Infant's Motor Development - Admission/Application Essay Example

Infants Motor Development Introduction The term motor development can be explained as the changes related to age in an infant for their voluntary physical movement. This change can be observed in a child throughout their life span but the major development takes place between the birth and 18 years of age. The motor development skills refer to the movement of the small muscles. The children’s generally use their hands right from the point of their birth to explore the world around them and also to feel their bodies. The motor skills in children tend to grow and develop along with the growth of their whole body. With the due course of time, they learn to use their hands for improving their social, emotional and cognitive skills. Initially the body of the infants is simply uncontrolled and with the passage of time they learn to move their body to perform both fine and gross motor skills. Thesis Statement Motor behavior of infants forms the basis for framing a set of influential assumptions related to motor development. Discussion Babies generally grow tremendously at a fast rate during the first phase of life. Along with the physical growth in weight and height, they also pass through major achievement stages or phases which are considered as the developmental milestone. The developmental skills of the children can be defined as the easily identifiable activities performed by the child that includes walking, rolling over, sitting up etc. This development of the child can be classified under the three broad segments of developments such as the motor development, social or emotional development and the language development (Cowden and Carol 22). When babies or the infants learn skills they will develop or build new skills over the old skills. The parents are required to consider their child as special since each child in unique. When the infants are born, they are equipped with various automatic and reflex actions. The reflex or the automatic activities that the babies generally perform are drinking mother’s milk and breathing freely while the other reflexes performed by the child have no real purposes. When all reflexes are performed efficiently and smoothly by a baby then that infant is considered as a normal baby by the doctors. The main or prominent reflexes of babies are head turning, sucking, grasping, rooting, stepping, tonic neck and Moro response. The sucking reflex facilitates the baby to drink milk by own self in order to nourish him or her during the first phase of its development cycle. The permanent reflex of a child is heading turning. This turning assists the child to freely move his head when something is blocking his airflow. The other important reflex is rooting which help the babies to nuzzle their face and mouth into the shoulder or the caregiver’s chest. Rooting also guides the infant in finding the source of food such as their mother’s breast and this helps to communicate the message to their mothers or the caregivers that they are hungry and are ready to eat food. This rooting activity generally disappears after 3 weeks of age (Haywood and Nancy 35). The rest reflexes performed by the infant are less significant as compared to the reflexes mentioned above. But these reflexes are also required to perform effectively by the child. The babies in the first 3 to 4 months develop an amazing grasping ability they grasp anything that is placed in their palm and they tend to hold everything very tight. The interaction of the baby with his her environment provides an opportunity to develop his or her motor skills and also development within various learning domains such as self help, cognitive, language and social. The motor development is interpreted as the process of learning in which the abilities or the skills of the child is combined with the existing skills and the abilities of the babies required for fulfilling their task requirements and other constraints. The motor skills helps the babies in supporting the upper body and head when they are on stomach, opening and shutting their hands, stretching out their legs and kicking when on back or stomach, shaking and grabbing hand toys, bats and swipes dangling objects, follows the moving objects and pushes down their legs when they are left on the open and flat surface. The motor development can also be categorized into two types of motor development which mainly includes the large motor development and the small motor development. The large motor development can be defined as the development of the infant such as holding up their heads, pulling up, walking, rolling over and sitting. The very slow starter and slow development in the child are required to be observed and evaluated since there is no physical or health risk for normal development of the child. The small motor development of the child can be defined as the development such as coordination of the hand and eye movement, grasping, searching or reaching and also manipulating the objects. The example or reference used in this case of a child who is going to complete her 1 year on July 14 also passed through various cycles and developed her skills to walk, grasp etc. The motor development of an infant on monthly basis can be explained as follows. On the first month the child can lift their head momentarily, sees the black and the white patterns, becomes quiet when they hear voices and creates throaty sounds, the hands remains clenched and looks or observes intensely to their parents when they talk to him or her. On the second month the grasping reflexes decreases, visually searches the sound, vocalizes to various similar sounds, follows the dangling objects and crying becomes more prominent and distinctive. On the third month clutches their own hands and pulls the blankets, recognizes objects , faces and voices, develops awareness to strange circumstances, gains weight on forearms, tries to talk when someone speaks to them and attempts to locate the sound by turning their head in the same or particular direction. On the fourth month the coordination of eyes and the hands starts, rolls from back to side, gains weight on their legs when they are lifted upright, creates consonant sound, laughs, can sit with support and grasp the objects or toys with both their hands. During the fifth month holds his or her head up while sitting, takes or grasp the nearby object directly to the mouth, plays with their own toes, rolls from stomach to back, smiles and laughs by observing themselves on the mirror, starts discovering and noticing his own body parts, when they are laid on the bed takes their feet to the mouth and gets upset and sad when their toys are snatched or taken away from them. In the sixth month it is observed that they can hold the bottle, can adjust their body to observe an object, prefers or supports more complex visual stimuli, turn their head from side to side and they can also look both up and down towards the things around them and bears majority of their weight when they are held in a standing position and they can identify or recognize their own parents. During the seventh month the babies develops the ability of responding to their name, develops tastes and preferences, can transfer or move the objects from right to left hand and vice versa, willing to talk when others are talking and can sit without support and can also lean forward with support on both their hands. On the eight month they learn to say no by gestures, can adjust their posture to reach an object, reaches easily to the toys that are out of their reach and listen carefully to the familiar words. In the ninth month they starts crawling, responds to some simple commands, can sit for long time and increases interest in pleasing their parents. During the tenth and the eleventh month the permanence of objects start developing, wave’s bye, and lifts one foot as a support to take a step in the process of walking, walks with support to furniture and other objects and explore various objects thoroughly and on the twelfth month when the infant will complete his or her one year they can walk with one hand held by their parents or others, can recognize the object with names, can speak three to four words, shows affection and clings to their parents or near ones in strange situations. The child who is going to complete her one year can follow the objects rapidly, understand verbal communication, can respond and comprehend the meaning of various familiar words (Slater and Lewis 18). Conclusion Between 1 to 3 months of age the babies or the infants starts the transformation from a totally dependent and new born child to an independent and responsive infant. The child develops various reflexes from the point of his birth which gradually disappears with the due course of time. The infant’s development should not be compared with the growth of other infants or babies. The motor development skills developed by the infant help them to solve or overcome various problems or constraints. Works cited Cowden, Joe and Carol, C. Torrey. Motor development and movement activities for preschoolers and infants with delays. New York: Charles C Thomas Publisher. 2007. Print. Haywood, Kathleen and Nancy, Getchell. Life span motor development. New Zealand: Human Kinetics. 2009. Print. Slater, Alan and Lewis, Michael. Introduction to Infant Development. Great Britain: OUP Oxford. 2007. Print. Read More