As infants grow, their movements become less clumsy – they’re more in control of themselves. Try putting a couple of grains of rice in front a baby and watch the effort it takes for him or her to pick it up. Careful though, that grain will go straight from the hands into the mouth!
The gigantic effort of picking up the rice grain has two actions that are happening simultaneously to complete the action.
- The eye is coordinating with the fingers of the hand in order to guide it to pick up the grain.
- The finger muscles (that need to be skilled and strong enough to do the picking up) are picking up the grain of rice,
Simply put, it means that there has to be a perfectly coordinated control between the eyes that guide the hand towards the object, and the actual process of picking it up. Wow! That’s a complex thing for a 6 month old to accomplish.
These two processes i.e. Fine Motor Development and Eye-Hand Coordination play a crucial role in the developmental cycle of children, and we can do much to facilitate these.
Fine Motor Development is nothing but the strengthening of the small muscles of the fingers. I’ve often seen that parents are eager to get their child to start writing ABC. The process of writing assumes that the child has sufficient finger muscle strength and control to form the letters of the alphabet, and very often, the child is simply not ready.
Even before we come to this, here’s another vital piece of information for you. Language learning begins with listening, then proceeds to speaking, reading and finally comes to writing. Our education system often pushes our children to start with writing! There is nothing more damaging to children than pushing them to do things they are not ready for.
So, coming back to Fine Motor Development – it is crucial that children develop sufficient strength in their fingers before they are pushed into gripping a pencil and writing ABC. There are many fun ways in which you can achieve this at home. Get play-doh – plasticine clay that is very easily available at all toy stores. However, please make sure that it is toxic free, because children have the tendency to put things into their mouths. You can very easily make a safe version of clay at home by kneading flour dough. Put lots of salt (your child will not be tempted to eat it), and food colouring to make it attractive. You could make some fresh dough everyday or make lots of it and store in the fridge. Encourage your child to roll out this dough, make shapes or anything they fancy. In doing so he or she is exercising the finger muscles and is also creatively engaged.
Anything done with the fingers will provide exercise – so you could give your child old newspaper and ask them to tear it into tiny bits, they could scribble on this too using crayons. Clothespins are a great fun tool for fine motor development. You could tie a small rope somewhere convenient in your child’s room and ask him/her to clip the clothespin on it – or just simply put the clips on a towel or any flat object (maybe a thin book or piece of cardboard.) The action of pressing the clothespins to force it open, exercises the finger muscles. The use of tweezers and tongs will also do the same work. However, please be extremely cautious and make sure there is adult supervision at all times to avoid accidents.
Similarly, you could get child friendly scissors and get your child to cut paper. Start with old newspapers and slowly graduate to thicker, more resistant paper. Start with random cutting, and then draw lines or curves along which children must cut the paper.
In each of the activities described above, you might have noticed that Eye-Hand Coordination is a natural partner. A child will not be able to guide his/her fingers to create a ball of play-dough unless his/her eyes guide the action. How can anyone use scissors unless their eyes guide their hands correctly? Even the seemingly simple task of eating with a spoon requires perfect coordination for the food to leave the plate and enter its correct destination i.e. the mouth. Using a fork is even trickier.
I hope you understand now why I say that writing ABC is not the beginning of your child’s educational journey, but the end result of a couple of years of fine motor development and eye-hand coordination. Do not rush your child into it!
