Hey everyone! My name is Sarah Johnson and I'm a pediatric occupational therapist, CLC, and part of the infant's malmenteic care to merge pediatric therapy. And I'm here today to talk to you about the three signs that your infant is ready to work on sitting. When we look at sitting, the first thing we talk about is crop sitting, where your infant is either pushing against a vertical surface or against the floor, and then then progress to independent sitting where they're not having to hold onto an object in order to keep themselves upright. There are three different things that we look at when we see of an infant is ready for beginning sitting. The first thing we look at is head control, specifically in a position of laying on the ground up to sitting. So when you're pulling your child into a sitting position, what we look for is for the head to stay with the body, the entire time, and not lag. So a lag would look like the head being back and it comes up really quickly towards the end. We're actually looking for a little bit of a chin tuck and the ability of the infant to maintain that head control throughout the movement from laying to sitting. Another sign of good head control is when you're holding your infant in various positions, they're able to maintain their head control without bobbing, and you don't have to support their head when you're moving them through various positions. Another thing you look for prior to sitting is the infant's ability to push up on their arms in time. So the progression of time typically looks like a little bit of a plank, then infants go to extended arms, and then we get a really big extension and we see the neck and the head start to lift up a bit. That is the sign that infants have the head control and also the neck strength to be able to maintain an upright posture for sitting. Finally, the last thing we ideally want to see is an infant ability to roll from back to belly and belly to back in both directions. Why is rolling important for sitting though? When we look at sitting, infants are using both their trunk muscles and their back muscles to maintain that upright position. Rolling back to belly and belly to back works on engaging those muscle groups in a coordinator way to move your infant from one position to another. Rolling also works on your lateral trunk muscles and those are really helpful for maintaining an upright posture and when an infant falls to one side, their ability to come back up to midline and regain their center of balance. When looking at ways to support sitting, you want to make sure an infant has a appropriate head control and also that when you place them in a sitting position, their spine is ready. What is that and what does that look like? If an infant spine when you place them in sitting is really rounded that shows that they don't have the control yet and they're not quite ready. Ideally, you want to see them in a little bit of an upright posture when you sit them in a supported sitting position because that means that they're ready and their pelvis is in the correct position. And do you have any questions regarding sitting for general biocids for your infant? You have more than happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you so much.