How Does Poor Muscle Strength and Endurance Affect My Child?

Muscle strength and endurance enables children to perform every day activities. Adequate muscle strength and endurance is important for both gross motor skills such as carrying a backpack, walking, and playing on the playground, and fine motor skills such as writing, cutting, and brushing teeth.

Foundational building blocks for developing muscle strength and coordination include:

• Body awareness

• Muscle tone

• Coordination

• Sensory processing

• Postural control

• Crossing mid-line (imaginary line that runs vertically down the center of the body)

If your child has difficulties with one or more of the above areas, your child may demonstrate the following:

• Poor balance

• Low level of alertness

• Feeding issues

• Fine motor manipulation tasks such as holding a pencil or tying shoes

• Poor coordination

• Issues with speech clarity

• Writing

• Self-care such as getting dressed and brushing teeth

• Difficulties with postural control

Here are some simple ways to improve your child's hand strength through every day play.

1. Climbing ladders

2. Squigz suction building toys. Click here to see on Amazon.

3. Tug-of-War

4. Animal Poppers. Click here to see on Amazon.

5. Play dough, putty, or slime

6. Pop Beads. Click here to see on Amazon.

7. Crab walking

8. Wind up toys. Click here to see on Amazon.

9. Squeeze/stress balls

10. Games with tongs like Bed Bugs. Click here to see on Amazon.