A Parent’s Guide To Gross Motor Development
Gross motor development is very important for child development. Therefore, it is essential that parents help their children to develop correctly through activities and movements and, above all, by understanding what they are and why they are so fundamental to the lives of little ones or anyone else.
The process that children go through to learn to lift their heads when they are babies, run when they are children, until they actually play a sport at school is known as gross motor development. Gross motor skills are an important part of children’s overall physical development.
Gross motor development
Children develop gross motor skills when they learn how the body works and how they can move and control it. Gross motor skills must be developed during childhood, until the first years of elementary school.
During early childhood, it is important for children to develop skills such as muscle strength, balance, core strength, postural control, endurance and coordination. Children naturally grow from the center of the body outwards. That is, they first need to increase strength in the trunk and abdomen before developing it in the arms and legs.
Therefore, fine motor skills, such as finger strength and control, depend primarily on the development of children’s gross motor skills.
In this sense, the latter can be developed in various ways during childhood, mainly through free play. Thus, planning movement activities to do with your children allows you to work on specific skills, such as balance or actions such as catch and throw.
Why is gross motor development important?
Later, if children do not have well-developed gross motor skills, certain limitations may arise:
- Little concentration in class.
- Little awareness and body control.
- Difficulty writing.
- Difficulty sitting at a table.
- Incorrect posture, balance and coordination.
- Avoid sports and physical activities.
Over the years, a trend has developed to replace children’s free play hours with all sorts of extra activities. It is understandable that you would want to take your children to swimming lessons or occasional extracurricular activities, but it is not necessary for a 4-year-old to take art classes, multiple dances, ball skills, etc.
These activities are replacing the free time children have to play, which is vital for the development of their gross motor skills. As for screen time, although it is currently impossible to completely prevent children from being exposed to them, as a parent, you can control how much time is spent on new technologies.
That way, your 3-year-old doesn’t have to sit at the tablet all afternoon. He must have been running around in the yard or playing mischief somewhere. I should be learning. Any online program your child follows, no matter how incredible, is not a justifiable substitute for play. In short: the more your children play freely, the more they will learn.
Activities for gross motor skills
There are two main ways to develop your child’s gross motor skills:
- Activities guided by adults.
- Free game.
When children play freely, they develop many gross motor skills, such as:
- Run, walk, chase.
- Crawl, lift, reach.
- To jump.
- Capture, pull, push.
- Hitting, hitting, passing, rolling.
- Climb, hang, hold.
- Balance and coordination.
Additionally, adult-led activities are also a great way to teach motor skills. So this means playing with your child. This is why extracurricular activities, such as dance lessons, are also part of adult-led activities and can be valuable when done sparingly and when free play time is not overly substituted.
Offer opportunities for gross motor development
As a mother or father, you must be able to provide endless opportunities to develop these skills at home. So try to find a balance between doing activities of this type and playing with your children, as well as letting them play independently.
So, when choosing an activity to do with your child, choose a specific skill to work on. Here are some examples: body awareness, eye-hand coordination, balance, agility, strength …
In any case, it is important that you are aware of the importance of your child’s gross motor development. That way, you can offer him activities that will help him improve this aspect of his development.
In addition, if at any time you notice that your child is having some type of difficulty in gross motor development, it is important to consult the pediatrician to clarify any doubts and concerns that may arise in this regard. This can be useful in order to find a solution to the situation of developmental difficulty that your child may have at some point.
