Take a minute to appreciate your baby’s progress so far

Isn’t it fascinating what your baby can do now? All these months they have been practising and learning about how to move and coordinate their hands and fingers. Now they have such great control. Your baby has followed lots of different developmental processes to arrive here, let’s look at their progress so far... 

Up, up and away 

Defying gravity – we must start here.  

Before your baby could gain any kind of control of their arms, hands and fingers, first they had to work out how to lift their arm up and then their body. This is an enormous feat, as all gravity wants to do is pull us down. 

Vision 

Your baby has progressed from learning to focus, to visually locating an object, to trying to reach for it. 

Eye-hand coordination 

Your baby can now control eye movement in unison with hand movement. You will see them concentrate visually on an object and coordinate their muscles to pick up or manipulate it. 

Proprioception 

You may notice that they also have more of an awareness of their body and they now know where their hands are without looking for them. They may use their hands to guide their eyes, as well as their eyes to guide their hands. 

Posture 

Your baby has gained strength in their whole body which enables them to maintain many positions that allow them to play and explore. 

Gross motor muscles 

They have gained control over the larger muscle groups which makes the control of smaller muscles much easier to achieve. 

Raking movements and grasps 

Your baby developed their raking movements which in turn has led to the development of control in their fingers and thumbs.  

Ta da! 

Now all these steps have been completed, your baby is more able to make meaningful contact with objects and have more control when using and playing with them.

Pretty impressive, we're sure you'll agree!

Reference: 

[1] Goodway, J.D, Ozmun, J.C, Gallahue, D.L. (2021). Understanding Motor Development Infants, Children, Adolescents, Adults. Eighth Edition. Jones and Bartlett Learning.