10 mo. old not crawling, about to start walking, feeling worried...

[NWnewmom]

My son is 10.5 months old.  I am trying not to worry but he is showing no interest in crawling.  He will (unhappily) "pull" himself on his belly along the floor to get things, like an army crawl, but he will just not get up onto his hands and knees.  He has always preferred to stand and he has taken up to 10 steps by himself before falling over.  He loves walking around the house holding onto my finger and I suspect he'll be walking on his own soon.  My issue is that he is not crawling and I doubt he will.  It's hard not to feel like he's missing a major milestone. Is there anything I can do to encourage him to crawl?  Has anyone else had this happen with their LO?      

[LynnS6]

Forum crashing here... but... crawling is not a milestone. If you look at the developmental milestones pediatricians use, they have sitting, standing, and walking, but not crawling. A good number of children skip crawling. Some just skip it. Others roll. Others scoot on their bottoms. My sister (according to my mother) was quite a plump little thing. She hated being on her belly. They lived in a small apartment and once she learned to pull herself up, she walked from chair to couch to table back to chair. She's in her 50s now and doing quite nice, developmentally.

[Bird Girl]

Neither of my kids crawled--one skipped it and went straight to walking, the other scooted along on his bum, then walked. Both are fine, developmentally, and, also, both can read. (People swore to me that my children would be unable to read unless I held them down and forced them to crawl. Nonsense!) My DD, who skipped the entire thing, taught herself to read at 4, and my son is reading just fine at age 5.

I wouldn't worry at all.

[Ginger Bean]

My impression was that crawling on all fours, army crawl, bum scooting and rolling around the room were all considered OK.

If he's meeting other milestones, don't worry!

[neonalee]

Aden is only 8 months, but he is doing exactly as you described - except for the 10 steps, haven't made it there yet   He just did the pulling thing for the first time yesterday, but standing and assisted walking?  LOVES that.  I wish he would crawl because DP is moving out of state 7 weeks ahead of us leaving this Friday.  It would be nice for him to see that.  But I think we're going to be skipping crawling also.

[KempsMama]

There is no correlation between skipping crawling and developmental delays.  Also, any sort of locomotion that involves scooting, crawling, army crawling, inch worming, etc is considered "crawling" by pediatrician standards. 

DS1 didn't crawl on all fours until a week before he started walking, both at 11 months.  DS2 inch worms it all around the house (he's 7 months, been inch worming since 6 months).  I wouldn't be concerned.