How Does Poor Muscle Strength and Endurance Affect My Child?
Muscle strength and endurance enables children to perform every day activities. Adequate muscle strength and endurance is important for both gross motor skills such as carrying a backpack, walking, and playing on the playground, and fine motor skills such as writing, cutting, and brushing teeth.
Foundational building blocks for developing muscle strength and coordination include:
Body awareness
Muscle tone
Coordination
Sensory processing
Postural control
Crossing mid-line (imaginary line that runs vertically down the center of the body)
If your child has difficulties with one or more of the above areas, your child may demonstrate the following:
Poor balance
Low level of alertness
Feeding issues
Fine motor manipulation tasks such as holding a pencil or tying shoes
Poor coordination
Issues with speech clarity
Writing
Self-care such as getting dressed and brushing teeth
Difficulties with postural control
Here are some simple ways to improve your child's hand strength through every day play.
Climbing ladders
Squigz suction building toys. Click here to see on Amazon.
Tug-of-War
Animal Poppers. Click here to see on Amazon.
Play dough, putty, or slime
Pop Beads. Click here to see on Amazon.
Crab walking
Wind up toys. Click here to see on Amazon.
Squeeze/stress balls
Games with tongs like Bed Bugs. Click here to see on Amazon.
