FAR REACHING THINGS

REACHING

This may feel like a movement progression of Head to Foot and Near to Far – and it kind of is, but reaching is a really special skill, one of the earliest “goal-directed” behaviors. It’s exactly what it sounds like – being able to reach for and grab something with intention. Reaching requires an array of specific skills – intention (a goal), being able to position and orient your hand to an object, to open and close your fingers, to apply the right pressure to match the physical properties of objects, and to move the arms steadily – while connecting this to what you see and sense.

Note: Timing information is based on general AAP milestone guidelines, which exist to help determine if a child is progressing as expected for his or her age. Keep in mind that each child develops skills at their own rate, and often in their own order. These different rates are based on many factors – the environment around them, genetics, muscle tone, gender, and even what they are spending their firing and wiring time on. Researchers are making efforts to develop more accurate and individualized guidelines, but it may takes several more years.

Reaching typically appears around 3.5 – 5.5 months (when adjusted for estimated due date of the baby). However, recent research has shown that parents can create reaching opportunities for infants as early as 3 months. At this time in development though, reaching might look more like jerky batting at objects, so if that’s the case, no worries, development isn’t a race – just watch for the beginnings and encourage it.

Try These:

Hands and Thumbs (Grasping)

Continue to help baby open and explore their hands and thumbs. Handling a variety of safe objects helps the thumbs open when holding an object. A variety of size, shape, and texture (even wet/dry, warm/cool) help the hands learn to grasp things. Careful with the object choice as your baby might be bringing it to their mouth soon. DIY DAD – Paper towel tubes can be cut and taped into all sorts of shapes and sizes for supervised play.

Batting

With baby on their back, hang things above them to bat at (fabric, those neck ties, streamers, tie an object to a string above them). Doing this outside or near a softly blowing fan can add in some random motion.

Reaching with Dad

Place a graspable object in front of the child and draw attention to the toy by talking about it and pointing to it. Encourage your child to reach for the toy, but refrain from helping them grasp the object. When they make successful contact, celebrate it, and help put the toy in their hands so they can explore it for a short bit, then repeat. Babies love change and novelty, try swapping the item. Work up to the baby in supported sitting on your lap with both of you facing the same direction. Play close attention to their interest level and attention, and RESIST the urge to step in or disrupt unless really needed – for may dads, resisting may take every ounce of will, especially in the coming years. Practice this now, it’s important for later. This leads into the concept of scaffolding.

SCAFFOLDING

Much of learning is a social process. Scaffolding is a term that describes how a child is supported in learning by a caregiver or teacher that assists and encourages learning until the task can be done more independently. It puts the learner first and has been shown to be an efficient approach to learning, while also helping to build independence in children.

As “Dad as Coach” – look for opportunities to help support learning by assisting only as much as needed to keep them in the happy learning area of Not Too Hard and Not Too Easy – between where they can and can’t do something (even with help).

Reaching and grasping are some of the first skills coming online where you can start to explore this. As reaching and grasping start – offer opportunities to do it, show how to do it, enable some success, and give encouragement as they progress. In regards to encouragement… you do you – it might be a full on touchdown dance or something much more toned down and stoic. Babies like excitement and babies don’t judge.

The rewards that kids get often drive motivation for more learning. Science knows that positive parental contact, interactions, and excitement is rewarding in babies (arguably the most rewarding). The important concept as “Dad as Coach” during reaching (and every task) is the excitement and encouragement you bring and show! Start there as you build your support skills.

Look… a lot of what they learn is going to land square in Dad’s lap. One day a pencil will show up in their hand. They’ll want to draw a square – so you have to break it down. Vertical lines, practice. Horizontal lines, practice. Together a square… eventually. You’ll help move their little hand to start, then let them mimic what they see you do, then they will observe a line and copy it. Your support will fade and your role shifts more to one of encouragement and feedback. They’ll do it on their own, and won’t need your help… until they want to draw a triangle. And so on.

In the coming weeks – watch for reaching, encourage reaching. Have fun.

Humans are born to learn.
Learning how humans learn is a powerful dad skill.

Scaffolding was introduced by researchers in 1976 as an assisted learning approach which tries to create independence in the student. The idea was that teachers can teach best by giving the right amount of support to the individual student until they can do the task themselves. The name was also a metaphor for the idea of how a tall building is built one story at a time. Put scaffolding around it, support the process, and then remove the scaffolding when the building is complete.

Peeling back the curtain of scaffolding to look at what inspired it – it was the work of a Soviet psychologist named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was known for his work on psychological development in children in the 1920’s and 1930’s in the Soviet Union. He was fascinated with the learning potential of children and noted that “individuals learn best when working together with others during joint collaboration. It is through such collaborative endeavors with more skilled persons that learners learn and internalize new concepts, psychological tools, and skills”.

He researched and observed that full cognitive development required social interaction – and that the meaning of most things in life comes from interpersonal connection between individuals. He also documented that brain development seemed to have windows that built on themselves through progressions. He put all of this together into a theory he called the Zone of Proximal Development, before his passing in 1934. This optimal zone was where you could learn a task that was not too hard nor too easy, from someone more skilled than you, who reduced support as you progressed to be able to do the task independently.

This concept took almost 50 years to make it into circulation in Western countries, but today it is often what is meant when scaffolding is mentioned. The concept has become an important foundation in child development all the way to elite athlete coaching. In the journey of learning more about learning, and specifically if certain tools might change learning dynamics of reaching – quite a few researchers have looked at ways to modify the experience of reaching, to some surprising results.

But first, a quick reminder that science is a continuum, and not all science is created equal. Oftentimes research is funded to address widespread medical issues or areas that researchers have deemed a deficiency. There are fewer studies done on what are called “typically developing humans” (normal healthy people), and even less on how to promote optimal development or health in people.

There are also some other challenges to scientific research. It’s often done in labs in controlled conditions, which may not always reflect the dynamics of life. It’s also best to have many scientists try to recreate results, but this can be too expensive and often researchers are rewarded more for doing novel work. Even really well designed experiments might have too narrow of subjects, or may not represent across enough groups (race, gender, socio-economic status). All of these things can limit the ability to generalize the findings, even though they add to understanding and help shape new experiments. It’s useful to understand why and how certains things came to be and what the most important foundations are.

The reason this is being brought up is that there was a 2011 and 2014 study done in autistic populations to encourage reaching by using sticky mittens (putting velcro on a pair of baby mittens to help the hand of the baby attach to a velcro covered object). These studies showed success in this training in autistic risk babies. A 2015 study of 25 typically developing 3 month old babies showed that sticky mitten training increased focus and attention and promoted more motor skill development than babies that did not use sticky mittens – a very incredible finding! However, this study was recreated by another research group later in 2015, and it was unclear if mittens made any impact. The original researcher was a little critical of this new finding, so in 2016 the other research group did the study again, and found that sticky mittens might even hinder the learning experience. It was suspected that parental encouragement, the sensation of touching the toy, and having several days of practice was the best thing for promoting reaching vs sticky mittens. A 2019 study of pre-term infants, however, did show that reaching was improved with sticky mittens.

It can sometimes be easy to get excited at small studies that develop tools for quicker scaffolding and progression. Here, the benefits of “sticky” over “non-sticky” training is unclear in typically developing babies. What is VERY clear, however, is that the tools we use to teach and coach are often only as useful as the one who wields it. Tools are secondary to the coach – to how dads support the learning process – to how Dads support those far reaching things with encouragement and excitement. And that’s a skill that’s worthwhile to build.