Parents celebrate when infants reach expected developments in motor skills – use of their hands, crawling, first steps, etc.
But a U-T Arlington study finds children who meet those standard milestones can later fall behind in age-appropriate motor skills.
Dr. Priscila Tamplain, an associate professor of kinesiology and director of U-T-Arlington's Motor Development Lab talked with KERA's Sam Baker about the reasons why.
Dr. Tamplain: Motor skills don't come as birthday presents.
We don't start throwing a ball because we turn three or four years of age and then all of a sudden, because that's on the list, we start throwing balls. No, we practice a lot. We play with it. Someone teaches us how to do it. And we do it over and over again and we get better at it.
What we see now is that children do not have all these opportunities and experiences to practice motor skills. They don't go out and play as much. The parents don't spend a lot of time doing this with them. Schools do not spend as much time devoted to physical education. They spend more time on screen time, so probably a combination of factors. But all these trends are causing this low motor skills sort of situation.
Baker: Isn't there a tendency for parents or others to think kids just develop at different rates. These things happen instinctively with children.
Dr. Tamplain: I think most parents think that, but think about this: If your child was having trouble with reading at school, they would probably get extra support for reading. I think we need to look at motor skills the same way.
Motor skills have been linked to later future physical and mental health, in adolescence and in adulthood.
Being able to catch a ball; to throw, kick, and jump; to cut with scissors, button a shirt. Being able to do all these skills really well will help children, for example, join a group of kids playing dodgeball or volleyball. Being able to ride a bike will help kids ride a bicycle to a friend's house and socialize that way.
So, having good motor skills help kids participate. And participation is essential for physical activity habits and for great mental health. The way we talk about motor skills is that they are a precursor to later health.
On the other hand, if the kids don't throw the ball as well, if they don't cut paper the same, other kids can notice and subject them to criticism.
Dr. Tamplain: Sure. And that's where the mental health issues come from, right? A lot of early bullying in the school settings, for example, can come from children being, quote unquote, clumsy, being uncoordinated. And that can definitely lead to being teased.
How do you correct this problem when you see that kids are falling behind?
Dr. Tamplain: There's a couple of things that can be done.
First of all, for parents is making sure children have opportunities to develop motor skills. They need to be able to play. They need to be enrolled in extracurricular activities that they like, but they need to have time and opportunities for that.
If they're not participating as much, if they don't play in recess. They're not excited about joining an activity where kids are moving around, I think it's something that needs to be looked at and parents can bring this up to a pediatrician. They can take kids to a physical therapist, an occupational therapy.
You emphasized that it is very important to address this as early as possible.
Dr. Tamplain: It just gets harder and harder later on to develop those skills. And for a 10-year-old, for example, it will be really hard to backtrack and teach them the basics of how to jump because the other kids are already jumping and kicking the ball at the same time, right? Older school-aged kids and adolescents are not interested in learning something that little kids are doing.
We also see these associations between motor skills and special mental health very early. In childhood, so we see children, for example, about age nine or 10, and this is an age I keep bringing up because it's when we start seeing those differences. We see some differences in mental health. We want to catch this way before that.
RESOURCES:
Many children seem on track, but struggle with motor skills
14 ways to help older kids build motor skills
CDC's Developmental Milestones
World Health Organization: Motor development milestones
Is Your Baby's Physical Development on Track?
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