Developing motor skills

There are many things you can do to help your baby’s motor skills develop from a very early stage.

All babies are born with a grasping reflex which will cause them to grip onto anything placed in the palm of their hand, and this reflex must disappear before they can start to experiment with reaching out for and grasping particular objects. When not gripping onto your finger for dear life, your baby’s hands will be curled tightly into fists for most of the time.

Touching and manipulating
You can start to encourage your baby to begin touching and holding objects once her initial grasp reflex has disappeared and her hands start to open out at around 6 weeks. Try placing different-textured objects across her palms to stimulate her interest – tickle her palms, or play games such as “round and round the garden”. By 3 months, your baby will start to try reaching out for things, so give her safe, accessible things to experiment with – a string of toys across her pram or cot, for example. Start encouraging her to try holding objects – something interesting that makes a noise, like a hand-held rattle, is more likely to hold her attention.

Once your baby starts to be able to touch and hold toys (and put them in her mouth!) from around 5 months onwards, she will enjoy ones with different interesting textures, or which make a sound when crumpled, pressed or shaken – these will help her to start making the connection between her actions and the resulting effect. Rattles, squeaky toys or toys which light up or play tunes when buttons are pressed or kicked are all fascinating for babies and will all help to develop her motor skills.

At around 9 or 10 months your baby will start to master the art of releasing her grip on an object. This is when babies develop a perverse delight in dropping everything they can on the floor and throwing their toys around the room, but it also means that they can start to manipulate objects in a more sophisticated way, putting one building block on top of another, for example, or posting objects into a container.

By the age of one your baby will have mastered the “pincer” grip of thumb and forefinger, which will enable her to do many more things, such as turning the pages of a book or picking up small objects. You can start introducing her to pencils and crayons – she won’t yet be able to hold them properly but will enjoy holding them and scribbling. See our video Games to play with an older baby for more ideas.

Feeding herself
From around 6 months onwards, your baby will probably want to try feeding herself or holding her milk bottle or juice cup – at this stage, you’ll probably want to invest in a cup which is robust and won’t leak when dropped or tipped up inexpertly. Experiment with safe finger foods which she can easy hold, such as carrot sticks, small pieces of cereal, breadsticks, rusks, pasta twists, or sticks of soft cheese. Getting food into her mouth is a powerful incentive to practise that hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills!

Dressing herself
Your baby may have become adept at removing her socks and sunhat at an early age, and by 18 months will probably be keen to try dressing and undressing. She may be able to pull on a simple elastic-waisted skirt or loose top, for example. Shoes may be a little hard for her, but you can try getting shoes with simple Velcro fastenings which she can do up and undo once you’ve put the shoes on her feet - give her the opportunity to try out her skills and gain a little independence.