Tiny Tots Motor Skills At Nine Months

By Super Admin

Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 14:00

A new British study has found that tiny tots who do not achieve key developmental targets at nine months may find it hard to cope up with studies at school.

The Millennium Cohort Study saw researchers from London University's Institute of Education analysing the progress of 14,853 children, born in 2000 and 2001, from birth to five, to come up with this answer.

It was found that toddlers who were slow developing motor skills at nine months were more likely to be slow in their cognitive development, and also likely to be not well behaved at five years of age.

A number of vocabulary, spatial reasoning and picture tests were used to assess the cognitive development of kids at the age of five and they were compared to those from separate assessments years earlier.

The results at five were strongly related to the babies' abilities to motor development, such as crawling, and fine motor development like holding objects with their fingers, at nine months.

The researchers also discovered that reading out to children help a lot in enhancing 5 year old child motor skills.

Children who failed at nine months to reach four key milestones in gross motor development, relating to sitting unaided, crawling, standing and taking their first walking steps, were found weak on average in cognitive ability

"Delay in gross and fine motor development in a child's first year, which affects one in 10 children, was significantly associated with delayed cognitive development at age five. Delay in gross motor development also has a significant impact on the child's behavioural adjustment at five," Ingrid Schoon, professor of human development at the institute, says.

Step taken for good development of motor skills is very important for child's healthy growth.