To think no one helped develop our fine motor skills and we all turned out fine?

[Maybeitstime2021]

Just had a post on my FB with activities to do with your child to develop their fine motor skills before starting school in September, why is this a thing? I’m pretty sure we all learned to do our coats up and hold a pencil ok when we were kids without these activities?

It's the same with sensory classes. They used to be for special needs children / brain injuries etc.

Now apparently healthy children need senses stimulating...

[quote girlmom21]@Maybeitstime2021 nobody told them not to take us to pubs where everyone was smoking indoors either. Times change. [/quote]
Yes but those are changed for the better, these seam to be changes because things are getting worse.

I think the difference is that we did do these things but they didn't have a name. It's just stuff you do with babies/toddlers.
I only found out when i joined MN that I did baby led weaning about years after I did it. back then it was called 'chucking it all on the high chair tray and letting them get on with it'.

That said though-no tummy time as a set daily thing to do. Probably did it accidentally though and not realised.

@OutwiththeOutCrowd

I think motherhood has been turned into a profession and the stuff that previous generations used to do in a more laid back organic way is now given a label and closely scrutinised and monitored. Fine motor skills. Speaking and listening skills. Social skills. And so on.

Is it a good or bad development? I don't know but it can lead to a lot of angst.

I really agree with this. The Gardener and the Carpenter is quite a good book on this, if you can get past the fact it's a parenting book that argues that parenting shouldn't be a verb and no one should be doing it according to books...

@CrouchEndTiger12

It's the same with sensory classes. They used to be for special needs children / brain injuries etc.

Now apparently healthy children need senses stimulating...

I mean, that one is pure marketing. Convincing people that babies who don't do anything yet would benefit from classes is big business. It also capitalises on maternal guilt - when I had a baby I couldn't work out why all the classes and things were clearly there so mothers could meet and talk to each other but so little of it was just set up as 'here, let's all have a cup of tea and talk while the babies lie on the floor', it was all brief social contact around things 'for' the babies. Then I realised that you're not supposed to do anything for yourself any more once you have a baby.

I do feel that things might have gone a bit too far towards turning bringing up children into a joyless cerebral exercise. I would like to look at a toy in a shop and ask myself if it was going to be fun to play with rather than being hyper-conscious of what skills might be improved by playing with it.

@Hardbackwriter will check it out.

I feel very disenfranchised with the whole parenting thing, tried to do everything ‘right’ with my oldest boy only for it not to be enough as he has ASD. Now with my second I feel like you can develop their fine motorskills all you want but that doesn’t mean they are going to be able write.

You wouldn't say that if you met my sister or my husband who have the worst handwriting ever. DH is the least dexterous person I know apart from DC who has SEN, but was offered no assistance other than an encouraging clip round the ear at school.

@Maybeitstime2021

Just had a post on my FB with activities to do with your child to develop their fine motor skills before starting school in September, why is this a thing? I’m pretty sure we all learned to do our coats up and hold a pencil ok when we were kids without these activities?

It's not a recent thing that's just popped up it's a general sort of idea where children of certain ages can be expected to have.

Kids getting ready to start school could do with the odd bit of practice over the summer holidays just to give them a head start, get in some practice and give them an extra shot of confidence for their first big day.

I don't get why it's bothered you

Actually I do think kids lack some skills or develop them later because advances in technology and manufacturing make lots of things easier.

Modern playdo is really soft, it has sod all resistance. When I was a kid children were given plasticine - it's much stiffer, you really have to work it with your hands, it's much better for building strength.

I wasnt given felt tips or white board pens until much older - again old school crayons or even colouring pencils require you to press harder and thus grip tighter, but kids these days are used to low resistance felt pens, water pads etc.

Kids are given screen apps which require no hand strength.

Also the EYFS emphasises child led/free play. This has many benefits but the downside is children don't often choose things they find hard. So children who struggle with their pen grip will simply avoid those activities, whereas when I attended a playgroup in the 80s, there were more adult led activities at age 3 & 4 where you were quite strongly encouraged to have a go at a craft picture etc.

I’m all for anything that helps.

Hardbackwriter

Yeah I thought those groups were a bit daft. I preferred the old school mum and baby groups in local churches. Turn up, pay a quid, get given a tea & a biscuit, some nice old ladies offer to hold your baby while you drink it and chat, no requirement to be a churchgoer!

A teacher told me that actually gross motor skills should come first ie. Climbing grabbing catching balls....but we are pushing fine motor so holding pens ..far too early and children are being brought indoors for sedentary learning too early.

Op its widely debated that here in the UK we force children to sit down and hold pens etc far too early. This is one reasons (screen use is another ) that we see children being pushed to develop skills that you would think come naturally.

Throughout human history children would have developed these skills by playing all day long outdoors. Probably until adolescence.

Our bodies evolved for that life..not a life where 4 year old are asked to write sentences to hit targets in reception.

Perhaps we should go with it and focus on teaching kids to touch type etc. rather than agonise over their cursive writing skills. Humans and their environment constantly change innit

@MaskingForIt

Maybe if your parents had tried a bit harder you’d have learnt that it’s “seem” not “seam”.

Seem is how things appear to be.

Seam is the thing holding your trousers together.

Yes, yes, of course you’re dyslexic.

Maybe yours should have tried harder and you would have learned not to be so rude.

Agree wholeheartedly, @waterrat

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland - exactly this! I’m in my 40s and have a cross stitch calendar I made at infants - so age 6 or 7. Every child did this, we were also taught to knit, tie our shoe laces. I have a 6 year old who loves crafts but this level of sewing/knitting is beyond her because she’s always had easy toys. She makes Pom poms in a plastic Pom Pom maker - I had to cut out circles of thick corrugated card. She’s not strong because she’s always used tools designed to mage things easy for children - kids scissors. She uses felt tips because pencil crayons and wax crayons don’t give instant results. If an activity is difficult for her she goes and does something easier.
It’s ok - that’s the world she’s growing up in but my goodness she would not be able to use a tin opener, or light a fire or any of the normal skills a 6 year old child would have had in the 1980s.

Re: kids starting reception in nappies and with no cutlery skills, unable to dress themselves, etc with the "and no specials needs" tacked on the end - a fair proportion of those children will actually have special need but just aren’t diagnosed yet due to their age.

I think a lot of it is about hitting arbitrary targets based on whatever's fashionable with the government of the moment rather than having any real connection to what helps children develop lasting useful skills.

I remember my kid's year check with the HV (he wasn't yet walking) and she asked me what I was doing to encourage his walking, eg. standing him up and holding his hands, putting things at the back of the sofa out of his reach etc.

I asked whether there were studies showing that doing these things translated in to some sort of lifelong advantage. I wasn't being an arse or rhetorical. I was genuinely curious. I really thought kids would just walk when they were ready. Which of course they do (barring some sort of problem of course).

So if our one year olds are under pressure to meet targets that's only going to increase exponentially at school age.

Also agree in the uk we try to get children to write too young.

Some kids - dyspraxia/ADHD have fine motor skill problems. My DS still struggles a lot with writing/tying shoelaces/ using scissors etc

Maybe it's because more is known now about child development, and what helps children.

If your child is a bit delayed in this area, having access to activities which help could make a difference.

If you don't want to do it - then don't?

We're all constantly bombarded with ideas for parenting and suggested activities; we'd be spinning if we tried to take them all on board. Just pick and choose things which are appropriate and helpful for your lifestyle, parenting style and child's needs.

I have a DD who's autistic and has excellent fine motor skills.

I have a DS who's autistic and dyspraxia and struggles severely with fine motor skills.

Creative ideas about activities which might help my DS practice his fine motor skills are always very welcome in this house. Other parents might find them unhelpful and unnecessary. Our children are not identikit. Pick the stuff that works for you.

If you're really suggesting that it's nonsense just because it wasn't mentioned 50 years ago, give your head a wobble.

I’m dyspraxic - i.e didn’t learn to use cutlery properly until age 12, couldn’t tie laces until age 26, still have an awkward pencil grip at 30 - I honestly don’t see why it would be so wrong to give children exercises and ideas to help?

I’d have felt so much more confident in myself if I’d known that other children were also doing similar stuff to me - I felt like a total numpty most of the time as I had to attend OT a lot, was singled out continually at school for having ‘motor disabilities’ - it normalises these things, surely that can’t be a bad thing !

I went all the way through primary, secondary school and college without knowing my maths problem i.e. being spectacularly shit and unable to add up the cost of two items for 70p each without having to use my fingers – it's now recognised as Dyscalualia.

Not until my 30's did I even discover there was such a thing and all the way through school teachers didn't pick up on or bother to give a shit about me never doing any work, constantly finding ways to be a pain in the arse during tests and get myself booted out and off the hook.

I found ways to get by and little things that made life easier but it would have made life so much easier it wasn't that I was just a thick bitch and I didn't need to blag and wing my way through things.

We're a family of musicians and I have natural ear for music, play numbers instruments and can pick up and follow along with anything on the hop but I can't read sheet music. I can sit down at the piano, play and find my way to whatever key or chord I want to pick up and start work with but I still have to lean in, squinty and look at sheet music like “E... EVERY.. GOOD... EVERY GOOD”

Head of music ripped the piss out of me and got mad cos I could not grasp how to read music and I still can't to this day.

Again there's a reason for it, I'm not a thick bitch, my brain just can't work with it all.

Interestingly I did learn how to properly touch type in secondary which is probably the only thing I actually took and used as an adult but it was painful learning to get your fingers into the muscle reflex and endlessly feeling your way over the keys to type another half hour about a quick fucking fox jumping over some shit.

Took the full two years in school and one of my first jobs was working as office junior for a law firm and I started doing audio typing for one of the junior partners, picked up the speed through time and repetition and eventually it became second nature.

Maybe it's with the QWERTY keyboard layout being fixed and constant that let me learn and develop that natural reflect for touch typing. Music changes consistently throughout and you have to read and translate it from sight to hands I guess.

I can hold a conversation make a brew, type out a long ass report and not even need to give thought to what my hands are doing they just crack on without me.

But yeah if I knew or the world knew back then about this being a thing, life would have been a lot less stressful. I see nothing wrong with checks, assessments and just making sure children starting school don't end up slipping through the net and small areas that might need just a bit of extra help before the window of opportunity to help is missed.