We understand child psychomotor skills to be the level of development of the central nervous system, which is the main regulator of movements and cognitive and emotional functioning. Psychomotor skills in children encompass all the physical and psychological factors involved in child development, marking the evolution and growth in the child. We could say that psychomotor skills are like a psychology of movement based on a body-mind connection, and each movement is accompanied by knowledge, thought, and emotion.
Stimulating psychomotor skills in children at an early age
Early psychomotor stimulation is highly positive for their physical and psychological development because it makes it easier for children to:
- Reach some muscle skills and abilities more quickly
- Better development of critical thinking and memory, as well as maintaining concentration for longer
- Favors the acquisition of the body schema, allowing the child to be aware of their own body.
- Contributes to achieving postural control, laterality, balance, coordination, and sense of space.
- Helps the child orient themselves in time and space.
- Encourages perception and exploration of the environment.
- Promotes learning, concentration, and generates creativity.
- Promotes social relationships and stimulates emotional expression.
- Reaffirms self-concept and strengthens children’s self-esteem.
Psychomotor skills are especially important during the first years of childhood, since this is when children have greater brain plasticity, develop powerful neural connections and present flexibility and possibilities, which they will not have again in the rest of their lives. Therefore, early detection of possible warning signs that compromise the milestones of a child’s evolutionary development in any of its spheres (bio, psycho and social) should be more than enough reason to get started and act.
When we talk about the normal development of child psychomotor skills, we are referring to a process that allows the child to acquire the appropriate skills for their age. Let us start from the premise that there is great variability in the ages of acquisition of some knowledge and skills since, although psychomotor development is an evolutionary and continuous process that follows a similar sequence in all children, it is not carried out in a rigid manner and presents great diversity without being a pathology. The line that separates what is normal from what is not can be very subtle and it is sometimes difficult to diagnose problems in psychomotor development, since many factors and their interaction are needed to be able to diagnose accurately.
Possible indicators or signs
- Delay in the acquisition of skills or knowledge
- Stagnation or even regression in acquired skills
- Persistence of behaviors from previous stages
- Inadequate quality of responses, abnormal physical signs.
In the face of any uncertainty or doubt regarding the adequate psychomotor evolution of the young child, it is advisable that specialists visit him, starting with the pediatrician.
Main disorders of psychomotor development
- Motor weakness, which consists of clumsiness in movements and inability to relax muscles voluntarily. Motor instability, inability to inhibit movements, as well as the emotion that accompanies them.
- Motor inhibition, tension and indifference in social contexts, they show fear in the face of social interactions, they are afraid of falling, insecurity, they inhibit their movements, thinking in this way of making themselves invisible.
- Disorder of body schema or laterality, difficulty in acquiring knowledge and representation of one’s own body. It is difficult for him to orient himself in space-time and to use his body effectively to relate to the environment. An example of this disorder would be a child who at the age of three does not identify the elements of his face.
- Apraxia and childhood dyspraxia, the minor knows the movement, but is unable to perform it correctly, does not coordinate in activities and cannot imitate simple gestures.
- Tics or Tourette’s disorder, sudden and involuntary movements that affect small groups of muscles and are repeated intermittently. They can be chronic or transient.
- Tonic-motor disharmonies, Problems occur with muscle tone. It emerges in those cases in which the child is permanently tense or constantly relaxed.
Relationship between child psychomotor skills and learning problems
Every day there are more and more children between the ages of five and seven who have significant difficulties learning to read, write and do basic calculation operations. A large part of the causes are psychomotor in nature. When we talk about psychomotor problems, we are referring to problems of immaturity or dysfunction of the motor, sensory, and developmental patterns that the brain uses to perform these learning processes, integrate information, memory, and understand. Let us think that many graphic investments are not resolved by making files of numbers placed correctly, but by detecting and treating the cause that causes the child not to have well-structured spatial coordinates.
There are other common obstacles such as confusion of letters and numbers, skipping words when reading, lack of concentration and attention, poor quality handwriting, impossible postures when writing… all related to adequate psychomotor development. Psychomotor problems are present in children with ADHD who manifest deficits in fine and gross motor skills, motor coordination and balance, in children with NLD, in learning disorders such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia.
Early detection of learning and development difficulties
Although it is only a brief article, we can understand the relevance of early detection of any psychomotor difficulty in order to intervene, support, enhance and resolve as early as possible, addressing in a real way the diversity and uniqueness of each of the minors.
This work of detection, of collecting information that previously could be highly complex, costly in time, money as well as in professional and minor effort, currently with dide is fast, dynamic, without the participation of the child, and with the possibility through the observational method and answering online, to obtain information from the minor up to 35 indicators (one of the indicators is Psychomotricity), comprising the ages of 2 to 18 years, and covering all the spheres of the infant and the young person, “Education and Learning”, “Development and Social”, “Emotion and Behavior”.
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