If you have a baby who’s starting to crawl, or have any babies coming to visit this holiday season, look to your floors. What will they be crawling on?
The first thing that might come to mind when you imagine a baby crawling on hardwood floors are splinters. You probably think about floor contamination right away, too.
Hardwood floors can actually be an excellent environment for crawling babes, even when compared with the “go to” carpets many parents think of first. It’s natural to go to the cushy carpet as the preferred environment for an infant learning to crawl, but some of the pros that hardwood floors provide might surprise you.
Pro #1: First of all, hardwood floors are much easier to keep clean than carpet. Yes, there are hardwood “dos” and “don’ts” to clean wood floors right and keep them in their best condition. The point is, hardwood floors CAN be cleaned, and cleaned well. Carpet, on the other hand, will accumulate contamination over time—and even after vacuuming it will eventually harbor more filth than can you can ever properly remove.
For all those families in and around Shiloh, Edwardsville and our neck of the woods in general, keep reading to learn more about these other surprising baby benefits of hardwood floors.
Pro #2: Baby’s motor skills can benefit from hardwood, too. Just picture it—you see them rocking back and forth, building momentum, and you wish those sweet babies always had a soft surface to fall on. A hardwood floor is anything but a “soft surface.”
No, I’m not going to make the argument here that falling on hardwood “builds character.” That’s not where I’m going with this. Instead, I’ll point out that rocking back and forth on a hardwood floor gives infants firmer “push off” than they have when rocking back and forth on uneven, cushy carpets. This means infants can actually crawl and push themselves up more easily on hardwood.
Pro #3: This is the last one, and it’s a zinger…static electricity. With all that palming and rubbing of knees across carpets, babies can get regularly zapped by static electricity, especially as we move into fall and winter.
Carpet has its pros for crawling babies, but so do hardwood floors. You know we aren’t biased, either, because we install and repair both—this is an honest effort to get you the information you deserve. Fair enough?
Specific questions about your home? Give me a call today!
