Fine Motor Skills, Free Downloads & Checklists, General Information
How to Identify Issues with Fine Motor Skills
What are fine motor skills, why are they important, and how do we identify issues with fine motor skills?
Fine motor skills are the skills that involve the use of the wrist, hand, fingers, and thumb. As these develop, they give children the ability to draw and write, eat with a spoon and fork, cut using scissors and dress themselves independently.
Before we see fine motor skills develop, children must first develop gross motor skills. These involve larger muscle groups, therefore requiring less precision. Gross motor skills give children the ability to run, jump, climb, and throw a ball.
When children have delays in fine motor skill development, we must take a step back and look deeper. An occupational therapist’s job is to get to the bottom of why fine motor skills aren’t developing in the way they should.
This means going back to basics. We must look at foundational skills, also called sensory motor skills. Some examples of these include posture, balance, and hand-eye coordination. If these crucial skills are underdeveloped, that’s where we first place our focus.
The hierarchy goes something like this – sensory motor skills, gross motor skills, fine motor skills. We start at the beginning and work our way forward to aid in how to identify issues with fine motor skill.
What should we know about the dominant hand vs non-dominant hand?
The dominant hand is the preferred hand for tasks such as eating, drinking, writing, and getting dressed. Therefore, by default, the other hand becomes the non-dominant hand – AKA the “helper hand”. The dominant hand is determined based on genetics and the way a child’s brain is wired.
Parents and teachers should never try to change a child’s dominant hand. This can cause confusion and feelings of inadequacy. It will almost certainly do more harm than good.
Hand dominance is usually established between the ages of three and five. A dominant hand and a non-dominant hand are required for most fine motor skills we expect to see develop in young children.
For example, when a child is cutting paper, the dominant hand maneuvers the scissors while the non-dominant hand holds the paper. This is why we like to call it the “helper hand”.
How to Identify Issues with Fine Motor Skills
What are the signs that a child is having difficulty with fine motor skills? Here are some things teachers might observe if a child needs occupational therapy intervention.
Fine Motor Tasks:
- Uses a clumsy pencil grip
- Cannot draw a diamond shape correctly
- Pencil grip is either too light/too tight
- Writes with too much/too little pressure on paper
- Swaps hand/confuses left & right
- Cannot form letters and numbers correctly
- Cannot clap a rhythmic pattern (i.e. game) with a friend
- Cannot tie shoes
- Cannot cut circles
- Hand fatigues
- Slow to complete activities like beading, lacing.
- Slow and untidy work when colouring, using glue, and paint
- Messy books
- Clumsy finger and hand movements when copying hand signs or gestures
- Hand and fingers look immature when the child is involved in fine motor tasks.
What can we do to help children develop fine motor skills?
The most important thing we can do to help children with fine motor development is to be on the lookout for underlying issues with foundational skills and understanding how to identify issues with fine motor skills.
Familiarize yourself with this list and take a step back when you are watching kids in the classroom. Remember, all behavior is information.
A child may not be able to verbalize that they are struggling, but if we look closely, we will start to see the signs. The earlier we are able to intervene, the more likely we are to see success.
Behaviour red flags seen in children struggling with fine motor skills:
- Avoids fine motor tasks
- Indicates that the task is far too difficult and asks for assistance
- Indicates the task is far too easy and boring to do
- Prefers outdoor play
- During free play, prefers toys which do not need manipulation such as cars or dolls
- When given a choice, they will avoid beads, crayons, dressing of dolls, manipulation of small objects
- Might scribble and intentionally provide untidy and immature work for age without trying to produce accurate work
- Might try to damage others’ work (especially in pre-school years.)
The other thing we can do is focus on providing plenty of opportunities to strengthen these skills. Repetition is key. Practice makes progress, so when we make fine motor practice a priority, we are setting a child up to win.
An example of this would be playing an instrument. It feels foreign and weird at first. It’s hard, and often you want to give up. But the more and more you practice, the more familiar it becomes. The hand movements begin to become second nature. You’re building muscle memory.
However, to maintain or build a positive attitude, start with big movements, e.g. thick paint brushes on large areas without guidelines instead of a pencil trying to stay between lines or copying a design.
What are our best next steps?
You can see clearly that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to fine motor development. Children may exhibit signs you wouldn’t normally associate with needing an occupational therapy evaluation.
But the most important thing to remember – behavior is information. Children are communicating their needs, even if it may seem hard to decipher at first. We’ve got to be attuned and put the pieces together to figure out what’s going on and how best to help them.
Use this checklist as a resource and observe carefully. When you see a child having difficulty, take the necessary steps and get them the intervention they need.
While this list is just a starting point, an OT evaluation will help pinpoint those areas where a child is struggling the most and help you put together a plan to help them succeed.
You can also look at our checklists for Kindergarten, pre-school, Year 1 and Year 2 covering many different aspects of development to indicate when a child needs a professional assessment. You can also record progress on these checklists.