Advice seeking - fine motor skill 'delay'

[TheHoneyBadger]

Hi, will try to be concise but it's not my strong point.

My son will be 8 in a couple of months. He has always been mentally bright and verbally able to show it. His gross motor skills are fine and he did things like ride a bike really easily - like literally he had a balance bike then he got him a pedal bike and he just got on and rode it after i gave him some verbal instructions about the difference and what to watch out for itms. He took to reading fine and his spelling is fine and he was pretty early with things like seeing numbers on signs etc.

Yet at this age he still clearly really struggles to 'operate' a fork and finds it clearly exhausting to be made to eat a whole meal with cutlery - same with physical writing despite the fact he 'gets' words and would type them or spell the verbally etc the physical act of writing is tiring and hard for him. he struggles with zips and buttons and the like and can't or really struggles to open a tightly wrapped lolly.

i'm not a helicopter type parent whose always done everything for him and as with the bike example i've tended towards a verbal instruction and demonstration type approach throughout rather than a 'do it for you' method of parenting even when he was tiddly so i really don't think it's a result of my parenting and i don't think it's laziness or attitudinal i think it's genuinely that those motor skills or that neurology or whatever it is is not there yet despite him having gaily skipped ahead in many areas of development this one just isn't happening for him like it has for others.

i found myself looking up dyspraxia the other day as it rang some bells but there are way more things that don't fit him than there are things that do itms (though the problems with feeding really did remind me of him and he did take ages to roll over and to get crawling but then walked and talked early).

i'm not sure what i'm asking here really but i'm aware there is a WEALTH of knowledge and hard won experience on this board and i was wondering if anyone had any ideas or knowledge to share with me. i'm not fussed about labels or no labels and i've just gone with this really and accepted it in him and encouraged the development but 'at' the point it is at rather than what he is allegedly supposed to be doing for his age. i don't know if that's the right thing to do though - maybe i should have taken it more seriously or soething?

thanks if you've managed to read all that! i did say i'm not good at concise

My son has dyspraxia and I didn't know that condition existed until he was diagnosed.

Some of our ot exercises are as follows

Cover a marble in therapy putty ( it's like play dough you buy it off amazon) get ds to pick it off

Streached and roll the putty in your hand. Dominate hand only never the other the help.

Roll putty very thin and use dominate hand to snap it into little bits

Streach elastic bands over fingers tightly and then use the resistance ( not too tight) to work against as you Streach fingers apart

Pick up pieces of rolled up paper with a peg.

Do that for 15 mins at least four times a week and see if it helps

Disclaimer - my son does have dyspraxia so he has to work on core strength and body - shoulder - arm stability too

Hope that gives some ideas

As a starting point, ask to be referred to a paediatric Occupational Therapist (OT) for assessment of his fine motor skills. If that is going to take ages and he's struggling, if you can, buy a set of paediatric Caring Cutlery, the handles are shaped and chunky so they are easy to hold and there's an indent where the index finger rests so the cutlery is gripped correctly. Made an amazing difference here and were free from the OT.
This is what you're looking for www.completecareshop.co.uk/eating-aids/junior-caring-cutlery/junior-caring-cutlery-full-set-view-large/
(shop around for price, I just googled for the image)

Here's what you need to help pencil-grip, have a browse through the whole site and be amazed at all the different things that are available
www.thedyslexiashop.co.uk/stationery-for-dyslexics/pens-pencils-and-writing-aids.html

thanks.

2boys - good ideas there for the fine motor skills - ds has really good core strength and has always been strong re: being able to lift his head up as a newborn when laying on his tummy and such. it's another of the ok not dyspraxia type things that stand out to me if i read about the condition but as you've shown it seems the ideal place to look for tips on the fine motor stuff.

blanklook at this point i'm not keen on involving professionals or treating it like an 'issue' - will def have a look at that cutlery though thank you

My ds is dyspraxic/dyslexic, BUT my dd is hypermobile. The ligaments etc in her joints are just floppier than most peoples (so she is bendier in some ways for ballet, gymnastics etc).

What we discovered is that she can write reasonably neatly for a short time, but then her fingers tire. It is because the messages from the nerves have to ge relayed on at each joint - if the joint is floppier, the message gets fuzzier at every joint.

Her solution is to lock as many joints as possible to make the joints tighter and to grip a ribbed pen/pencil as tightly as possible to increase the senstion that she registers.

It is akin to writing in thick woolly gloves.

Is this ringing any bells?

It is still a job sor a paediatric OT, but the advantage is that muscle exercises can tighten the joints - the muscles stepping into the job normally played by ligaments.

Also, the onset of growth spurts makes it a whole lot worse, because the hormones tell the joints to go floppier so the bones can grow. We are emerging out the other end, so even skiing which was unthinkable at 13/14 is back on the to-do list.

Also, if on google, bear in mind that Hypermobility Syndrome is quite different from having some hypermobile joints.

Far more people have some hypermobile joints than have hypermobility syndrome

And hypermobility syndrome is a full spectrum, like cancer, from a cancerous mole removed aged 10 and die of something else ages 99 - through to more severe stuff.

So no need for a spike in your blood pressure!

It seems all my kids are hyper mobile but the eldest isn't dyspraxic because he has good co ordination.

OT is really great for ideas. They only have a few things we can't do at home.

Even things like colouring is good exercise. My ds tires quickly as he grips the pen too tight to get the right level of feedback. Pen grips are a god send. Nice and easy to get hold of two.

Another thought is loom bands. My ds really struggled to master them as it's very fiddly. But over time that's a good excercise he's quite happy to do by himself. If you can stand the plastic bands all over the place.

Hamma beads where you make the pictures that you iron to seal them. You can get chunky or fiddly. Both my boys live both of these activities. You can make minecraft like pictures with hamma beads. Supposed to be good for maths too.

Hope he masters it soon.

I second getting a referral to OT. They will give you putty exercises and may even be able to sell you the putty cheaper. DD has yellow putty but I think different colours offer different resistance but I could be wrong.

Try cutting shapes with scissors and practicing tying shoe laces. Bead threading is another one suggested by DD's OT.

TBH the exercises don't appear to have helped DD. Awkward as her sport is ice skating and she can't do her boots up herself.

You may find school life is better once your son is at secondary. DD is allowed to do a lot of her work on computer instead of writing.

hi thanks again everyone. interesting point on hypermobility - my friend often nags me about it as i have many of the signs of this myself which led to way too much extreme yoga in youth and now things like waking up with a mildly dislocated jaw that hangs around for a week or two before it seems to go back into place and fun things like that. not much to indicate it in my son but i'll go back and think about this again given i'm guessing it runs in families.

we do do colouring and i've found if i sit and do it with him and don't push him to do it for too long and take breaks he's getting more able and willing itms. we tried loom bands and it nearly killed and me which made me wonder if whatever it was that is his issue was maybe and issue i shared and why i had hated things like sewing so much as a kid we'll try again but they were really way way too small for us and think we need to start with something larger scale.

ds is not in school, i took him out nearly a year ago and i work freelance and we're currently overseas for a few weeks and he's pretty much taught himself to play chess and is into that at the minute though typically frustrated too by it as obviously it's a 'it takes practice and patience' game not speed which most 7yo boys struggle with so main fine skills task going on currently is with using cutlery or opening a little sachet of sugar or trying to sprinkle the sugar evenly over a pancake etc which as i say it i'm aware for many people would be something they had their children mastering in toddlerhood.

i really liked my son's health visitor and she has been everything from a midwife to district nurse to health visitor in her career and i'd love to talk to her as a starting point but i don't suppose i can access her with ds at the age he is.

badger you sound hypermobile to me - the semi-dislocations are a pretty good sign.

I hated sewing so much I wrote poems about how much I hated it - I won a prize for one of them!

And now DD is doing all exams on a laptop, and has a room to herslef as just sitting on the chair for that length of time is too much. The room has a firm sofa and a giant beanbag as well as a chair so she can switch positions.

The thing for exams is rest breaks rather than extra time. Obviously if it hurts, having extra time just makes it hurt more.

So even at pre-exam stage, get the school to look at rest breaks, and make sure that n0-one tells DC off for things that aren't his fault. It is demoralising for anyone.

My son has fine motor difficulties and i agree with others about getting an OT assessment.
My son is still unable to use a knife and fork together at the age of 10. He can use a fork but not a knife. So far we have tried 'hand over hand', 'caring cutlery' (which i love), foam tubes over cutlery to make it more easy to grip and school are currently getting him practice knife and fork use by getting him to cut up play-doh.
DS has ASD and is very very stubborn and does not like anybody trying to correct his cutlery use which is why some of these methods have not worked. The caring cutlery was probably the best for him so far, although school haven't updated me about how the play-doh cutting is going yet.
These are all strategies that the OT gave us to try.

general q - are these all strategies to try and speed up a delay that would catch up eventually anyway or with the theory that unless these props are put in place these skills would never come into play?

In DS's case the strategies are there to teach him the skills in the first place and not to help speed anything up. They don't expect DS to be able to learn these skills himself, for him it needs to be taught.

so not so much developmental delays as things that didn't organically develop but need help 'to' develop?

Yes i would say so. It's not a delay at all, it's more a case of he can't do it. He has had OT input from the age of 4 and still can't do it, if it was a delay then he would have caught up or made some progress by now.
We've tried a strategy then had a break from it, then tried a different one then had another break. If the play-doh doesn't work then i might try the caring cutlery again because it did actually position his in the correct place but it depends whether DS will use it as he doesn't like to be different.
He knows he has difficulties with cutlery and he doesn't like to be corrected on it so that is part of the battle. But even when left to his own devices he still hasn't managed to figure it out himself over the past 6 years.

In my sons case it's neither. With Dcd it's not that ds can't do things or learn organically, just that's very hard for him. Things hurt to so there's little insentive to keep trying.

My dd - the floppy-joints-hypermobility thing is inherited - but as she got older, the activities that were expected were more complex, and the more apparent it became. The gap between dd and her classmates was widening even though she herself was improving slightly year on year.

So the therapy is just to build up the muscles so that they can tighten up the joints, ie make up for the under-performance of the ligaments.

Whether it is putty etc for the fingers, or larger movements for knees etc the exercises are all just a neat to get her body to perform more in line with expectations.

The other stuff is to reduce the demands on the body - eg touch typing, shaped cutlery, adapted pencil grips etc.

With most SEN/disability there are 2 things to think about :-

1. how can we change the person to make them have fewer needs (eg exercises) and
2. how can we change the learning environment to make it easier - eg touch typing etc

NOW my ds is dyspraxic, so it was

1. get exercises to improve the way his brain worked eg fine motor-visual work, some games like rush hour and neuro-stimulating exercises
2. change the learning environment by moving to touch typing and pencil grips.

In both cases the first job was to get teachers to stop telling them off for things that they couldn't help. Took a term or more, but well worth the fight - and the kids seeing me fighting for them helped them to get their confidence back.

Hope this helps

it does thank you.

i have some pondering and things to try when i get home.

i think pen grips were mentioned - are those things you can buy to put on any pen? sounds a cheaper option than buying specialist pens and sounds like something ds would find less of an issue than me giving him a special pen if so.

same with the cutlery - could see the cutlery someone linked to made sense but i can imagine ds being offended and thinking it was 'for babies' from his view point

Pen grips you can buy on the high street for just chunky ones that make it easier to grip. You can get ones that show where to place fingers etc off the net.

My ds said the cutlery was for babies. I said " it's not for babies, it's for hyper mobile ( but here I said dyspraxic) kids. No one can see you using them at home so can you please just try" he did and agreed they felt easier to use.

As ds has Dcd he has low muscle tone as well. Excercise helps his low musle tone but it can never cure it. He will always have low tone as it's part of the dyspraxia / Dcd thing. He's conective tissue, nerves and musle is not the same as everyone else's.

We got round the dd 'baby cutlery' problem by producing steak knives.

I heard of someone who just stuck some rubber bands on the handle to increase the ridged feel, so it was less conspicuous.

Also, the pencil grips that were great for DS (dyspraxia) were terrible for DC (hypermobile) as they reduced the stimulus into the fingertips.

She wants a ridged biro where her finger tips can press down on the actual ridge - if I could find something with lots of sharper points all around, that would be great. They have pencils with little bumps on in standard UK stationers, she just needs her bumps much spikier!

So it will be a fair bit of trial and error I'm afraid.
And touch typing of course, and maybe voice to text software, or you writing his creative work for him

Lots of help out there

this has got me thinking about my pickiness about pens. there are some i really can't use/dislike/find hard and there are some that 'just right' goldilocks style. whether it's the hypermobility or something else i think it's hereditary. he is the same as i was with food and sensory stuff as well - unconnected i think but interesting how similar things are.