Growth & Development

Let’s Stimulate Your Children (Part 1)

Morinaga Platinum - 6 December 2019

When your children were born into the world, Moms and Dads must have a lot of wishes for your children to grow and develop well. As they grow, they will also learn more abilities.

 

Well, those abilities will not develop without stimulations from both of you. Some aspects of stimulation that Moms and Dads need to do are for their gross and fine motor skills.

 

Gross motor skill is a movement ability that involves a large group of muscles. For example, ability of babies who can only tilt their body to the left and right and finally able to walk as they get older.

 

Meanwhile, fine motor skill is a movement ability that involves several small muscles. This is related to the activity of placing or holding an object that uses fingers when the babies aged less than to 1 year old.

 

Here are some examples of rough and fine motor skills according to the babies’ age:

 

Rough Motor Skills:

Age 0-3 months

  • Rolling or turning from prone to stomach position or vice versa with Moms’ help

 

Age 4 months and above:

  • Your babies start to lift their legs up high while lying down
  • Playing with their feet includes kicking
  • Moving in various directions while in a stomach position
  • Lifting their chest and head for a few minutes without help

 

Age 7-12 months

  • Sitting without help
  • Crawling
  • Standing up without help
  • Walking with help
  • Imitating a movement of rolling or throwing a ball
  • Trying to propagate to reach an object

 

Fine Motor Skills

Age 0-3 months

  • Stretching their palms and trying to hold an object

 

Age 4-6 months

  • Both hands are touching each other
  • Reaching an object around them
  • Taking a small object with their five fingers
  • Moving the object from one hand to another

 

Age 7-12 months

  • Reaching out something
  • Gripping
  • Inserting an object into the mouth
  • Touching an object using thumb or one finger
  • Moving an object with their hands
  • Dropping an object and picking it up

 

From those examples of gross and fine motor skills at each stage of age, Moms also need to observe what your children do. This is because when they reach the age of 7-12 months, they will have great curiosity and they will use their instinct to observe and find out about something. Therefore, Moms need to pay attention to any harmful objects around them. It is better to avoid unwanted things happen to your children. Happy playing with your children, Moms!

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