Motor Skills

 

The reason why a child is able to crawl, sit, walk, grasp onto things and play with toys is because of the parents. Directly or indirectly, parents are the ones who teach the child how to move and do things. If a child is left alone in the cradle the whole day, in extreme cases the child will only learn to walk at the age of 2, and even by the age of 3 he would still not be able to speak. If parents train him from the start, he will be able to develop his motor and linguistic skills much faster.

 

Motor development can be divided into gross motor and fine motor.

 

Gross motor

The child learns to move the big, main muscles of the body first. For example, controlling the nerve muscles, which start from the head, followed by the neck, the trunk, and the limbs. These controls would help the child to balance, turn, climb, sit, walk, run, etc. If a two-month-old infant is able to move his head and chest on his own, this would be the first step in developing motor control. Each child differs in development speed, but in general a four-month-old infant would be able to do the following:

 

• Use his elbow to support himself and lift his head.
• Keep his head steady in a sitting position.
• Kick and push to flip his legs over. The strength in kicking would be much stronger.
• Use his legs to push onto the ground when put in a standing position.

 

Fine motor

 

These include the ability to write, hold a pen, and use the fork and spoon, and other movements that require a greater level of control. These movements can only occur when the child is able to control the small muscles in the hands and body.

 

0–1 month: Have grasp reflex, e.g. taking hold of your finger when you place it in his or her palm.
1–2 months: Able to move the hands and legs
2–4 months: Able to put things into the mouth using the hand.

 

Young children are tremendously interested in hands–not only their mother’s hand but also their own hand. Therefore the mother can use this opportunity to develop their motor skills by constantly letting them grab onto things and playing with their hands while bathing, eating and doing any activity. Please keep toys and items that are toxic away as the baby may insert these objects into his mouth.

 

Hand-eye coordination is a highly difficult task to perform in terms of action. For example, when the child sees the pacifier and wants to put it into the mouth, this is the seeing process. This triggers the motor process which involves using the hand to reach out for the pacifier and trying to put it into the mouth. By sucking on the pacifier, the child is able to develop the muscles in the mouth through the sucking process, which helps his ability to eat and speak in the future.

 

The brain and motor skills develop through the infant’s contact with things around him. Letting your child experience and play with different things will only lead to better coordination in the future!

 

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