Fine Motor Skills

There are those moments in your child’s life that you cherish and wish they would never stop or grow out of like those toothless smiles, the rolling giggles, and slobbery kisses. What about the moments or the milestones that you’ve been waiting for but haven’t surfaced yet? Those tiny fingers take a lot of motor planning and sensory skills to wrap around your pinky, grasping at your heartstrings. Fine motor is a skill that has to do with our hands that we might not think about everyday, but are evidenced by the little fingerprints left behind leaving a trail from their exploration that we so quickly wipe away, only for them to reappear the next day. A child has milestones at every stage of development, however they can become delayed for several reasons. The way our bodies develop, start from the center of our bodies and move outward, proximal to distal. Sometimes for whatever reason, our bodies will not develop appropriately and if our core is not reaching milestones neither will our fingers. Gross motor skills are our big movements of the body like trunk, arms, legs, but fine motor would be our wrist, hands, and fingers. Think of all the activities, during the day, that engage our fingers to complete the tasks such as feeding, dressing, writing, and exploring. What if our fingers couldn’t do those tasks? How frustrated would we be? Even the simplest task would become a struggle such as picking up cheerios to our mouth or bringing up a piece of paper to our eyes,to get a closer look. We explore so much with our hands and fingers not just by grasp, but also feeling it, That’s the sensory portion. It is always fun to watch kids test textures, figuring out what’s ok to handle and the textures they can’t stand. My favorite is always making slime and how they react to putting their hands in the mixture. What if their bodies couldn’t handle touching, smelling, or even looking at it. What if it was so bad that they couldn’t even handle being in the same room? These are issues that Occupational Therapy deals with and can help with. Not only do we work on strengthening or increasing endurance in those little hands, but also getting our bodies to catch up to these milestones. We all want to be independent with our daily lives and with OT treatment, we can increase our ability.
Some activities that are great to help is picking up coins from a table and putting them in a piggy bank, rolling out playdoh and making things with them, or banging on pots and pans. If they are a little older, having them help with chores like folding towels, matching socks, or mopping. We want our babies to stay babies forever, but we also want to bring up our little people to become the best they can be.