Hi, my name is Ann Wolfe. I'm a pediatric physical therapist at a Merch Pediatric Therapy. I am part of our infant specialty care team that is comprised of PT's, OD's and speech therapists that have additional continuing education and coursework in the care of infants. Today we are going to be talking about independent standing as a milestone for your child. My hope is that you will walk away from this video with three ways to encourage independent standing at home. Before we get into the exercises, let's talk about development. It is expected that a child would attain independent standing between nine and twelve months. Some children are going to get that milestone earlier. Some will be slightly after that range, but the average range would be nine to twelve months. Before your child will learn how to independently stand. There are a couple of things you should be watching for. It would be expected that your child could pull up to standing at a support surface. So stable furniture, maybe that's you, could be on a variety of things. But that they could pull into a standing position and stand with support. For pretty extended amounts of time, we're talking anywhere from five to maybe up to 10 minutes at a time that they could be in a standing position. It would be expected that they would have at least emerging skills in cruising, so moving side to side on furniture. And it would be expected that they would start to be reaching for objects when they're in standing and starting to hold on with only one hand. That would show us that they are getting closer to being ready for independent standing and that we should expect that milestone soon. If your child fits kind of that description, they might be a little bit above or a little bit below that range, the average kind of time frame, but they're showing those skills and that they're pulling up to standing. They seem comfortable in standing. There doesn't look like there's any discomfort. They're pretty easily moving around in standing with support than these exercises that you can try with your child at home. So the first one you're going to want to try is if your child is at a support service, and they're holding on with one hand that you will attempt to hold to hand them some toys from all different angles. So in the video, you'll see that I'm sitting behind the child. I'm trying to get her to turn her body towards me to reach behind her for the toy. So that is attempting to get her to shift her weight a little bit more, to lean less on the surface, to engage her postural muscles a little bit more, to bear more weight through her legs, and to challenge her balance in standing. So you could use any toy that your child is motivated by, you would be working on getting them to shift away from the surface just a little bit so that they can reach and grab for the toy that you have. That's going to be your first exercise. Your second exercise is going to involve having your child sit in your lap and move into a standing position. So you'll help transition them through a squat into standing. So they're standing up into that standing position. Once they're in standing, start kind of moving the pressure that you're giving to all different places. So you can see in the video that I'm kind of moving my hands up, down kind of randomly around to make it so that she can't know where my hands are going to go. She has to really engage all of her postural muscles. She really has to be better at dynamic standing balance. I'm right there if she needs me. I could give her more support if she needs it. If she starts to fall, we would definitely capture or we could lower her back down into the into a lap and she can sit and then practice again to get back up into that squat. But the goal is that she can't predict where my help is going to come from. So she has to really engage all of her postural muscles. This can be something that's nice to do when you have two people. If you only have one person, my best advice would be to do this in an environment where your child is really engaged. So if you have a pet and they really like watching a pet or maybe they have a sibling or maybe you could do this in kind of a playground or when you're with friends in a situation where there are other things to watch can be a really great time to do this. That way, even if you don't have someone directly engaging with your child, your child is engaging the environment and is more likely to be distracted into standing up for long periods of time. That is your second exercise. Your third exercise is to work on standing at a vertical surface. So in the first exercise, you saw that the child was standing at a kind of two stacked mats. So that would be a horizontal surface. In the third exercise, we're going to move to a vertical surface. So you'll see a window in this video. The goal is that the vertical surface is more challenging in terms of getting support. So they're getting less support from the surface. They have to work a little bit harder. Cruising in this position is also a great exercise. So you could put suction cups on a window. You could use a mirror. You could certainly use a wall. If you're using a wall, things like post-its or painters tape works really well to engage kids in that position. Anything that they're motivated to reach for, to pull off, to move around for, start with just standing in that position and then move towards trying to get some cruising. Again, I'm sitting behind the child in this video so you can see that if she were to need more support or she needs to sit down, she can come right down into my lap. But it encourages her to then stand right back up and be at the service. So those are the three exercises that you can practice with your child at home. If you think they have some merging skills and standing. If you start practicing these exercises and you have any questions, you can obviously put us a comment right down below and we will get back to you if we can't about how we can help. If you are working on standing skills with your child and you notice that they have discomfort in standing or they seem really uncomfortable, they're fighting standing, or it seems really hard to help them get into a standing position. That would be the time to talk to your pediatrician or referral to physical therapy might be warranted in that case. But you could talk to your pediatrician more about what that should look like and if it's time for PT. I hope you learned something from this video. Please let us know if you're able to use any of these tips at home. Thanks.