Movement & Motor Planning
At Rumpus OT, we will work together to identify your child’s strengths and areas for growth. Balance, coordination, postural control, and motor planning (a child’s ability to create a plan, visualize it, sequence the steps, and adjust their movements as needed) are all important foundational skills for play, daily routines, and school participation.
Kids who struggle to join in at recess or PE, who have difficulty learning new skills, or who are easily frustrated during daily routines are often masking challenges with movement and motor planning. Why is this? Childhood activities are full of novel motor demands- much more so than the average adult’s life. It can be hard to remember how difficult this is for kids. To get an idea for the magnitude of these expectations, imagine the last time you undertook a truly new activity for your body as an adult. Did you try cross-country skiing, rock-climbing, baking bread, a new type of dancing, or CrossFit?
What did it feel like to watch someone demonstrate a new action and attempt to imitate it?
Were you able to advocate for yourself if you needed something demonstrated more than once?
What did it feel like if other members of a group were able to imitate something more easily than you?
When you needed to make adjustments to your body position or the force or gradation of your movements, were those adjustments easy to make or difficult? How did you know how to adjust?
This process, motor planning, is essential for learning new skills. Children rely on motor planning for every new skill they learn, and we require them to learn new skills just about every day. The emotions you may have recalled just now- whether excitement, delight, and joy or vulnerability, anxiety, or shame- are all part of children’s daily lives as well. Motor planning can be particularly challenging for kids with learning differences or diagnoses like ADHD and Autism. The good news is that all of these skills can be supported through play.
At Rumpus OT, we will strengthen your child’s underlying motor skills by doing the things that interest and excite you both. We will climb on a play structure. We will build a fort out of couch cushions. We will make up rules to a silly new game. We might even bake cupcakes. These can all be great ways to practice motor skills in a playful way.