Fine Motor Development for Young Children

Early education curriculum promotes the development of the whole child. Part of the whole child is fine motor skills (fingers and hands). This is important because strong fingers can be the foundation for strong writing, and confidence in learning.

I have worked with children in the education setting for over ten years. There can be limited confidence in writing because lack of practice in activities that encouraged the development of fine motor skills. Fine motor development can be an aspect of a child we easily overlook. Intentional development can help children learn to: tie their shoes, eat with utensils, write more confidently and clearly, draw, button and zip their clothes, and be more independent with self care.

Here are some ways to promote fine motor development:

• Allow toddlers to eat with their fingers: This is something that may have a cultural component. Many parents feed their children until they are four or five years old. Allowing young children to use their fingers with the "pincher grasp" can help strengthen the finger muscles. 
• Individual Self Care (taking clothes off/on, brushing teeth, combing hair, etc.): This is something that will take time and patience. Young children are learning how to care for themselves and help around the house. This can be messy, and it is a learning experience. Slowly giving children more autonomy to care for themselves, even if it's not perfect or takes more time build confidence for a task in the future. If we rush to put their clothes on (all the time), it's difficult to learn how to do it when we ask them to. 
• Drawing and coloring: It may seem like kiddos aren't learning, but making art is an essential part of developing fine motor skills. Children get to practice holding crayons and making lines on paper. It doesn't have to be perfect, and children can feel accomplished for making something.
• Play doh or goop: Sensory activities can help strengthen fingers with some feedback. The activity can calm a child, while improving fine motor skills.
• Zippers and Buttons: Young children love to help! Asking them to help with zippers and buttoning your clothes can help them feel useful and indirectly develop finger strength.
• Arts & Crafts: With your supervision, children can use their fingers to pick up beads, coins, and other small objects and string them along a thread, count them, or place them in jars.
• Tongs of eye droppers: Squeezing and holding onto objects can help improve hand resistance and patience in children. 
• Bubble wrap: When you receive mail, popping bubble wrap can be a fun and exciting way to develop fine motor skills. It will most likely lead to lots of giggles as well! 
• Turning pages & Tearing paper: Reading is essential! Asking little ones to turn the page can help improve confidence to read and fine motor skills. Tearing paper can be a great activity with junk mail, and papers that are going to be recycled. Kids can learn about helping the environment, while developing a necessary skill.
• Spray bottles and water guns: Summer is coming up, and water guns will very much help develop fine motor skills. Remind kids it's okay to take breaks if their fingers start to hurt. Sometimes little ones keep going and get blisters.
• BLOCKS: Larger blocks can help little ones start to develop fine motor skills by learning to take the blocks together and apart. Mega blocks are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. When their fine motor skills are more developed, Legos are more appropriate.

Of course, supervision is important with these activities. Using these moments as bonding experiences can also help encourage the frequency of practicing. 

Benefits of Journaling

Once upon a time...

We were given prompts in school to write in class or at home. Sometimes it was seen as a nuisance; a rote task that didn't have any purpose. It turns out, there are multiple health benefits of journaling across the lifespan. Some of these benefits include:

1. Increase Empathy

As we read or write about the lives of others, we are able to delve into their complex and sometimes very different emotional experiences. Over time, there can be an underlying connection of human suffering, joys, or accomplishments, that we are able to tap into. It's common for many of us to think that others, especially if they look dramatically different from us, do not experience difficulties in life. Taking time to write or read about the stories of others can help increase one's understanding that what we see is not always the entire story. 

2. Increase Creativity

Writing with prompts can help increase one's ability to expand on creativity. Sometimes writers have lots of doubt with their art form. The masters know that writing every day is an essential task to increase their creative flow. Writing every day can help boost creative confidence. For those starting out, being silly or writing random stories that could never happen may help promote a creative outlet for those who think they're not creative. (This is a lie we tell ourselves, btw. It's just something society has told us to grow out of because we're "adults." Nurture your creativity by writing again.)

3. Increase Goal-Setting & Confidence

Lots of us *ahem* try to remember everything in our heads. It's almost impossible to do, and yet, we continue to think to ourselves, "I'll remember it all." It's okay to use journals to write things down. This can help built habits of prioritizing responsibilities, and seeing which chores we tend to do last or forget most often. Crossing items off a list is also very satisfying. This visual of accomplishments (no matter how small the task) is very rewarding, and can help increase confidence. 

4. Increase Memory

Some of us have a hard time remembering things. Sometimes it's because our brain wiring is different, and we haven't had the practice to remember things in a way that sticks. This may or may not be related to trauma, but there are correlations of early trauma causing some brains to wire in a way that promotes survival. This translates to some data not being necessary for long-term memory. Writing about your day chronologically can help slowly increase memory. After a while, little details can be more easily remembered. An improved memory can help with work or school performance, as well as interpersonal relationships (loved ones ask for tasks to be done, and instead of forgetting, it gets done!)

5. Increase Healing

Journaling is a common intervention in therapy. Writing out one's story can help put pieces of a puzzle together, and get unwanted emotions outside of the body. It is because of stigmas of mental health, and earlier experiences with sharing intense emotions that many of us choose to suffer silently, and alone. Keeping emotions inside can negatively affect one's physical and mental wellness. It is essential to get one's story and emotions outside of the body to heal. When there aren't safe spaces to share, writing about intense or normal experiences can help one attune with their emotional state, and process the meaning of these events. 

Journaling is a great habit to have, even if one isn't a writer. There is so much energy and emotion to process in our daily lives, and journaling can be an excellent method of channeling it somewhere productive.