Do not get a walker for your baby.
 
There are some things you can do to help your baby along in the process of developing the motor skills necessary for walking on her own.  Here are a few tips:
 
• Don’t let your baby wear shoes indoors. It is much easier for a baby to learn to walk barefoot.  
 
• When you are holding your baby while trying to assist her in  walking don’t hold her legs or hands. You can hold her by the torso.  
 
• Try to encourage your baby to develop walking motor skills by calling her to come to you or by placing a favorite toy just out of reach so that she crawls towards it. This will help her engage in these actions on her own volition and will expedite the development of several necessary skills for independence.  
 
• Make sure the floor is not too slippery; your baby may not find it easy to balance on a slippery floor and this can be dangerous for a baby just learning to balance.
 
Motor skills are not exactly the same thing as hand and eye coordination but they are pretty closely related. The development of hand-eye coordination often parallels and/or compliments the development of gross and fine motor skills.

There are some activities your baby can do to increase her coordination and develop her motor skills, such as:
 
• Puzzles: Get your baby started on jigsaw puzzles. Let her start off on small puzzles of 4-5 pieces. There are baby-styled puzzles available that have little handles on them for babies to grip. As she gets adjusted to the idea, start her off on puzzles of a higher level.  Don't get very complicated puzzles for her as she may get frustrated if she can't do it and this could make her develop feelings of frustration. 

• Baby-sized Lego Blocks: These types of blocks are the kind which require construction and which require pegs to be placed and fitted in certain places. These big blocks are excellent for developing motor skills. 
 
• Plastic building blocks: These types of blocks allow babies to stack and build things that require balance and use a different set of hand/eye coordination skills and motor skills.
 
• Peg and hole toys: These are toys that are made of plastic and have holes fitted to plastic pegs for the baby to differentiate different shapes and also to develop motor skills and hand/eye coordination.
 
• Plastic “Doughnuts”: Another popular toy for encouraging the development of motor skills is the graduated soft plastic Doughnuts that fit on a plastic center pole. Your baby can stack these and will soon learn more about shapes, sizes and colors, and how they relate to one another.  

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