Menu
Menu

Children

The Developmental Stage of Handwriting Skills

· · Leave a Comment

THE DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE OF HANDWRITING SKILLS

The year is flying by! I cannot believe that we are already in July! 

Our winter school holidays are in full swing and we are now taking the time out to rest, recharge and perhaps even go on a small trip with our family! June brings about the halfway mark of the year and from here on we start thinking about what the remaining six months of the year will look like. We reflect on what has been achieved in the first six months of the year and set new goals for the months ahead. 

It’s also a time where we start to think about the transition to Kindergarten.

It’s about doing the preparation needed for a successful and stress-free leap into the next stage of life for both parents and children. It’s all about ensuring our children have the skills needed to make the transition. Reading back through our blogs over the years, we have detailed many of these including emotional regulation, sensory processing and gross motor skills.

A big question that is often asked by parents is how to prepare their child’s handwriting skills. How can we actually determine how well our child is prepared to learn how to write and are they ready for the transition to school?

To commence developing pre-handwriting skills, we spend time focusing on and developing our fine motor skills. You can see more information on fine motor skill development in a blog that we previously wrote here in July of 2020! 

The development of fine motor skills in relation to pre-handwriting skills begins with a focus on shoulder stability and control of whole arm movements including strength of the shoulder, upper arm and forearm, transitions to whole hand movements, positioning, grasping, whole hand coordination, finger isolation and finally finger movements.  

Once the development of fine motor skills has emerged and is strengthening, we then focus on the pencil grasp itself. 

Picking up a pencil: It may sound funny, but there isn’t just one way to learn how to hold a pencil. We first teach children a whole hand grasp, then onto a digital grasp, modified grasp and finally we transition to a tripod grasp. Through the early developmental years, forming these grasps is ideal in working towards a tripod grasp when engaging in academics. Each individual holds their pencil their own way, however, our aim is to ensure that they can each reach functional capacity and ease when completing all writing tasks. 

From the moment they pick up a writing utensil, our children draw, scribble, paint, colour and explore within the world of art. This can be in all mediums and is the beginning of pre-academic handwriting skills. This happens from a very young age and continues to develop over time. It plays such an important part in their development and not just with handwriting skills, but with their language, visual information, grapheme knowledge, word knowledge and developing symbolic representations of letters. 

Learning to write is a long term process and something that needs to be based on each child’s individual goals and skills. During our intervention and support, we scaffold and grade activities based on different developmental stages with pre-handwriting and fine motor activities. This allows for foundational skills to be set, whilst we support each of our clients emerging skills and ultimately preparing them to enter schooling

Learning to write can happen at different times for each child but as a guide and general rule of thumb, this is what most children are exploring / have the ability to do at particular ages:

At 15 months to 2 ½ months:

Random scribbling occurs, picking up their pencils and scribbling on anything they can get their hands on. Let’s face it, how many of our toddlers have picked up a writing utensil and scribbled all over our walls or doors without us realising! As frustrating as this may be, it’s a good indication that they are honing their fine motor skills. At this point in time it is about spontaneous circular shapes or scribbles with reduced clear direction. 

At 2- 3 years:

Controlled Scribbling over time with more practice and their hand muscles strengthening, scribbling drawing has increased in control, smaller drawings and creativity is becoming a part of their ability. They are starting to naturally move towards more controlled circular movements, vertical and horizontal lines, including multiple loops and spirals and shapes that resemble the letters ‘t’ and ‘v’.

Basic Shapes  (2 ½ years – 3 ½ years)

The development and understanding of being able to draw horizontal and vertical lines. Other shapes include circles and squares and shapes that may resemble the letters ‘t’, ‘v’, and ‘h’. 

This can then expand into curves, lines, scribbles that resemble writing and creating their own letters and words which is also helping their imagination, building upon letter recognition and developing drawings and ideas that have meaning, which they are excited to share. 

Pictures of objects or People (3 to 5 years)

This is when the development of distinguished drawing, such as drawing a person begins to emerge. From 3 to 4 years of age it is usually people with their arms and legs attached to their head, with expansion and development of head, body and limbs in appropriate places towards the end of 4 to 5 years of age. In addition, increasing details around the face, including eyes, mouth, nose, ears and hair. At this point your child will be able to tell you all about their drawings and what they represent but they may not always clearly represent the idea at hand. Children at this age will have an increased awareness of being able to draw two objects together, as well as beginning to expand on their subject matter, including trees, houses, vehicles etc. 

Letter and Word Practice (3 to 5 years)

In addition to the expansion of picture drawing, the child’s ability to draw and expand on pre-handwriting shapes also increases. This sets them up for increased letter representation and awareness, shapes expand from squares and circles to a cross (X), attempting triangles, diamonds and an interest in attempting letter development. 

All of these stages are fundamental in developing the pre-handwriting skills required prior to entering Kindergarten. Having these foundational skills allows for the awareness, skill and ability to make the shapes and lines required prior to knowing and beginning the correct letter formation. 

This significant part of development and fine motor skills can be lots of fun and can be completed in so many different ways through craft, play and art!  Being able to get creative, with finger painting, shaving cream, water play, colouring in and drawing are all ways that allow children to experience these skills in a playful way. It’s important to remember that play is the most effective way to learn all pre-academic and handwriting skills. Allowing the child to lead the play and explore their ideas with them will inadvertently assist you in naturally supporting and providing these opportunities to develop the skills needed. 

There is no one size fits all when it comes to developing handwriting skills! Remember that each child is different! 

What’s important for us as Occupational Therapists is coming up with creative and supportive ways to facilitate these learnings.

Berk, L. E. (2013). Child Development (9th Edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education

Huffman, J. M., & Fortenberry, C. (2011). Helping preschoolers prepare for writing: Developing fine motor skills, Young Children, 66(5), 100-103.

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2021

Latest Posts

Understanding Motor Planning and Coordination

· · Leave a Comment

UNDERSTANDING MOTOR PLANNING AND COORDINATION

This month we are going to talk about motor planning and coordination.

Each child develops at a different rate and at Explore and Soar it’s our job to identify and offer intervention solutions to help that process. 

Developmental Coordination Disorder is what postural and motor sensory based disorders are diagnosed under, in the DSM-V. We use sensory based motor disorder definitions, information and research to help us identify behaviours consistent with this, as occupational therapists.

One of the most common reasons we find that children are referred to Explore and Soar is difficulty with gross motor skills. This could be concerns regarding poor coordination, appearing clumsy and falling over a lot, difficulty with crawling or an inability to jump with two feet at a time, to skip or to ride a bike. 

As part of our initial assessment process and during our intervention sessions, we pay close attention to how your child moves their body in various scenarios. This provides us with vital information regarding how your child is processing the varied types of sensory inputs around them.

Last year we wrote about Sensory Processing Disorders on our blog, how to correctly identify the warning signs and how to best assist your child. One of the types of sensory processing disorders that we only spoke briefly of was sensory-based motor disorders (SBMD) also commonly known as a developmental coordination disorder, as recently outlined in the DSM-V under the category of neurodevelopmental disorders.

In SBMD, we see children who have difficulties with “stabilising one’s body or thinking of/planning/sequencing or executing a series of movements based on sensory information outside and inside the body” (Miller, L.J., 2014, pg.14). SBMD can be categorised into two groups; Postural Disorder and Dyspraxia.

Postural disorder is seen in a child who has difficulty in maintaining the control of their body, to meet the demands of an activity. It involves our muscle tone, core strength and stability. It is the action part of all motor movements. 

Children who have difficulty with ideation (forming an idea in the brain), planning and sequencing (identifying what steps are involved) and execution of motor movements fall into the dyspraxia category. This can occur across all motor movements including gross motor, fine motor, visual motor and oral motor. This is known as the planning part of all motor movements.

Motor planning is an automatic subconscious process that occurs every time we seek to move our body. We tend to take this process for granted. It occurs with many common daily activities such as opening a door, putting a jacket on, writing our signature, or chewing our meals. Once acquired it becomes like riding a bike – once you know how to do it, it begins to happen without too much conscious thought. Everything we do can be broken down into steps that our brain automatically executes via motor movements for successful completion of the desired activity. Children who are experiencing difficulties with motor planning find such tasks difficult, awkward and exhausting because of the level of conscious energy they have to put into completing each and every task! 

One common result of motor planning difficulties is an impact upon the ability to form social connections and self-worth. This is often due to difficulties with oral motor (eg. speech), visual motor (eg. difficulties copying work from the board at school), fine motor (eg. difficulty with buttons, shoelaces) and gross motor skills (eg. difficulty keeping up with their peers at recess). 

So how do we address motor planning difficulties in OT sessions?

We practice all the steps involved – ideation, planning and sequencing, and execution – so that it eventually becomes an easy and automatic process for the child. We provide opportunities for the child to create their own ideas for an activity, we break skills down into smaller steps to achieve success and we provide high repetition rates to allow feed forward and feedback loops to develop around the sensory information the child receives from the world around them. This is where we apply our knowledge and skills of activity analysis as OT’s to coach and teach your child skills that allow them to increase their independence. 

This is not a quick process. It takes time to rewrite neural pathways in the brain for autonomic responses to sensory input. By addressing motor planning goals within intervention sessions, we are not only looking to increase a child’s skill level but also their self-esteem and confidence to complete activities that are meaningful to them, ultimately leading to a happier successful life!

If you have any questions around motor planning, please reach out to one of our therapists who will be able to provide more information to you.

Reference:
Miller, L.J. (2014) Sensational Kids: hope and help for children with sensory processing disorder (SPD). New York:Penguin Group.

Until next time,
Lori

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 2, 2021

Latest Posts

The Impact of Relationships on Social Development

· · Leave a Comment

THE IMPACT OF RELATIONSHIPS ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Over the last few months, I have seen a consistent theme emerge with clients and families within our communities, centered around personal health, well-being and relationships. 

As we are focusing on the importance of mental health this year, I thought it would be good to talk about the impact of relationships on social development – especially in that of our children in their early stages of life. 

Modern life seems to be filled with more stresses as humanity progresses. From a social emotional perspective, as a society, many of us are struggling. Our emotions are high, and we are feeling anxiety and uncertainty more than ever before. Once felt, this stream of thought and instability transfers to all aspects of life. But what if I told you that there is an intervention model designed by a psychologist, Stanley Greenspan that acknowledges our emotional social development and how it stems from relationships developed soon after birth? As health professionals we can use this model to support our families, both parents and children in developing the skills to maintain healthy relationships from the first 3 months of life! At Explore and Soar, we reference this model and use it as a guide in our intervention sessions. It is called the DIRFlootime Model; a Developmental, Individual Differences and Relationship based model that acknowledges each child’s unique differences and uses relationships and connections to establish a strong emotional social connection to further enhance development. This model is integrated into our sessions by following the child’s lead and adapting their ideas to enhance these skills through play. 

So why DIRFloortime? 

Well for us it aligns perfectly with our core values and supports our ability to develop connections and relationships with all our clients. But most importantly, it is an intervention model that acknowledges the emotional social development from birth into our adult years. It allows us as clinicians to work through developmental milestones from an early age. It is also a model firmly based on parent coaching; supporting our client’s parents/carers to further develop the skills needed to support healthy relationships. 

So how can we support our communities and families in developing these skills from birth to increase emotional development, resilience and social engagement, in order to avoid seeking intervention at an older age? This is done through awareness, education and acknowledging that the first months up to two years of life are of great importance when developing healthy relationship skills. 

In the first 3 months of life the foundational skills of regulation begin. This is the beginning of co-regulation between the parent and child and fosters shared attention; where the baby can seek the mother’s attention and they respond or vice versa. This then becomes the child’s foundation to a secure attachment. Attachment between the caregiver and the baby. The start of co-regulation is around the caregivers/mother’s ability to understand the baby’s wants, needs and desires. It’s the ability to answer cues and answer questions like are they hungry, uncomfortable, do they require a nappy change or are they in fact tired? The connection and relationship is based on love and learning to soothe the baby, creating a positive experience and strong connection. This ability comes from the baby having their own unique cries or cues to indicate to the mother or caregiver what they need. This is where the baby and caregiver become entrained with one another forming a bond; the foundations to co-regulation.

In an ideal world this seems simple, easy and realistic. However, every baby enters this world differently, every mother has a different experience and every baby has different sensory processing capacities that then impact their own biological rhythms. There simply is no one size fits all when it comes to taking care of an infant. 

As a new baby comes into the world, parents are presented with an array of challenges. Difficulty sleeping, reflux and feeding concerns, high stress births, babies being unable to settle or babies that simply do not enjoy being touched or soothed. These difficulties that arise for every parent, have a flow on effect with little to no sleep, stress, anxiety, self-blame and hormonal changes being merely a few of the impacts on our parents. This too then has an affect on the relationships that surround mum and dad, including their relationship with one another.  

This is all normal. But why don’t we talk about it more? Why do we gloss over the early stages of parenthood and try to make it look as easy as possible to the outside world? I remind my clients and friends that as parents, you simply are NOT a failure for not being able to soothe your baby. The only way you will ever fail is when you stop trying to understand your child. It is about asking questions and seeking medical advice when required, but also not being afraid to ask for help from your family and friends. 

It takes a village to raise a child. 

As OT’s we provide an extra level of support to parents, children and families. We understand and work with children in motor movement patterns at a young age to support their discomfort and the development of their sensory systems, including their sleep-wake cycles. We have the skills and ability to discuss with you your routines and support in identifying cries and ability to connect with your babies. We also acknowledge where other health professionals’ unique strengths can provide positive impacts for you and your child. But most importantly for us, our skills lie in the development of connection. We look to support our parents/caregivers by building the skills to interact, laugh, smile and play together with your child from a young age. We work with you to build upon the ability to co-regulate emotions, to keep you calm in challenging circumstances and to be present in order to assist in the soothing and engagement of your child. 

If you have any questions around the foundational skills of co-regulation and shared attention please don’t hesitate to reach out. The first three months with your baby’s life is the starting point to all engagement, self-regulation and social skill development for life. My hope is that in having these conversations, we will increase our ability to ask for help when needed. We will foster strong, resilient children who have confident, calm parents who are a little kinder to themselves in challenging circumstances. If we make an effort to start from birth, we can positively impact the mental health of our children as they get older. I know I’d love to see our children’s quality of life, self-esteem and love for themselves be greater in future generations. 

In our socials this month we will go through some examples of challenges and strategies that can help to support you. Take a look at our instagram or facebook to see more. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need a helping hand or would like further information on how we could help you!

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 7, 2021

Latest Posts

Biological Rhythms

· · Leave a Comment

BIOLOGICAL THYTHMS

This year we are placing a strong emphasis on both physical and mental health. As a team, we are focused on a core goal of wellness for both our ourselves and our clients. 

The place to start understanding wellness and why we react or act the way we do is by delving into biological rhythms. 

Biological rhythms are the homeostasis and natural cycle of change in our body’s chemical and organ functions. 

These functions are paramount to self-awareness and motor development but most importantly they contribute to our emotional and social development through childhood.  

No one person’s body rhythm is the same. We all move to the beat of our own internal rhythm and in turn, no 24 hour cycle within our bodies is the same. This means that each day, our body’s internal structure functions independently, adjusting and adapting to the external environment around us, with external factors having the ability to impact and alter our internal biological rhythms daily. 

Take my biological rhythms for example. I am well aware that my body’s internal rhythms differ depending on each day. They can be affected by things such as how I have slept, what my to do list looks like, deadlines, family or general decisions I have made throughout the day. Additionally, different external factors have the ability to alter these biological rhythms for me; the weather and other decisions that employees or friends make, all can have an impact on how my biological rhythms respond. If I were then to have difficulty identifying what my own internal rhythms were, and how they adapt to various situations, this would greatly impact my ability to co-regulate or self-regulate, therefore affecting my emotional well-being. 

Over the years, with practice and by heightening my self awareness, I have developed the skill to identify how my body responds daily to various factors. In having a sense of awareness, I can consciously make the effort to shift my biological rhythms back to their own internal flow, in order to live my life in the healthiest way for me. I am not perfect, and some days the strategies that employ are ineffective and that’s ok. It’s all about building your awareness, your own self-regulating strategies and ways of supporting your own internal rhythms to live your happiest life and ultimately fulfil your purpose each day. 

So what specifically are biological rhythms and how can they impact your life? Let’s dive in!

Your Sleep Schedule: your sleep/wake cycle is paramount. And in my eyes, one of the most important aspects of our unique rhythms. I enjoy chatting to people about their sleep/wake cycles and how different they all are. When we are younger we require 12 or more hours of sleep to integrate a full day of learning, to get adequate rest and to continue to develop. As get older, we start to adjust to our own needs and the hours required to function. I usually require between 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night, ultimately functioning at my best each day after a full 8 hours of sleep. Other people only require 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night to function at the highest level. What’s even more interesting the difference between night owls and early risers, and how their rhythms then indicate optimal function capacity. 

So what is your sleep/wake rhythm? Do you have a set time to go to sleep or a best time to wake up in the morning? Experiment with this. If you feel like you haven’t perfected your sleep / wake cycle, choose a time to go to bed and try it for a week. Make that commitment and determine what times work best for you. Understand how optimal or lack of sleep makes you feel. Pause, take notice and also observe your children. What do their best nights look like? What do their best mornings look like? How do they then get through the day on the cycle they currently function on? The million dollar question then set in, how do we identify and maintain this rhythm for our child in order to achieve optimal rest? Well, this is where we come in. We can individualise a sleep/wake cycle plan or strategies for your child / family to get the most out of this biological rhythm and trust me… if you get this right for your whole family, it will change all of your lives for the better! 

Your Appetite: hunger, thirst and awareness of when you are full are all part of the biological rhythm that is your appetite. Do you ever get hangry?? This is my biggest tell tail. I have an incredibly fast metabolism and I eat quite frequently. However, if I haven’t eaten or drank enough water, I start to notice my internal rhythms beginning to shift, along with my behaviour and emotions. Acknowledging my appetite is a vital rhythm that supports the nourishment of my body, in order to fuel my energy for the day. This biological rhythm involves noticing your metabolism, understanding how it works, which foods best fuel you, as well as which foods make you feel slow, tired or lethargic. Appropriate management of our appetite on a day to day basis is a major contributor to our mood and achievements in our daily life. So start taking notice of where your body best responds to food. Additionally, start to notice varied reactions to different foods, how they affect your daily functions. Consuming the right foods for your body and understanding the importance of a balanced diet is the second biggest contributor to performance and behaviour, ultimately determining how we respond to sensory information from our external environments. 

Your Bodily functions: such as digestion and going to the toilet are other biological rhythms that impact our wellbeing. When working with our families, in developing independence in self-care we often address toilet habits. Working with a child in order to bring awareness and being able to identify when you need to use the bathroom, toilet training and developing day/night dryness are all a part of working with an OT within the realms of this important biological rhythm. For some children, their independence varies for multiple reasons, identifying these factors and working through strategies to address this goal is paramount in supporting digestive issues and exercising bladder control.

Your Reaction Times: Pain registration, which is one’s ability to identify when they have hurt themselves, is a safety mechanism built into the body to ensure our survival. Everybody’s pain registration differs and is on a continuum from low registration to sensitive and a high registration. Being able to identify your child’s registration of pain allows us to determine when they are not ok, but also supports them in understanding safety boundaries. Everyone’s pain tolerance is different, so it’s all about bringing awareness to and connecting with your child in order to speak up and identify when something is in fact wrong.

Your Body Temperature: and our ability to identify when we are hot or cold, allows us to develop internal regulation in relation to the external environment. This facilities the planning and ability to stay at optimal temperature in varied environments. Chat to us about how we can facilitate the body temperature identification and interaction for your children. 

Your Heart Rate: Our heart rate is the main contributor to our emotional regulation. If our body internally responds to the external environment, the first thing that alters is our breath. If our heart rate increases or we hold our breath, this increases our stress levels, which has the capacity to shift our biological rhythms. When our breath changes, so does our regulation. If you have strong self-regulation capacities, you are aware of this and alter your heart rate and emotions in the moment to adapt to the current situation and environment. However, very few of us can in fact do this. By supporting and bringing awareness to the breath through internal body rhythms, sensory processing capacities and self-regulation strategies we are building the foundations to self-awareness and independence in our everyday lives. This brings about resilience, self confidence, flexibility and adaptability to cope with any situation life may throw at you or your child.

So how do we best start to develop biological rhythms with our kids? 

There are a few main interventions we use throughout our sessions. Rhythm through song and voice, and respiration and breathing strategies are perhaps the most important. 

As OT’s identifying and supporting an individual’s biological rhythms is paramount to their overall health, well-being and quality of life. We will chat through some strategies in our socials this month so keep an eye out! If you’re interested in tailored and individualized strategies that address your child’s or your families concerns, reach out to us and we can help attain optimal success for your biological rhythms.  

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Latest Posts

Fine Motor Skills

· · Leave a Comment

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

Now that we have discussed gross motor skills, it’s time to talk about fine motor skills!

Fine motor skills refer to the ability to use the small muscles of the hand, with adequate strength, dexterity and coordination, to grasp and manipulate objects of different sizes, weights and shapes. They involve the coordinated efforts of the brain and muscles, and they’re built on the gross motor skills that allow us to make bigger movements.

Fine motor skills consist of multiple aspects including:

  1. Strength in fingers and hands
  2. Coordination to support grasping or holding objects
  3. Manipulation when moving objects between our fingers and hands

From a very early age, fine motor skills facilitate interactions with the world we live in and therefore create opportunities for learning. As children develop, fine motor skills then assist the development of:

  • Independence in self-care activities such as doing up buttons, cleaning teeth, opening lunch boxes or food packets and using cutlery. 
  • Development of early literacy and numeracy with control and use of a pencil for drawing, writing or colouring, cutting and pasting.
  • And finally play! Picking up, moving or manipulating toys accompanied with their vivid imaginations. 

The most important fine motor skills children need to develop include the following:

  • The palmar arches allow the palms to curl inward. Strengthening these helps coordinate the movement of fingers, which is needed for writing, unbuttoning clothes, and gripping.
  • Wrist stability develops by early school years. It allows children to move their fingers with strength and control.
  • Skilled side of the hand is the use of the thumb, index finger, and other fingers together for precision grasping.
  • Intrinsic hand muscle development is the ability to perform small movements with the hand, where the tip of the thumb, index finger, and middle finger touch. 
  • Bilateral hand skills permit the coordination of both hands at the same time. 
  • Scissor skills develop by age 4 and further provides hand strength and hand-eye coordination.

I thought I’d offer some personal perspective on the use of fine motor skills, as I have recently received surgery for carpal tunnel release, on my left wrist. The experience made me realise how we often take our fine motor skills for granted. Without the use of my left hand, I experienced a lack of independence, the ability to coordinate both my hands together to pick up objects, to eat food and even to fully dress myself. 

After undergoing surgery, I had lost all the function of my left hand and started the process to rebuild and strengthen my fine motor skills including regaining a full range of motion, muscle strength, flexibility, independence and function. I was participating in a similar process of regaining fine motor skills, a process of which babies, toddlers and young children follow as they grow. 

To demonstrate this, I thought I would detail the common stages of fine motor skill development by ages. 

At 0-6 months old, babies demonstrate reflexive grasp when objects are placed in their hand, they are reaching and grasping for objects, mastering a controlled grasp (at 6 months), holding an object in the palms of their hand (with 2 hands at 3 months and 1 hand at 5 months) and recovering an object dropped in their visual field. 

At 6-12 months old, they are grasping and putting objects to their mouth, demonstrating controlled release of objects, picking up small objects with a thumb and one finger, their Pincer grasp develops (using index finger and thumb to grasp objects), they are transferring objects between hands (the beginning of crossing midline skills) and they start to show a preference for one hand over the other (beginning the development of right-handed vs. left-handed dominance). 

At 1-2 years, a child can build towers of two-three small blocks, turn the pages of a book (multiple at a time), they can clap their hands together (this is the beginning of bilateral coordination!), they can wave goodbye, scoop objects up with a spoon or small shovel and bang objects together using both hands (the beginning of bilateral coordination!)

At 2-3 years, children can string four large beads, turn single pages, snip with scissors, hold a crayon with thumb and fingers. They are using one hand consistently for most activities, picking up small objects with thumb and one finger and can also  imitate circular, vertical and horizontal stokes with some wrist action, along with illustrating dots, lines and circular strokes.

At 3-4 years, a child can build a tower of nine small blocks, manipulate clay material (rolls balls, makes snakes, cookies), use their non dominant hand to assist and stabilize the use of objects, snip paper using scissors, copy circles and imitate a cross. 

At 4-5 years, a child is cutting on the line continuously, copies a cross and square shape, they are writing their name and the numbers1-5, copying letters and can dress/undress themselves. 

At 5-6 years, a child is cutting out simple shapes, copying triangle, colours within the lines, and has a 3 fingered grasp of a pencil.

At 6-7 years, a child is forming letters and numbers correctly, writes consistently on the lines, has controlled movement with pencil and endurance for writing and tying shoelaces 

At 7-8 years, a child is maintaining legibility of handwriting, and has greater independence in self-care tasks such as doing up buttons. 

Comparatively, I worked through the stages of development as follows: 

Post operation, my hand function in my left hand was starting back at the 6-month-old stage. My left hand was completely immobile, wrapped in a tight bandage and was instructed to not move it and place no pressure on my hand in any way. My left arm was placed in a sling and required to be elevated at all times.

Around one week after surgery, my bandages were able to be removed and so to were my stitches. I was allowed to freely move my hand as able, however it was incredibly stiff, had very little range of movement and was limited by the pain.

I then commenced my passive (assisted) and light active movements of my fingers. This included supporting and moving each joint of my fingers as far as I could every 2 hours. It was repetitions and persistence of these movements that retrained my brain and body to work together so functionally I could use my left hand. 

During week 2 of  post-surgery, the movements of my fingers had improved to the point where I could now complete pincer grasp, transfer objects between both hands and increase my bilateral coordination of tasks. However, with very little pressure or resistance. I slowly tried to reintroduce simple daily activities to increase my independence, this meant I could pick up paper, hold my phone etc. 

By week 3, I was using my non-dominant hand (left) to stabilise and support my activities. I wanted more independence, so I pushed myself, within reason – much like a child would. I started to dress and undress myself with both hands including buttons and zippers, I was able to manipulate objects including hair bands to put my hair up, use cutlery, type on the computer with greater speed and open and close doors. 

Now 3 months post-surgery, my grip strength is almost where it was before surgery. Going through this experience highlighted the importance of fine motor skills development. Much like a child, it was important for me to regain those skills in order to not be dependent on someone else to support simple everyday tasks. 

If you’d like to help your child develop their fine motor skills, here are some ideas that you can do at home, together. Often the repetition of everyday activities is a simple yet effective helping hand!

  • Allow your child to assist with meal preparation, like stirring, mixing, or pouring ingredients. 
  • Put together a puzzle as a family.
  • Play board games that involve rolling dice.
  • Finger paint together.
  • Let your child set the dinner table.
  • Teach your child how to pour their own drinks.
  • Have your child roll and flatten clay with their hands, and then use a cookie cutter to make cutouts.
  • Show your child how to use a hole puncher.
  • Practice placing rubber bands around a can. 
  • Place objects in a container and have your child remove them with tweezers.

If you’d like more information, please check out these websites below!

schools.shrewsburyma.gov/ot/fine-motor

education.vic.gov.au/childhood/professionals/learning/ecliteracy/emergentliteracy/Pages/finemoto.aspx

Madeleine Simms

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 1, 2020

Latest Posts

Subscribe to our newsletter

Receive our news and updates via email. That's all.

View our Terms of Use.

Your feedback is always valued at Explore & Soar. If you have some feedback to help us support your needs better, please click here and share your valued feedback with us today.