Fine motor development

After reading chapter twelve, I began to wonder how learning about fine motor movement would benefit me in my future career as a physical therapist, so I looked up the medical definition of physical therapy. According to MedicineNet.com, physical therapy is a branch of rehabilitative health that uses specially designed exercises and equipment to help patients regain or improve their physical abilities. A Physical therapist works with many types of patients, from infants born with musculoskeletal birth defects, to adults suffering from after-effects of injury, to elderly post-stroke patients. And then I realized the relation of this chapter to my future career. If a child is born with neuromotor impairment or a musculoskeletal disorder it can impair the child’s fine motor development which could later affect the child’s performance in school, sports, and daily living. As a physical therapist, it would be my job to observe and evaluate a child’s skill for playing, school performance, and daily activities and compare them to what is developmentally appropriate for their age. If the child seems to be behind developmentally, it would be my job to construct a series of exercises to help the child develop simple fine motor movements like grasping and releasing toys and eventually work up to developing and perfecting handwriting skills. This all then ties into why this chapter matters. If we don’t build and establish our fine motor movements we can’t advance in our motor behavior. It’s like the foundation of a building, without it the building can’t be constructed. Take immature grasping for example, if a child can’t grasp a ball or pen then they won’t be able to learn how to throw the ball or write because you have to grasp and hold the ball before you can throw it, and you have to grasp and hold the pen before you can write. It’s delays in fine motor movements such as those that can have adverse affects on a child’s school performance, athletic abilities, and daily living performance later on in life. Like the saying goes “You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what it is”, so if you aren’t familiar with fine motor development you won’t recognize a problem when it occurs.