Developing A Tripod Grasp

Control of the small muscles in the hand is a requirement for fine motor activities such as drawing, writing, lacing, stringing beads, or manipulating small items. Until they gain strength and control in their muscles, children may find these activities difficult. Think for a minute about your son’s ability to put on his shoe. That’s fairly easy, right? This is because putting on his shoe requires his gross (or large) motor skills, which children like him tend to develop more easily than fine motor skills. This is why not every child who knows how to put on his shoe can already tie it at the same time. Manipulating the tiny laces requires fine motor skills, and these normally come much later in a child’s life.

Writing is a perfect example of a fine motor skill whose progress you can closely observe as your child grows.  Learning how to use writing tools such as pencils becomes imperative as children near entry to formal school.

Children typically move through four phases of grip when learning how to use a pencil or any other writing tool. Around the age of two, children tend to hold a crayon on the palm of their hand, using their whole arm to move the crayon on paper. Their movements at this time are large and uncontrolled.

They then learn to hold the crayon with their fingers—the second stage—but still use the entire arm to move the crayon around. At around three years, your kids would start holding the crayon between their thumb and forefinger, their movement now directed using their wrist. Finally, starting around the age of four, children develop what is known as the mature tripod grasp. This means that they hold the crayon with their index finger and their thumb. The base of their hand is placed on the writing surface for support, and they can now draw using precise movements from their wrist instead of their entire arm. The smaller muscles of their fingers are now doing all the work as children start drawing random shapes. The more opportunities they get to draw, and the more encouragement they get, the better their fine motor development gets.