Toddler Gross and Fine Motor Development

Typical Gross Motor Milestones

• Standing and cruising - Most toddlers are adept at these skills by their first birthday, while some are still learning. At first children use a wide stance and hold on to objects for balance while developing weight-bearing abilities.
• Walking - Once toddlers are expert at supporting their weight upright, they are ready to master the weight shifting needed for walking. As stated in Chapter Three, the average age for first steps is 11 months and 3 weeks. New walkers often look like baby Frankensteins with their awkward stiff gait and their arms extended straight for balance and safety. One-year-olds are usually such fast and efficient crawlers that they will often revert to all fours when walking is too slow or laborious. By 18 months or so, toddler walking is smoother and more refined. Children can now maintain their balance without support or constant falling. By 18 to 24 months, most toddlers can easily walk around objects, twist their heads and torsos, move up and down from the floor, carry or push/pull objects, run, and walk backward. While there is a wide range of normal, toddlers who aren’t walking by 18 months should be evaluated.
• Climbing - Toddlers seem driven to climb by their need to practice motor skills, their curiosity, and the new perspective height gives. Climbing can be dangerous since one- and two-year-olds lack the ability to judge stability and can easily be distracted or lose their balance. It is essential to provide safe climbing opportunities for toddlers since climbing, like all activities children seemed compelled to do, is necessary for development.
  
  Stairs require a certain climbing pattern that develops with time. At first toddlers, like infants, climb up on all fours and down by sliding feet first. Soon they are able to step on each stair with both feet, one at a time, while holding the railing or an adult’s hand.
• Motor planning skills - These increasingly complex movement sequences are possible when toddlers can integrate their body image with their knowledge of spatial relations and predict the results of their body’s physical actions. For example, a toddler approaching the edge of something will judge the distance and move accordingly (e.g., turn around to back off if it appears too high).
• Large motor playing - Once children have mastered the fundamental movements or rudimentary skills (such as walking) through lots of practice, they are able to focus their energy elsewhere. Now toddlers are interested in pushing and pulling things, riding toys, climbing in and out (or on and off), going over and under and through, swinging, and much more.

Toddler Fine Motor Development

• Eye-Hand Coordination - The ability to use the eyes to guide the actions of the hands develops in infancy and blossoms in toddlerhood. Between 12 and 16 months there is a dramatic surge in toddlers’ ability to coordinate visual and motor systems. At this stage, most children can easily use their hands bilaterally and separately (such as holding a container with one hand and using the other hand to open it).
• Pincer Grasp - This is the ability to hold an object between thumb and forefinger. It is a significant improvement on the palmar grasp of infancy. With this ability, toddlers are able to twist, pull, pinch, draw, poke, unzip, etc. The pincer grasp typically develops between 12 and 15 months.
• Playing - Toddlers’ new pincer grasp and improved eye-hand coordination open endless play possibilities. Favorite fine motor toddler toys include peg boards, simple puzzles, stacking/nesting cups, blocks, pop beads, and shape sorters. Children’s play becomes increasingly complex and purposeful as their abilities and interests grow.
• Scribbling/Drawing - The random scribbling of young toddlers soon progresses into more intentional drawing as children near their second birthdays. At around 16 months, most toddlers become really interested in scribbling with and on anything (learning the cognitive concept of cause and effect as well as practicing motor skills). Circles, simple patterns, and lines are examples of the beginning drawings children intentionally make. By 24 months most children are focused on the product of their coloring rather than only the movements of their bodies. See the handout on the Development of Drawing and Writing for more details.

Variations in Motor Development

• Individual variations - Variations occur due to a combination of environmental and genetic influences, including strength, opportunities for movement, self-care expectations, environmental opportunities, disposition, siblings and family factors, weight and build. For example, I have noticed over the years that children who are physically large or temperamentally timid often walk later than their smaller, more adventurous peers.
• Gender differences - Girls usually have better small motor control than boys, which also helps them to become verbal earlier since movements of the lips and tongue are also fine motor abilities. Early large motor gender differences are mainly due to the opportunities and encouragement children experience for demonstrating gender appropriate behavior. For example, do both girls and boys play with balls and dolls? Do parents adhere to strict gender roles? Do toddlers help both parents, or just the same gender parent, with tasks?
• Cultural differences - These are mainly seen in the type of motor skills that are encouraged. Voluntary movements are formed in response to what children experience. Safety, as much as variations in societal values, determines whether and which motor skills are promoted. One example is the Mexican Zinacanteco tribe, which actively discourages early infant mobility in order to keep babies safe from environmental dangers (Greenfield, 1992). Other cultures, such as our own, actively encourage large motor development (Ever hear parents brag about how early their baby walked?). The wide range of adult attitudes influences large motor progress.