The Experience Miracles Podcast

The CDC Took Crawling Off the Chart — But Is It Still an Essential Milestone?

Sep 19, 2025

Why Crawling Is Critical for Brain Development, And What Happens When Children Skip It

Episode 140, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: September 19, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • The CDC removed crawling from official developmental milestone posters in 2022, despite its proven role in wiring the brain for focus, memory, speech, cognition, and emotional regulation, a decision Dr. Tony Ebel calls one of the most consequential mistakes in modern pediatric guidance.
  • Subluxation in the upper cervical spine and brainstem is a primary root cause of delayed, skipped, or asymmetrical crawling, the nervous system is compensating around a structural problem, not developing a harmless variation.
  • Crawling requires both brain hemispheres to fire in coordinated, symmetrical patterns; it integrates vestibular processing, visual tracking, and sensory-motor proprioception in ways no other early motor milestone does.
  • Children who skip crawling often develop compensatory neuromotor patterns that lay the groundwork for downstream challenges including ADHD, sensory processing difficulties, and emotional dysregulation.
  • Reorganizational healing through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care can restore proper developmental sequencing, many children spontaneously begin cross-crawling patterns even at ages 3, 5, or 8 once their nervous systems are properly adjusted.

Why Does Crawling Matter for Brain Development?

Crawling is one of the most neurologically complex motor patterns a baby performs, it simultaneously wires the brain for balance, coordination, focus, memory, speech, cognition, and emotional regulation. In 2022, the CDC removed crawling from its official developmental milestone posters, a decision Dr. Tony Ebel describes as one of the most misguided moves in recent pediatric guidance.

The neuroscience of crawling runs much deeper than physical movement. Crawling requires both hemispheres of the brain to fire in coordinated, symmetrical patterns. It demands that the brainstem and cerebellum, the body’s air traffic control for motor tone and coordination, are fully functional. It integrates vestibular processing, visual tracking, and sensory-motor proprioception all at once. When a child completes this sequence properly, they build the neurological foundation for every advanced brain function that follows: speech, sustained attention, emotional regulation, and cognition.

When that sequence is disrupted, by subluxation, birth trauma, or nervous system dysregulation, children often either delay crawling, skip it altogether, or develop what Dr. Ebel calls “stanky leg” crawling: an asymmetrical pattern where one side lags and sticks out. All three patterns signal the same underlying issue. The nervous system is compensating around a problem it cannot fully resolve on its own.

The “Stanky Leg”: What Asymmetrical Crawling Really Tells Us [00:00 – 00:04]

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: All right, parents. Here we go again. It’s the Ask Dr. Tony episode. This is the Experience Miracles podcast, and I’m your host, Dr. Tony Ebel, an expert in pediatrics, neurodevelopmental disorders, and drug-free nervous system focused healthcare.

The question came in: why does crawling matter so much? Is it a big deal if my child skips crawling or has delayed crawling?

There’s a specific version of crawling problems worth knowing about. Asymmetrical, incoordinated crawling, where one leg is doing what it’s supposed to do, but the other leg is just sticking out to the side. We call that the “stanky leg.” Not a medical billing code, but it fits perfectly when one side of the body is synced up and doing its job, and the other side is lagging behind and sticking out.

That visual matters clinically. When you see that pattern, you’re seeing a nervous system that cannot yet achieve symmetrical motor function. It’s not just an awkward phase. It’s a sign.

Why the CDC Removed Crawling from Developmental Milestones in 2022 [00:04 – 00:07]

Back in 2022, crawling, a movement pattern that wires the brain for everything from balance and coordination to focus, memory, speech, cognition, and emotional regulation, was quietly removed from the CDC’s developmental milestone posters.

The official message passed to pediatricians: “Don’t worry. Totally normal. Not a big deal.” The same message parents hear about colic. About chronic ear infections. About sensory overdrive and tantrums in two- and three-year-olds. About all the early warning signs that are right there, hidden in plain sight, for autism, ADHD, sensory processing challenges, and neurodevelopmental delays.

Skipping crawling, being delayed in crawling, or doing asymmetrical, asynchronous crawling, it is a big deal.

“Crawling, a movement pattern that wires the brain for everything from balance and coordination. But it even helps wire the brain for focus, memory, speech, cognition, and emotional regulation.”

The Most Important Health “Cheat Code” for Parents [00:07 – 00:11]

Before getting into the neuroscience, there’s a foundational premise worth establishing.

The CDC’s website is the last place parents should look for guidance on how to get and keep their kids healthy. The same website that removed crawling from milestone posters also publishes the statistics that make the case against their own approach: 40–50% of children have chronic illness, 1 in 6 have sensory or neurodevelopmental challenges, and the latest research puts autism at 1 in 31.

Those numbers are on the CDC’s own website, because they have to be, because they’re true. But the guidance offered in response to those numbers is consistently to lower the bar, relabel what’s happening as normal, and send families back home without a root-cause answer.

If there is one foundational move parents can make for their children’s long-term health: get out of the traditional medical-political system for chronic health management. When a child has an emergency or a crisis, conventional medicine is exactly the right place to be. But for building healthy, resilient, thriving children, the CDC, the FDA, and the AAP are not the right starting point.

“If there is one massive mega cheat code, golden key move you can make to get and keep your kids healthy: get out of the traditional medical political system.”

How Subluxation Blocks Crawling: The Brainstem and Spinal Transition Zones [00:11 – 00:18]

Here is the neurological sequence that connects subluxation to crawling problems.

Subluxation → neurological dysfunction → neuromotor compensation.

The most common and most consequential location for subluxation in children is the upper cervical brainstem area. That region, the cerebellum and the brainstem, is air traffic control for whole-body gross motor tone and coordination. Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs: the brain needs not only full connection in that region but symmetrical function across both sides of the body.

When a child has a traumatic birth or any other trigger of an upper cervical subluxation, motor milestones are more likely to be delayed or skipped altogether, because the symmetrical coordination the brain needs to initiate and sustain crawling is compromised. A C2 subluxation is particularly significant here. That pattern of neuromuscular dysfunction creates whole-body gross motor incoordination at the brainstem level.

There are two additional spinal transition zones that can directly block crawling:

The cervicothoracic (CT) junction, where the neck and torso meet, is where the upper limbs originate neuromotor input. Crawling is not just a leg activity. It is a cross-crawl coordination that requires arms and legs to sequence together in a balanced, alternating pattern. Dysfunction at this junction disrupts that upper-body component.

The thoracolumbar junction and the lumbosacral pelvic region are where neuromotor tone for the lower extremities originates, is stimulated, and is coordinated. Subluxation in those areas creates a mix of hypertonicity, muscles that are too tight and wound up, and hypotonicity, muscles too weak to fire properly for locomotion. Both patterns lead to the compensatory movement the body will adopt when crawling isn’t available.

Crawling also requires upper cervical function to be intact for visual tracking and vestibular processing, and proprioceptive input from these regions feeds back up to the cerebellum continuously during movement. When any piece of that system is subluxated, the whole cross-crawl pattern falls apart.

“The foundation of getting our kids better is getting their nervous system connected, restored, and regulated.”

Compensation: Why the Brain Skips the Sequence [00:16 – 00:21]

When a child cannot crawl, the brain does exactly what it was designed to do: it compensates. The human brain is hardwired for upright posture and walking. That drive is so fundamental that the brain will build compensatory neuromuscular patterns to reach walking even if it has to skip the intermediate developmental steps to get there.

Those compensatory patterns let the brain hit the next motor milestone. But they come at a cost. The stimulation that crawling provides, proprioceptive, vestibular, and mechanical input that flows from the back of the brain through the mid-brain and into the prefrontal cortex, never gets properly established. The front of the brain, where advanced human functions like focused attention, emotional regulation, speech, and cognition live, doesn’t get the foundational wiring it depends on.

The result is that children who skip crawling often miss the neurological scaffolding for the very functions that matter most in school, in relationships, and in daily regulation of their bodies and emotions. The compensation gets them walking, but it doesn’t get them regulated.

“Raging Bulls” vs. “Drunken Bulls”: Two Clinical Patterns After Skipped Crawling [00:18 – 00:24]

There are two clinical presentations Dr. Ebel sees consistently in children who skipped crawling.

The first is the “raging bull”: ADHD-pattern, fight-or-flight, brain overstimulated by the combination of subluxation and compensation. These kids are high-energy, reactive, and frequently struggling with behavioral regulation. Their nervous systems are chronically stuck in sympathetic dominance.

The second is the “drunken bull”: retained primitive reflexes, incoordinated movement patterns, difficulty with focus, attention, and executive function. These kids may be quieter than the raging bulls, but their bodies show the same pattern, incoordination and dysregulation expressed as cognitive and emotional fog rather than hyperactivity. Their reflexes haven’t integrated. Their brains aren’t firing symmetrically.

Both presentations share the same root: subluxation, skipped sequence, and the compensatory neuromotor patterns that followed.

Just because something is common doesn’t make it normal or optimal. The fact that skipping crawling has become more common isn’t a reason to remove it from milestone lists, it’s a reason to look harder at what’s driving the increase.

“Just because something is common doesn’t make it normal or optimal.”

Reorganizational Healing: When the Nervous System Finishes What It Started [00:24 – 00:31]

When children who have skipped crawling receive Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, something clinically striking often happens: they start to crawl again.

Not because anyone asked them to. The brain simply knows what it missed. Once the subluxations are removed, once the compensatory protective patterns begin to release, and once the nervous system has the capacity to reorganize, it goes back to the sequence it skipped. Dr. Ebel sees this in five-year-olds, eight-year-olds, sometimes older children with autism or ADHD who spontaneously begin cross-crawling on their own during care.

This is reorganizational healing in practice. The brain doesn’t just pick up where it left off, it goes back and completes the sequence it couldn’t finish the first time.

The sequence of recovery mirrors the sequence of development: crawling comes back first, then walking refinement, then running, then skipping, and then, for the children with autism, ADHD, or sensory challenges, speech and communication often begin to improve. Those are fine motor, upper motor neuron functions, and they cannot come fully online until the gross motor foundation beneath them is stable.

Sequencing is healing.

Once subluxation is addressed and the compensation is no longer necessary, other things begin to normalize on their own: retained primitive reflexes leave, neuromotor patterns smooth out, and the brain starts regulating the functions it was struggling with, concentration, emotional and behavioral regulation, cognition, speech and communication.

Dr. Tony Ebel: Crawling is not an outdated milestone we can just remove. When it’s missed or skipped, it’s not something to panic over, but it’s absolutely something to pay attention to and get to the root of with nervous system care. When you do that, the brain neurodevelopment gets back connected, back symmetrical, back in sequence. And everything downstream starts to follow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it a big deal if my child skipped crawling?

Yes, and it shouldn’t be dismissed. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, skipping crawling is a sign of subluxation and nervous system dysregulation, not a harmless developmental variation. Crawling wires the brain simultaneously for balance, coordination, focus, memory, speech, and emotional regulation. Children who skip it often develop compensatory neuromotor patterns that contribute to downstream challenges like ADHD, sensory difficulties, and emotional dysregulation. The earlier the root cause is identified, the better.

Why did the CDC remove crawling from developmental milestones?

In 2022, the CDC removed crawling from its official developmental milestone posters and told pediatricians it was no longer a required milestone. Dr. Tony Ebel argues this was a mistake rooted in the same pattern he sees across conventional pediatric guidance: when more children struggle with something, the system redefines it as normal rather than investigating the root cause. The neuroscience supporting crawling’s importance for brain development hasn’t changed. The threshold for concern was simply lowered.

What causes a baby to skip crawling or crawl asymmetrically?

The most common cause is subluxation, structural dysfunction in the spine that affects the nervous system’s ability to coordinate symmetrical motor patterns. Subluxations in the upper cervical spine and brainstem disrupt whole-body gross motor coordination. Dysfunction at the cervicothoracic junction affects arm-leg cross-crawl integration. Problems in the thoracolumbar and lumbosacral regions create the hypertonicity and hypotonicity that lead to the asymmetrical “stanky leg” crawling pattern. Birth trauma is a frequent trigger for these subluxations.

Can a child who skipped crawling catch up on that development?

Often yes, through what Dr. Tony Ebel calls reorganizational healing. When Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care addresses the underlying subluxations and releases compensatory patterns, children frequently begin cross-crawling spontaneously, even at ages five, eight, or older. The brain appears to recognize the missed sequence and, once given the neurological capacity to do so, goes back to complete it. After crawling returns, other downstream functions, including speech, emotional regulation, and attention, often begin to improve.

Is there a connection between skipping crawling and ADHD?

Yes, according to Dr. Tony Ebel’s clinical framework. Children who skip crawling develop compensatory neuromotor patterns that bypass the brain-wiring that crawling provides. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for attention, executive function, and emotional regulation, depends on proprioceptive and vestibular input built during the crawling sequence. Without it, children are more prone to the two clinical patterns Dr. Ebel identifies: “raging bull” ADHD (hyperactive, dysregulated, fight-or-flight dominant) and “drunken bull” ADHD (inattentive, emotionally foggy, with retained primitive reflexes). Both trace back to subluxation and skipped developmental sequence.

How do I find a chiropractor who specializes in this approach?

To find a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care provider trained in the PX Docs approach, visit the PX Docs Directory. Enter your zip code or city to find a certified PX Docs office near you. These practitioners are trained specifically in pediatric nervous system assessment and care, including evaluation of developmental sequencing, subluxation patterns, and the neuromotor compensations associated with skipped crawling.

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