Setting up Fine Motor Skills

Many children who have Sensory Processing Disorders, also have deficits in prerequisites for efficient emergence of fine motor skills:

  • Executive Functions
    • Attention
    • Task organization
    • Task maintenance behaviors / sustaining focus
    • Initiating/terminating activities
  • Postural control
    • coordinating muscles that control posture
  • Ocular motor control
    • coordinating muscles that control the eye balls
  • Developmental Prehension
    • Coordinating muscles that control hand and finger moves

Getting all of these domains working together to perform fine motor skills efficiently can be quite challenging.  Setting up the neuraxis by using preparatory tasks can often result in smoother transition to fine motor activities.

In this current example, the vestibular system has been targeted for activation due to its interaction with multiple sensory systems involved preparing the execution of fine motor skills.

Preparation

The youngster has been prepared for  an integrated visual motor task of  picking up pets from a bucket and placing them into rings of matching colors.  He has been

  • “Brushed” using the Wilbarger Therapressure Protocol
  • Wearing a weighted vest along with ankle weights
  • Hearing a selection of Therapeutic Listening

Execution

When he kicks off the wall to place a sand pet into a ring, his neuraxis has been primed for attention to task, visual fixation upon the target, postural extension, and aligned to center his body and extremities along a specific trajectory of movement.

 

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