Motor development of early childhood (toddlers) aged 1

The motor skills of toddlers are one aspect of early childhood development that needs attention. Motor skills are divided into two, namely gross and fine motor skills. How is the development of toddlers aged 1-5 years from the motor aspect? The following is a complete explanation of the motor skills of children aged 1-5 years.

What is motor development in early childhood?

Quoting from Help Me Grow, motor skills are activities that involve children using the muscles in their bodies. Motoric children under five are divided into two, gross and fine motor skills.

Gross motor skills are movements that a child does that involve large muscle groups, such as arms, legs, calves, or the entire body of the child. So, gross motoric movements of toddlers include crawling, running, jumping, throwing, and catching the ball.

Then what about fine motor skills? Launching from Understood, fine motor skills are motor movements of children under five that involve small muscles in the child's body, such as the hands, fingers and wrists.

Examples of fine motoric movements of children include scribbling paper, drawing, wagging their thumbs, and arranging blocks into towers. Apart from motor skills, this activity is also included in the cognitive development of toddlers.

How is the motor development of early childhood?

The motor skills of toddlers vary from age to age, so you need to monitor the extent to which your little one can use his muscles to move.

The following is an explanation of the gross and fine motor skills of early childhood, starting from 1-5 years.

Early childhood development: 1-2 years

In children aged 1-2 years, fine and gross motor development includes:

Rough motoric

From the gross motoric aspect, children aged 1 year can stand on their own, although not too long ago. To walk, children start learning and exercising from 11 months of age and fluently at 18 months of age.

Based on the graph from Denver II, children aged 12 months or 1 year can move their body, starting from rolling over, on their stomach, then trying to stand up on their own.

Approaching the age of 2 years, early childhood motor development is getting better with the ability to jump, kick, and throw a ball.

Fine motor

Your little one often picks things up in front of him? It includes fine motor development in early childhood.

At the age of 1 year, children can reach or take objects that are nearby. In addition, he was also able to grasp objects in his hands. However, it will still take time to learn to put a toy into its place.

By the age of 2 years, he is able to stack blocks up to 6 levels, arrange objects vertically, and open book sheets.

Early childhood development: 2-3 years

The following is a further explanation of the development of gross and fine motor skills for children aged 2-3 years.

Gross motor skills

At the age of 2 years or 24 months, children are more active, which indicates that their gross motor skills are well developed.

In the Denver II child development chart, it is shown that toddlers' motor skills are in the very good category, when they are able to walk backwards, run, throw a ball, and even jump.

He is also able to pick up items on the floor by bending his knees like he is squat or squat.

At the age of 30 months or 2 years and 6 months, your little one has learned to balance the body by lifting one leg for 1-2 seconds. This is one of the motor skills of toddlers.

Fine motor skills

What about the fine motor skills of a 2 year old child? A sign that a child has good fine motor skills is that he likes to scribble on a child in books or other media that he uses frequently.

At this age, the child's eyes and fingers are able to coordinate well, so that the child's scribbles are clearer and can make a shape even though it is not clear.

In addition, the Denver II chart also shows that the fine motor skills of children at the age of 2 years and 6 months are becoming more proficient in arranging wooden blocks into a tower. Initially only 2-4 levels, now increased to 6 to 8 levels.

Early childhood motor development: 3-4 years

Motor development of children under the age of 3-4 years for gross and fine motor skills, namely:

Gross motor skills

When the child is 3 years old and the child's movements are more active, it is a sign that their gross motor skills are well developed.

The Denver II chart shows that by age 3, your child is fairly fluent in balancing by lifting one leg for 1-2 seconds. In fact, he is trying to increase the duration of 1 second, to 3 seconds.

The gross motor skills of a 3 year old child are able to climb and run according to their wishes.

The ladder is also a place to play to climb one rung to another.

Fine motor skills

If your little one is scribbling more often and has fun playing with crayons, this is a sign that the child's motor skills are well developed.

At the age of 3 years, children begin to learn to imitate or copy other people's pictures, such as squares, triangles, circles, and others.

At the age of 42 months or 3 years and 6 months, children begin to learn to draw people with 6 body parts, such as head, hands, feet, fingers, eyes, nose, ears.

The way your child holds the crayon also gets better, by holding the crayon between their thumbs and their other fingers.

Blocking is one of the fine motor skills that a 3 year old child has. He has been able to arrange the blocks into a tower by using 6-8 higher beams. This is a way to keep the child focused.

Early childhood motor development: 4-5 years

The following are gross and fine motor skills in children aged 4-5 years.

Gross motor skills

How active is a 4 year old toddler moving? At this age, the child is able to balance his body when running, so the risk of falling is smaller than the previous age.

The child's imagination also plays while running, sometimes he imagines dribbling in the middle of the field in a match.

Correspondingly, the Denver II chart shows that the child's balance is also getting better. He is able to lift one leg for 1-4 seconds without falling. Your little one can jump around while walking like a rabbit.

Fine motor skills

The child's independence and focus will get better when doing activities at the age of 4. At this age, children are able to cut paper following a pattern or dotted line as a guide.

In addition, children have also been able to imitate pictures made by other people, and have even started to try to draw humans, complete with limbs. For example, the head, hands, feet, fingers, eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

He is also able to hold his own spoon when eating toddler food. In fact, the child's meal schedule is also more regular.

Early childhood motor development problems

At the age of 1 year, motor development problems that are often encountered are the condition of the child who is difficult or afraid to walk. What causes the child to walk late? Launching from Patient, there are several things that cause children to be late for walking, namely:

Effect of motor skills

In some cases, children who walk late are influenced by motor skills from genetic factors. If your child is running late, chances are there are family members who have experienced the same thing before.

This does not mean a child is disabled or left behind. All motor skills are running fine and normal, it's just too late compared to other friends and this is not a danger.

In addition, children who are late for walking can also be caused by developmental disorders. It could be that the child is not only late in walking, but also late in the development of gross, fine motor, language, and social skills.

Patient explained that this condition can be affected by hypotonia (low muscle tone which makes the body weaker) and dysmorphic (psychological disorders when a person is anxious about their physical appearance and feels they have a physical disorder). This can cause the child to walk late.

Environmental factor

Not only medical factors can cause impaired early childhood motor development, but environmental and habitual factors. Some of them:

Infections (eg, meningitis, encephalitis, cytomegalovirus)
Head injury
Malnutrition or poor nutrition
Rickets or bone disorders caused by a deficiency of vitamin D, calcium and phosphate
Obesity and hip dysplasia has not been proven to hinder the development of a child's path
Baby walkers have little effect on children's walking development
The habit of putting children in a baby crib

In very extreme cases, the custom or tradition of placing children on a mattress or crib makes the child's gross motor skills untrained.

How to hone children's motor development at an early age

If you feel that your toddler's motor skills should be trained, there are several ways you can do it.

We recommend that you train your little one's motor skills according to age so as not to interfere with the child's growth and development. Here's how to train motoric children aged 1-5 years:

Children aged 1-2 years

How to hone fine motor development in early childhood? Here are some things you can do:

Train gross motor skills

At the age of 1-2 years, children are happy to learn to walk and run. You can train your little one's gross motor skills by inviting him to a larger space such as a city park.

If your little one seems insecure or reluctant when learning to walk, lure him to take a step by keeping the toys at a distance he cannot reach. This is the same method when fishing a child to crawl.

When he tries to reach the toy, tell him the direction. Whether to the right or to the present. Apart from being a therapy for late children, this is also useful for training coordination between the hands and brain of children.

Train fine motor skills

Children aged 1-2 years are fond of many colors, you can use them to train fine motor skills by drawing.

Quoting from Understood, drawing can improve eye-hand coordination when holding crayons or colored pencils.

Practicing holding the color tool is also a way for your little one to practice controlling the use of the object he is holding.

You can also give your child healthy snacks so he can practice grasping something.

Children aged 2-3 years

Ways that can be done to improve gross and fine motor development for early childhood 2-3 years, are:

Train gross motor skills

At the age of 2, children are very interested in dancing and singing. To train your little one's gross motor skills, you can invite him to play war games in the yard or garden.

Share the roles with the child, for example the child becomes a prisoner and you become the catcher. Then let your child run around trying to get caught.

Train fine motor skills

Make children and color tools as friends. You can train your child's fine motor skills by inviting them to draw together using crayons or colored pencils.

Let your little one express themselves with the strokes he made, slowly give examples of clear drawing shapes. For example, a picture of a cat, dinosaurs, or a place to eat that he often uses.

Children aged 3-4 years

Source: My Kids Time

Here's how to train the gross and fine motor skills of children aged 3-4 years:

Train children's gross motor skills

Do you feel that your little one is too often silent and his gross motor skills are not well-honed? Take the kids to the park with their friends and let them run and climb.

At this age, children already feel happy playing with their peers. So that the presence of children his age can lure your little one to be more active.

However, make sure to continue to supervise children's activities and make sure the children's play area is safe.

Train children's fine motor skills

If you see that your child's fine motor skills need to be honed, there are several ways you can do it, one of which is playing with candles.

On the Understood website, it is explained that the movements of forming wax, cutting, and printing wax are examples of fine motor skills that can be practiced and developed again.

This activity is also included in sensory training and avoiding learning disorders in children.

Children aged 4-5 years

How to train gross and fine motor skills at the age of 4-5 years old, namely:

Train gross motor skills

You don't need to look for activities outside the home, you can train your child's gross motor skills by dancing.

Play your little one's favorite song, then make agile movements to the beat so your child can follow along. Dancing is able to help in terms of balance and coordination in every movement.

Train fine motor skills

Sponge can be a tool to train toddlers' motor skills. Other supporting tools needed are water, a clean sponge, and two bowls. How to play, fill 1 bowl with water and leave the other plate empty.

After that, allow your child to soak the sponge in a bowl filled with water and transfer it to an empty bowl. This simple game can improve children's motor development at an early age.

When to worry and take your child to the doctor?

Parents need to be vigilant when an 18 month old child cannot walk at all. To determine the child's ability to walk, pay attention to the child's motor skills.

Another important thing to remember is that children born prematurely have a different line of development from children born at the appropriate gestational age.

Use the correct age according to the child's original date of birth. So, if your child is 14 months old but you gave birth 3 months earlier, it means that the age of the child according to development is 11 months.

If the child's age matches the expected day of birth, you need to be aware of the following things as a sign that the child is running late.