Katie Harrison

If you see your little nieces and nephews run, you know it can be adorable to watch. At times, it can even be funny. It’s hardly a smooth ride, wobbling and flailing around. And it’s certainly nothing like how an adult runs. Jim Usherwood, a locomotion expert at the University of London, conducted a study to see why children run the way they do.

Usherwood’s study and results were published in the Journal of Experimental Biology and reported on by Science News. It turns out the reason children’s running is a funny thing to watch is not because they don’t know how to run or because they’re still learning. They run the way they do because they’re just doing what they can with what they’ve got. Usherwood explains that legs on children are somewhat stubby compared to adults’ legs because the child’s body is nowhere near finished developing yet. “Even when they think they’re running, they’re barely getting off the ground,” Usherwood told Science News.

Not sure what this looks like? Take a look at this video from Usherwood and three sisters, ages 8, 5 and 3.


As you can see, children will grow into tamer runners eventually. In the meantime, as long as they are running into our arms for a great big hug, it doesn’t matter one bit how they get there.


Photo: jorgefranco
Published: October 20, 2015