Conference moira::parenting_v3

    Hi.  My son is 14 mo old and these are some of the things we are doing
    to develop FMS.
    
    Finger food is our best resource at this time.  He still likes to put
    everything in his mouth.  Cheerios and Kix are the best for us.
    Spoon feeding is also good to try at this time.  
    
    Coloring is another alternative.  Watch for eating crayons.  Markers
    are good for my son because he can't push hard enough on the crayon.
    Crayola makes a non-toxic, washable one.
    
    Some toys that are good are... Playschool Discovery Cottage and
    Schoolhouse, Baby's First Blocks and the Cash Register.  Anything where
    she has to put one item into a specific hole. The Cash Register also
    requires that they complete a series to retrieve the coin.
    
    Bristle blocks and the like where the put them together or building
    towers from blocks are very good and require precise hand control.
    
    I hope these help give you some ideas.
    
    Good luck,
    Corinne
    
    

    At that age, Steven's favorite fine motor skill was picking up
    ants off the floor.
    
    Most of the time he'd try to eat them, too, so I guess they also
    helped his eye-hand coordination.
    
    --bonnie

    Re .1 "watch for eating crayons".
    
    As long as you buy nontoxic crayons (most of them are labelled as such)
    there is no harm in kids eating them. My family doctor didn't recommend
    a full meal of them but said the worst that would really happen is
    colored poop!
    

    Try... 	threading blocks
    	      	puzzles, especially the ones with handles on the pieces
    		picking up any small objects between thumb and forefinger
    		scissors when older and following lines to cut
    		gluing in patterns (glue macaroni in a cirle, square, etc)
    		painting
    		definitely coloring
    		duplo blocks or any stick-together blocks
    		wooden blocks for towers
    		pick-up sticks (don't need to play the full game)
    		finger paints
    
    My son is now 2.5 but he started with most of these activities at about
    2, some prior. 
    
    Andrea

    Just a quick sidenote to .1, I recently went to SPAGS Schoolhouse,
    found a box of assorted color, water based markers there.  Each color
    had a scent related to something edible. (Brown=RootBeer,
    Red=Strawberry etc.)  Although they were clearly marked non-toxic and water
    soluable, I can't imaging something like that even bein marketable.  Think
    about it, if it smells like something good to eat Why not eat it!!  
    Hopefully these things will be banished before they create a problem!! 
    I don't recall seeing an age guide on the package either.  You know the
    thing that says from age "__ and up".
    
    Lyn
    
    

    
    
    
    
    
    
    RE .-1  
    
    My nephew is handicapped (deaf and mildly retarded) and goes to a 
    school with other children - some who are blind.  They use these markers 
    and they have been a wonderful tool for learning and identifying
    colors.
    
    Also, I would buy them for my 3� year old - but not for a much younger
    child.  I am certain Paige wouldn't try to eat a magic marker no matter
    how good it smelled!  However, when she has played with them (at a friends
    house) she did end up with lots of colored dots on her nose from
    sniffing too closely! :)  I think they are great.

    A lot of fine motor developement is actually muscle
    developement.  So, things that work best are things that
    require 'force' as well as 'fine control'.

    Our son is 4 1/2 and very 'gross motor'....very common
    for boys.  He was noted as having 3 1/2 year old hands, meaning
    that he is behind in fine motor development.  he is VERY strong,
    for example can climb anything, but clumsy with crayons.

    some recommended exercises are to get him some clothes pins
    and make a game of using them to pick things up (like...he's
    a crane and moving things around).  Also good are barbeque
    tongs (the old kind of bamboo ones?) for picking up blocks
    or toys.

    good luck
    bob

    
    
    Just an FYI...
    
    There is a definite correlation between fine motor skills and possibly
    reading readiness and crawling.  Those children who actually walk
    before they do a complete crawl on on fours, are more inclined to
    be developmentally young in these areas.  Boys are more inclined to 
    be this way more than girls.  
    
    
    					Darlene

Darlene (.8),

Do you have any hard statistics on this?  I had heard that tale before (Kati
walked before she crawled), and asked two pediatricians.  Both said it was
nonsense, so I didn't worry about it.  She's only 19 months old now, and *loves*
to read, but of course she makes up her own words to the books, so I don't know
if her reading will be affected later on.  I would be interested in some
documented evidence, if you have any!

Thanks,
Kristen

    RE:  275.5   I have some of those markers here in the office.  Bought
    them for a special 2-day meeting we had in July.  It was amusing to
    watch the different reactions to the scents!  Blueberry!  Licorice! 
    Strawberry!  
    
    I would never dream about having something like that around children...
    it's tough enough keeping the adults from eating them!!!

    
    
    
    Kristen (.9)
    
    I don't have any hard facts per se but was told this by my son's
    Transition teacher.  She has been teaching Transition at least three
    years in my son's school. 
    
    She asked me the question about the walking before crawling evidently
    because she may be doing her own informal survey.  I would think that
    someone in the teaching profession may be more up on this than a
    pediatrician.  Just as we would probably not ask a teacher a medical
    question, maybe the better source for this answer is someone in the
    teaching profession.
    
    In regards to your daughter, she does have less of a chance of being a
    young developer just because she is a girl.  Again, an observation from
    Doug's class and the Transition class before him, was that the classes
    were 2/3 boys and 1/3 girls.
    
    Just the fact that at 19 months, she wants to read is an encouraging
    sign.  Even though Doug was read to at that age, I do not remember him
    really sitting down and wanting to read.  He is showing much more of an
    interest in books at the age of 7 years than I have seen previously.
    Sometimes he'll even want to be read to in the morning now.
    
    
    					Regards,
    
    					Darlene
    
    
    P.S.  Sorry it took so long to answer.  I been way behind and am just
          catching up in this notesfile.  It's the only one I HAVE to read!
    
    

    In the 1960s there was a fairly widely accepted theory that certain
    cognative skills were fostered by the particular physical coordination
    required in crawling, and that if the crawling phase was brief or
    absent, would remain under-developed.  These skills also being
    necessary for reading, under-development would be reflected in delayed
    reading ability (though not long-term impairment).
    
    However, this theory has since been discarded.  Learning to walk
    without crawling is now taken to indicate a child who has learned to 
    walk without crawling.
    
    Properly speaking, this is not a question for either a teacher or a
    physician, but a cognative/developmental psychologist.  Some teachers
    and physicians follow research literature, and some don't.
    
    		- Bruce

    At what age can you expect a boy to be able to handle scissors? I'm not
    asking about the super child, just the average. Do you know?
    
    G

    I dunno if I had an average child or a super child, but Steven
    could manage a pair of blunt-nosed scissors well enough to mangle
    paper to his satisfaction at around 3.
    
    --bonnie

re: .13

I would think that a daycare provider would be a good person to ask.  I 
honestly don't remember.  

Clay

    re .13
    
    just yesterday i went to pick my son up at the day care (he is
    2 1/2) and he was sitting very intently with another boy using
    scissors which i have never let him use at home. so this was
    his first time using them. these were safe, rounded edge types, 
    however.
    
    when i questioned the teacher, she said this is age for those
    motor skills...and he was totally engrossed with what he was doing.

    I got some kid-scissors (for both right or left hand) for mine when
    he was 2.5 and he began using them right away. Amazingly, he has
    never tried to use them on anything but paper (so far).
    
    Lucy
    

    .17> some kid-scissors (for both right or left hand)
    
    I don't believe there's any such animal, for kids OR adults.  Did *you*
    try them with each hand?  How are they constructed?  My intense
    interest is "sinister" (though I happen to have learned to cut right-
    handed).
    
    Leslie

>    .17> some kid-scissors (for both right or left hand)
>    
>    I don't believe there's any such animal, for kids OR adults. 
    
    Sure there is, Leslie.  
    
    They're the kind that won't cut anything no matter which hand you
    use!
    
    --bonnie

    Oh, OK, and I have umpty-ump of THAT model around my house!
    
    The only thing I could think of, and I haven't actually *seen* any,
    would be a pizza-cutter type affair, where the wheel would be driven by
    some squeeze device... come to think of it, maybe I should copyright
    the idea!
    
    eilseL renlooW

    Kathleen could cut at 3 if someone else held the paper.  Now, 4 months
    later, she can hack up paper pretty well, but I haven't seen her cut
    out anything on purpose.
    
    Sally began cutting with her duckie scissors (the blades are the bill)
    when she was almost 4.  A few months later she could do it without
    moving her mouth to match the duck's (!)

   Actually, there are left handed scissors, but they are still sort
   of rare.  Usually, so-called left handed scissors are right handed
   scissors with the hand-grip molded the other way.  But we all know
   that they are pretty much useless, because part of how they should
   work depends on the orientation of the 2 cutting edges.
   
   But, back to the topic at hand... 
   
   re:  hasn't used them on anything else yet...
   
   Just wait!!  I recall having my scissor privileges revoked at one
   point because I tried to cut my own hair....  kids can be quite
   creative with enough time!!
   
   Tom (who learned to use right handed scissors out of necessity)

    .22>   Actually, there are left handed scissors, but they are still sort
       >   of rare.
    
    Tom, if that was directed at me, I was quesioning the existence of
    scissors that work equally well in *either* hand.  I know there are
    scissors made to be used with the left hand.
    
    > Usually, so-called left handed scissors are right handed
    > scissors with the hand-grip molded the other way.  But we all know
    > that they are pretty much useless, because part of how they should
    > work depends on the orientation of the 2 cutting edges.
 
    
    The left-handed scissors I'm talking about *do* have the cutting-edge
    orientation flipped (so you "push" out with your [left] thumb, instead
    having to "pull" as you would if you had rightie scissors in your left
    hand).
    
    But I cut rightie with rightie-scissors because way back a kazillion
    years ago real leftie scissors were hard to come by, so that was one of
    my concessions to the dextrous world.
    
    Leslie

    On those ambidextrous scissors...
    
    They're made by Fiskars, who make top of the line sewing scissors,
    and they're called Fiskars for Kids. The display at the store claimed 
    they work equally well on either left or right hand, which appealed to 
    me because Daniel hadn't (still hasn't) settled into one "handedness" 
    or the other. 
    
    The handles are molded for the right hand, but the reason they work 
    equally well on the left hand (they really do!) seems to be that the 
    blades are riveted together very tightly. Also they are light in
    weight, and pretty sharp (with blunt ends, of course).
    
    So all in all, I recommend them. They weren't super expensive either.
    
    Lucy

I remember when Maggie was in pre-school at age  4 they noted on her 
progress report that we should work with her on her scissors skills - 
that it was a fine motor skills milestone they look for to be developed
by that age.  Maggie would hold them all the way down on her finger 
and thumb making them difficult to control.  Curious since she was 
very advanced in fine motor development by other indicators.  She was 
probably almost 4 1/2 by the time she was really proficient.  

Brian, on the other hand, has been good with scissors since about 2 3/4.
He has only given himself a haircut once and sliced only one placemat.
:-}.

Norma