A recent NY Times article reviews a study which showed no benefit in motor development in babies who had “tummy time.”

Here’s the link: nyti.ms/11vrG11 

Here’s an excerpt:

Putting infants to sleep on their backs, recommended since the early 1990s, has helped reduce the prevalence of sudden infant death syndrome. ..Now a new study, published in May in the journal Early Human Development, suggests that tummy time may be irrelevant.

Canadian researchers compared 1,114 infants born from 1990 to 1992, just before the “back to sleep” campaign began, with 351 infants born 20 years later. They found no difference between the two groups in the age at which prone to supine or supine to prone rolling began, or in the order in which those behaviors appeared….

Whether tummy time helps or not, said the lead author, Johanna Darrah, a pediatric physical therapist at the University of Alberta, “the back to sleep campaign has not adversely affected motor development. Motor development happens.”