While a child is growing, he/she goes through certain developmental milestones that invariable shape the chid into the person he/she becomes.
Few of the developmental milestones are Cognitive development, motor development, social development, emotional development and communication development. Out of all the above-mentioned developmental milestones, motor development in the children is regarded as the more crucial and important.
Let’s have a look at the details of this development.
What is Motor Development?
Motor development in children refers to the development of a child’s muscles, bones and their ability to move around in its environment. Generally, the motor development is divided into two sections – gross motor development and fine motor development.
Gross motor development: This development involves the development of the large muscles of a child. Basically, these muscles aid the child to walk, run, stand, and sit.
Fine motor development: The fine motor development in children involves the development of large muscles of their body such as muscles of the hand.
The motor development in children is crucial as it involves how well the child’s muscles work. It is also aids in the process and is referred to as muscle tone. A good posture, actions, walk, or even sitting postures are necessarily a result of how well the motor development in children has been in the early years.
The motor development in children is also responsible for the vestibular and proprioceptive systems. These two systems are a part of the sensory system of a child.
Vestibular system: It is a sensory system that provides the leading contribution to the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance.* It is located on the inner side of the ear.
Proprioceptive system: Proprioception is a process in which the body can vary muscle contradiction in immediate response to the incoming information regarding external forces, by utilizing stretch receptors in the muscles to keep a track of the joint position in the body.** This process generally involves coordinated functioning of the inner ear, the muscles, joints, and tendons. Also, the development of this system helps the child to understand how to maintain balance, posture and coordinate movements.
The motor development in children follows the order or sequence as given below:
- Generally, the development that occurs in this developmental milestone is from the inner body to the outer body. Which means the child will tend to gain control over their arms before the gain control over the fingers.
- Also, the developmental sequence is from top to bottom. The child will have to gain control over the head and neck before they develop other parts of their body such as the legs and feet.
There are the external factors also that support this development such as a balanced diet and good amount of physical activities. Speaking of diet nutritional powders such as Enfagrow A+ has a unique formula that supports muscles and bone development. Hence, including this nutritional powder in children’s diet will not only help them cope with the developmental milestones but, also give the required support to the development.