BABY'S HANDS: USEFUL EVERY DAY FOR A LIFETIME.

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GROW YOUR MAGNIFICENT CHILD

CHAPTER 46

LEVEL 7: 

BABY’S HANDS: USEFUL EVERY DAY FOR A LIFETIME:  Baby’s hand use and manual development.

Your child’s OMSDEP: Her hand use and manual development intentions: 

  • To simultaneously use her eyes, tactile abilities and favoured hand to carefully draw, write, paint and do other skilled handiwork. (Naturally then, drawing, writing, painting and other skilled handiwork can now be well fostered by parents). 

Becoming right or left handed is a natural process.

As adults go about their everyday lives they rarely notice whether they are naturally right or left handed.  It is the same for children, they also rarely notice if they are naturally right or left handed. By a natural process, children begin to favour either their right or left hand and the dominant or favoured hand usually becomes much more skilled than the other (‘to favour’ here means choosing to use that hand more often). Most children become right handed and therefore most adults are right handed.

It is little known that people who are right handed are usually also right eyed, right eared and right footed. This means that they favour using their right eye when using a telescope, surveyor’s level or other tools or toys that require the use of one eye only. They also favour using their right ear to listen to sounds in the distance by turning that ear towards the sound. And they also favour using their right foot to kick a ball. As would be expected left-handed people are usually left eared, left eyed and left footed.  Being either left or right footed, eyed, eared or handed does not appear to have any negative effect on a person’s intelligence.  For that reason children should be encouraged to use whichever hand, be it right or left, that they naturally choose to use as the favoured or dominant hand. 

At Level 7 your child’s right or left handedness should become clearly established. 

Into the future.

Your child has now reached a high point in her personal development. She should now be fully equipped for her lifetime with a natural high level of manual development that will enable her to learn manual skills such as sewing, surgery, plumbing, carpentry, writing, painting, drawing, pottery, gymnastic bar work, musicianship and many other skills. If she hasn’t already started then now is the time to involve her in learning those skills to a high standard. She should delight in all of these activities but she will probably favour some more than others and it may be easier for parents to arrange to do some of these activities than others. Which activities are chosen usually depends on the preferences of parent and child and what opportunities are available in the home and community environment. It is important to remember though, that for children, quality learning occurs with repeated, brief periods of hands-on activity in a quality environment. Children should never be allowed to become bored, they should always be interested and happy when doing their activities.

Brachiation Level 7.  

Your child should now be able to brachiate well and persistently. She should now be well equipped with the brain, vision and hand functioning required to write and to carry out many other skilled tasks using her hands and vision. The level of development and learned experience she now has as a result of doing the brachiation, mobility and other activities should ensure that she can persist in physically taxing games and activities requiring excellent hand, arm and lung response. Excellent natural breath control should help her to sing and speak well. To write and draw well your child should now require only the desire to write and the knowledge, that is information, about how and why we form shapes on paper using a pencil. If she has been doing Magnificent Drawing then she may already be an excellent drawer for her age.  Her fingers and the brain functioning required to play many musical instruments should be excellent for her age as should her ability to perform as a gymnast on bars, ropes, climbing frames and trapeze. 

The next step:

If your child is not yet learning formal gymnastics then now is an ideal time for her to begin. Try to find a gym teacher who is happy to have you present while your child is at the gym. It is essential that your child likes, even loves, her gym teacher. It is also important that the teacher makes gymnastics fun for children, ideally with an active program that includes games, music, dance, self- discipline and the use of a full range of gym equipment and facilities including circuits, floor routines, balance beams and horizontal bars. Gym teachers who are not loving towards your child and do not see gymnastics as fun should be avoided. The teacher should also appreciate your child’s ability and the love, time, effort and devotion that you, as a magnificent parent, have for your child. 

Your child is very fortunate to have a parent such as you. You have given the time required to help her to reach this point in her life.