Fine Motor Skills Development: 10-12 Months

At about 12 months, toddlers can sit straight and use their hands a lot

• Develops Control Over Muscle
• Develops Fine Motor Skills
• Starts Moving Around

Develops Control Over Muscle

By 10-12 months, a baby starts using her hand to pull, push, hold and rotate objects. She can sit without support. The major developmental milestones that a baby shows are balancing muscular control, trying to stand without support, twisting hands, trying to eat a single piece of fruit or biscuit by her own. Most of the babies take their first step during this age. All this means your baby is ready to develop fine motor skills. One year olds can take out things from a container. She might try to take off her shoes and shocks. She might try to search her hidden toys. There is lot about this age of your baby which may surprise you.

Develops Fine Motor Skills

From banging the objects to deliberately throwing them, finger feeding, being self motivated to hold the spoon and trying to eat (not perfectly),pointing to objects ,navigating a touchscreen phone (it’s very common among current generation) etc are some of the fine motor skills which can be seen in 10-12 month old babies. These little monsters love to tear off papers or books. Give them old magazines to play (prefer one which has colorful pictures), they learn to turn the pages may be more than one at a time but its fine. Let them enjoy it as it’s an old magazine (do not worry if they try taking off pages or destroying it). The baby may also try to correlate the names if you let her know what is in the picture.

Starts Moving Around

Toddlers at 10-12 months move from sitting to crawling. They crawl, creep on hands and knees. Try to keep your home safe from the things which can be harmful for the baby. A baby should have free play area where she can do anything she wants. As a part of learning, the baby may want to climb on sofa or bed or any other furniture. Keep the furniture with sharp edges away from the reach of your baby or either pad the corners with sharp edges. Do not keep any liquids (medicine, spray, shampoo) within your child’s reach which can be harmful or poisonous. To encourage more hand movements, give a few blocks and let her stack these on one another. Teach her to say ‘bye’ or ‘hi’ by waving hands to promote wrist movements. Play catch with a soft, big ball or soft toy. Sit closely and throw the ball slowly towards baby. She might not be able to catch it but would surely love this. Scribbling is fun at this age so let her hold a crayon or a marker and draw whatever she wants.
Chewing and throwing toys is very common for 10-12 months babies. Try to understand your baby and encourage her in the development of these motor skills.