Building fine motor skills
Does your baby seem to reach for things lately? Does she focus on something and try to grab it? These are examples of fine-motor skills, which are key in learning to eat solid foods.
Muscle-building
Babies develop from the torso outward, meaning they’ll gain control over their arms and legs before their fingers and toes. And they develop from top to bottom, so they’ll gain head and neck control before getting control of their arms and legs.
Your baby’s physical growth also involves large- and small-motor development. Large-motor development refers to big muscles such as the leg muscles. Crawling, jumping, and throwing are all large-motor skills. Small-motor development refers to small muscle groups, such as those in the fingers, toes, lips, and tongue. Picking up and grasping small objects and licking the lips are examples of fine-motor skills.
“Hey, what’s that?”
As your baby develops fine-motor skills, she’ll have a newfound interest in the world around her. She’ll not only be able to see objects better but also reach out and try to get them.
This new adventure is fun and exciting, and the new skills she’s learning will help her when she starts to eat solid foods. Want to know what she’s up to? Look for these actions:
Reach out: If your baby sees something that interests her, she may reach for it. Her eyes can focus on what she wants, and she will soon be able to control her arms and hands to reach for it.
Hold on: When your baby gets what she’s reaching for, she’ll wrap her fingers around it and try to grasp it. She may drop it the first few times, but she’ll keep trying until she can finally hold on to it.
Touch and feel: As your baby gets older and can hold an object in her hand, she’ll use her fingers to feel it, noticing any bumps, rough spots, smoothness, or other textures. When she starts eating solids, she’ll do this with her food too.
Work together: Does your baby try to put everything into her mouth? Then she’s practicing her eye-hand coordination, using her eyes to focus, her little finger muscles to grasp, and her arms to move things to her mouth. This skill will be helpful when she tries to feed herself.
Keep watching
All babies develop at different rates, but it can happen fast, so keep watching your little one for these skills. She’ll amaze you with all the things—both big and small—she learns this first year.