My daughter has never been a fan of tummy time. Lifting her head whilst being on her tummy was probably her most hated physical exercise ever. But it was a necessary evil, and with tummy time then came practising to roll over and back. So the question is how to encourage baby to roll?
Rolling over was easier than rolling back. The starting point was on her back, which made it more enjoyable for her from the start. For me the most important thing was to find a toy that she was interested in enough to want to reach it. Anna has low muscle tone, and although she is interested in her surroundings, reaching for toys was not always something that would motivate her enough to move. Maybe it is because having low tone makes physical activity more exhausting.
The first exercise that we practised to get ready to roll over
The first thing that we practised was to get her to follow toys with her eyes from side to side whilst lying on her back. She loves rattles and they really helped to get her attention.
Then we started to place the toy on the floor over her shoulder. There is where the toy needs to be interesting enough for your child. It encourages them to try to reach it by rotating into their side, and, eventually, to roll over.
The fragment of the following video shows what we did.
As I said in other posts, every kid likes different things, but mine really enjoyed these sensory balls. My parents bought them for her when she was 7 months old and they still provide a lot of fun!
We placed a few of them on each side over Anna’s shoulders and she was instantly motivated to try to reach for them. They are the perfect size to put them in the mouth and lick them, which she was starting to do.
We also used the mirror mentioned in the tummy time post, but nothing worked as good as the sensory balls.
The 2 approaches to roll over and back
Anna’s physiotherapist told us to follow 2 different approaches to teach her to roll from back to tummy and from tummy to back.
Rolling over and back by herself
One of them was to encourage her to roll by herself so she would get practice and get used to it. Doing tummy time would help her get stronger, and exercises like the above would encourage her to rotate.
Making her roll
The other approach was a more hands-on way in which we “made her” roll over and back. We would do it 3 times to one side and 3 times to the other. This is done in a quick-ish way and the purpose of it is to help her learn the movement itself. This was very tiring for Anna so the recommendation was to do it for a few minutes a few times per day
To roll over to the left, for example, we would bend Anna’s right leg and hold the left one straight. We would slowly bring the bent leg across the body to roll the hips to the side and then straighten it to bring the hips and stomach down flat on the floor. Anna’s upper body should roll over to follow the movement of the hips. If the arm got stuck, we would help her by lifting the shoulder.
These images from Children and Healt Family Surrey show what the movements are:
To roll back, we pulled Anna’s legs which would make her lift her head, and then we rotated the hips. This needs to be done quick but gently so the baby does not bump their head with the floor.
The hardest part of rolling back
The hardest part here was to get Anna to keep lifting her head for long enough so she could roll back. At the time she was getting very tired when having her head up and she tried to roll back with it lying on the floor. It never worked!
I hope this helped to answer how to encourage baby to roll. Specially if your baby has low muscle tone like Anna does. At one point she also seemed to lose interest in rolling over and back. I was worried that she was maybe having a regression, but apparently it was only because we started to teach her to be in a sitting position. She found that new perspective a lot more interesting and less tiring!
