Motor Development

In
preschool and late childhood
 Motor development means the development of control
over bodily movements through the coordinated activity of
the nerve centers, the nerves and the muscles. This control
comes from the development of the reflexes and mass activity
present at birth. Until this development occurs, the child will
remain helpless. This conditions of helplessness changes
rapidly. During the first 4-5 years of life, the child gains
control over gross movements. These movements involve the
large areas of the body used in walking, running, jumping,
swimming and so on.
After 5 years of age, major development takes place in the
control of finer coordination, which involves the smaller
muscles groups used in grasping, throwing, catching a
ball, writing and using different tools.
With normal motor development the 6 year old child will
be ready to adjust to the demands of school and to
participate in the play activities of peers.
Principles of Motor development:
There are five important principles are there in motor
development.

1. Motor development depends on neural and

muscular maturation: Development of the different
forms of motor activity parallels the development of
different areas of the nervous system. Reflexes and mass
activity presents at birth gradually developed in to simple
patterns of voluntary activities which forms the basis for
motor skills.
2. Learning of skills cannot occur until the
child is maturationally ready: Trying to teach
the child skilled movements before the nervous system and
muscles are well developed will be waste of effort.
Ex. Cycling before child is ready to walk.
3. Motor development follows a predictable
pattern: Motor development follow the law of developmental
direction- There are two laws of the directional development.
•Cepholocaudal Law: Development spreads over the body
from head to foot. i.e. improvement in structure and function
comes first in head region and then in the trunk region and
lastly in leg region.

•Proximodistal law: Development spreads from near to

far-outward i.e. from the central axis of the body towards the
extremities.
•As per cephalocaudal law, sequence of motor
development shown first in head region, than in the
rest of body (head control, trunk control, leg
control).
•Motor development also follow proximodistal law.
In reaching for an object, the baby uses shoulders
and elbow before wrists and fingers.
4. It is possible to establish norms for motor
development: Because early development follows a
predictable patterns it is possible to establish norms based on
mean ages for different forms of motor activity. These norms
can be used as guidelines to enable parents and others to know
what to expect at what age. They can also used to assess
normalness of a child’s development. Norms for different
patterns voluntary activity such as sitting, standing, reaching
and grasping are used to assess the intellectual development of
babies.
5. There are individual differences in the rate
of motor development: even though motor
development follows a predictable pattern that is
similar to all but there are individual differences in
reaching different stages.
 Common motor skills of childhood:
Some motor skills are commonly found among all
children in a given culture because of similar learning
experiences and similar adult expectations.

•Hand skills : Control of the muscles of the arms,

shoulders and wrists improves rapidly during the childhood
years and almost reaches the adult level of perfection by the
time the child is 12 years old. Control of the fine muscles of
the fingers by contrast, develops at a slower rate.
 Of the many skills of childhood, those that have been
studied most commonly are self feeding skills, self
dressing skills, self grooming skills, writing, copying,
ball throwing and catching and block building. All these
studies, resulted in age norms at which different skills
are mastered.
These hand skills are learned and developed earlier
than leg skills. Hand skills are more in number than leg
skills.
 •Leg skills: After babies reach 18 months of age
motor development in the leg consists primarily of the
perfection of walking and the acquisition of related skills.
Before babies are 2 years old, they can walk side ways
and backwards. They can stand on one foot with help and
a year later without help. Between fifth and sixth years,
they can walk well enough to balance on a narrow plank
or follow a chalk line on the floor.
The leg skills that have received most scientific
attention are running, hopping, skipping, jumping,
climbing, swimming, tricycling and bicycling.
Motor Development during school age period
• During the elementary school years, the child learns many
new motor skills and also improves on those previously
acquired.
• During school age, motor abilities develops from general to
specific and simple to complex.
• Provide children freedom to experiment and practice a
variety of motor skills.
• Provide activities and equipments which encourage the use
of large muscles and fine muscles. eg. Jingle gym, slides,
rockets etc.
• Progressive gains are registered in the speed of running,
accuracy, distance of throwing, height and distance of
jumping, balancing etc.
• A two fold increase in strength occurs between 6-11 years
of age and remarkable increase in the speed of eye-hand
coordination.
Throughout late childhood, boys are superior to girls in
most of the gross motor skills such as climbing, jumping,
skipping, running, ball throwing etc.
By acquiring more motor skills child gain self satisfaction,
physical independence.
Children can achieve control over motor skills through-
1) Readiness of body to perform the activity.
2) Opportunity to practice.

Methods of learning motor skills-

3) Trial and error learning
4) Imitation
5) Training
Important Contributions of Motor Development:
• Achievement of skills indicated good physical health.
• Skill helps to release pent up energy or keep children engaged in
that activity (drawing, embroidery)
• Achievement of motor skills indicates their levels of independence.
• Some skills which require practice and reputation provide self
entertainment. (dancing, playing with musical instrument, cricket
etc)
• Group activities and certain gross motor skills having competitive
spirit helps for socialization.
• Achievements and rewards received for perfection in motor skills
increases self confidence, these intern it gives value for self
concept.
Motor fitness Components:
Children’s motor fitness is interrelated with
movement acquisition. The necessary components are:

•Coordination: Skills that requires considerable

amounts of visual inputs integrated with motor outputs.
Bouncing, catching, throwing, kicking, and trapping are
the main skills that needed coordination.
• Boys perform better in coordination activities than
girls.
• Year by year improvement with age will be there.
•Balance: The ability to maintain the equilibrium of one’s
body when it is placed in various positions and it is basic to
all movement. Vision play an important role in balance, use
of eyes enables the children to focus on a reference point to
maintain balance.
•for eg (young 6-7 years) children cannot balance standing on
one foot with their eyes closed-
Static balance: refers to the ability of the
body to maintain equilibrium in a stationary
position (standing on the foot).

Dynamic balance: refers to the ability to

maintain equilibrium when moving from one point
to another (walking on Beam balance)
•Speed: The ability to cover a greater
distance in as brief time as possible. Boys
and girls appear to be similar in running
speed skills at age of 6 and 7 years but
boys outperform girls age 8 onwards.
•Agility: is the ability to change the direction of the
body rapidly and accurately. With agility, one can make
quickly and accurate shifts in body position during
movement. It is most important in most sports and in
dancing. It is largely depends on the looseness of the
Joints and the abilities of the muscles to stretch and relax.
girls begin to level off after age 13, whereas boys continue
to improve.
•Power: Is the ability to perform a maximum
effort in as short a period as possible. This
combination of strength and speed is exhibited in
children’s activities that require jumping, striking,
throwing for distance etc. Boys outperform girls at
all ages.
Motor development in children :
5-6 years: flings out arms and legs as he walks, very active.
almost in constant motion play active games which involves
jumping, running, skipping etc. He can pull and push large pieces
of furniture, play things, climbs up and steps down many steps.
Able to bounce and toss up the ball. Child can enjoy walking,
balancing on fences, cuts and pasts papers, learns make boxes,
pockets out of paper etc. can copy latter drawn and paint the
picture.
7-8 years: Very active, repeats the performance persistently
enjoys, running, skating, rope jumping, catch and throw activities.
Interested in cricket carpentry work. Girls prefer dancing,
making dolls, colouring and attempts to sewing. Children can able
to copy small letters.

9-10 years: Body movement is more rhythmical and graceful.

Like to play in groups, follow the leaders, enjoys soft ball play,
cricket, foot ball etc,. Able to copy text from black board. Girls
prefer skipping / rope jumping games. Free movements while
painting enjoy folk songs and dances and playing musical
instruments, enjoys painting, can write all types of letters and text.
Girls can do Heming and interested in sewing also.
10-12 years: Enjoy playing all games and works hard.
Like to do anything until exhausted, such as racing bicycle,
running, skipping or playing ball. Interested in swimming and
water games. They have better control of own body speed but
not confident with automobile riding. Boys are interested in
team games and in learning to perform skillfully. Improves
hand writing, can copy maps, still pictures from printed books.
Girls interested in simple embroidery painting, knitting etc.
children can dress neatly and show interested in combing own
hair.
Functions of Motor skills:
Different motor skills play different roles in children’s
personal and social adjustments. They can be divided roughly

in to four categories according to the functions they serve in

the child’s personal and social adjustment.
•Self-help skills: To achieve independence, children must
learn motor skills that will enable them to do thing for
themselves. These skills include self feeding, self dressing,
self grooming and self bathing. By the time children reach
school age these skills should have reached the level of
proficiency to enable children to take care of themselves
with almost the speed and adaptive of adults.
•Social-help skills: To be an accepted members of a social
group either the family, the school or the neighborhood group,
the child must be cooperative member. Skills such as helping
with the work of the home, the school or the peer group will
win the acceptance of the group.

•Play skills: To enjoy the activities of the peer group or to

amuse themselves when away from peers, children must learn
play skill such as, ball play, roller skating, drawing, painting
and manipulating toys.
•School skills: Much of the work of the early school
years involves motor skills, such as writing, drawing, painting,
clay modeling, dancing etc.

Children who are better in these shills are better in

adjustment and greater in their achievement in academic as
well as the non academic areas of school work.
Handedness :
Handedness means the predominant use of one hand.
There are two criteria used to determine handedness.
1) Preference for one hand as compared with the other.
2) Proficiency or skill with which a person uses one hand as
compared with use of the other hand.

Children are said to be “right handed” if they use the

right hand most of the time and “left handed” if they favor
the left hand. Few children are so predominantly right or left
handed that they always use the preferred hand.
People are regarded to as “ambidextrous” or as it is
sometimes called mixed handed if they use both hands
equally well and approximately an equal amount of the time.

A majority of hand skills require the use of one hand or of

one hand aided by the other. The hand that does most of the

work is known as the “dominant hand” and if the act

requires help, the other hand plays the role of helper and is

known as the “auxiliary hand” . eg,. In writing-, writing

can be done with right or left hand, holds the pencil or pen
with other hand holds the paper in place.
Development of handedness: Extensive research
on handedness indicates that, handedness develops in early

months of life. Training and social conditioning

determine the handedness. When children enter the school,
they are predominantly either left or right handed. These is
no evidence that right hand is superior or left hand, but
traditionally right hand is preferred than left hand.
Importance of right handedness (advantages):
• Learning is facilitated
• Guidance and demonstrations are more meaningful
• Gives feelings of stability and security and opportunities to
develop levels of skills. So feels less fatigue
• Gains confidant in speed, accuracy in movements
• Conformity to social expectation and personality gets
facilitated.
Factors influencing Motor development :
Some conditions influences the rate of motor development they
are :
• Genetic constitution: including body build and intelligence has
a marked influence on rate of motor development.
• Favorable Prenatal conditions: especially maternal nutrition,
encourage more rapid postnatal motor development than
unfavourable prenatal conditions.
• A difficult birth especially when there is temporary brain
damage delay’s motor development.
• Good health and nutrition during early prental life speed up
motor development unless there are environmental obstacles.
• Children with high IQs show more rapid motor
development.
• Stimulation, encouragement and opportunities to move all
parts of the body speed up motor development
• over protectiveness delays learning of motor skills and first
borns tend to be ahead than later borns due to parental
encouragement.
• Physical defects such as blindness delays motor development
• Sex, racial and socio economic differences in motor
development are due to differences in motivation and in
child rearing methods.
 Hazards in Motor development :
•Delayed motor development: Delayed motor
development means motor development below the norms for
the child’s age. As a result child does not learn the
developmental task the social group expects children of that
age to learn. For g. if a baby learn to sit by 9 months of age it is
considered as developmental delay.
There are many causes of delayed motor development some
of which are controllable and some not. It may come from
 •Unfavorable prenatal and postnatal periods.
•Brain damage at birth
• Lack of opportunities to learn motor skills
•Parental over protectiveness
•Lack of motivation.
Delayed motor development has unfavorable effects on
children’s self concepts. As a result it leads to emotional and
social and behavioral problems. They become frustrated, feel
inferior, and children lack the motor skills necessary for play
with their age mates.
 •Unrealistic expectation about skills:
Unrealistic expectation are based more on hopes and desires
than on the individual’s potentials. In the area of motor
development children are expected to gain motor control and
to learn skills before they are maturationally ready to do so.
Some unrealistic expectations come from parents, some
from teachers and some from children themselves.
Regardless of the source, they are hazardous to the
• child’s personal and social adjustments.
• They are also psychologically damaging the children.
• Not being able to live to the expectation makes children
feel inferior and inadequate feelings that undermine self
confidence and weaken motivation to learn other skills
• in addition children are criticized and scolded.
•Failure to learn important motor skills: If
children fail to learn the motor skills that are important to
them or to members of the peer group, it plays havoc with
their personal and social adjustment. For eg. Self-help
skills are necessary to become independent. If child fail
learn to self help skill, when a desire for independence
becomes strong, then the child feels inferior and become
rebellious when it must rely on others for help.
• Poor foundation skills: ‘Practice makes perfect’.
This is true only when the foundation skills are good. Skills
learnt from trial and error method or by imitating a poor
model will not result in good and perfect skills. If the
foundation skills are poor, proficiency in the new skills will
not be possible.
When this happens, children feel frustrated due to poor
results and results in feeling of inferiority. Lack of social
acceptance leads to poor social and emotional adjustments.
 •Stunting: Once children learn skill well enough to
gain satisfaction from it, they often begin to ‘stunt’ or to carry
out the skill in an unorthodox way to gain greater
satisfaction, attention and publicity.
For.eg. a child who learnt the skill of riding a bicycle very
well, it may try to ride the bicycle in unorthodox way- riding
backwards, leaving handle bars etc. this gives them personal
satisfaction from feeling of successful achievement and from
the admiration of their peers.
 In spite of the satisfaction stunting gives, there is
potential psychological damage from it. This comes from
the effect on children’s personal and social adjustments.
Because stunting often lead to accidents with the physical
and psychological repercussions. As they grow older, it is
hazardous to good social adjustments, because members of
the peer group regard stunt children as ‘show-offs’ and
think they are silly and even they start envy them.
• Left handedness: Left handedness is a
potential hazard to good personal and social adjustments.
It becomes hazardous under two conditions:
•If children realize they are different because they are left
handed and if they are serious about this, it will affect their
attitudes towards self and in turn their behavior.
When the instruction are given to right handers - these
children get confused. This makes their learning more
difficult.
 •Awkwardness: Children are not clumsy by
nature, as they grow older, the grace of movements of the
average child is something to be admired. Children whose
movements are awkward and in coordinate presents an
unhappy contrast.
Awkwardness in early childhood may be due to
brain damage at birth, mental deficiency or other physical
cause or due to over protectiveness of parents. Children who
are awkward delay in their motor development cannot keep
up with their age mates, as a result they feel ‘left out’ and
developing an inferiority complex.
 Emotional Development
in
Early and Late Childhood
 All emotions play an important role in life. It is
essential to know how they develop and how they affect
personal and social adjustments. Emotional development
depends on maturation and learning. As children grow
older, their emotional responses become less diffuse,
random and undifferentiated.
eg.- when showing displeasure, babies merely scream or
cry. Toddlers express their reactions in resisting,
throwing things, stiffening the body, preschoolers may
runaway, hide and children of school age may use more
of linguistic responses. In them, the motor responses
decreases so, emotionally follow a predictable pattern
with different stimuli.
Conditions responsible for emotional development:
Various studies of children emotions have revealed that their
development is due to maturation and learning. Both are so
closely interwoven that some time it is difficult to determine
their relative effects.
• Role of maturation: Development of endocrine gland is
essential to mature emotional behavior. The adrenal gland also
play an important role in emotional control. Intellectual
development results in an ability to perceive meaning and
reacts a accordingly. The growth of imagination and
understanding increases the ability to remember and
anticipate in particular way.
• Role of learning: Different kinds of learning contribute
the development of emotional pattern during childhood.
Their learning experience will determine which of the
potential reaction may actually use to show their emotions.

Both maturation and learning influence the development of

the emotions but learning is more important because it is
controllable.
Characteristics Features of Children’s Emotion :

• Emotions are intense: Young children respond with

equal intensity to lighter event and to a serious situation.
School age children are quick and sharp in responding
they can understand the seriousness of the situation and
respond accordingly.
• Emotions appear frequently: Children display
their emotion frequently. As they grow older and
discover that disapproval or punishment often
follows an emotional outburst. They learn to adjust
to emotion arousing situations. Then they curb their
emotional outburst or react in a more acceptable
way.
•Emotion are transitory: Children can easily direct
their emotion. There is rapid shift from laughter to tears,
from anger to smile or from Jealousy to affection. This
change is mainly because of
1) Clearing the system of pent up emotions by unreserved
expression.
2) lack of complete understanding to the situation due to
intellectual immaturity
3) limited experience and short attention span.
As children grow older, their emotions become more
persistent.
•Responses reflect individuality: In all children the
pattern of response changes gradually as the influences of
learning and environment are felt. One child may run out of
the room when frightened, another may cry and still another
may hide behind the furniture or a person.

Eg- For exam- some are cool, interested, but some are

disturbed, tensed.
•Emotions change in strength: As the children
grows older. Emotion becomes very strong in some
children, while in other weak, these variations are due
partly to changes in the strength of drives, partly to
the child’s intellectual development and partly to
changes in interests and values.
Eg- Naughty child may become very good, decent and
regular
•Emotions can be detected by behaviors symptoms:
Children may not show their emotional reactions directly, but
they show them indirectly by restlessness, day dreaming,
crying, speech difficulties and nervous manners such as nail
biting, thumb sucking etc.
As the child gains intellectual abilities, in physical and
motor skills and in awareness of the significance of their
environment, they acquire emotional reactions and pattern
appropriate to their level of development and to their
experience.
Eg- 4 years child’s tends to be afraid of dark, ghost etc, but 12
years child may be afraid of failure in school subjects, rejection
Methods of learning Emotions are:
Five kinds of learning contribute to the development of
emotional pattern during childhood.

•Trial and error method: It involves mainly the

response aspects of emotional pattern. They try out different
ways to express their emotions that give them greater pleasure,
satisfaction and avoid those that give little or no satisfaction.
This form of learning is more commonly used in early
childhood years than later.
•Learning by imitation: It affects both stimulus and
response part of the emotional pattern. By observing the
emotion of others arousing certain emotions in them also eg.
If teacher scold the child, if that child is popular with age
mates, other children also like to become angry at the
teacher.

•Learning by identification: Is similar to learning

by imitation. In this, children copy the emotional reaction of
another person. Here they copy the style and nature of
admired people and imitate them to identify in that
personality.
•Learning of conditioning: It means training by
association. It is related to stimulus aspects. (eg. Child gets
afraid of hairy thing when conditioned by loud sound,
Pavlov’s experiment food-dog-bell). Conditioning occurs
easily and quickly during early years of life, because of lack
of reasoning ability and experience to assess a situation
critically.
•Learning by training: Means learning under
guidance and supervision. It is limited to the response
aspects of emotional pattern. Children are taught the
approved way of responding when a particular emotion
to respond to stimuli that normally give rise to pleasant
emotions and discouraged from responding emotionally
to stimuli that normally give rise to unpleasant emotion.
Common childhood emotions:

Fear
Anger
Jealousy
Curiosity
Joy
Pleasure etc.
Fear: Certain fears are characteristically found at certain
ages- called as ‘typical fears’ for those age levels. Young
children are afraid of more thing than either babies or older
children. 2-6 years of age is the peak period of specific fears
in the normal patterns of development. Among children,
fears are concentrated on the fanciful, supernatural, or
remote dangers, on the death or injury, on the elements like
thunder and lightning and on characters recalled from
stories, movies, and television. School children have fears
related to self or status. They are afraid of failure, being
ridiculed or being ‘different’ in group.
 An important characteristic of all fear stimuli is that
they occur suddenly and unexpectedly has little
opportunity to adjust to them. As children grow older and
become more mature intellectually they adjust more
quickly to sudden and unexpected circumstances.
 Fear related responses: Children may hide their faces,
screams, cry or run away from the situation etc. As children grow
older, overt fear responses are curbed by social pressures. The
crying reactions stops, though the characteristic facial expression
remain and the child withdraws from the feared object.
Variations in children’s fear may be due to, Intelligence, sex,
SES. Health, social contacts, ordinal position and personality.
Girls have more number of fears than boys. First born have
more fears than later born. Physically tired, hungry, poor health
and less intelligent child respond in greater intensity to fears.
Fear related Emotions : Dominant aspect of these emotion is
‘fear’.