Clumsy kids can be cute, but if you’re a parent, it might be worth it to check in on their motor skills.
A new study from the University of Texas at Arlington warns that coordination issues in childhood could translate to a wider degree of clumsiness – not just in movement, but in social interaction as well. That’s why experts like Priscila Tamplain, an associate professor of kinesiology at UTA, and one of the authors of the new study, are warning parents to keep an eye on their child’s motor skills.
Tamplain sat down with Texas Standard to discuss the study, and what it can tell parents about their child’s development. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Parents already have a lot to worry about. Why should motor skills be on the radar?
Priscila Tamplain: Motor skills are so important, but so overlooked in childhood.
They have been associated with physical health and mental health, not only in childhood, but also in adolescence and in adulthood. Children that have better motor skills are more physically active and have better mental health, and those are two things that we really worry about.
The first year of life, the baby communicates, especially with family members, through movement. So crawling is a big deal, walking is a big deal and sitting is a big deal.
Even if kids are meeting those milestones on time, if parents don’t really continue emphasizing those skills – promoting experiences to improve motor skills, practice, instruction, time – they may actually be clumsy a little bit later on in childhood.
Well, and being clumsy doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal, right? It’s something we joke about among ourselves as adults. But you write that it can actually be a big deal, especially for a little kid, where a lot of socialization happens, say, on the playground.
Research has established very strong links between coordination in the elementary school years and the ability to participate in activities, sports, the ability to feel good about yourself and so on.
We don’t see that much of a big deal as a society, and we don’t place as much importance on those skills, because once kids start regular school years, we’re worried about academic achievement. We want them to learn to read and do math and things like that. And those skills are like, well, that’s okay. They’re playing. That should be enough.
But it’s not enough anymore, right? We live in a society where there’s so much screen time, indoor time and other things that we need to do. There’s not as much time anymore to learn and practice those skills. Kids are falling behind on them, and we’re seeing the consequences of those things later on.
What sort of things should a parent be keeping an eye out for to say, “Oh, this isn’t quite where they need to be at this age”?
There’s no checklist, but especially when kids are starting pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, there’s some things that we really want to pay attention to. The ability to be able to draw, color, copy and trace, for example. Those are fine motor skills that can be very important later on.
We also want to make sure that kids can do things like throwing a ball, catching, jumping, skipping, galloping and all those more gross motor skills, big muscles. If kids are kind of falling when they’re doing it, or not being able to do it right and, you know, sometimes they’re getting the hang of it and they get it and go on, sometimes, they’re not.
If parents see by the preschool years that kids are not playing as much with their friends and they’re not joining in the playground very much, they might not have the adequate motor skills to join in. That is the time when we should do something about it.
You write about developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Is that common, and should that be on the radar of parents?
That’s such a good question. It’s extremely common, prevalent even, more prevalent than ADHD and autism, which are very well-known neurodevelopmental disorders.
About 5% of kids have developmental coordination disorder. This is a disorder of having poor motor skills.
Not every child that is clumsy will have DCD. Some of them just did not have enough opportunities to learn them and practice their motor skills.
Well, professor, if someone is hearing this and they’re thinking, “oh my goodness, I might really have an issue,” they could go to their pediatrician, but you also have resources at UTA.
Yeah, sure. So my lab at UT Arlington, right in the middle of the Metroplex in Dallas-Fort Worth, we do free assessments if parents would like to see their child’s motor skills. Those are a great way to know a little bit more.
Motor skills are way more important than people will tell you. And they don’t develop on their own, right? They don’t come as birthday presents. It’s not because a child turns them on at one year of age that they start walking, it’s because they practice that a lot, and they fall, and they get up, and they do it again.
This is a great example of how those skills need to be practiced. So, really focus on experiences and opportunities for kids to learn motor skills.
