Helping your child get a jump on their motor skills could be as easy as using an app on your smartphone. LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center has created an app to help parents teach their children how to kick, jump, throw a ball and even play hopscotch. Dr. Amanda Staiano said far too often young children are lagging in proper motor skills.
“Three out of four preschoolers are already considered below motor skills of where they should be based on their age,” said Staiano.
Pennington studied 72 children, ages 3 to 5, over a 12-week period to see if the exercises on the app that parents used to interact with them improved their motor skills. Staiano said it made a difference.
“The kids moved from a below-average rating for motor skills up to an average rating for motor skills, just from using this app,” said Staiano.
Staiano said poor motor skills can lead to childhood obesity, so it’s important to teach children as early as possible.
“And then it’s really hard to catch up as they get into school if they’re not feeling confident and they haven’t built some of these really fundamental skills then they just keep getting further behind,” said Staiano.
Staiano said the use of the program helped children increase their motor skills by an average of 16-percent and the study is published in the Journal of Pediatrics. The name of the app is called “Play” and Pennington is trying to get funding to make it available to the public.
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