Why are “In-Hand” Manipulation Skills Important?

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What Are In-Hand Manipulation Skills?

These are the skills that involve moving and controlling one or more small objects inside the hand. For example, between twelve and fifteen months of age, your child will not only use a pincer grasp (holding an object between the tips of the index finger and thumb) to pick up tiny objects but begin to press the middle, ring and pinky fingers against the palm to hold several objects in place. These basic In-hand manipulation skills develop between ages 2 and 4 years but are refined over a lifetime!.

Below is a photo of my hand holding a candy that was pressed by my ring and pinky fingers against the palm. Children use this in-hand manipulation skill when holding several coins and moving one at at a time to insert into a piggy bank slot. This skill is called Translation and I am so skilled – I can unwrap one candy while holding another in the same hand.

Translation

Children at this age are also developing skills to stabilize an object with the helper hand while manipulating with the worker hand. This enables them to stabilize a container while inserting a coin through a slot.

It would be difficult to stabilize and squeeze the “Hungry Harry” ball shown below while holding several coins at the same time if you didn’t have in-hand manipulation skills. Feeding a tennis ball as shown below is an ideal activity for older (4-5 years of age) children working on increasing hand strength and coordination to stabilize the ball with the “helper” hand while manipulating objects with the “worker” hand. (Closely supervise if working with a child who still puts inedible objects in her mouth).

Rotation

It would be rather inconvenient while stabilizing paper during writing tasks- if children needed to use both hands in order to rotate the pencil to use the eraser end. Rotation is the skill to turn an object, such as a pencil using the pads of your fingers. Simple rotation is used when twisting a lid on a container to open or close. Rotating the pencil to use the eraser end is considered a complex rotation.

Shifting

When I see a child using the helper hand to adjust the pencil grasp in his worker hand- I question whether she has in-hand manipulation challenges. The skill called Shifting enables a person to move the worker hand up and down the writing tool, or control handles on forks and spoons without using the helper hand to adjust them inside the palm.

When children have challenges manipulating objects inside the hand- sometimes we also see that they avoid touch to the palms, have flat palms- meaning poorly developed intrinsic hand muscles. They may perform manipulation tasks using their fingertips-which is less effective. One strategy that promotes using intrinsic muscles is crushing paper inside the palm as shown in the following post.

Learn more about how to promote hand skills from birth through 5 years of age in my book From Rattles to Writing: a Parent’s Guide to Hand Skills (sold on Amazon in print and digital editions).

Looking for an In-Hand Manipulation Challenge?

See if you can connect 2 or more cubes inside your hand…. Be sure to use only one hand!!!!

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