AUTISM AND MOTOR SKILLS
Like sensory, social interactions, communication, and language, motor skills are somewhat of a challenge to many children and adults with autism. This is because many of them don’t have these motor skills and because we don’t know much about motor skills to take them seriously and recognize that they are a huge challenge. And we, therefore, don’t solve this problem, because you can’t solve a problem you don’t know exists, right?
As a parent of a severely autistic child who is 12 years old now, I will tell you why I personally believe that the absence of these motor skills is a problem. My son has what I have grown to call “butterfingers” (out of lack of knowledge, of course). He is as clumsy as hell and that is if hell is even clumsy. You’d give him something and he would drop it like it was hot, especially if that thing weights sort.
He trips and falls and bumps into things like he just doesn’t care. Well, to be honest, I used to think that he didn’t care that he was injuring himself. He can’t walk straight because if he did, he would fall. So, as a result, when he walks, you’d swear he was a car that is losing control.
I tried scolding him and even channelling him but because I was not shooting at the right target, I kept missing all the time to the point that I started accepting that this child just likes being difficult for no particular reason at all.
But guess what?
He was not the problem, nor was he doing all that on purpose or just to piss me off. But the problem was that he didn’t have motor skills and I didn’t know anything about what even that was. Until very recently, about a year at least. So, before we jump into the deep of this swimming pool, I want to explain what motor skills are.
What are motor skills?
Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles to help us perform certain tasks such as walking, running, etc. What this means is that the strength of our muscles depends on the performing of these tasks.
It is said that some of these motor skills may lose functionality if not used for a long time and the loss may be temporal or permanent. It kind of does make sense if you look at it from a medical point of view. For instance, what happens when a person is injured and hospitalized for too long?
They struggle to walk or use their hands because the incapacitation has impaired their motor skills and abilities. And for them to regain these motor skills back, they would have to undergo physiotherapy where their muscles are trained for flexibility so they can function again.
Picture this, for motor skills to be performed accurately and successfully which is their primary goal, three major players need to come on board to collaborate. These players are the BODY’S NERVOUS SYSTEM (the engine of the car), our very MUSCLES (the car), and of course the BRAIN (the driver).
Here’s the thing, though
As you can see, I am using a car to clearly describe the role of each participant in our motor skills performance. Remember that autism is a neuro-complex disorder, right? This means everything begins in the brain and ends in the brain.
And because the brain is one of the players but has challenges or developmental impairments (in the autistic person) and is also the driver, motor skills can, therefore, not be performed accurately and successfully.
Picture this scenario, we have our car and it’s in good shape and condition — road-worthy good shape but we have our driver who is not in good shape at all for whatever reason you can possibly think of.
Would that driver be able to drive our car properly? Hell to the no! Why? Because he is not in good shape or fit to drive, he can, therefore, damage our car. This scenario is exactly true with autism and motor skills.
So, the brain is there alright and is partaking but because of the challenges it has, it does not perform the way it should. As a result, these skills would not work properly. Now that we understand what motor skills are, allow me to further explain their two types, starting with the first one.
Fine motor skills
Fine motor skills are skills that require smaller muscles for functionality and these smaller muscles are the ones located in our wrists, hands, fingers, feet, and toes. The functionality of these motor skills and muscles includes playing the piano, manipulating small objects like fastening our buttons, tying our shoelaces, holding a spoon, and brushing our teeth just to name a few.
If you can look at your hands right now you would realize that all these skills use fingers a lot, and if your fingers are stiff and can’t move flexibly enough, they cannot perform any of these tasks. This is why many children including my son and adults with autism struggle to even hold a toothbrush steady enough to brush their own teeth.
The image above shows a little child tying his shoelaces and doing a fine job too. You might have an autistic child who is older than the child in the image and you’ve said some nasty things like “even kids younger than you can tie their own shoelaces but you, old as you are can’t”.
Just admit it, you’ve said such words and so have I. But guess what, that child young as he looks doesn’t have autism but yours and mine have. Therefore, tasks that seem easy to non-autistic and or neurotypicals come naturally but for children and adults on the spectrum, those skills must be taught.
And to be taught they first need to be identified and if they are not identified, they cannot be taught, and a child cannot learn them. Now, let’s move to the next type of motor skills.
Gross motor skills
Unlike fine motor skills that require smaller muscles to function and carry out their duties, gross motor skills beg for larger muscle groups. These larger muscles can be found in our legs, torso, and arms. These muscles help us to walk, balance, and crawl.
Gross motor skills are divided into two subgroups and the first one is called: locomotor skills which help us to run, jump, slide, and swim. Then we have object-control skills which help us throw like sane people, catch, and dribble.
The image below shows a child kicking a ball. Now, believe it or not, but many autistic children and adults don’t know how to kick, catch, or dribble, and my son is one of them. No matter how close you can be when trying to throw him the ball, he would still not catch it.
I remember losing an interest of playing catch with him because I thought “what a slow child I have”. Many parents do this out of lack of knowledge and as a result, we stop teaching our children because we think they are just being difficult when there’s actually more than meets the eye. So, know that it’s very difficult to be autistic.
The image below shows a child with good balancing motor skills, something an autistic child can’t do if they aren’t trained. For some unknown to me reason, my son likes doing this a lot, but he falls until it’s not funny anymore. Before knowing all this, I had lost interest in teaching him a lot of things that could have improved his life a lot, thanks to lack of knowledge.
If you look at all the images, the tasks the children are performing look simple and easy enough to be done even by the dumbest human being, right? Let’s all be honest. Except until you know that if the brain not “sober”, they can’t be performed.
And if you don’t know, you either call the child stupid and slow and become disappointed in them, right? I know I have because I didn’t know and that is why I am writing to educate you about all this so you can know and make better judgement calls than I have. I wish I knew all this many years ago, but I didn’t have anyone teaching me, which is why I am teaching you.
