closing down the baby’s interest in the world (Manning-Morton 2023).

Enforced ‘tummy time’ is also problematic: the practice of placing babies on their tummies before they are able to roll over themselves means that this autonomy and learning is curtailed. Babies can also miss out on other crucial movement experiences required to build and support the musculo-skeletal system, such as bringing the knees up to the chest, exploring hands and feet and rolling over. ‘Tummy-time’ is commonly recommended to parents to ‘strengthen’ the neck and back, although there is limited evidence for the long-term efficacy of this (Hewitt et al. 2022), and in fact, Falk (2011) suggests that continually laying babies on their stomachs can cause body tension in the baby’s back, neck, arms and shoulders, impedes the need to flex and rotate knees and feet and restricts the use of hands and arms, thereby hindering the development of the reflexes to reach and grab. A Pikler child is never put in a position they cannot get into themselves.

Instead, young babies should have plenty of time freely moving and exploring on the floor on their backs. This gives them the time, space and opportunity to wave their arms, watch their hands, kick their legs and push against the floor with their feet and thereby to experiment with movement and the position of their limbs. Then, as their motor development naturally progresses, autonomously rolling over onto their sides, onto their stomachs and back onto their backs, all of which are important positions.

To support free movement for babies and young children, educators can do the following:

• Closely observe the nature and details of all movements.
• Allow uninterrupted time for play.
• Provide ample space for movement and rest, removing all unnecessary chairs and tables.
• Create protected floor space with a firm non-slippery surface for babies to lie, roll and crawl on.
• Create free access to an interesting outside area with protected space for infants and plenty of space for the active movement of toddlers and two-year-olds.
• Implement care events, e.g. nappy changing, in which children can move and participate as much as possible.
• Place resources at different levels to increase their visibility and accessibility and to facilitate play while lying down, squatting, standing and moving around.
• Provide large apparatus that is sturdy enough for group play, such as a Pikler triangle with ramps and steps, low beams and platforms.
• Ensure that clothing doesn’t impede children’s movement.
• Use adult-facing prams in which babies can lie flat.
• Provide opportunities for:
• lying down, rolling, belly-crawling and crawling, over, under and through
• walking and running on different surfaces and levels
• scooting, kicking and throwing
• pushing, pulling, rolling and carrying large objects
• climbing and balancing
• bending and stretching.

Pikler noted that children who are allowed free movement are not only more balanced and agile, with good physical and spatial awareness, they also develop confidence in their own ability.

She suggests that when adults habitually assist children in their motor movements, such as ‘teaching’ them to sit or walk, this communicates to the child that they should be doing something they are not capable of. This subtle message that what a child can do already is not good enough is undermining to a child’s confidence and competence and reflects a transmission pedagogical model where the adult is seen to hold all the knowledge and skills and doesn’t value children’s self-directed achievements.

Without this interference, Pikler wrote, a child will learn to sit, stand and then take their first steps independently.

All photos Julia Manning-Morton

The Pikler approach in practice

Educators from The Early Years Nursery in Kidlington, Oxfordshire

G: Free movement’s not just about their physical development, it’s more about letting them take their decisions and not telling them what needs to be done.

Ma: I think if we stop children from free movement, we’re not allowing them to make their own decisions. We are telling them that they are not capable to choose what their body can do or can’t do. And then it can lead to not making choices and decisions freely as an adult or teenager because you’ve been told you can’t do it.

J: Being able to set the environment up in a way that is safe for the children but allows free movement is a challenge. In our toddler room, we have a Pikler triangle, which for some of the children is quite high, but because we never put the children into a position that they can’t get into by themselves, if the child is ready to climb onto that triangle, they will only go as high as they can go. Therefore, the risk of them falling is a lot lower. But if I just put a child at the top, the child hasn’t done that themselves, so their body is not necessarily ready. So, the benefit of being in this environment is that we allow the child to choose when they’re ready to do so.

M: When I started at the nursery, I didn’t know anything about free movement or the Pikler approach. But I have learned how beneficial it can be for children mentally, emotionally and physically. Through us allowing them to do things when they’re ready, they seem so much more contented.

B: In my previous setting where we were holding on to their hands to walk and constantly aiding them, the children’s balance wasn’t as good as the children that are here.

L: Since I joined here, I learned that the more we allow the children to express themselves freely, the more they learn to assess and take risks for themselves

M: When I first started, I was wanting to help the children all the time. Now I’ve learned I can step back and watch how they do it – just being next to them and supporting them by saying phrases like ‘I’m here’ and ‘you can try’. I’ve noticed that children are very capable of doing things by themselves and that children tend to do things in a different way than us adults. It’s about them finding their own way.

FURTHER INFORMATION

www.pikler.co.uk, including information on upcoming training sessions and the annual conference on 21 October 2023 in London

Julia Manning-Morton and Rachel Tapping from Pikler UK will be presenting at the Nursery World Conference on Physical Development in the Early Years on 7 November 2023.

OTHER RESOURCES

https://www.pikler.hu

www.pikler.co.uk

The Pikler Collection: https://thepiklercollection.weebly.com

REFERENCES

Go to www.nurseryworld.co.uk to see the full list of references for this article