Everyday Ways to Improve Fine Motor Skills
If the term “fine motor” intimidates you, rest assured, it's nothing scary! Fine motor is simply referring to the things your child does with his or her hands. These skills are incredibly important because they eventually translate into independence. Think about it. Your hands help you zip pants and jackets, write and draw, tie shoes and so many other activities that you do each day.
Hi Peaceful Press readers, my name is Brittany Rose. I’m a momma, writer and occupational therapist with a passion for helping children become as functional as they can be. While I no longer work in a pediatric clinic, I spent many years there, walking alongside parents and kids with special needs, helping to ensure they could thrive regardless of a diagnosis or physical challenges. Today, I’m sharing a little bit of what I learned during that journey in an effort to help you and your child, whether they have special needs or not. My goal is to help you identify a few everyday ways to incorporate fine motor skills and strengthening into your child's routines.
What comes to mind when you think of fine motor activities? If it’s Pinterest and multistep crafts that require time, prep and at least two trips to Hobby Lobby, then I want to challenge you to think of addressing fine motor from a simpler approach.
That’s not to say there isn’t a time for all those fun crafts, there is! But for now, let’s start with activities of daily living or ADLs. ADLs are the things you (depending on age and abilities) or your child already does simply to take care of himself/herself everyday. For the purpose of this article I’m going to discuss a few ADLs and how you can help improve your child’s fine motor skills while accomplishing them. The great thing about this approach is that it’s easy, gives lots of opportunity for practice (everyday) and you already have all the resources needed to get started.
A Note for Infants
Because infants are largely dependent on a caregiver for any ADLs, the functional skill that will build toward healthy fine motor development is tummy time. Tummy time should eventually lead to weight bearing through the upper extremities. For example, an infant using his or her elbows to prop up and see or manipulate a toy is great for development of core and shoulder girdle muscles. I don’t have time to get into how to encourage tummy time today, but THIS post by CanDoKiddo is a good place to start!
As your infant ages, another great activity that lends to fine motor development is crawling. While crawling isn't a fine motor skill itself, the weight bearing and weight shifts through the hands, elbows and shoulders are especially helpful in developing general upper body strength and the arches of the hands. As parents, we’re often so excited to see those long awaited first steps, but take a moment to enjoy the crawling stage too! Many core and upper extremity muscles are learning their role during crawling.
Ages 2 years - 7 years
Dressing
Dressing is a great way to incorporate fine motor practice. Children are naturally motivated to be as independent as possible, so dressing is usually something they are excited to accomplish.
When it comes to working on fine motor skills with dressing, the most important thing you can do as the parent is know where the child’s current abilities are and set up a doable challenge for them.
For example, if they are unable to latch the zipper on the jacket, you can latch it and then allow them just to pull it up. Or, rather than pants with a button, look for a velcro closure that they can manage. This goes for shoes as well. Buckle shoes can be especially challenging, but often a shoe with a Velcro closure is manageable.
If your child still struggles with managing clothes, using a favorite doll or stuffed animal is a good way to practice. Make it as fun as possible, granting lots of positive reinforcement throughout.
Meal and Snack Times
This is a favorite of mine, because there is always a great reward at hand: food or drink! Allowing your own child to punch the straw through their sippy cup takes a great amount of fine motor strength and coordination. If that is too challenging, you can always punch the straw through first, take it back out and allow them to put the straw in without the extra resistance of the plastic covering the straw hole.
This same concept goes for opening any kind of snack packets. It can be difficult to find brands that make child-friendly openings, but I find if you assist by just beginning to tear the packages open and let the child finish the opening, they are very satisfied and get good strengthening for their little hands.
As your child masters finger feeding, letting them practice scooping with a small spoon or using a small fork to stab soft foods are great ways to set them up for eventually grasping writing utensils. My advice on this would be to make sure the fork and spoon you are allowing your child to use fits well into his or her hands. I like these or something similar. Adult-size silverware will be a tough place to start and may be too heavy for little hands.
If the utensil handle seems too small for them to manage, I recommend going to your local hardware store and grabbing 2-3 inches of styrofoam pipe insulation which you can slide over a fork, knife, spoon or even a writing utensil if needed. Here is an example. This is a cheap and favorite grasp hack of mine!
Bathroom Time
We already discussed clothing management, but just note that as your child begins to potty train, that aspect often comes last and that's OK! Managing pants and underwear can be tricky.
There are still lots of other great ways to incorporate fine motor strengthening in the bathroom. One of the simplest ways is just allowing the child to squeeze toothpaste out while you hold the toothbrush. Does it occasionally result in a mess? Yes! But messes are part of learning to grade pressure, so even a mess is a win.
Bath crayons as well as simple pouring toys are other good ways to address fine motor skills at bath time.
Final thoughts
There you have it! These are a few of my favorite functional ways to address fine motor skills within everyday life, but they are certainly not the only ones. I would challenge you to find other functional ways to encourage your child to take on fine motor challenges throughout your daily routines. Look for what motivates your child and build from there.
What to do if you have concerns?
If you have concerns about your child’s fine motor skills, I would encourage you to reach out to your pediatrician and ask them about getting an evaluation for occupational therapy. Likewise if you have gross motor concerns, you will want to ask about an evaluation for physical therapy. Also, while we are on gross motor skills, if this is an area you would like more resources on, a wonderful pediatric physical therapist and friend of mine wrote an e-book called The Worry Free Guide to Meeting Motor Milestones. She has even been so gracious to share a 20% discount with the code: save20now. If you want to learn more, you can also read her article on gross motor skills HERE.
I hope this article has given you some easy ideas for improving your child’s fine motor skills and taken a little pressure off your shoulders. If you have questions or comments you can email me at thegingerlifeblog@gmail.com. Or you can find more of my writing which mostly focuses on motherhood and the accompanying humor at www.thegingerlifeblog.com or on Instagram @thegingerlifeblog.
A Few Other Resources
Written by a mom and pediatric OT, http://www.candokiddo.com/ is a great place to find answers to your development questions! She also gives great ideas on how to incorporate tummy time, improve independent play and reviews of the latest baby gear.
Mama OT, Christie over at https://mamaot.com/ has a great blog covering all things occupational therapy with lots of fine motor posts, if you want to read more on this topic.
For behavior help and sensory calming ideas I love the blog https://lemonlimeadventures.com/
This website is geared toward pediatric therapists but has many good ideas that parents can implement too. https://www.toolstogrowot.com/blog
The Peaceful Preschool includes 26 weeks of activities geared towards developing motor skills in preparation for the school years. Get yours today!
