I have been reading up on Sensory Processing Disorder in children to learn how parents can identify and seek help if we notice children having difficulty in these areas. It has always been an area of interest to me and I do have a soft spot on helping children to achieve their potential.
Children with Sensory Processing Disorder may have problems with mastering fine motor skills which are useful in daily life which we often take for granted like dressing ourselves, tying shoe laces, painting, even simple things like holding a pen.
While Ashton is fairly bright and mix well with his classmates, his teachers used to comment that he needed improvement in both gross and fine motor skills. We were fairly worried when we received this comment. And my mil immediately rushed to Popular bookstore to buy colouring and writing books for Ashton. My fil also searched the bookstore for pen/pencil grip that can teach him the correct way of gripping a pen/pencil.
Under my inlaws' patience and guidance in getting him to do colouring everyday, he has improved a lot! On weekends, we also let him tried using a scissor to cut out lines and patterns. We have so many scissors at home now! He also does his weekly colouring book using watercolour. From these activities we realised that Ashton loves colours and he is very unconventional. Example, if the picture shows that the kangaroo is brown, most likely Mummy will follow and paint it brown on the side which has no colour. Ashton will colour in different shades of brown, orange, yellow and even blue. The colour that he dislikes most is black! He said black is dirty : )
We were so glad when after several weeks of coaching, his teachers have commented that Ashton is a lot more independent and has shown tremendous improvements in his fine motor skills. This goes to show that spending time to guide our children is important and rewarding.
Some of the things that we have used are also listed in many articles that are suggested to improve fine motor skills.
1) Playdoh
2) Pencil/Pen grip
3) Colouring and learning how to paint inside the line
4) Joining of dots
5) Use of paintbrushes
6) Use of kids' scissors to cut along lines, cut off corners
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