Age for onset of walking and prewalking strategies.

Background: Age for onset of independent walking (AOW) is frequently used as an indicator of the progress of motor development in early life. Yet there is considerable uncertainty in the research literature about the age we should expect children to walk independently, and also whether prewalking strategies are of importance for this milestone. In clinical practice we commonly experience that children start walking at later ages than the standards presented in the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS), the most frequently used standardized instrument of gross motor development in Norway.