Detecting Fine Motor Delays
Do you wonder if your child is struggling with fine motor skills? Many kids learn very early on how to compensate for delayed skills. They also figure out saavy ways to avoid tasks that involve fine muscles. Because of this, it is difficult to detect if someone truly has fine motor delays.
Simply stated, fine motor is the use of the small muscles within the hand. It is hard to detect delays because people tend to compensate by hyperextending their joints, locking their joints into certain positions, using their gross muscles instead of their fine muscles, or stabilizing with external tools.
Signs of a Fine Motor Delay
- Using the body to hold an object as they open it, instead of holding it with their hands.
- Using whole arm to color or cut, instead of just fingers and wrist
- Fisted or whole hand grasp on utensils or writing instruments
- Avoidance or frequent complaining of tasks like coloring, building with blocks or Legos, drawing
- Complaint of fatigue or boredom with games, crafts, puzzles
When We Use Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor is oftentimes interchanged or only associated with handwriting. However, there are hundreds of other tasks that utilize the small muscles of the hands. And, handwriting skills incorporate much more than FM skills (such as visual, attention, core, posture). Some other tasks that involve FM skills are…
- Cutting and self feeding with utensils
- Opening and closing jars and containers
- Buttons, zipppers, snaps
- Tying shoes and knots
- Cutting with scissors
- Tearing paper
- Typing, texting
- Twisting a water bottle lid
- Using office tools like stapler, paperclips, tape dispenser
- Changing batteries
- Building and interlocking blocks
- Threading, stringing beads
- Locks/ keys
- Washing dishes
- Grooming tasks like shaving, trimming nails, washing face/ hair
Types of Fine Motor Skills
Fine Motor involves strength, dexterity and precision. The following areas are how therapists assess these skills into categories.
Hand Development
| Range of Motion | That each finger is able to move through it’s full range of movement |
| Finger Isolation/ Individuation | Moving each finger by themselves |
| Thumb Opposition | Touching the tip of the thumb against each of the other fingers |
| Wrist Extension | Performing fine motor tasks with the wrist extended and not flexed |
| Separation of the Two Sides of the Hands | The thumb side of the hand is for precision, the pinky side of the hand is usually the stabilizer that creates more power |
| Palmar Arch | Muscles form on each side of the palm, creating an arch while performing motor tasks |
| Thumb Webspace | The space formed when the thumb touches the tips of the other fingers |
Hand Skills
| Translation | Moving objects from the palm to the fingertips and back to the palm |
| Shift | Ability flex and extend the thumb and radial fingers to move an object within the hand |
| Rotation | Ability to rotate an object between the fingertips |
| Grasp | Holding objects with a variety of grasps depending on their function (ie- pincer grasp, tripod grasp, cylindrical grasp, etc) |
| Graded control and strength | Apply the necessary amount of pressure and force to create a desired function |
Improving Fine Motor Skills
When we break down FM skills into the above categories, it helps occupational therapists develop exercise programs to target specific delays. Repeating the difficult task can be too difficult and frustrating for an individual with a delay. Therefore, it is important to provide “just right” exercises and programs that build skills at an optimal pace for motivation and goal acquisition.
Check out our blog about using playdough for fine motor skills.
If you suspect a fine motor delay in yourself or someone you know, contact us! We would love to help you assess and develop a program to target possible delays.