Aren some children too retarded to learn to walk?
Before we can address this question, we need to explore our definition of the term “learn”. It is true that human babies, unlike most animals, cannot walk immediately after birth. Most people “learn” to walk automatically around the age of one without any active intervention or teaching process. The most important and possibly the only necessity for automatic walking is that the motor areas of the brain have not been tremendously damaged. Experience, or the chance to practice the movements necessary for walking, keeps muscles from atrophying while the brain matures; but lack of experience does not seem to play a vital role in learning to walk. Studies with American Indians and Eskimos who kept their children in papooses as well as children who have been ill or restrained during the first months of life indicate that they quickly “catch up” when given the chance. Damage to the cognitive areas of the brain seems to have little or possibly no effect on learning to walk. Bleck, 1984, repor
