Experts Say Decreasing Fine Motor Skills in Kids Could Be Real Problem

If you’re old enough to remember what the world was like before e-mail and pre-Internet, back when letters and school papers were mostly written by hand, you’re probably also old enough to remember a time when handwriting was something that just seemed to come naturally for most children.

But those times are gone, and with their disappearance has come a new era in which many children lack the fine motor skills of their predecessors and often struggle just to correctly grasp a pencil.

Dr. Andrea Chipego, director of student services and special education for the Radnor Township School District, said that referrals for occupational therapy to improve handwriting skills have been on the rise lately in the district.

The reason for declining handwriting skills, Chipego said, is difficult to pinpoint. But she said she believes that “part of the problem is that children are coming to school without the fine motor skills that they used to have. When they don’t have fine motor skills, it’s hard for them to handwrite.”

This generation of children tend to do fewer hands-on tasks such as writing, coloring, and using scissors, so they have fewer opportunities to hone the fine motor skills that they need to handwrite, Chipego said.

“They get tired more easily, and their pencil grasp is not very strong,” she noted. “It’s not so much about letter formation; it’s more about hand and lower-arm muscle strength.”

This decline in fine motor skills and hand strength can lead to many problems in students’ academic careers, Chipego explained.

“I think the problem comes in because there are many writing activities in school, and unless the child is treated early on or that gap is addressed, they’re going to have problems later on in their work.”

Dr. Maureen McQuiggan, the literacy coordinator for Radnor High School, agreed that these issues need to be addressed as early as possible.

“We need to catch some of the issues before they become a real problem,” McQuiggan said.

But are they really a problem? Some might say that handwriting is becoming increasingly unnecessary in an era dominated by keyboards.

Chipego said yes, it is a problem.

Students, she said, still need to use handwriting in their academic work from kindergarten on up, and there are plenty of other tasks that require strong fine motor skills.

“Anything you do with your hands–cutting, making things–[those activities] are dependent on fine motor skills and hand strength,” she said.

One of the steps Radnor schools have recently taken is implementing fine motor skills centers in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms to emphasize tasks that require good hand-eye coordination and hand strength: picking up marbles, threading things through small holes, and other activities.

Each kindergarten and first-grade classroom has access to a kit with all of those activities in it, and if a teacher feels that it’s needed, students can practice using those tools before going into an evaluation for occupational therapy. The district is also considering extending these activities to area nursery schools so that children can start practicing those skills even earlier.

“Our most involved step is that each building is now offering their Pencil Power Handwriting Club,” which is an attempt to “make [handwriting] fun,” McQuiggan said.

The club is a six-week program in which students receive specific instructions on how to hold and use a pencil. The district hopes the effort will reduce the need for occupational therapy for children.

Another step to encourage strong handwriting skills is a new writing program for first- and second-grade classrooms, which, McQuiggan said, “discourages teachers from modeling [writing] using a computer or SMART Board” (an interactive whiteboard).

“Students can’t visually see the whole editing process if they’re not erasing and writing. There’s a push back to pencil and paper.”

But schools can’t solve all of these issues alone, Chipego noted. Some of the responsibility lies with parents, who should encourage children to color, use scissors, and do other activities that require fine motor skills, she said.

“How many kids still have coloring books?” asked McQuiggan. “Children really don’t have those opportunities to use hand strength; [those activities] don’t happen with the same intensity that they did 10 or 20 years ago.”

But those opportunities, she argued, need to be made more readily available to children, or they may suffer the consequences later on.

“Much of what you do in kindergarten and first grade involves a pencil,” she said. “A six-hour day in first grade can be pretty long when you have weak hand strength and fine motor control. That’s your whole day.”